@ThePlumbob Villains? Me? Naaaaaahhhh, everyone in my story is a total sweetheart! o:)
I agree with @mercuryfoam here, in that villains don’t have to be evil as long as they’re in opposition to the main character. Actually - I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate, but the way I see “villains” is probably a little different from the majority here. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, though!
I actually think of them as antagonists – it’s largely a semantic difference, but it’s a big one. I don’t like the idea of “good” and “evil” as objective traits in my stories, and instead think of motivations and desires that can naturally bring characters into conflict with each other. Not because they're good and evil, but because they want opposing things. In my head, there’s three types of antagonists: obstacles, enemies and villains.
Obstacles are just roadblocks on the way of your character getting something they want. Their motivations oppose the protagonist by accident/circumstance. It’s the grumpy bouncer that won’t let you in, or the pack of wolves on the road, or a robber trying to take the protagonists’s things. It’s a temporary thing.
An enemy is an antagonist whose motivations oppose the protagonist on purpose. If the robber is just a roadblock, the robber turned murderer to take revenge on the protagonist for hurting his friend is an enemy. They cannot achieve their goals without depriving the protagonist of their goals (or, in this case, their life).
But a villain is the most interesting one. To me, a villain is to a protagonist what a protagonist is to an enemy. Er, lemme explain that. If you have a situation where your main character’s motivation is to thwart the goals of another person in the story, that person is a villain. If the robber whose friend got hurt is your main character, the protagonist that hurt his friend is the villain. But it doesn’t have to be an “evil” person. Anyone with motivations that your main character has to oppose (“stop the necromancer’s dark ritual”, “save my kidnapped friend from the spaghetti monster”, “hide successfully from the janitor until school ends”, “defeat my mom in a debate about healthy food”, etc) is a proper villain.
That’s how I see it, at least. Just my 2 cents. =)
Can I has pancakes and baumkuchen and blueberries now please? I'm starving. o:)