It would be stupid of me not to bring this up first. Today's younger generation has a MUCH larger media base than the world did even 12 years ago. A few clicks of a mouse and you can access sites with information on almost every piece of literature in public access as well as entire archives of videos. With all of this information so close at hand and easy to grasp, why is it that RP seems to be losing it's original or interesting villains?

The answer, at least to me, is that there is simply too much information at hand. Why bother creating an original villain when you can just watch an episode of an anime series and make a carbon copy (or worse, rip them right out of the series and tweak the name a bit) of a villain you happen to like? There doesn't seem to be much point in making original villains when there are so many examples that can be copied in a matter of moments.

That isn't to say all carbon copy villains or unoriginal villains are BAD villains. I've seen someone use a villain from an old Space Opera anime in a modern setting Role play and turn him into one of the biggest threats to the universe I have ever seen. And that villain wasn't even a main character in the series he was stolen from, he was just a no name henchman.

I shouldn't have to say anything about this once. You're villain is an all powerful vampire lord, blessed with eternal life and literally unkillable. Sure he can be defeated and 'killed' for a few decades or centuries but the moment blood touches even a single speck of the ashes that come from his remains he'll be as right as rain in no time.

So why the hell do you have him brooding and moping about death and life? He's an ancient vampire. I realize vampires might not have much to do during the day other than sleep or stay indoors and all (Sparkling doesn't goddamn happen. The only 'sparkles' that occurs when a vampire goes out in the day are the cinders sparkling in the fresh ash pile where he stood.) but I highly doubt they spend their days or nights moping around about their past lives half the time. And if they do they should have taken a little sunlit walk ages ago.

Villains should either be overly confident or extremely cowardly, ready to run or beg for mercy at the slightest notice, only to try and stab the hero in the back the moment he turns away or offers grace. A villain can mope about his eventual death but he should also be able to overcome that moping long enough to shout to the heavens that he will surpass God himself and laugh in the face of Death, ultimately dooming himself to irony's cold embrace.

If your villain sits around moping like a teenager who listens to too much Bullet For My Valentine then it's time to sign them up for counseling.

When your villain isn't a threat then they are no longer a villain. They become, once again, a faceless mook simply there for the heroes to beat down and laugh at. When their 'evil plan' is comically harmless without MEANING to be you've ruined their image. And a villain without an image is just an NPC, a face in the crowd.

However, this isn't always the fault of the villain's creator or owner. A HUGE problem I have seen in recent RP threads on forums and in games is that players will actively AVOID the villain at all cost, leaving the player who owns them to wonder why the hell he bothered to join the RP in the first place. This is normally done with little to NO talking between players so the villain's owner has NO idea if the ones avoiding him are doing so to fulfill some unmentioned personal plan or if they're just doing so to be jackasses.

When a group of role players begins to alienate and ignore the villain they effectively kill ANY chance of there even being a story worth creating. And that's when things turn into nothing but Erotic Role Play or "romantic" one shots. (And if you've read my first Blog you know how I feel about those.)

Villains NEED to be threatening. They NEED to be tough and dangerous, something characters are hesitant to just openly attack without a reason. If the characters don't fear them, the readers wont either.

This is a short one as it seems pretty clear. A villain should be fun. They should be enjoyable to watch and entertain the reader, be it thru comedy or because of how devilishly evil they are.They should be fun to watch and even more fun to write. I enjoy writing all my villains. I almost always enjoy writing my characters and I like to think It shows.

A character you don't have fun writing isn't a character WORTH writing and It shows heavily in how a villain acts or is seen when the writer no longer enjoys writing them.

So the villain is dying, slowly and painfully. He's killed a few people, MAYBE even managed to wound or kill a player character there at the end. Great. Brilliant. Bravo. Now we get to find out what his motive was.

... What? He did it because he felt like it? He murdered hundreds because of a stupid temper tantrum due to his stupid Romantic one shot sub plot going wrong? Well then.

Screw. That.

Not all villains need to be sympathetic. A large majority of the best are the best because they AREN'T sympathetic, because we CAN'T relate to or understand why they were so horrible or why they did what they did. But the very best, in my book at least, are the ones you don't want to see die, or at least don't want to see die without at least getting a respectful nod from the hero or a redemption filled speech where the villain admits that he knows what he did was wrong but that he did it because he was doing it to protect the future or another or to avenge the death of a loved one.

