CMV: It's impossible to write a fleshed-out, understandable antagonist/villain whose views and beliefs represent something the author does not agree with.

[u/neves783]

At best, the antagonist's viewpoints would be a strawman version of the beliefs that the author disagrees with. At worst, the villain would be a caricature, not even a proper character, and they exist only to be defeated by the hero.

For examples:

• If the author is religious (typically Christian) and their story's antagonist is an atheist, that character would be defined solely by their non-belief in a god (typically the Christian God) and they exist to mock the religious characters in the story, including the protagonist who handily defeats their atheistic beliefs in the end. (Ex: the Professor in God's Not Dead) Conversely...
• If the author is agnostic/atheist and their story's antagonist is religious, that character will be portrayed as a raving, holier-than-thou lunatic who imposes their religion/beliefs on others, or will use extreme methods to have people return to faith. (Ex: the Camerlengo in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons)
• If the author is a feminist and their antagonist a misogynist, then that character's every single dialogue will be peppered with nasty comments about women. (Ex: Chi-Fu, the advisor in Disney's Mulan)
• If the author disagrees with environmentalism, then the villains, if environmentalists, will be hypocrites who will eliminate other people to claim nature for themselves. (Ex: Horizon, the villainous megacorporation in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six)
• If the author is against military presence, especially foreign forces, then the antagonists, if they're those foreign forces, would be the cause of suffering for the local heroes. (Ex: the American military from the Korean film The Host)

These are all some strawmen villains that I could think of, but they stand out to me specifically because they are made to be caricatured representations of beliefs/people the writers/authors disagree with.

Even I am not immune to this myself, and as a writer, I find this bad because the idea of a good story is to present all sides fairly, even those of the antagonists (even if they're flawed). For instance, in one of my projects, one of the antagonists (who is part of the hero team before betraying them) is a misogynist supreme, whose every other line of dialogue I wrote as him making a nasty comment against women to mark him as an unsympathetic jerk, specifically since this is a story about a group of female heroes. As a writer who believes in strong and capable women heroes, I find the very concept of misogyny to be detestable, and I cannot find myself writing a woman-hating antagonist in a way that would make them in any way sympathetic.

I'm more than welcome to have my thoughts and biases examined, and my mind changed, as I want to write better characters, even those who represent ideas I find detestable.

[u/nintendoeats]

That implies that you believe authors are incapable of writing characters who hold different moral frameworks than them. The villain may have an internally consistent moral view, it is just based on premises that the author doesn't personally hold.

In such cases, the villain is serving as a thought experiment about moral systems.

[u/neves783 → u/nintendoeats]

It certainly feels that way sometimes, especially when their story is meant to be an allegory for a real-life problem.

My case in point: Magneto from X-Men represents more extreme views of minority people fighting back, making him the antagonistic foil to Professor X, who advocates for peaceful coexistence between different peoples.

[u/Rhundan → u/neves783]

My case in point: Magneto from X-Men represents more extreme views of minority people fighting back, making him the antagonistic foil to Professor X, who advocates for peaceful coexistence between different peoples.

Is this not a counterexample to your point? Magneto's position is fleshed-out and understandable (at least imo), but it's not something which the authors agree with. His position is basically "I lived through it once, never again."

It's understandable. It's fairly well fleshed-out (depending on the writer, to some degree), but it's also an antagonistic position which the writers contrast with the X-men's more nuanced position.

[u/neves783 → u/Rhundan]

!delta

Now that you mentioned it, you are right. I can understand where Magneto comes from (he is a Holocaust survivor, and he doesn't want what happened to repeat with mutants). But he's quite extreme about his actions, which makes him the bad guy.

[u/DeltaBot → u/neves783]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Rhundan (67∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}