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💀 Making Your Villain Make Sense (Without Making Them Right™)

("because if I see one more war criminal with a sad diary entry get a redemption arc, I’m gonna throw my laptop.")

Here’s the thing: your villain doesn’t need to be redeemable. But they do need to make sense.

And I mean sense beyond "they’re evil and they monologue about it." Or “they have a tragic past, so now they do murder <3.” Or “they were right all along, the hero just couldn’t see it 🥺.”

Let’s fix that.

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🧠 STEP ONE: BUILD A LOGIC SYSTEM THAT ISN’T OURS Your villain shouldn’t just be wrong, they should have their own internal system that works for them. Morally flawed? Absolutely. But coherent.

Ask yourself:

What do they value more than anything? (Power? Order? Loyalty? Vengeance?)

What do they believe about the world, and how did they get there?

What fear drives them? What future do they think they’re trying to prevent?

The villain doesn’t need to know they’re wrong. But you should.

Make their logic airtight. even if it’s awful. Give them cause and effect.

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👿 STEP TWO: STOP GIVING THEM THE BETTER IDEOLOGY Listen. I love a “morally gray” moment as much as anyone. But if your villain is making all the good points and the hero’s just like “no because that’s mean,” your arc is upside down.

If your villain is critiquing injustice, oppression, or inequality, make sure their methods are the problem, not their entire worldview.

✖︎ WRONG: Villain: “The ruling class is corrupt.” Hero: “That’s not nice.”

✔︎ RIGHT: Villain: “The ruling class is corrupt, so I’m burning the city and everyone in it.” Hero: “So you’re just… committing genocide now?”

Your villain can touch a real issue. Just don’t let them be the only one talking about it, or solving it with horror movie logic.

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🔪 STEP THREE: GIVE THEM POWER THAT COSTS THEM The best villains lose things too. They’re not just untouchable horror dolls in sexy coats. They make bad choices and pay for them. That’s where the drama lives.

Examples:

They isolate themselves.

They sacrifice people they love.

They get what they want, and it destroys them.

They know they’re the monster, and choose it anyway.

If your villain can kill a dozen people and feel nothing, that’s not scary. That’s boring. Let them bleed. Let them regret it. Let them double down anyway.

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🧱 STEP FOUR: MAKE THEM PART OF THE WORLD, NOT OUTSIDE IT Villains shouldn’t feel like they were patched in from another genre. They should be part of the world’s logic, culture, class system, history. They should reflect something about the setting.

Villains that slap:

The advisor who upheld the regime until they decided they deserved to rule.

The noble who’s using war to reclaim stolen legacy.

The ex-hero who thinks the system can’t be saved, only reset.

The priest who truly believes the gods demand blood.

They’re not just evil, they’re a product of the same world the hero is trying to save.

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👁 STEP FIVE: SHOW US THEIR SELF-JUSTIFICATION You don’t need a tragic backstory™. But you do need to show us why they think they’re right. Not just with exposition, through action.

Let us watch them:

Protect someone.

Choose their goal over safety.

Justify the unjustifiable to a character who loves them.

Refuse to change, even when given a chance.

A villain who looks into the mirror and goes “Yes. I’m correct.” is 1000x scarier than one who sobs into a journal and says “I’m so broken 🥺.”

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🧨 BONUS ROUND: DON’T MAKE THEM A HATRED MEGAPHONE Especially if you’re writing marginalized characters: don’t let your villain become a mouthpiece for slurs, abuse, or extremism just to make them “evil enough.” That’s lazy. And harmful.

You don’t need real-world hate speech to build a dark character. You need power, consequence, and intent.

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TL;DR: Good villains don’t need to be right. They need to be real. Not a vibe. Not a sad boy in a trench coat. Not a trauma monologue and then a sword fight. They need logic. They need cost. They need to scare you because you get them, and still want them to lose.

Make them dangerous. Not relatable. Make them whole. Not wholesome. Make them make sense.

—rin t. // thewriteadviceforwriters // villain critic. final boss consultant. licensed chaos goblin

P.S. I made a free mini eBook about the 5 biggest mistakes writers make in the first 10 pages 👀 you can grab it here for FREE:

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baby i've never seen brown eyes look so blue

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ARF ARF ARF ARF 🐕

Yes, this is base off the “When he copies your snap”

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Quick drawing bc i'm never healing from this fuckass show

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Reiner daily dead inside during final war while Jean yells at him 🤙

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i love that when eren started the apocalypse the first thing reiner did was give up and go into a coma while surrounded by carbs. reiner we are the same

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Recall this scene. When will we know what Y said back then? Now it's the same scenario, Yashiro, what would you do and what would you say? 🐦

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Genuinely one of my favourite panels of them. Someone explain it to me. Height difference. He Tian leaning over. Mo being embarrassed and fidgety and no eye contact. I love it

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commission for Eren Week ‘25

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Sleepy Reiner is my passion ♡

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What no saezuru does to a mf

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Doumeki's surprised Pikachu face

His face is priceless 😆 He seems to be completely puzzled by Yashiro's inability to put two and two together. He shouldn't be too surprised though, given the fact that Yashiro never came to understand Ryuuzaki's feelings for him either.

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Who Doumeki's life belongs to...

‼️Spoilers: This doesn't contain any detailed spoilers per se but if you don't want to get any hints about what happens in chapter 60, don't read it yet.‼️

In chapter 33 Doumeki said:

In other words: You can kill me if you want. Doumeki is saying that he cares more about Yashiro than himself, no matter what Yashiro does to him, even if he wishes for Doumeki to die. We see that he meant what he said when despite the fact that Yashiro shot him in the thigh and pointed the gun at his head, Doumeki still ran after him and saved his life when Hirata was about to kill him.

This scene in chapter 41 may have cast doubt about how Doumeki felt after Yashiro threw him to the curb. When Nanahara confronts him about becoming a Yakuza, Doumeki said:

Yashiro picked up on it:

Yashiro still remembered Doumeki's words from four years ago. It's difficult to tell how he felt in that moment, his words make it sound like he was relieved, his facial expression looks rather solemn though and there's the shadow over his face. Either way, the fact that he comments on Doumeki's answer to Nanahara's question this way, shows that Doumeki's words had touched him deeply and that he clearly remembered them.

After they've met again, Yashiro kept questioning Doumeki's motives. He kept ignoring all the signs that Doumeki still cared about him deeply. The fact that Doumeki didn't confess his true feelings may have caused Yashiro pain but I'd argue that it also made him feel safe. I bet that even he himself couldn't tell how he'd react if Doumeki told him the truth.

They were caught in a limbo. Neither of them were able to make a move for fear of losing each other again.

With what happened in chapter 60, the die is cast. No more pretending, no more feigning ignorance.

Doumeki's life is his own, he makes his own decisions. His protecting Yashiro instead of Tsunakawa was his own free will, no loyalty towards his superior or a baby bird blindly following their parent. He wanted to protect Yashiro, the one person he cares most about. This time Yashiro won't be able to pretend that Doumeki's action is anything other than his true intention.

How will he react to the truth?

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Happy Saezuru Day!!! 🎉🎉♥️

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Redhead in red 🔥