What type of villian do you want to see

[Malte279]

I haven't seen Psycho so far, but I always wanted to. It is definitely one of the (sadly many) movies on my to watch list
In case of both, Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer the motives remain unknown, but so remain the criminals. They were never identified with any certainty. If they were I suppose there would be a bit more of an idea about the backgrounds. I do admit that in many (I daresay most) cases of serial murders and the like who are caught everyone is shocked that somebody that "friendly" and "normal" would do something like that.
In many such cases (Jack the Ripper included) there is a strong likelihood of a perverted kind of sexual drive being involved in the atrocities. This however is a motive which I consider absolutely unfit for an LBT story. Jealousy might work, but not something so far beyond that (not saying that you ever even suggested otherwise; just a general statement).
I see where you are coming from, but personally I still prefer some motive for the villains. It is just a matter of taste anyway.

[WeirdRaptor]

Whoa, back up there! I never said anything about giving the villain a perverted sex drive.
Well, we'll just have to agree, but I think the route you're talking about here gives rise to too much possibility for the audience to 'feel' something for the villain, other than disgust and contempt. That always irks me. I don't want to feel sorry for the villain. I don't want to like the villain. I'm happy with a character who is just a purely malevolent force creating chaos. If there's any character development to be had, let it come from the the heroes.

Anyway, if my memory serves me weel, the original film never states the Sharptooth's reasons for tracking the group almost every step of the way on the journey. There's obviously some sort of obsession or mania going on there.

[Serris]

You are right. No motive is given for The Sharptooth's pursuit of Littlefoot and the gang.

But I want the villian to be a 3d character. Yes, I want them so hatable that you WANT to see them dead but I like my characters 3d.

[Kor]

Those are the best, but very few are seen, except under certain writers usually.

[WeirdRaptor]

Well, whether a character is 3D or not isn't just in how much you know about them. A part of what makes a character good and memorable is how they're played out. Their own words, actions, how well his dialogue is acted out, and how well the character's mannersims are acted out/animated speak louder than amount of backstory.

[Malte279]

Sorry, my post came across the wrong way. I never assumed you to consider such a drive to be practicable for an LBT story villain. It is a possible motive of the murderers that had been named, but I never understood you to consider this as an option. I should have been clearer on that one.
I guess the essence of this discussion is that there are two different point of views neither of which is right or wrong as they are primarily based on taste. I hear what you are saying about not wishing to feel something for the villain. It is a valid point to take.
Personally I don't believe good or evil to come into the world just for good's or evil's sake but rather because the conductor of good or evil deeds seeing some gain in the acts he or she commits. Sometimes villains are demonized to the degree that we "credit" them with being "not human". I think that to some degree such a "demonizing" works as a measure of self protection pretending that only somebody who is not a human and therefore not of the same stuff as everyone else could commit such unspeakable crimes.
Sometimes I think that showing the "weak" moments of a villain is a good idea. There can be moments where the villain doubts that what he or she is doing is "right" and what damage he or she is causing. If in spite of this awareness the villain still pursues his or her devastating course I think it is not so much making you feel positive about him or her but rather despise the inability of the villain to change the course which he or she recognized as harmful.

[Drake]

I prefer my villians to have some kind of motivation, or goal. They can act quite insane, but I'd like them to at least be clever.

If they believe themselves to be doing the right thing, that's an interesting plus. Such as doing it for their species, or government, it at least gives them some degree of humanity, which can be lessened by any foul acts he/she commits.

Anyway I think we've kind of strayed off topic.

[WeirdRaptor]

I think you're both over-looking that there are people out there who just love to cause strife and chaos and don't care about right or wrong and are incapable of having "weak moments" because they have no conscious. In actuality, yes, some evil does exist just for the sake of "evil". Ergo, it would be no negative to have a fictional character just like that.
And who says a villain we don't know much about can't be clever? Jafar from Aladdin has no specific history to speak of, but he was very clever. And I defy anyone to say that the Joker from The Dark Knight wasn't a great villain, and we don't know squate about him or his motives.
The villain I have in mind does have a motivation: to watch gleefully as the world burns because he's frikkin insane and derives a sick kind of satisfaction from it. Its not very specific, but its still there. Why wouldn't this fly with you two? Just because he doesn't have a backstory doesn't mean he can't be a 3D villain. As I said, it all depends on how well he's played out.