When the villain can become a regular person and make us CARE about what happens to them then that is a villain worth a reader's time. This doesn't make them an Anti-Villain per-say, simply a hero who took the wrong turn and became a villain. A villain needs a motive or they just aren't interesting. Being evil because they're just evil is a cop out and not even a very subtle one.

One of the absolute GREATEST of these is Harley Quinn of the Batman series. She's a horrible horrible person sure. Yes. That's a given. But not only is she fun and likable, you feel sorry for her when you realize that she loves a man so insane and cold-hearted that he constantly abandons her and abuses her, all for her to come right back to him out of her sheer undying love, which is the only reason she continues to BE evil. We pity her and care about her.

They can be used to show the reader just how fragile the human mind is, how morals can be twisted or shaped to fit one's own personal definition, how the hero could just as easily have become the villain.

Those are the villains I long for and desire. Many of my own thru the ages have been Sympathetic villains and I've had a blast with each and every one of them.

No sound escaped the void, nor did any living creature. The void was closed off from the world, nothing would be able to pass thru the void.

Nothing but a song. It started quietly, almost undetectable to the ear. Quickly though it grew in volume, encompassing the entire island.

Malagnis found himself wandering a black and barren plane where nothing lived and nothing grew. The sky was red as blood and the moon shining down upon him was tainted brown. Malagnis found that no matter how far he walked he never seemed to get any closer to his goal, a simple one room hut on the opposite side of a flowing river. The river oozed along, it's waters murky and black.

The song continued to ring out across the barren plane, bringing with it memories of the past. Painful memories. Sickening memories. Malagnis found his body being racked with pains. It began in one of his shoulders, the pain so intense that he began to tear at the afflicted area, eventually tearing off his own shoulder. To his own horror his shoulder did not grow back. Instead, the pain transferred to a new part of his body.

As he continued to tear at his own body, slowly ripping himself apart, the bones shattering as they hit the ground, Malagnis was filled with an overwhelming sense of self-loathing and guilt. He saw the faces of all those he had destroyed over his lifetime, each and every one of their faces becoming etched in his mind.

Malagnis had never feared anything. He was invincible, having consumed the bodies of the living, the dead, and the immortal alike. Gods and devils had found their way into his being, his power growing each time. None had ever defeated him. Until now.

Now he was afraid. He feared the pains that were forcing him to tear apart his own form, tearing away at a lifetime of destruction. He feared the faces that flashed before his eyes, their looks of hatred and anguish filling him with dread. He feared death, the prospect of what awaited him, he who had ended the lives of millions, almost overwhelming him.

Eventually the pain was all but gone. And so was Malagnis' form. Where once he had been a giant construct of bone and sinew, he was now nothing more than a normal looking skeleton, still quite tall but far from the threatening abomination he had once been. He had collapsed to the ground where he was clawing at his own head, his real head, trying as hard as he could to get rid of the pain. If only he could stop the pain! Stop the pain! STOP THE PAIN! STOPTHEPAINSTOPTHEPAINSTOPTHEPAI-

"Why are you crying?" A soft, gentle voice said above him. Malagnis stopped trying to tear off his own skull, looked up. There, standing over him with a quizzical look on her face, stood The Child.
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"Why are you crying?" The Child said again, her voice gentle and sad. She was standing over Malagnis, her soft glow still present. Malagnis wasn't sure what she was talking about until he noticed small droplets of water hitting the black, barren ground. Reaching up, his fingers came away wet. He was crying.

This realization only made him cry all the more, a wailing cry echoing throughout the barren plane as tears flowed out of his empty eyesockets. His body shuddered with each sob, his bones rattling as each cry racked his body further. And The Child smiled, a small sad smile. And she drew him to her and held him.

And soon they were both crying, The Child's tears mixing with Malagnis'. They held each other as they cried, pouring out their sorrow and their grief, at lives lost and lives taken. They had both committed atrocities on a scale that was almost incalculable, taking but never giving back.

And now they could finally realize the truth, here in this barren world where nothing changed, nothing grew, and nothing lived.
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Eventually there was nothing left for the two to cry over, nothing left to regret. They continued to hold each other long after the tears had stopped falling, long after they had dried up and the barren land had fallen quiet again, their wails and sobs silenced. When they finally stood they stood together, hand in hand. The Child gave Malagnis' skeletal hand a squeeze and smiled up at him. He, in turn, reached down and brushed one last drying tear from her cheek.

