hello here is a post on antagonists written by yours truly because i get so so damn tired of people dismissing or bashing characters, signing them off as evil, and leaving it at that. i’m usually not at all like this but it’s been bothering me for days and i just am so very done right now.
i’m not here to excuse antagonists and their actions. they often commit horrid crimes, and nothing should excuse that. let’s get that out of the way first.
antagonists are written to oppose the protagonist. in many cases, this means they’re morally the direct opposite of the protagonist. in many cases, this means they are the general definition of evil. they kill, hurt, and destroy with no apparent moral compass.
from the protagonist’s pov, in my case harry potter, this leaves no room for questions as to why and how. harry sees bellatrix only as evil, for all he knows are the crimes she’s committed. any interaction harry has with bellatrix is loaded with mutual loathing, for different reasons of course, but still. there is no depth to her character, no humanisation, and frankly, when i read the books first, i really found her one of the most cartoonish villains in the whole of the series. she was written as a 2D, simplified, mindless soldier with no conscience, who so happened to be nuts. a parodic variation of the joker, almost.
nowadays i just know that jkr can’t write villains for shit, but that’s a subject for another day. i mean come on, who even comes up with “death eaters can’t cast patronuses”. hello, joanne, my bullshit meter just broke. as if these people can’t have happy memories??? they’re human, for fuck’s sake. they went to school with the order. they were children. they have fathers and mothers and siblings and sunny days running through the garden and rainy days curled up with a good book. they made friends and found love and went to parties and broke the rules and celebrated birthdays. if those or something along those lines aren’t good memories or something then i will eat my damn shoe right now.
because there is so little information available on the background of just about any villain in the series, whether it be bella or draco or barty crouch jr or the lestrange brothers or rosier or i could go on for a while, there’s literally nothing written for them but “ew they’re not on my side so they must be evil and i hate them”. that’s ridiculous.
this in fact really only leaves room for interpretation for the rpers in the community. they should be allowed to, god knows the countless of marauders/golden trio players come up with entire intricate backgrounds and they get encouraged, so why shouldn’t the darker characters get the chance to develop themselves and rise from their 2D position to 3D? that’s what i thought.
do you even realize how scary it is to be confronted with a three-dimensional villain? a villain with a background, a villain who was formed. do you honestly think bellatrix lestrange was born a nutcase with no conscience? or that she woke up one day and was like “yes today i’m capable of killing my cousin, my niece and my nephew-in-law haha!” if so, then, well, what are you doing here in the first place.
no, no these people were molded into who they became, into who they were expected to be. in who they knew best how to be. it’s the most frightening thing, to me, because it could happen to anyone. it happened to peter pettigrew (who is honestly so underrated and cast off as ‘a little rat who was part of the marauders but not really haha, hey these are my marauders, james, sirius, remus and *looks at smudged writing on hand* pat pat the rat’ which is a fucked up lie and i will fight you on this), and it could happen because of the most understandable reasons. forced into it, like draco. raised with it, like my own character. as writers, we are allowed to fill in these blanks to our own wish / want / interpretation, no matter what fanon believes. fanon doesn’t dictate. fanon is often wrong, anyway.
imagine my surprise when i look at the dash, and i see with my own two eyes that one of my favorite blogs gets told that their character portrayal is not good enough, because he’s only allowed to be a bully, and not a person with thoughts and feelings and fears and doubts, wants and needs. i’m literally pissed off. who the fuck do you even think you are? what gives you the right to tell a person they are not allowed to develop beyond what the books have given them to work with?
villains are allowed (tragic) backstories! villains are allowed to be human, and to be portrayed like that. villains are allowed to invoke sympathy. villains don’t have to be heartless and 2D in order to be a proper antagonist. villains are characters too.