Drake, I don't want to be rude, but I have to be frank. The kind of thinking you presented sickens me. I know its a matter of taste, but the idea of feeling anything other than contempt for such a figure just makes my skin crawl. I will be saving my sympathies for Samwise and Frodo instead of Gollum, thank you very much.

It is not a plus if the villain thinks they're doing the right thing. They'd have to be pretty stupid to think that killing millions of innocent people, disrupting the order causing the world to fall into chaos, supporting an ideal that sacrifices those not considered "important" aside to thw wolves, trying to destroy the world, trying to take over the world, trying to force an idea of others,  or whatever, and the like is the right thing. And I'd be even less inspired to feel sympathy for one who did, because at least the unsympathetic villains are fully aware of the consequences of what they're doing. They just don't care as long as they get their way.
A villain does what he/she does out of personal and selfish gain. To think that someone who destroys, conquers, lies, and steals could be a sympathetic figure is just naive.

If there is character growth and sympathy to be had, let it come from the heroes. The villain should always take second fiddle to the characters we're primarily reading about or watching, anyway.

Conclusion, I know I was pretty rough in this post, but you have to understand that in the case of the villain, talk of sympathizing with the figure who summoned up a meteor to strike and destroy the earth or back-stabbed his way to the top is just something that puts me off very quickly. Its one of those things in fiction I feel strongly about. The way I look at it, if you feel sorry for the guy whose already destroyed about a dozen planets, I just think you're more likely to be fooled by a real life trouble maker. That's why I don't let myself take a sympathetic stance on it, because how we look at fictional DOES and WILL effect how we view the world. And in real life, I can't name a single lowlife or warmonger who did any of the things they did out of a remotely understandable motivation.
But, there you have it in a nutshell: sadistic, unbalanced villains are not and should not be tragic figures. They are little people. They are not Sephiroth.

[Drake]

I wasn't actually refering to super psycho villians when I made that post.

Just because they have some degree of humanity doesn't make them sympathetic.  I rather meant that it would be better if one understood what the villian was after. Psychoes that just enjoy killing kind of don't appael to me as villians.

I would have disagree. The prospect of a villian thinking that he can do any sort of atrocity he wants so long as his ends are justfied could just make him more foul.

(Looking back I'm not too sure I worded my previous post very well.)

[Malte279]

Now, now WR. Nobody tried to talk you out of your point of view and it has been stressed by everyone that being a matter of taste rather than petty right or wrong. No need to get agitated.
Also you may have overlooked one detail in my last post. I tried to point out that having a villain who could easily take a different path but still decides for the "dark side" is not any more sympathetic for that than one who never ever shows the ability to choose (in fact it may be even more vicious if somebody is evil by "choice" rather than by some mental disorder or the like). Very often the world is not just black and white and evil as a villain may be I consider it no infringing of this "quality" if he or she was aware of and theoretically able to choose better. You are correct that delight in others suffering and destruction is a motive (I think I even mentioned it in one of my posts), but I suppose it to be the exception if there is no background whatsoever if somebody takes such delight in this.
Gollum / Smeagol is the very particular case of an extremely split character, but I guess going into analyzing here would go to far off topic.
Just please keep in mind that nobody here is attacking you or anything. You have your points, you have your reasons, others have other points and there reasons and in case of such a matter of taste this is good the way it is. No need to get angry about it.

[WeirdRaptor]

To Malte: I know that, but as I said, I get very put off quickly when people start in with the "make the villain tagic" crap, which I thought you were both going for. I've been in this kind of argument so many times before that I seem to have come to expect people to just to want the villains to be sympathetic.

The world's also not as gray as some would like to believe, either. Moving on from that, I can see your point, but I still have to disagree. I personally find villains who will just never stop to be more frightening, because a sane villain will be less likely to do anything destruction that's without a lot of planning and reason.

We could start a topic about Gollum and talk about him there, if you like.

To conclude, sorry about becoming short.

To Drake: You need to tell me that you're not talking about psychos if you're not.

Just because they have some degree of humanity doesn't make them sympathetic. I rather meant that it would be better if one understood what the villian was after. Psychoes that just enjoy killing kind of don't appael to me as villians.

I beg to differ on that first point. As for understanding the villain, that's always a given. Even the villain I'm thinking of has a motive, that much is hardly ever left out of the writing.
I take you don't have much fondness for the Batman franchise.