The two made their way to the river, the waters no longer oozing, but instead flowing red. As they made their way across the red waters and onto the shore opposite The Child remembered a legend, long lost to the world.

The story spoke of a being of old, one of the first to walk the earth. The being was worshiped as a god by a certain tribe consisting of both monsters and human. The god was a benevolent being, who asked nothing of those who worshiped him. But the people were not satisfied with simply living their lives in homage to their god.

Instead they came to the conclusion that the only way to truly appease their god was to sacrifice to him the most precious thing they had: A life. And so the first child born upon the blood moon was chosen. The child was given no name, for her sole purpose in life was to be devoured by the god her people so worshiped.

When the child came of age she was sent out into the deep woods in which the god of her people was known to dwell. Eventually the child came upon a hut, small but sturdy. No animals could be seen around the area, having all fled ages ago. This was the home of her peoples' god. When she came closer to the hut a voice called out to her, clattering and snapping. She stopped and watched as the god of her people stepped out of the hut.

This god had no flesh, no blood, no muscle. And yet it moved and spoke in it's odd tongue. The god beckoned the child forward, asking why she had come, if she had a request from her people and if so, why had the priest of her people not come himself? The child told the god of her peoples' wish, to give a life to their god.

The god grew silent, his empty skull staring into the treetops. The child simply stood there, unsure of what to do. Her god had not yet taken her into himself, had not taken in her essence. Was she not pure enough? Was she not worthy enough? At the thought of this the child began to weep. She fell to the ground, he head in her hands as she wept, tears falling between her fingers to the ground below.

And then the god was there on the ground with her, holding her as she cried, his skeletal limbs encompassing her entirely, comforting her. When she had no more tears to cry, the god took her with him into his hut, inviting her to sit and stay with him awhile. The hut was simply, with only a bed made of cloth and moss and a low table that looked to have been crafted by one of her people.

The god set a small meal before the child, indicating that she should eat. While the child ate the god explained to her that he would not take her into himself, quickly making sure that she realized that this was not due to any fault of her own. Instead, the god decided, she would live with him, in his forest and in his hut.

And so it came to pass, that the child lived with the god and walked with the god, speaking to him at length and growing in knowledge of the world. When she had been a part of her people she had been kept in solitude, only being taught the most basic of things. The god however, shared with her his seemingly limitless knowledge of all the things in the world. And the child was happy.

After living with the god for many years the child was no longer a child but a young woman, beautiful to behold and with a voice as pure as moonlight. The woman found that she had, in the years spent with the god, grown to love him dearly and the god in turn was much the same. They were happy, for a time. Until the priest of the woman's people realized that their sacrifice of years ago had not given herself to their god.

They came in the night, during the blood moon, waving about their spears and their tools. They tore the woman away from the god's grasp, keeping him away and telling him that the woman was evil, that she had tricked him all these years. And they killed the woman right before the god, his wailing cries heard across the land.

And when the woman's blood began to soak in to the soil of the woods that they had walked together so many times, the god was driven to madness. The god set upon his people, slaughtering them in droves, and devouring their corpses, growing in size and in shape. He was no longer the benevolent god they once knew. He was a god of hatred and judgement, slaying those who had taken what was most precious to him.

When the blood moon had passed and the sun peeked over the treetops the land was in ruin, the people of the god all slain, even down to their smallest infant. And the god sat staring at the only body left in the land, that of a young woman who had been stabbed thru the heart. The god had not slain her, of that he was certain.

Yet the god could not remember who she was or how she had come to be there. The god could not even remember who he was, knowing only that he felt a burning hatred for all that lived and walked the earth, be it human or monster or immortal. And so the god walked the land, no longer a god, but a monster.

Malagnis turned to look at the woman now standing beside him in front of the hut that sat on the opposite side of the red river, her long glowing hair and kind eyes filling him with comfort, the soft sway of the woods that now surrounded them and the hut giving rise to feeling long forgotten. As they made their way into the hut, The Child realized that Malagnis may have forgotten the legend. But that was alright. There was plenty of time to remind him.

They had all eternity after all.
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Outside of the barren plane, the dark voids dissipated, leaving no trace that they had ever been.

It would be revealed later that day that across the world a strange song had been heard by all, driving many to suicide. The official global death toll ranged around 1 million though many more were suspected to be unaccounted for.

And the legend of the god and the child left the world along with those who passed, never to be remembered again.