Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Protagonist not the main character?
, started by MagBas on Jun 16th 2011 at 3:10:26 AM
Removed:
- The Boys (2019): The Boys are certainly villains in-universe. Butcher callously uses his friends, blackmails people, kills people, breaks into government facilities, and has a general disregard for anyone's welfare (including his own, to be fair) unless it gets him closer to his goal of killing Homelander.
I haven't started the new season, but I think it's pretty clear that Vought International is the villain of the show, and the Boys are antiheroes in a case of Gray versus Black morality.
Okay, the following entry has been contested on whether or not they are a Villain Protagonist:
- Drow Tales has the protagonist race Drow, who were once brown skinned Dark Elves, who nearly destroyed all life, escaping into the underworld, only to worsen in every aspect. The very beginning has the drow, particularly the protagonist's house's party slaughter a town of humans, take women and children as slaves, the protagonist herself murdering a child by smashing his head with a mace slowly and watching gladiatorial games where captured humans are made to fight to death for amusement, murdering a light elf female in a rage and buying a female human slave as a bodyguard. It takes several disconnected episodes until Ariel the protagonist softens a bit if only for fan love.
Does this count?
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Well tbh by the examples in here and on other pages that guy edited, the drow do qualify for some serious villainy.
But given the mad meltdown he just went on in edit bans thread, I don't even want to bother trying to establish the veracity of these claims.
Edited by Adannor
Out of note, the original version mentions that they are Designated Hero examples. If they really qualify to this, this disqualifies them because this means that they are not villains where the history is concerned.
Well as that page itself goes "Ironically, a failed attempt at writing a Villain Protagonist can lead to misunderstanding the author's intentions and come off as a Designated Hero" and it could go the other way too.
These drow commit terrible acts. If the narrative tries to gloss over that and paint them as heroic, it still may be that it fails to actually stretch them into Designated Hero and leave them squarely into villain territory.
But that needs somebody who actually read the comic and isn't a blistering ball of rage against it as the original bringer of the example was.
Edited by Adannor
If the narrative visibly tries to gloss over their acts and paint them as heroic, this means that of a descriptive(describing without values judgment) point of view, their acts are not morally wrong and they are heroic, and Villain Protagonist is a trope that received sufficient subjective examples in the past to receive a warning in hidden text alerting to keep the examples objective.
Said this, i never read the comic and i do not know if this actually is true.
- Courage The Cowardly Dog: A downplayed example is Eustice Bagge, the Token Evil Teammate of the three main characters. Unlike Courage, who is a heroic coward, or Murial, who is very kind, Eustice is cruel, greedy, mean spirited, and a bully. Eustace is mean to his dog Courage for little to no reason, and is not a good husband to Murial. Eustace is not nearly as much of a villain protagonist as some other examples for two reasons: one is that while he is one of the three main characters, Courage is the main main character. The second reason is that he is more of a Jerkass than a villain. There are several episodes where Eustace goes from a jerk to an actual villain, but he plays the role of an antagonist in those episodes, although he may still count for these episodes since he is still a main character on the show as a whole. The one episode where he is the central character rather than Courage, Curse Of Shirly shows just how cruel he truly is. At one point, he refuses to help an old lady across the street, telling here "You got legs don't ya?! Do it yourself!". At another point, he sees a man being killed by a monster and refuses to help him or honor his dying request for Eustice to tell the man's wife he loves her.
First of all, this example is riddled with spelling errors.
Second of all, bobg, this example was deleted for a reason. If you're going to restore it, you need to give an edit reason of your own, otherwise you're just edit warring.
Third of all, it says right there in the example context "he is more of a Jerkass than a villain." There's your problem right there. A jerkass and a villain are not the same thing. Even in episodes where he is an outright villain, again, your own example context says "he plays the role of an antagonist in those episodes." An antagonist is not a protagonist. In other words, Not An Example. Oh, and furthermore: "although he may still count for these episodes since he is still a main character on the show as a whole." No, he doesn't, and Examples Are Not Arguable.
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I recently opened up an Image Pickin' discussion for this, but it is now closed. What happened?
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The mods declined to open, stating your case was weak. I'm inclined to agree, as the character is Obviously Evil, what with the scary black armor, leading a horde of mooks (and they're clearly mooks, since they're goblins or whatever), and being called "Overlord." I know Dark Is Not Evil is a thing, but he's pretty clearly evil, and the focus of the art so it's apparent he's the protagonist.
