Designated Villain: Difference between revisions

* Similar to the Leah example, Kayla in ''[[The House of Night]]'' makes a whopping two appearances and is promptly branded a man-stealing jealous bitch by Zoey as a result. Kayla's crime, really, is hooking up with Heath after Zoey tells her several times, in no uncertain terms, that she's broken up with him. In ''Betrayed'', Zoey acts like Kayla was being horribly spiteful and irrational in going to the police after witnessing Zoey drinking Heath's blood, and then having Zoey threaten to do the same to her. To really hammer this point in, Zoey's friends (who never even met Kayla before) begin referring to her as "skank-bitch Kayla" after learning that she went to the police.

* Although it's probably not very nice to pick at a story written by a 12-year old, critics of ''[[Swordbird]]'' by Nancy Yi Fan have complained that the main villain isn't really evil, just annoying.

* [[They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste|Done deliberately]] in ''[[Rosso Malpelo]]'', a novel written by Giovanni Verga. In fact, the child miner protagonist is portrayed by the narrator (who embodies the Sicilian mentality of the nineteenth century) as a malicious and bad bully...[[Values Dissonance|due to his red hair.]] However, it is made pretty clear that Malpelo is just a poor [[Jerkass Woobie]], brutalized by the cruel society where he lives, who sometimes even borders on a [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]], especially when he interacts with his ill friend, Ranocchio. (And no, this is not a case of [[Villainy-Free Villain]]: all the other characters, [[Wide-Eyed Idealist|with the exception of his father and Ranocchio]], are far bigger jerks than him, if not outright evil).

* [[Michael Crichton|Michael Crichton's]] ''[[Timeline]]'' features a [[Jerkass]] corporate executive Robert Doniger whose quantum teleportation experiments kickstart the plot. He supports all possible safeguards for his technology, all accidents and disasters are caused by people refusing to follow his orders, and he does everything in his power to help the protagonists. As thanks for this, they murder him at the end by sending him back in time to die of the Black Plague. For being a jerk.