Villains, Evil, and Why You Should Be Glad You’re Not in My Head
“No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even – perhaps even especially – those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call ‘hard but necessary steps’ for the good of their nation. We’re all the hero of our own story.”
― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat
Let’s talk about villains.
Okay, more accurately, I’m going to talk about villains — at great length, without stopping, because this is me we’re talking about and I ramble like it’s going out of style. I’d love to hear your input and opinions, but for now, I’m claiming the stage (all right, so maybe it’s more like claiming the soapbox, but regardless). So. Let’s try this again.
I want to talk about villains.
I love villains. I love characters who antagonize the hero and drive plot; I love characters who make me doubt my own thoughts on what a hero is. I love stories that can make me love the supposed villains and loathe the would-be heroes. I love having my world turned upside down by characters who exemplify different levels of evil. I don’t want to see them redeemed, but I do want to see their story.
If you’ll excuse the geek talk for a minute, I’ll try to make it as painless as possible. There’s this game some of us play called Dungeons and Dragons. It’s been around a while, but not everyone has had the chance to indulge. I’ve been lucky enough to play it, along with several other similar games, and I learned a lot about storytelling from them… because the people you’re playing with? Yeah, they don’t do what you expect.
It’s common knowledge when you’re “running” a game, when you’re responsible for creating a world and a story and characters for people to interact with, you should have a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C. It doesn’t matter, because your people are going to run off with plan Z, which you never even thought about. Fun times. I’ll talk about the influence that’s had on my writing another time, because right now, the correlation between evil and a roleplaying game probably isn’t very obvious.
Well, the game operates under the idea that there are nine alignments. I won’t go into all of them, but they’re broken down into categories of good, evil, and neutral as well as chaotic, lawful, and… neutral. It’s a thing. Just stay with me here. For various reasons, you choose what your character is going to be. For various reasons, a lot of people running games don’t want their players choosing evil characters.
“Why not?” You may be asking this question, or I could be typing this question to the sound of crickets chirping. One never knows with me. I digress. The reason evil characters tend to be dissuaded is that at its core, evil is centered around selfishness. An evil character will be concerned with themselves first — their money, their power, their prestige, their end goal, their happiness, or some other measure that’s “theirs.” Selfishness doesn’t inherently make people evil, but an abundance of it can lead to a lack of empathy… and when that empathy level starts to fade in favor of calculation and excuses, therein lies the problem.
Some villains started out good, only to be twisted when life dealt them a bad hand. (I’m looking at you, Kylo Ren.) Not all of them, mind, but that goes into a whole other conversation about nature versus nurture — and how the hell I went from villains to evil to D&D to selfishness to Star Wars to nature versus nurture… Just be glad you don’t live in my head. Seriously. It’s a scary place in here.
And maybe that’s why I love villains so much. It lets me purge that part of me that does wonder what it would be like to set everything else aside in favor of my own self-interests. (Note that I’m talking extremes here, true turning points you can’t ever come back from — like murder. Not eating the last candy bar at 2 a.m. when your kid’s asleep because you don’t want to share — which I would never, ever do. Ahem. I love villains that aren’t overly cheesy, and that’s hard to do!
I write a few I think are notable, but they’re vastly different in feel and dynamic. Elias Ivers, of my Fate of the Fallen series, is a ruthless witch who will do anything at all to gain power. He has his reasons, but he’s an evil bastard, full stop. He’s willing to destroy anything that gets in the way of his goals because he believes in them so strongly. A few people have argued that one of my more passive characters, who hides away from the world as it goes to hell when he could influence it, is just as bad. That’s a whole question on active versus passive behavior, but regardless. Those are two extremes right there. Pretty much every character is morally ambiguous. One hates “supes” because he was raised as a prejudiced soldier type. Another is so lonely it drives him to the extremes.
All of them have their flaws, but there’s only one in the series who’s regularly called out as evil: Elias. (I may or may not poke the bear in my group on a regular basis by getting my lovely people to banter about #TeamElias versus #TeamEliasMustDie. Literally, a review once stated that if someone had a glass of water and he was on fire, they’d drink the water. Hands down one of my favorites.)
In Too Close, which is a contemporary romance portraying themes of domestic violence, my villain is Tate — Skylar’s abuser, the man who holds his life in the palm of his hand. It’s pretty easy to villainize those who abuse others, and my challenge there wasn’t in keeping him from being a caricature. No, being the asshole that I am, I wanted to see if I could make Tate seem like a real person. As unsympathetic as I am toward those who abuse others, especially to the level he did, it’s important that we remember that these are still people. (Yeah, and then I threw in puns to make you laugh and a love story so you wouldn’t hate me. I’m special that way.)
And now I’m about to introduce Leandro to you in Undone (happy release day to me and Morgan Noel, woo!). I love fae characters. They’re amazing. They’re amoral and inhumane, and they are so “other” that they couldn’t be mistaken for anything but. They can blend in for a short period of time, but you can’t accuse them of doing anything more than mimicking humanity. The biggest challenge when writing him was in keeping him alien, something that was just so different that it was clear he wasn’t human. Whether I succeeded, well, the jury’s still out on that one. But he’s one of the most difficult characters I’ve ever written.
I’m fascinated by the response to them. It makes me giddy that people like Elias. Tate… Well, that one’s a lot harder to discuss, so we’re just going to say that I’m glad when I succeed but I’m still told he didn’t redeem himself — because he’s not supposed to, not then, not there. I am eagerly anticipating seeing what people think about Leandro. (And hoping a certain someone stops thinking of the name as belonging to a soap opera character when they hear it!) There were some difficult scenes in Undone, and I may or may not have decided to see if I could accomplish a few things.
But I won’t spoil them for you.
Anyway, in the end, villains can feel more realistic than heroes. They’re the people we see in the news, the people who get arrested for corruption and crimes of passion. We write headlines and slant them to make readers feel one way or another, driving their opinions. And then we laud others, as evidenced by our utter fascination with serial killers and what makes them tick. We focus more on the perpetrators of crimes than the villains, and that’s something I’ve pondered a lot. Why? Why do we want to know more about the criminal than the victim? Do we want to understand them? Or is it something else entirely?
There’s a ton of research out there about it, and I’ve already rambled at you enough. But suffice it to say that I love villains, and I could ramble (obviously) about why for ages. If you’re curious about any of my imaginary friends, you can find them here (and all are in Kindle Unlimited!):
Undone, with Morgan Noel, releasing today, January 30th!: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079BVT957
Too Close: https://www.amazon.com/Too-Close-R-Phoenix-ebook/dp/B01MU4RX9U
The Fate of the Fallen series: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M64WPJO
Thanks for reading, and feel free to drop by my page to chat. I’m always up for it, especially when we’re discussing the latest villains to terrorize the pages of our latest favorites.
Love,
Raissa.
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