Now, if you come up with some suggestions, then maybe they'll open it next time. But as-is, your reasoning was deemed insufficient for a pull with no replacement.
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In addition, someone else hollered that thread and said that they didn't think it was actionable.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I think this article requires a cleanup.
I attempted to add a Villain Protagonist entry for Pete's listing on the character page for Goof Troop twice because several episodes had him as the protagonist with a clearly evil goal, and both of those attempts resulted in another contributor removing the Villain Protagonist entry and saying that Jerkasses don't count as villain protagonists.
Quite a few of the entries I see on the Villain Protagonist page qualify more as jerkasses than downright villains, for example: Clay Puppington from Moral Orel and the titular protagonist of Dan Vs.
What are your thoughts on this opinion?
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It was being discussed on Ask The Tropers as well.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Wondering why Overlord is the page image when there are far more recognisable examples.
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Because we don't care that much about "recognizability" - images work bes tif they don't need one to know the work.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I think it's funny that even the classic family board game Monopoly features players as Villain Protagonists. Think about it. Monopolies are illegal, but that's the primary goal in the game is to acquire them. At least this is touched upon with the chance to "Go to Jail".
I removed this line for sounding like an 'arguable' example and providing no context to decide if it fits.
- To some extent, Richard III's father, Richard of York, in the Henry VI trilogy.
Something that's been bugging me about the page quote. The title character of Dexter is described as a Villain Protagonist through the quote, but he's not listed as one either on this page or the series page.
The point is — can Dexter objectively be called a Villain Protagonist? He is a serial killer, but he only kills murderers who have escaped the law. He does it out of bloodlust, but he also allows himself to believe that he is a vigilante. He also deeply cares about his family, friends, and coworkers. All in all, this character really skirts the line between this trope, Sociopathic Hero, Anti-Hero, and Anti-Villain.
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!" Hide / Show Replies
He breaks the law and he's a detective by trade that could catch them the normal way? Idk, but he sure is hell has a quote that fits this trope. The difference here is that taken out of context and used with these other villains that last line "The series compels viewers to empathize with a serial killer, to root for him to prevail, to hope he doesn't get discovered"... Yeah... When Light in Death Note said he was a god, I shock my head and was happy when he was killed and proven wrong. I see where he was coming from and empathize with him like the quote said, but I didn't really think he was doing the right thing.
Don't make me destroy you. @ Castle Series
I posted on your discussion about this on Dexter, but I'll chime in here.
While I think Dexter is definitely a Villain Protagonist, the quote is still fine because, in the context of the page, it's clearly describing a VP. Hell, even if Dexter were actually a puppy maker made of chocolate, the quote still works even if it were wrong.
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The wee difference here is that Light killed innocents or people trying to catch him. Dexter just went under the radar and caught people in a less "kill you where you stand public way". Either that makes or breaks a Villain Protagonist is up for debate.
Edited by Thecommander236 Don't make me destroy you. @ Castle Series
Long story short is that Dexter does illegal things for immoral purposes, and actively impedes justice/causes harm to innocents in the process. That qualifies him as a VP, in my book.
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Call me convinced. Something I sometimes forget is that tropes are indeed flexible.
@ Larkmarn: Do you mind if I use some of what you wrote in an example description for Dexter?
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
Not at all, go ahead.
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Dexter isn't a villain protagonist, he's an antihero. We're expected to sympathize with him and hope that he succeeds. Each season pits him against the actual villain of the season, whom he defeats. Just because he does horrible things doesn't make him an villain protagonist. Antiheroes are often flawed, immoral and even tragic characters. A villain protagonist is the villain of the story. Dexter isn't the villain of the show.
The page quote is also not reflective of a villain protagonist. The critic is complaining that Dexter is too dark of an antihero. We're expected to root for Dexter to succeed even though he's a serial killer. In effect we excuse his serial killing. The critic would have no such complaint for a real villain protagonist, like Richard III, who commits murder and is treated as an evil villain for it.
Edited by CaptainCrawdad
Hmm, I'm not sure. What seems to me to justify the Villain Protagonist label (if not the serial killing itself) is that besides as you say, being pitted against actual villains, Dexter is also in opposition to his colleagues on the police force, who are goodish people, and want to catch the Bay Harbor Butcher (i.e. Dexter).
Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
The police force are treated as obstacles that our antihero Dexter must avoid and overcome so that he may continue doing what the audience wants him to do: kill villains. Of course, we're frequently reminded of how morally questionable it is for Dexter to go behind the backs of his honest(ish) colleagues and take the justice into his own hands. That's why he's an antihero and not a hero.
I largely see your point. My sort of informal test for whether a character is an Anti-Hero or Villain Protagonist looks at how law enforcement are presented in relation to the main character.
For instance, heroic con artist or thief types- anti-heroes- tend to be opposed by either corrupt cops or ineffectual ones, and if they do have a heroic opponent, they will tend to end up on the same side as them.
In contrast, villain protagonists will be opposed by well-characterized hero antagonists. See for instance Death Note or Breaking Bad''.
Now Dexter complicates this because his crimes are shown as having positive outcomes (along the lines of an anti-hero), but his relationship with police is more of the villain protagonist type.
Edited by Hodor Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
Here's the thing. Look at it like this. The police is the white (morality) of the story, Dexter is grey, and the other serial killers are black or darker grey. Since there is a white side in the story, I think you can call him a villain. Still, I rather him running around than those other serial killers or Light.
Don't make me destroy you. @ Castle Series
The test of a antihero versus villain protagonist is whether the audience is expected to sympathize with them.
An antihero might be a really horrible person, but if we want him to succeed (or at least don't want him to fail) he's our hero. He might be a crook, a liar, a coward, a murderer, etc. An antihero might be considered an "evil" person by conventional morality, but that doesn't matter. As long as the audience is on his side, for all his faults, he's the hero of the story.
By contrast, the villain is, by definition, the person we don't want to succeed. He's the force that must be stopped. The only difference between a Villain Protagonist and a standard villain is that we see the story from their perspective. Look at characters like Richard III. We follow his actions and get inside of his head, but we hate him all the more for it. We want to see him fail, and therefore he's the villain.
So applying this to Dexter, he's the antihero. We want Dexter to survive, season after season, killing the bad guys and evading capture just a little bit longer. Sure, we realize that he's terribly flawed, but he's all the more fascinating for it.
Edited by CaptainCrawdad
Still it's a matter of opinion and I'm not talking about Misaimed Fandom or Fan Dumb. I'm talking about character interpretation which can come from your beliefs to your culture. There's a reason different countries and even different states give out difference a sentencing for the same crime. Like ever country/province/state/county/city set their own laws and definition, TV tropes needs a line to draw some where (while not being hard asses about it).
All in all, I have given reasons for why Dexter would be a Villain Protagonist and why he would be an Anti-Hero. I'm 50/50 on it and don't even mind if I end up seeing him in anti-hero AND villain protagonist.
Don't make me destroy you. @ Castle Series
I think you're still confusing Villain Protagonist with "Anti-Hero, but more-so." A Villain Protagonist isn't an protagonist who does worse things than an Anti-Hero. In fact, one story's Villain Protagonist could look like a choir boy compared to another story's Anti-Hero. The difference is in their function within the story, not their morality.
Yeah, I went looking, but the question is "is he a villain or a hero"? In this case, "is he an Anti-Hero or an Anti-Villain"? The way you work it out is this. We start with the question, "is he a villain protagonist?" which, according to it's page, can overlap with Nominal Hero which has a link in Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes. Also, Villain Protagonist has this little gem in the first paragraph, "Sometimes (but not always), this villainous main character will even get the Sympathetic P.O.V. or be portrayed as an Anti-Villain". So you see, Anti-Villain, Anti-Hero, Villain Protagonist, Villain Antagonist, Hero Antagonist, and Hero Protagonist are all linked and can be compared with one another. So yes, it would be pretty fine to put Dexter in Anti-Hero and Villain Protagonist. If the character's alignment is so on the edge, s/he can go in YMMV and be described as a type of Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain. Finally, there's the neutral zone.
Don't make me destroy you. @ Castle Series
It's perfectly acceptable for a villain protagonist to receive enough sympathetic aspects to make him an Anti-Villain. What keeps him a villain is the fact that you don't want him to succeed. That's what distinguishes heroes from villains. If you want him to succeed, then he's a hero, not a villain.
