V is for Villains

My MOUSE DIED AND I CAN'T SEEM TO HANDLE IT...so there should be a big V logo RIGHT HERE!!!!!!

Since this, well, a blog about writing and writing more, I'm sad to point out this moment and the next will focus on just that.

My passions.

Still, I cannot help thinking that such discussion about the craft of my art really does have an appeal beyond my fellow authors. I know crap about music, but, with the passing of very incredible Prince, I've been really getting into his process as an creator of some of the better tunes of the past few decades.  My brother once had a biography on Frank Zappa and I chowed that puppy down.

So, the process does define the individual in a manner that I don't think we readily realize. I believe it is because not everyone can create. We feel inadequate, since we've not written that third Great American Novel and we're petrifed that we'll discover that there's no magic bullet, no special "thing" that causes awesomeness.

It's kinda what I've always believed. We're already awesome. The spotlight hasn't found our corner of stage left yet. Just after this next big number.

I have a feeling, due to the limited vocabulary utilizing the letter V, I have a feeling we'll all be reading a bunch of "villain" commentaries today.

Wait. Vocabulary starts with a V.

Aw fuck.

Go with this, Roo, go with it.

As an American kid, our first taste of villainy tends to be of the Disney variety (another V word...good thing I don't always think about vaginas...).  Very clear cut. It's pretty obvious. They wear black, they sneer. They speak in low tones. I won't point out the killing part, because, many times, the heroes do pretty much the same.

But it helps the formative mind understand the tropes as they get to adulthood.

When they learn that Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, really was a good person who was treated badly. But such complexity let's hold off for a bit, here, folks.

Also, we should point out, in those training narratives to young minds, villains are not the McGuffin. They are not the thing the story seems to be about. They are the antagonist, who make the protagonist's journey so much more difficult getting to...well, whatever.

I have to point this out, because there's a learning curve. Kids see movies like Star Wars and think Kylo Ren is kinda cool. They don't realize the full potential of the viciousness (another V word) before them...yet.

And that's okay.

For myself, as I author, I tend to start with the bad guy.

Safe to say, I loved Darth Vader. And I knew Cruella DeVil before she took over the drag show over at Parliment House in Orlando. These were my peeps, if I may.

Cause they had rough childhoods? Sometimes. But their journey, almost always parallel to the protagonist's, always ends up in separate away place. Reading Dracula, I felt sorrow, knowing that love can truly destroy a person; I read Magneto and understood his angst angst a society that did nothing while his family was killed.

And that's where I start most of my fiction. A bad person that didn't set out to be that way. Where did they go wrong?

And why won't they sit quietly?

And this goes for tales that you wouldn't expect. Love is elusive, it's inherent. It can be, very much so, an antagonist. But why does it elate some and make others so bitter? Ahhhh, yes, there's the rub, is it not?

I was sad when the famed fictional serial killer was explained in the novel, Hannibal.  All my readings on serial killers was thrown out the window. Up until that point, he had filled a gap. A good man who just was-bad. Luckily, it was buried in some of the best writing and plot development that Thomas Harris could create, but the villainy was gone. In it's place was a victim (another V word) who behaved very badly.

By eating his victims? It's a stretch, but it's there.

My point being, there's a moment in our lives as we grow up when the Disney villains, and ourselves, realize the horrors of the real world and the narrative changes for the characters we read, watch, and love, as well as, for ourselves. Seeing the vileness (another V word) of teen age angst acted out in high school hallways, the potential for evil is born into every one. Horror movies (good ones, at least) become popular for most youth as this concept of villain bursts into our consciousness.

Yeah, it did to me too. I just never let go.

Villains are the place were all stories start for me and for all of us.

Now, there's a trend that I do enjoy, however, lately.

Superhero movies.

It's like those Disney animated films, all over again.

And it's reflecting a change in popular culture, if not the culture itself.

These villains seem clear and obvious and very much jsut being bad because it looks good in the costume. On an aside, Bond used to be like that, but have been so absorbed into fabric of society, that's not the case. His villains reflect a more personal concern than ever before, but it's something I've also noticed. But Marvel's cast?

We're looking at their heroes also coming into their own...by fighting each other. Yes-the true villain is ourselves.

How delicious of a tale is that? Try giving yourself a black eye. Or tickling yourselves.

Villains are vital (dang, another V word), but a necessary evil, as it were. Even if it's a twister. Or a lost dog. A dead dreams. Or past decisions.

Start there. The story writes itself.