Villains are far more important to any story than heroes.

I totally began this debate because I have always been that messed up kid that rooted for the villains who grew up into a man that is infatuated with them.

However, I have now realized that actually I don't care about any other reason... Villains are the best!

What's a hero without a villain? A lost soul.

What's a villain without a hero? An unstoppable force. (Well, only rival villains can stop them but that would make the underdog the antihero ;) )

So, in reality, we see that heroes need villains but villains, quite frankly, do not need heroes at all.

Now, 9spaceking comes in all like:

 do heroes need villains if their entire purpose is to destroy the villain,or render them futile?

They need them because destroying the villain gives them the entire purpose. They need the villains because villains are what make heroes feel like all their sins are somehow forgiven for all their benevolence. It's about being the 'better man, or woman'.

Tell me now, can you imagine the Joker without Batman? Of course you can, he existed before Batman came along to stop him.

Can you imagine the Batman without the Joker? Sure, if he had all his other villains to worry about.

So fundamentally heroes originate from villains. Ironically, all that heroes are is an obstacle in a long race the villain intends to finish but when you see stomping feet running towards a hurdle, from the point of view of the hurdle, knowing all the hurdle's childhood torment and inner conflict then sure, the athlete's a bad guy and when they trip and crack their head open, we cheer the hurdle on because that's what the storyline programmed us to do.

So that leaves us with one fundamental question...

What about religion? Since, even if the stories are true they are stories, nonetheless. In this storyline an entity that can do anything creates an angel who turns into the greatest villain of all time and poisons our souls for the original creator of him to seem like the 'hero'. It's all a clever ploy really, and it only furthermore proves my point. Villains do not need heroes, heroes are mere obstacles for them to surpass (or usurp) to achieve their goal. On the other hand, heroes need villains just to be classified as heroes in the first place. This is why villains are more important.

An entity that can do anything, knows everything and is everywhere at all times didn't see it coming that his more rebellious intellectual angel may question his authority?... Then he punishes him and burns him just to make him even more bitter and malicious? Then he renames him a less pretty name knowing how vain the narcissistic angel Lucifer was? I see... Remind me, who was the megalomaniac guy with ego issues? Oh, that's right, we have to root for the 'hero'.

You see, fundamentally, Satan is actually the hero in the Bible. This is the point that any and all Satanists make. Satan is the underdog who stood up to oppressive authority and was shunned for seeking knowledge and truth as opposed to blind faith and ignorance. He was so brave that he got scorched beyond even supernatural pain barriers so that he is now so insane that the only way he can still carry out his good nature is to punish the evil because God is too lazy to do so himself. God is actually the villain; possible the only villain in all literature who genuinely won against the hero and had people rooting for him.

Nevertheless, it still make some question why he tries so hard to have a 'villain' of any kind when he could have demolished Satan in a split second. It's because he needs the 'bad guy' to be the 'good guy'.

SOME STORIES DO NOT HAVE A VILLAIN.

Yes. Those boring old stories where there exists no real villain. There are obstacles in the way or abstract ideals stopping one. In fact, sometimes the hero is faced against....himself. You see, my opponent must prove that in ANY STORY, villains are far more important. However this is not always the case. Is Oedipus more important than himself? Of course not, he cannot be more important than himself. In these cases of self vs self, the villain is only just as important than the hero. No villain? No hero. No hero? No villain. No Oedipus equals no Oedipus equals no Oedipus.

Indeed, villains of course can make the story more exciting, but heroes make the story more important too. Look at Mega Mind. He was originally the villain. If we assume the opponent correct and villains being far more important, then why is the movie turned so boring? Mega Mind is bored because there is no hero to fight him, and he can do anything. The big problem is, when villains succeed they no longer have to work. When heroes succeed they still have to fight on in their daily lives. This means that, without the hero, the story would be far more boring than a story without the villain. And as Mega Mind realized, he really didn't have to be the bad guy. He could save the girl, receive public's attention, and become an awesome, much more important, hero instead of the useless villain he was without the hero. (He even had to make the hero :P)

My opponent tries saying that without the villain the hero cannot be a hero, while without the hero the villain can still be a villain. But have you considered this--without the hero, the villain has nothing to say he's a villain. Nobody stands up to the villain, nobody does anything. Is he even a villain any more? He's just this guy who controls everyone like little puppets. Without the hero, only we the audience can judge whether the villain is a villain or not. On the other hand, the hero can be a hero in his own way without the villain. He can help his friend in trouble, he can stand up against himself when he starts doubting his abilities. He can hold up strong on his own and be the awesome hero he is even without the villain. 

As you can see at the very least the hero is just as important as the villain within many cases.

Back to you, Rational Madman.