A nominal hero is a hero who doesn't have a strong motivation for being on the "good" side. By definition, however, you want him to succeed, because he's technically the hero. A nominal hero cannot also be a villain protagonist because heroes cannot also be villains. They are mutually exclusive.
Unless you want to see the world burn or you just curious about what would happen.
Don't make me destroy you. @ Castle Series
Where are you getting that you're not supposed to root for the Villain Protagonist? There is nothing on the page that indicates that at all.
Protagonist is the person that, by definition, you're supposed to root for. Antagonist is someone that, by definition, you don't. Heroes and villains you can choose who you like but protagonists and antagonists are pretty clear. Dexter's a protagonist, no one's debating that. But you seem to think that by merit of being the protagonist, that makes him The Hero. That's just not true.
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The protagonist is the main character. The antagonist is the person who opposes the protagonist. The villain protagonist is when the villain is the main character. He's usually opposed by a Hero Antagonist, who is opposing the main character but actually the hero of the story.
Right. Where are you getting this "You don't want the villain to succeed" bit from?
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That's the function of a villain in a story.
Here's the breakdown:
Hero Protagonist: Main character you want to win
Villain Protagonist: Main character you don't want to win
Hero Antagonist: Main opposition you want to win
Villain Antagonist: Main opposition you don't want to win
Anti-Hero: a hero with unsympathetic aspects to their character, but you still want them to win.
Anti-Villain: a villain with sympathetic aspects to their character, but you still want them to lose.
So Dexter is a Hero Protagonist (because he's the main character and you want him to win) as well as an Anti-Hero (because he's a hero with unsympathetic aspects to his character)
Edited by CaptainCrawdad
Where are you getting this? That's just not how villainous is used on this site.
It's obviously not how the trope is used on this site.
Pro/Antagonist are what "you want to win." You want the Antagonist to lose. You don't necessarily want the Villain to lose. The fact we have a video game section for that is proof enough of that. Villain is treated not really as whether you want them to lose, but whether they're considered morally superior. Saying that you're rooting for Dexter doesn't make him a hero, it makes him a protagonist.
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I agree that "want them to win" isn't the best test, in that (for example), plenty of people want Light of Death Note to win, and I'm pretty sure he's a Villain Protagonist. That's why I think it may be more helpful to look at who opposes the main character.
And I don't think it is necessarily helpful either to look at whether the character opposes someone worse, because a Villain Protagonist can definitely be in opposition to someone worse- that just means the work uses Evil Versus Evil.
Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
Larkmarn and Hodor, you've simply got the terms reversed. Protagonist means "main character," and the antagonist is the character that opposes the main character. How the protagonist and antagonists are characterized is where you get the hero/villain part.
Richard III is the protagonist because he's the main character. He's a villain because he's a murderous bastard that the audience wants to lose. Thus, he's a Villain Protagonist. You don't always want the main character to win, because sometimes he's the villain of the story. That's why this trope exists.
As far as rooting for the villain, that's a common enough audience reaction. However, just because I decide to root for Gozer doesn't make it the hero of Ghostbusters. Gozer serves the objective function of villain for that film. In the same regard, I might want to see the protagonist Light win and become a god of the new world, but he still serves the function of the villain, and is opposed by the various Hero Antagonists.
As far as video games go, I've noticed that they would basically never fit villain protagonist trope, because the player is both the audience and the main character. The player character is always the protagonist (because that's who you the audience follow through the story) and always the hero (because you the player want to win the game). Even though the appeal of many games is to get to "play the bad guy," you are the bad guy, and everyone is the Hero Protagonist of their own story. Like I said, interactive fiction twists the conventions of normal storytelling by making the player both the audience and participant.
Moved this example here.
- The titular character in Ratman is one officially although it's not like the heroes there are particularly heroic.
- Although more and more people see Ratman as the hero he wants to be, and actually is, as the manga goes on.
It's badly written, since it doesn't even seem sure if this character fits the trope or not. I'm not quite sure myself if Word of God is enough to make a character a villain; their actions should probably speak for themselves.
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
These examples are Zero Context Examples, and need more details.
We'll take your word that the character you're describing is the protagonist, although it's helpful to make clear what kind — whether they're the main character, one of several protagonists, the replacement of a Decoy Protagonist, etc.