For the villain committing atrocities to get his way. We're not going to agree, so I'm not gong to argue that point.

[Drake]

I take you don't have much fondness for the Batman franchise.

Afraid not, I prefer Marvel comics to DC. I was a Batfan in the past though.

[jedi472]

Super-Sharpteeth seems like the best idea, although Rogue Valley inhabitants are still cool, too.

[Kor]

I'd prefer to have no sharpeeth that can leap an 1/8th of a mile, run faster then a speeding locomotive, and have bullets bounce of their chest.  Why not just regular ones.  They can still be dangerous with their claws, teeth, normal non super speed, ect.

[Malte279]

I second that. Sharpteeth don't need only super abilities. All they do need is being spared the indignity of being so much tamed down and stupified as has been the case in most of the later sequels.

[WeirdRaptor]

Really. I don't know just who the creators think they're protecting. Not a single kid out there that has wide-eyes for dinosaurs and adventure hasn't seen both the original Land Before Time or the Jurassic Park movies. Charlie and co, the kiddies have all already seen a T-Rex tear a lawyer to shreds in JP. Drop the safe act, already.

[The Friendly Sharptooth]

What if there was a villian who was a good guy, had good intentions, and cared for his herd? Not very villiany yet, eh? I'm just getting started. A villian can have the best intentions, yet his methods to achieve his goals can be so tyrannical, cruel, and down right evil, that his actions outway his intentions enough to be considered villianous. A perfect example of doing the right thing in the wrong way. No matter your intentions, it is no excuse for doing terrible things. Then even those who he is trying to help, while his intentions may be valued, will despise him. How can you look up to someone who acts like a criminal? If someone wants to better things, yet steals, kills, and destroys, he isn't really bettering things, is he?  Everyone is judged by what they do, not what they think. So if they do what's wrong, then they will be perceived as such. No matter how much you stand for what you believe, whether it's right or not, if you decide to abandon all the rules to get it, then you might get what you want but will certainly lose yourself in he process. So there should be someone who is a villian in every aspect of the word, except where his heart is. Pretty creative, yet actually possible. I like it.

Now while I can take credit for writing this and expressing the idea in such a way, I can take no credit for the idea itself. It is actually an idea I heard from brekclub85. I hadn't seen him in this thread yet and I was afraid that he might not show up. And since his idea is related to this topic completely, I just wanted to make sure it got posted at all, whether I did it or not. But I still made it very clear that I take no credit, for I didn't think of this at all. When I share others' ideas, I always give the proper credit. I don't think I said it nearly as well as brekclub85 could have, being as it's his thought, but this is the best explanation I could write. Sorry if it isn't dead on.

[brekclub85]

Yeah, one thing I don't like is how we've never really, for lack of a better term, gotten inside the minds of the sharpteeth in the LBT series besides series, and they are always protrayed as mindless killers besides Chomper and his parents.

That's why, I had in my Sharptooth Valley fanfic, one of the major villians (Redfoot) be a leafeater who does something terrible to the sharpteeth, but he thinks he's doing the right thing. Leaf eaters can be evil too.

The LBT movies have mentioned the Circle of Life, but I don't think they ever said that meat eaters (who eat other dinos) are required to make the world balanced. They also never mentioned that sharpteeth need to survive, and we all know what it takes for them to survive. That's not evil, it's instinct. There is a difference

Plus, I wanted to say "screw you" to the cartoon cliche of making every meat-eating carnivore the bad guy.  A story or series where the carnivores are the good guys and the herbivores being the bad guy would be awesome IMO.

[The Friendly Sharptooth]

(Sigh) If I had waited ten more minutes I would have known that I didn't need to write my post at all. I don't usually speak for others, but brakclub85 had made such a good point a while back that I just wanting to make sure his idea, which I love, was expressed. You never know if someone falls in a coma or something and can't post. Well I'm sorry for stealing his spotlight. He just had such a good point I got hasty. I'll try to stick with my own ideas now. Still, ya gotta admit that out of the many members and topics, writng about someone then having the same person show up at the same topic at about the same time and writing right after you do, well, winning the lottery seems equally likely.

[brekclub85]

It's ok, I'm not bothered by you posting first. Just glad you think my idea is clever and well-done. (PS, did you get my PMs Friendly Sharptooth?)