The Five Kinds of Bad Guys
-You Need a Villain-
-The Patient-
In my horror collection "The Mirror Stares Back", there is a story aptly named "I Die When The Hour is Over". The story centers on a person seeking psychological help and they kidnap this doctor and lock them in their basement. They don't seem interested in the standard channels of therapy. They would sooner hurt someone to get their help.
The Patient is the most sympathetic villain we're going to talk about. He just needs help and doesn't know how to get it. Or he think the normal way of getting help is too slow or too difficult or he won't get what he wants out of it. He is a villain, yes, but if he had the right help, maybe he wouldn't be.
-The Mayor-
Patty doesn't think she's in the wrong. She just thinks she can make the hard decisions like they're the right decisions. Mayor Patty is an early antagonist in "Pavement". She's the Mayor of Tapetown. Yes, the town is mostly tape-based. I was "on one", at the time. When Bale and Vana free a living tape giant in the museum, it falls apart and Mayor Patty swears revenge.
The tape giant was Patty's husband who was changed by some tape curse, so her bloodlust for the main characters comes from a place of denial. She could have let her husband die, but she chose to make him an art piece as if it that's as good as being alive. So when Bale and Vana basically freed his soul, she couldn't live with the thought of him being better off.
-The Goddess-
Between most depictions of Greek myth, one thing is true; Zeus is a cheating son of a bitch. And, of course, a woman scorned and all that. In "Zeus Did It Again", we meet The Goddess Hera as a villain out for the life of our main character Zeke. She recruits monsters, enlists Demigods, and personally kidnaps Zeke's family all because of what Zeke is, not who is his.
Spoilers for the book, but it's in the freaking title. Zeke is one of Zeus' bastard sons. To Hera, Zeke represents her husband's infidelity. Zeke's actions, his personality, his future-none of it matters to Hera. This kid is in the public eye. He becomes a famous hero. And that just ticks Hera off. Her anger is selfish, yes, but the blame is not only on her. It's on Zeus too.
-The King-
I try not to write too many bad guys who are just shitty dads, but I also think shitty dads are some of the most grounded characters in fiction. King Midust is the antagonist of "Ravenous", and he rules over an empty, barren kingdom on the East side of the Block Continent. Midust wanted to create an army of superpowered knights. He wanted to do this because it worked. Once.
Midust, like many people in "Ravenous" was born with a magic ability. In his case, he can drain life from living creatures to extend his own life. His son and daughter had powers too. And, while his daughter fled, he still had his son who he molded into an emotionless killing machine. Until his killing machine left him too. Midust's wife was long gone too-he had nobody to sire more of his kin.
King Midust represents power, obsession, control, and pride. The complete nepotism needed to insist on literally producing your own perfect army is a realistic stake in a field of fantasy. Is King Midust mad? Yes. But is he unfocused and inconceivable? No.
-The Machine-
Artificial intelligence. We are all afraid of it. Within "Addiction 2 Fiction: Volume 2" there is a story called "Serial". It centers on a group of robot assassins created by the U.S. government to perform covert ops missions. These are the 6.0. Units and something is wrong with model 603. As a machine, it should simply do what it's asked to do. But, when 603 hurts a human; it enjoys doing it.
603 is one of my favorite characters I've ever written. They're a twisted take on the trope of a robot becoming human. That's literally all the thinking it took. I thought about Pinocchio and The Vision and Data and I thought, "okay, every robot wants to become a human, but what if they became the worst kind of person?"
Serial killers are often described as only "feeling" something when they hurt people. And, in science fiction, it's supposed to be impactful and significant when a robot feels a human emotion. Those elements were combined here with 603.
They sort of represent my favorite part of writing-finding new ways to explore tried and true themes. 603 offers suspense and curiosity without needing to feel relatable, grounded, or sympathetic. 603 doesn't even need to see itself as the "hero of it's own story". They're just figuring themselves out.
I hope these characters help inspire your stories.
Thank you for reading!
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