It needs to be described how the character is a villain, however. Is the character a murderer, an Evil Overlord, a monster? These details are required.
- Raoh from Fist of the North Star is the main focus of two of the Legends of the True Savior movies, as well as the protagonist of his own spinoff manga/anime titled Legends of the Dark King
- The eponymous Golgo 13 tempered by the fact that those he fights tend to be complete monsters
- Ladd Russo of Baccano. He's not the main character (there is no main character), but he is an Ensemble Dark Horse and is certainly a protagonist.
- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni loves this trope. Several characters play this role at some point. Subverted as neither the protagonist nor the viewer knows until The Reveal.
- Sasuke of Naruto becomes more and more like one of these in Part II. He was just a major character and not the actual protagonist.
- In Big Order this is what Eiji wants to be.
- A lot of DC villains get this treatment. Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, even Catwoman when she's not being an Anti-Hero.
- Both Lenore and Ragamuffin from Lenore The Cute Little Dead Girl.
- A good chunk of titles under Marvel's Dark Reign banner.
- Marvel loves giving their villains their own books. Bullseye has actually had a few miniseries under his belt (Bullseye: Greatest Hits and Dark Reign: Hawkeye for example) and other villains like Loki, Doctor Doom, The Hood, Sabertooth, Mystique, Baron Zemo, Magneto, Norman Osborn, etc., have all starred in their own books.
- Doctor Doom also co-starred with Doctor Strange in the Doctor Doom/Doctor Strange: Triumph and Torment graphic novel.
- In The Mad Scientist Wars, a great number of the characters fit this trope. The story doesn't even bother to try and justify.
- J.T{Jason Thomas) from Deadgirl.
- The Omen
- The Dr. Phibes films.
- The Saw franchise hands off the Villain Protagonist role from Jigsaw to his various apprentices.
- Henry Faber in Eye of the Needle (Ken Follett has said that it was mostly his inexperience and hubris as a first-time novelist that led him to use such a risky device as a Villain Protagonist).
- The Day Of The Jackal. Originally literature, but well-known for the film.
- Salieri in Milos Forman's Amadeus.
- Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.
- Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down.
- The Firefly family from The Devil's Rejects.
- Jawbreaker has Courtney Shane.
- The film crew from Cannibal Holocaust.
- Also common in David Lynch films: Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and Lost Highway all presumably fit this trope.
- The Hot Rock, based on the first of the Dortmunder novels by Donald E. Westlake (see Literature examples below).
- Tyler Durden in Fight Club, but only because he's a split personality of the actual protagonist, Edward Norton's character.
- In Chronicle Andrew Detmer becomes this by the end.
- The Howard edition of Billy & Howard has one of these. Duumvirate has two and a whole lot of Supporting Villain Protagonists besides.
- Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair, also by Thackeray. The book's subtitle is A Novel Without a Hero.
- Harry Flashman, the eponymous hero of George Mac Donald Fraser's books.
- Half the cast of Micah E. F. Martin's Prophet's House.
- Whether it's Screwtape or Wormwood who's the "protagonist" of The Screwtape Letters may be up for debate, but both count as a Villain Protagonist.
- The entire cast of the HIVE series.
- The "My Side of the Story" series of Disney picturebooks. One side of the book has the protagonists' story while the literal flip side has the villain's account.
- Fantômas, protagonist of a series of stories written by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre.
- Medea from the final novel in The Icemark Chronicles. Its debatable though if she should be included in the category as the book has so many main characters
- When the Marquis De Sade wasn't writing about good people that horrible things happen to, he was writing villain protagonists.
- Edgar Allan Poe used this trope a lot; for example, in "The Tell-Tale Heart."
- The Malus Darkblade series by Dan Abnett certainly qualifies though its plain Warhammer.
- Dr. Seuss wrote villain protagonists: The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Once-ler in The Lorax, and the eponymous Yertle the Turtle (based on Hitler).
- Johannes Cabal in the series of the same name by Jonathan L. Howard.
- Chichikov in Dead Souls.
- A Song Of Ice And Fire features a wide variety of POV chapters, including from characters who are considered the villains of Westeros.
- Colonel Sebastian Moran (and Professor Moriarty) in Kim Newman's The Hound of the d'Urbervilles, which tells their point of view in the Holmes stories and a number of other Victorian works.
