Villains

I work with this woman, who is dedicated to her job, thorough, detail oriented and one of the rare people who really cares about what she does.
She’s also antagonistic, rude, aggressive, completely unwilling to see another point of view, or even consider another’s opinion and strongly believes she is the only person in a large organization who has a clue what they’re doing.
There is no question this woman is the villain of my little workgroup.

She is uniformly acknowledged to be extremely difficult to work with, and dealings with her are painful at best.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s become a well of inspiration to my little writer’s mind.

She has these two sides to her personality, one really commendable, and the other incredibly hard to deal with, but side by side they make her a difficult person to evaluate, or dislike outright.

I admire her passion and her attention to detail, but I’d happily never have another dealing with her.

But isn’t that the key to a really compelling villain. The dual nature of their personalities. Let’s face it, villains who are just plain evil are boring. But make a person straddle the line between good and evil, right and wrong, and their path becomes fascinating.

The best villains do this.

One of my favs is Balthar from Battlestar Galactica, who has at times through the show been insane, brilliant, attempted to do the right thing, but is hampered by a fatal weakness and cowardice. But watching him struggle has been incredibly entertaining.

Or take the movie The Departed. There are several villains in this movie, but the key antagonist is the Matt Damon character. A man undone by a loyalty given as a child and a need to be perceived as successful. We watch as his grasp on his situation grows increasingly tenuous every moment of the movie. He’s a character almost as compelling and sympathetic as the hero.

But aren’t the best villains flipsides of the hero. Losing to their fatal flaws instead of overcoming them, like the protagonist does.
A villain has to be a worthy adversary to the hero. But more than that. We give our heroes depths and flaws, and on the flipside we have to do the same thing for our villains, or they’ll fall flat in comparison.

Because the most interesting villains are mirror images of the hero. They reflect the hero’s strengths and weaknesses.
And sometimes they make the book/movie/tv show. Anyone who’s seen Silence of the Lambs would back me on this.

And sometimes the villain becomes the hero.
Take the Soprano’s, a show I need to see. But is Tony Soprano a hero, or villain, or both? Molly, could you chime in here.
Or, in Interview with the Vampire, where the Vampire Lestat became the hero of the second book.

Give me a compelling villain and I'm hooked. Give me a villain who's as complex as the hero and I'll sing the praises of the book/movie/Tv show till I'm hoarse.