Why would anyone want to be the villain?

[Dawnshine Wonder 161]

Depends what  you mean by that, voice acting as one I'm indifferent to, but this is a nuanced topic and there are many reasons behind a villain's motivations in a story as to why they do what they do, it doesn't make it right, but both nature and nurture aspect influences their behavior in later life, it doesn't happen in all cases, but abuse does contribute to this.

 

I've written a fan fiction of MLP, where my imaginary self reincarnates into alternate timeline Equestria after requesting nurturing to avoid causing problems, my imaginary self however did not want to become a villain, it would be a cruel and heartless thing to do to them if I were in that fantasy world situation, doing that to any world is wrong, however there's a big difference between wanting to write a villain into a story, be an actor/actress who voices them, and actually being them. A desire for power and manipulation is a sure sign of an ego problem.

 

As much as I like Disney stories, a lot of them seemingly have one dimensional motivations in their actions, like being evil for the sake of being evil, which is unrealistic.

Realistically, no one starts out like this. We don't even know what contributed to Jafar's behavior in Aladdin, yet he wants to be an overlord of the fictional city in Saudi Arabia, Agrabah just cuz.

Jafar was already in a privileged position, a royal advisor for Sultan, though apparently that amount of power and wealth wasn't enough for him, in the same way being a member of Mufasa's royal family in Lion King wasn't.

 

Akira Toriyama's fiction Dragonball made more sense for villain motivations, Saiyajins wanted to over throw Frieza because Frieza was quite literally oppressing them, all the while belittling them with racist remarks, calling them monkeys. But Saiyajins were not exactly good either, as they went around conquering planets even without Frieza's influence, and if it wasn't for his head injury, Goku would likely had turned out the same, there is something about them that predisposes them to aggression to get what they want.

[Lunaholic 914]

Many reasons, one is different beliefs in what is right, in the stories there's always a good and evil. The other reason is they are blinded by hate and despair due being misunderstood, isolated, trauma etc. (Ie. Nightmare Moon, Tempest Shadow...). The stories usually do bad with the latter type of villains and destroy them completely although all they needed was someone to, perhaps, to listen to them

[Dawnshine Wonder 161]

3 hours ago, Lunaholic said:

Many reasons, one is different beliefs in what is right, in the stories there's always a good and evil. The other reason is they are blinded by hate and despair due being misunderstood, isolated, trauma etc. (Ie. Nightmare Moon, Tempest Shadow...). The stories usually do bad with the latter type of villains and destroy them completely although all they needed was someone to, perhaps, to listen to them

Yes, and in MLP FIM the fact that Princess Luna would go so far as to torture herself with Tantabus because of her past regrets speaks volumes about how much pain she was in. I don't believe that pain ever went away either, there were signs that depression was still eating at her psyche in Royal Problem when she became irritable with her sister, unresolved trauma can do that, and if they had intervened sooner, other Ponies could have helped Luna deal with her mental health problems in a better way.