- Blackadder in the third series. In the first series, he's set up as one, but comes off as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
- The Shield Vic Mackey, and the other members of the Strike Team.
- Jim Profit of Profit.
- Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire.
- Likewise, the viewpoint characters in Jonathan Coulton's "Skullcrusher Mountain" and "Re: Your Brains".
- Opera, by Mozart: "Don Giovanni". He probably even qualifies as a Magnificent Bastard...
- Byronic Hero The Phantom Of The Opera.
- Roxie Hart, Velma Kelly, and Billy Flynn from Chicago.
- The "Dark" story in Sonic Adventure 2 runs opposite in goals to the "Hero" story.
- Also, Blaze the Cat in Sonic Rush... intially.
- Anyone in the MMO City Of Villains. It's kind of in the name.
- Agent 47 from the Hitman series borders on this, but his victims tend to be worse.
- Infocom's 1983 game Infidel featured a villain protagonist, making this trope in computer games Older Than the NES.
- Optionally, the amnesiac Revan from Knights of the Old Republic or the Jedi Exile from KOTOR II.
- Vile Mode in Mega Man X: Maverick Hunter X.
- Jin Kazama becomes this in Tekken 6.
- Also as it is revealed, Kazuya Mishima has always been this since the first game.
- Double Switch: Eddie is revealed to be this later on.
- Joshua in The World Ends with You especially when it's revealed he is the Composer.
- Dragon Age has "The Darkspawn Chronicles" DLC.
- V-Tech Rampage'' and ''Super Columbine Massacre RPG, in which the player assumes the role of...yeah.
- Niels and Duncan.
- This trope is basically the premise of When She Was Bad.
- Suicide For Hire. Boy howdy, Suicide For Hire. Especially Hunter. In their defense though the people who die such over the top deaths do tend to deserve it.
- Villain Next Door
- The main characters of True Villains. Really though, what else would you expect in a comic by that title?
- The main characters of Overlord Academy, excluding A-san.
- Marla, at least in Act 1.
- The Joker Blogs. He knows that this time, you're rooting for him.
- The Nostalgia Critic (and the rest of the That Guy with the Glasses crew) in Kickassia.
- In their regular shows, Lindsay Ellis has been making an effort into making sure everyone knows The Nostalgia Chick is this.
- Mr. Plinkett. You're still rooting for him over Nadine, right?
- Duggan Masters aka Light Master in Waiting For A Miracle.
- Wile E. Coyote, so much that Chuck Jones made it a written lore that all sympathy must be directed to him instead of the Road Runner.
- Captain Hero of Drawn Together. He is anything but what its name indicates.
- The main characters of Evil Con Carne, which was originally part of the same show as The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
- Dick Dastardly and Muttley of both Wacky Races and Dastardly And Muttley In Their Flying Machines.
- Clay Puppington from Moral Orel, especially the fact that season 3 is more focused onto him.
- League Of Super Evil
- Early Cuyler in Squidbillies.
- Dueling Movies Despicable Me and Megamind.
- Bender in some episodes of Futurama.
- The Professor in others, and Leela in an alternate reality.
- The Blue Racer
- Dan of Dan Vs, to the point where one wonders how in the world the cartoon managed to get aired on The Hub.
- While the first two Ringu movies antagonized Sadako, the third film, Ringu 0: Birthday, treats her as the protagonist.
- As suggested by the title, the western spoof The Villain is an example of this trope.
These are also an example of Weblinks Are Not Examples.
- Played with for laughs at the start of Commander Kitty. It seems CK's got some pretty lofty ambitions...
- The whole point of the Megaman DL series. As more-or-less lampshaded in this trailer.
Removed:
- Many Slasher Movies will have the killer as the main protagonist such as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Their victims are rarely given many characterization.
I'm not terribly familiar with slasher films, but my understanding is that while the villains are the whole draw of the film and might be the most interesting characters, they're almost never the protagonist of the film.
This trope probably needs a new quote, since Dexter isn't actually a villain protagonist in Dexter.
Do Jerkass Gods count as Villain Protagonists? Or would adding them just open a can of worms?
Edited by Smasher
Is a Person still a villain protagonist, if, being shown as evil, he still fight people who are even worse?
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That's more like a Anti Hero Level V, which is Anti Hero in Name Only.
um...im a gobble you up?
So um, why do so many posts rave about how awesome the villian protagonist is? That's not really this trope.
