(All right, I spent all last night barbecuing and didn't get any sleep, so this one is going to lack in quality and content until I can get some rest and sort my brain out. Though the quality of the pulled pork made it all worth it.)

"MUAHAHAHAHA!!!! I AM DR ANTAGONIST, BRINGER OF SORROW AND CHAOS TO YOUR FAIR THREAD!"

"Not so fast there, Dr Antagonist! I am here to destroy your evil death ray and stop you from randomly blowing up Equestria for no reason at all!"

"Gasp! Mr Protagonist! Then let this be our final battle!"

There, you get the picture of what many people aim for when they create a villain to be in their storyverse, a random, crazy scientist (I don't know why they are called 'mad scientists', they never test any hypotheses. By all technicality, they should be mad engineers.) that has unreasonable amounts of wealth and power.

But more often than not in an MLP fanfic, that wealth and power is translated into magical power, and in apparently such high magnitude.

The villain of a story is the moral antithesis of the protagonist or the hero, and almost always falls under the Man vs Man or Man vs Society class of story line conflicts. But the biggest error that a writer makes is just making their villain a blind and malicious psychopath that has no real reason for being a villain.

There exists a chart on the internet, floating somewhere out in the memeverse, describing the levels and motivations of a villain. They can range anywhere from being nearly impossible to find fault with to being as hopelessly crazy as Mr Ignorable.

Elder God Tier: These villains are the highest order of villain. Their motives are almost always pure, and it is hard to find fault in their thought process. If you are familiar with the dark comic book Watchmen, then you will recognize that Ozymondaius is an Elder God Tier villain. He seeks to unite the world and end the Cold War by killing a small population to convince world leaders to unite against Dr Manhattan, the scapegoat. It is a 'needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few' situation.

Great Tier: Villains that are simply 'evil' because of the situation they find themselves in. A good example of the Great Tier villain would be the Batman villain Mr Freeze. He is simply 'evil' because he is trying to gather the money and rare materials needed to save his wife (Dr Octopus can also be inserted here). Many one-time villains are on this tier, using their power to try and change something in their lives that is wrong.

High Tier: Villains that do evil acts as a retaliation against acts done to them. These are the ones who are out for revenge against society or the protagonist. A familiar High Tier villain would be none other than our own Nightmare Moon. She felt she was wronged by her sister in the past, feeling that Celestia was taking all of the credit and admiration from her subjects who preferred the day over the night. They are bitter, callous, and often willing to sacrifice those following them if it meant that they could be one step closer to their revenge. Other High Tier villains may include Magneto from X-Men and more recently Magnus Hammersmith from Metalocalypse.

Mid Tier: Villains that do evil simply because it is a part of their way of life, and may not be construed as evil from their point of view. The absolute best Mid Tier villain I can think of off hand is Queen Chrysalis. She infiltrates the government of Equestria, locks away Princess Cadence, and almost marries Shining Armor. Why, you might ask? Because as a changeling, Chrysalis needs to feed on love. It is in her nature to infiltrate and impersonate, for if she did not, her species would almost certainly go extinct. Most Mid Tier villains cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be bargained with, for many times they are incapable of thought, like an animal or a monster. Many invasive alien species can be considered at this tier, as well as invading armies.

Meh Tier: Villains that present no logical thought process when acting out. They are random and incredibly violent in their nature. This is the tier that many writers throw their story's villain into without thinking. How many OC dark alicorns or HiEs have I seen that have people just randomly killing, torturing, even raping random ponies for no discernible reason? Far too many, that's for sure. Easily the most famous of this Tier is Batman's archnemesis, the Joker. There is no method to his madness, he simply causes chaos and crime because he wants to see the world burn. A decent villain at this Tier can be inserted into a story, but only if the writer has the literary skill to pull it off. Also, this is the Tier where Cupcakes' Pinkamena would fit in, she does not kill for any known reason, just to fulfill the madness within her. Even Discord can fit in here.

Shit Tier: The name says it all, these are the lamest, corniest villains that can be dragged out from the bottom of the creative barrel. They lust for power or wealth without really thinking about how they are going to get it. The list of Shit villains can go on for days, but a few good examples are any villain from a James Bond movie, Ganondorf, Chancellor Palpatine, Dr Evil from Austin Powers, anyone that has ever left a ransom note, Satan, Ahuitzotl, Moammar Ghaddafi, any of the list of demons, monsters and the like, Lex Luthor and on that same vein General Zod, YOU GET MY POINT! These are just god awful villains with no other motive than: "DURRR, I WANNA CONQUER THE WORLD!" If they have an evil lair, some kind of doomsday device, and a penchant for just breaking the laws of logical thought, they are probably a Shit villain. Like all things with writing, only tackle villains of this low caliber if you have the skills to pull it off.

Villains are something that are actually fairly difficult to pull off. You always want to shoot for the higher tiers of evil-doer, and make your reader almost sympathize with them. I mean, just like a hero, a villain needs just as much complexity and background, if not more. The absolute best villains are the ones who have reasons for their evil, or even the ones who do not see what they are doing as evil at all, but justified in a convoluted sense. Hell sometimes the best villains can sway the reader over to their cause, and can make for quite the show down in the comment boxes.

