Villains, Bad Guys, Antagonists

Villains, bad guys, antagonists come in all sizes and shapes. In storytelling, sometimes they are human. Other times they can be nature: forest fires, floods, storms, and even a pandemic, or our own shortcomings. But more often than not the villain is a person or a group, represented by one or more people.

My grandmother taught me a lot about villains, those pesky people who make life for our hero unbearably difficult. To understand how my grandmother revealed one of the key traits of villains in life and in fiction, I have to step back in time.

Here comes a flashback: 

Like most children, I had two grandmothers. Both disliked me. I actually think I’m quite charming, so this perplexed me. Plus, I’m named after both grandmothers. So I have a daily reminder of them.

The last time I saw my father’s mother, I was four or five.

She came across the country to help my mother take care of my new brother. She didn’t do that for my birth because according to her, “boys are more important than girls.” Yes, not all grandmothers are warm and fuzzy sweethearts.

One morning my mother left to run errands. My Little Grandmother, my name for her, stayed home to watch my brother and me.

 Apparently, I asked her to tell me that she loved me. She refused. When she went outside to hang up clothes on the clothesline (yes, I am that old), I locked the doors.

 She pounded on the back door. “Open the door and let me in.” 

I said, “Little Grandma, tell me you love me, and I’ll open the door.” 

She refused.

When my mother came home, Grandma was fuming. I was inside with my brother. The doors were still locked. 

The next morning my father put her on a train and sent her home. I never saw her again.

When I was in junior high, my mother was having surgery and her mother came to help out with the kids. We called her Granny. 

I quickly learned that Granny was not a bake-cookies-and-tell-fun-stories kind of grandmother. For my family, that kind of grandmother only existed on TV. She turned out to be as bad, if not worse than my Little Grandmother.

 I had four siblings by  then. I was the oldest. Granny turned out to be both verbally and physically abusive. 

My problem was that my mother was sick, and I was worried about her. So I tried not to rock the boat when Granny grabbed me by the arm and dug her long fingernails into my skin. I wore long-sleeve shirts to hide the bloody spots where her nails broke my skin. 

Her two common commands to me were: “Stop acting like a baby, you’re a grown up. Act like an adult,” and my favorite, “Stop acting like a grown up. You’re just trying to make me look bad. You’re not the adult here.”

 Finally, one day, I said, “Which is it? Stop acting like a baby, or stop acting like an adult? I can’t be both.”

 I didn’t duck fast enough and got a slap in the face. Her handprint left a mark that I couldn’t hide. My mother saw the slap mark.

 My brother said, “She hits us all the time. Mostly, she likes to hit Cora.”

My Mom sent me to stay with my uncle’s family for a few weeks. When I came home, my grandmother was gone. 

Okay, that backstory sets up my epiphany about villains.

 Years later, all grown up with children of my own, I went to visit my mother. Things had shifted and my mother was taking care of Granny. 

One evening, we were watching a movie. The villain of the movie was a very abusive father. He was verbally and physically abusive to his children. He was a man worth despising and clearly the bad guy. I was hoping to see this character change.

About half way through the movie, my grandmother stood up, and announced she couldn’t watch this terrible movie. We all went quiet, as she spoke.

“They are making this wonderful man out to be a terrible person,” she said. “I don’t like it. He’s a good parent. He has to do those things because that’s what good parents do. They teach their children.”

Something in my brain screeched to a halt. This character was despicable. I stared at her in disbelief.

“What?” was my response. “How does beating and berating your children teach them anything but hate and violence?”

I was an adult now, so I figured slapping me or scarring my arm with her nail marks wasn’t going to happen. 

I expected her to say, “So they don’t turn out like you.”

 Instead, she said, “You have to beat the foolishness out of them so they’ll behave. They serve parents, not the other way around. That’s the only way children learn.”

She was angry, serious, and didn’t see the horror of what she was saying. She thought, no, she knew and believed with all her heart that she was right.

 My memory of locking my Little Grandmother out of the house is more fragments of a memory and hearing my parents retell the story. My father’s version of the story often ended with “she’s one of the main reasons I left Virginia and moved to California. I figured putting a continent between me and my family was the best I could do.

The memory of Granny revealing her deep belief that abusing children was for their own good left a lesson sheared into my mind.

The lesson for me as a writer: villains in stories in some twisted way believe they are right. Their morality and their thinking somehow get twisted. Sometimes they can’t change. Not villain gets a redemption story.

Many villains in books and movies often say this, “I did it for the greater good.” I hate that sentence, but I’ve come to realize that some people believe their actions are good.

As a storyteller, my villains need to believe they are doing the right thing. I need to understand that something in their personality is broken. Sometimes they can’t be fixed.

 There's also a lesson for life. We come across people everyday. Some of them are villains and bad guys. Their actions tell us who they are. Believe them because they likely believe they are right. They can be dangerous.