Some things are meant to be eaten
As for Lucy not slaughtering anyone inarguably innocent, didn't she slaughter Kouta's family and numerous civilians over what amounted to a temper tantrum?
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thats pretty much it in a very dark and black and grey/black morality series
Some things are meant to be eaten
I put it in twice and it was deleted both times, but how does Mein Kampf (Hitler's autobiography) not count?
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I don't recall deleting this, but I got a private message about it. I would say that it doesn't apply because Hitler is not the villain in his own story. In fact, he's the hero of Mein Kampf. If another author were to write a story about Hitler's rise to power, portraying it as a Start of Darkness, then this trope would be in full effect.
Sure, the real Adolf Hitler is a villain, but this isn't a YMMV trope. It's not about what we feel about Hitler. It's purely about what tropes the work itself is using.
MagBas
- Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: The Vigilantes are very much this. The funny thing is that the author was trying to portray them as heroines fighting against evil Complete Monsters. Unfortunately, the author fails to actually show the people the Vigilantes fight against as horrible people who deserve what they get! Indeed, the bad people actually come off as more sympathetic than the protagonists themselves. The protagonists' use of Disproportionate Retribution puts them in this role. This is what happens when a story contains Bad Writing!
If it is an Alternate Character Interpretation, it not belongs here.
LimitedPatients
Would Punch from punch and Judy counts? He is played for laughs, but he often ends up injuring Judy or killing the baby (it DOES vary from performance to performance admittedly) and then beats the devil and a constable half to death, getting away scott-free.
Trans rights are human rights. If you don't think that, please leave.
Do Isaac and his party from the first Golden Sun game count? They're not villainous, because they're nice people and help people out with their problems, but they're trying to destroy the world. (although without knowing that's what they're doing)
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Definitely not. Their intentions are pure, and furthermore the guy who tricked them isn't really trying to destroy the world either. By the end of the second game it's clear who the true villain is.
On second thought, Lelouch really is a villain protagonist, he took advantage of the ideals of others to achieve his personal vendetta against his father.
Edited by cclosina Hide / Show Replies
Way late responding here, but Lelouch wanted to fix the entire world. His father was only one part of his overall motivation.
Scalon D. Dragon
What about Melissa, Jacqui and Cerise from "Magick Chicks," the spin-off strip of "Eerie Cuties"? They were originally the "queen bees"/"magical mean girls" whose use of the Orb of Tiresias led to a massive "Gender Bender" and nearly turned their school, Charybdis Heights, into an all-blonde-girl school thanks to Nina's magical perverted doll, Blair. When Ace, a former boy, was stuck as a girl thanks to being outside the orb's area when the spell was reversed, that led to their "volunteering" by the headmistress for a transfer program with Artemis Academy, an all-girls school. They must now start all over again as the new girls, against Faith Abbott, someone whose already gotten her hold on power at Artemis, and might even impress Nabiki Tendo herself.
I don't feel like making a justifying edit, because it feels awkward, but Light Yagami of Death Note tends to be a fairly decent guy when he forsakes the death note, which may or may not qualify for a justified justifying edit.
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I do not believe that Guts(Berserk) belongs here, because almost all its immorality is part of their Jerkass Façade.
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- ... Shadow wants to cause The End of the World as We Know It via a literal Colony Drop, out of revenge against the entire planet.
No he doesn't?! It's been a while, but from what I can recall he wished revenge on the human race, definitely, but the Colony Drop was something else out of the eleventh hour. Unless you're confusing Shadow with the Ultimate Lifeform prototype (Biolizard/Finalhazard)?
Edited by 94.9.139.139 Hide / Show Replies
That is correct. Shadow just wanted justice for Maria's death, but Gerald wanted the entire world to suffer as he did. Its subtly implied that the only reason Shadow is going along with Geralds genocidal plan is because Gerald used More than Mind Control on him.
Shamelessly plugging my comics, Oh yes.
I'd like a subset of this trope where the Protagonist and the Big Bad are explicitly the same person, not just a villain being the protagonist. Some examples include: Lord Mac Beth from Mac Beth, Light Yagami from Death Note, Walter White from Breaking Bad: Season 5, and Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War. Though I suppose there aren't a ton of instances where the Protagonist and the Big Bad are one in the same.
Edited by SubversiveScreen