Have fun, I'll edit this and add more when I have some rest.

Now hopefully no one will write any more bad villains.

Well, a shit villain could be added if they were writing a not so serious fix or parody fix, even a troll fic.

385849 We here at the School for New Writers frown upon the concept of a troll fic.

Klondike, you seem to like barbequing a lot.

This was quite informative, if sort of obvious to any storysmith of any merit. Your villain's got to have some motive in a plain story, unless a lack thereof is the motivation. A lack of motivation to be evil so they be evil because they're bored. Or something. Since Discord's motive is chaos, the proliferation of said chaos, and more chaos, it makes him easy to put into almost any diabolical scheme that would cause, well, chaos. This doesn't mean it's easy to write Discord well, however. Well, I don't know of any case where I've seen him written badly, but a significant number (including mine) of HiEs have Discord (at least partially or indirectly) responsible for the human's arrival, and as we all know, most of those suck. Other, more original stories usually create their own villain or use a more complex one, like Nightmare Moon.

I'm going to disagree hugely, for two reasons:

1) Some fantastic villians fall firmly into your 'shit' category. Tyler Durden, Norman Stansfield, Carcer Dun, Hannibal Lecter, the asshole coach from Karate Kid, the shark from Jaws, all off the top of my head. None of them have real reasons for the stuff they do apart from being evil bastards, but they're still awesome villians.

2) Villians with good intentions tend to be utter fucking idiots. Anakin Skywalker murdering children for no reason because it might save his wife isn't the exception, he's the rule. Look at Ozymandias. Total fucking moron. He's a "supergenius," and I can't put that word in big enough quotation marks, afraid that the world will tear itself apart in a nuclear war if he doesn't do something. So what does he do? Cause an attack on one (more in the movie) superpower, from an inscrutable source, ensuring that no nuclear disarment will ever take place because seriously, who would be crazy enough to throw away their weapons when the fucking aliens could invade any day, and also eliminating any possible arguments about nuclear proliferation. He drops a dollar to pick up a quarter, where the dollar is the salvation of the human race.

Now, I can see your argument making sense for villian protagonists. Macbeth or Titus Andronicus make much more interesting protagonists than Aron the Moor. But I completely reject the idea that a good villian has to be all moral ambiguity and shades of grey. Remember the movie where they gave Hannibal Lecter the sad backstory that explained why he murdered those people? That's when Hannibal Lecter started to suck.

I am oddly fine with my comparison. And yes, this list is rater correct. What I really want to see someone draw is an "Inadvertent villain"

....like Typhoid Mary c:

What about anti-heroes?

385918 Actually, Tyler Durden would be a 'Meh' category, seeing as his is a sociopathically motivated mindset, Hannibal Lecter and Stansfield as well. Jaws is a 'Mid' category because the shark is a mostly mindless animal just doing what it does.

The evil coach from Karate Kid... I don't even know.

386010 An anti hero is a type of protagonist, not an antagonist.

386090

Then why is (episode IV, V and VI) Palpatine in the shit category? He has clear aims and motivations, he wants to rule the damn galaxy, destroy the jedi and make Luke a sith. He'd be 'meh' too, surely?

386095 Maybe I should have said Chancellor Palpatine. The three new movies did kind of portray him as a villain without real motivations.

386100

Agreed. Was there a single character in those films who didn't act like they had an extra chromosome?

386102 Let's not talk about it too much, we'll be here for days. It's kind of one of those things you love to hate, if that makes sense.

I always quite liked ganondorf in Windwaker. he was really fleshed out and more mature.

Then he went back to "BWAHAHAHAHA" again. Shame, really.

Look, I am not a Doctor okay? That's a filthy lie spread by protagonists everywhere. I would never help or heal anyone. And just so you know Mr. Protagonist did not survive that battle. I use his bleached skull like a shot glass to this day.

404461 You could enter a degree program at Evil Medical School, Dr Antagonist does roll off the tongue pretty good.

387918 I will completely agree with you on that one. I love the jokers style of evil.He's has to be the best psychopaths ever made. He's a lot like my second personality, TOTALLY EVIL.

So, just a quick question, what would a villain such as bane be considered. Somewhere between elder god and great I would think?

The one from dark knight rises

445009
If this was a forum for movies rather than My Little Pony I'd argue with you about that till I was blue in the face.

445145
I meant to use this as a reference. I was trying to think of a Villian, and when I did, I thought of bane and his goal

445225True, "evil" is too broad. I like to crush my enemies using similar psychological methods that you described, and yes I do like watching the world burn. I know that most people think "sure, you have a lot of enemies" but I really do and that's what feeds my inner evil.
Also, I can cope with society fine. I play the sax, piano, and generally get good grades, but to me there is no doubt that I have a very similar evil lurking within me.

445444 How do you know that? You don't know anything about me or who I really am so, "why so serious?"

and yes, I really just went there

445600 hello i have a pie

445730 What flavor, and does it have a bomb in it? If so, goodie!
Now who should we throw it at...

445944 it is my pie and my pie only meani

446289 i b h8n pepl