I absolutely agree with 9spaceking that stories without heroes, where villains just run free to do as they please (without any rival villains, hence anti-heroes, to stop them) are indeed less intense, or interesting than heroic stories. Nevertheless, they are severely entertaining to watch and are the reason why horror stories (and even some thrillers) are so brilliantly thrilling and entertaining to read (and/or watch) despite knowing that everyone is doomed.

I highly suggest you to watch the film 'funny games' to truly understand what a horror film, minus the gore, makes you feel. The gore is actually a pleasant distraction from the truly horrific things that go on.

The matter of fact is that 9spaceking almost created a straw man attack on my entire argument. Instead of fighting what I said he merely pointed out that some stories exist without villains, yet he then defined heroes as someone fighting their own personal obstacle sand emotions without admitting that that would make the dark emotions and personal obstacles the villains by default.

He doesn't deny that the widest spread religions all fundamentally have a hero, who can do anything they please and have nothing in their way, creating and intentionally failing to stop the adversary (villain) due to the sheer need for a villain to make anyone root for the megalomaniac hero that would otherwise be a super villain of their own kind in the story.

Heroes exist to stop villains. They have no other purpose. Villains exist to make a story even worth reading. Villains are the only story-line features that make you even bother to turn the next page, or watch the next scene. They are the entities which make the ending of the book all the more tempting to find out. They make you scared because of what they are capable of doing and how unexpected their next action may be. the hero is nothing more than a means to give the villain a worthy opponent to stop them in order to make the story longer than one page. After all, not everyone is sadistic enough to watch people suffer endlessly with not a single hope of rescue or victory, in the form of one or more heroes (or masochistic enough to view it, depending how much they are empathizing with the victims).

In an attempt to counter my notion of heroes needing villains to exist but the reverse not being true, 9spaceking argues that there is no one to deem a villain as a villain if the hero does not exist. This is a failed rebuttal on many accounts.

It is essentially the argument that if no one hears a tree fall, it never fell. This is base don Existential Nihilism and unless my opponent can prove that absolutely no basis for existence is there (contradicting all science), he must concede that this line of attack is not a relevant rebuttal.

On top of this, even if Existential Nihilism is true, a 'villain' is labeled one by the people that they make suffer. The only exception is when an anti-hero goes Utilitarian and makes a few people suffer for a greater good. Nevertheless, the entire concept of an anti-hero is that they show many signs fo being a villain and thus there will people who do label them as one.

In order to assert that despite a villain not being a villain without a hero to 'label' them as one (which I already proved to be an invalid argument), a hero is inherently a hero despite what anyone says, 9spaceking has the impudence to all malevolent story characters to say that a hero can be a hero simply by 'standing up against himself when he starts doubting his abilities'.

Well, I have a message for heroes:

Aside from this, why is fighting one's own doubt even heroic to begin with? villains are often insecure as kids and grow up to be overly confident men and women (unlike heroes who are only men thanks to 'hero' being a gender-specific term which is another problem with them). Overcoming doubt is also what villains do. There are many severely brave villains throughout the entirety of fiction. It is just that for any story, with a hero, to work the hero needs to end up seeming braver and mightier than the villain because that's the only way that a hurdle can overcome the person trying to jump over it (round 1 analogy reference).

As for the hero helping out a friend in need, the villain is the person who puts the friend in need to begin with. If 'doubt' can be a villain then so can any cause for the friend being in need. This is an entirely fallacious rebuttal on so many levels.

In conclusion, villains are far more important to any story to any story than heroes.

The Last Man on Earth is the hero, indisputably. He is a presumed innocent man, and very important, especially being the last one. But then something weird happens and the villain comes in and we assume he ends the life of The Last Man on Earth. But what if there was no hero, no last man on earth?

Then the story could only go something like this....

See? Very boring. Nothing happens. The villain tries to end the last man on earth's life, only to waste its time knocking on the door of nobody, nothing. There is no hero in this story, and thus very boring and nothing happens.

My opponent tries talking about how villains make stories more interesting and that heroes are only there to give him or her a "worthy opponent". But this is not always right. Again, sometimes there really is no villain. There are just mere obstacles in the way of people, and sometimes heroes battle against other heroes, and we really don't care about who's the villain, only that there's a problem needing to be solved and at the end the battling heroes learn that they really didn't have to battle and they can live in harmony. You see, this story can be viewed upon both perspectives. These heroes could be knights battling each other for the glory of the king. Yet they could both be villains in a world where villany is actually the goal. Either way, the heroes or the villains serve the same purpose in the same story and are equally important in both stories, regardless of who the audience thinks the "Actual villain" is. These knights could be neutral for all we know. But in this case, the villains aren't more important than the heroes.

As you can see I have given multiple examples and regained logical reasoning for why villains are only as important as heroes. Back to you, Rational Madman.