Most of the time, I find writing or reading about the "traditional" hero to be insanely boring and predictable. Flawed people attempting to do the "right thing" are always more enjoyable for me to play as, especially when they're rather unorthodox compared to most others. For example, Surreal could be considered heroic, but I like to play him as being more niche than what's expected of your typical superhero, in order to take more unique writing paths and make him more of a grounded figure in some ways. In fact, I don't even really see his character as a superhero as far as how pop culture defines them, and neither does he.
But I also think like the idea writing a villain who is truly evil and is aware of that. As ironic as it sounds, the "villain with good intentions" trope feels a bit boring and played out for me. A villain can be truly disgusting with virtually no redeeming qualities and still be a fantastic character, iconic villains like The Joker and Hannibal Lecter are a testament to that. As well as some of the ones on here. I suppose I just miss the days when villains were a true force of evil, but could still be complex characters. It's kind of odd, but I like the idea of flawed and grounded hero types and genuinely incorrigible villains (but still nuanced) villains.
I admit I like playing the more traditional types of heroes. But then as I develop them as characters, I like to add a flaw here, add another there and drop a bombshell on people that this so-called hero has a darker side to them. And even though I don't reveal everything right away, it's because I tend to do the slow burn kind of story instead of leaping to this or that. Doing something too quickly and it's not much of surprise when the moment actually comes. It's the "you think you know them but actually don't" kind of thing. ^_^
I almost ALWAYS write vile despicable villains. Darkchild in the glory days (where you got away with much more on the site) was truly the definition of Villain. Not as evil as Final Arrow back then, but good lord did I bring my evil bastard ways to the forefront. One point I used children as weapons, and did many many vile evil things to women (trust me I am not a hater, it just...happened.)
I turned Feral Nova evil for a microsecond, trained her to use and manipulate hellfire (DC main weapon) killed Gambler a few times, did horrible things to Mercy (think she was another account back then) demons were my big thing back then so many a tentacle was used in obscene ways.
Arrow convinced through illusions a group of heroes to kill there entire families by making them think they were villains or demons I cant remember correctly
DC had a kid with Talon that whole thing was freaking weird. I am pretty sure the VV (Vine Villains) killed a few worlds...back in those days we were god awful. But back then the heroes out numbered us like 10 to 1 so we had to be real badassess. Now villains and neutrals outnumber it seems.
But its always been easy for me to write either truly evil characters, morally ambiguous, or Redeemable ones.
My role models in that kind of spectrum of characters were Punisher and Magneto. With a few Vertigo characters. I was a true blue sixteen years ago when I came here, then I read 60 years of marvel and a comic Transmetropolitan and it all went down hill when it came to heroes after that. Magneto was right. And prolapse gun should be a real thing.
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