Wretched hives of scum and villainy

Being a fiction writer, I think about villains a lot.

Of course, the proper word is "antagonist," but "villain" is a lot more evocative, bringing to mind such characters as the the dastardly Snidely Whiplash from the brilliant Adventures of Dudley Doright of the Canadian Mounties.

Left to right: Snidely Whiplash, Dudley Doright, Fair Nell Fenwick, and Dudley's horse, who is named... Horse.  They just don't write comedy like that any more.

One of the things that I've always tried to do with the villains in my own novels is to make them three-dimensional.  I don't like stories where the villains are just evil because they're evil (unless it's for comedic effect, like Mr. Whiplash).  My college creative writing teacher, Dr. Bernice Webb (one of the formative influences on my writing) told us, "Every villain is the hero of his own story," and that has stuck with me.  Even with the most awful antagonists I've written -- Lydia Moreton in In the Midst of Lions comes to mind -- I hope my readers come away with at least understanding why they acted as they did.

Of course, understanding their motivation, whether it be money, sex, power, revenge, or whatever,  doesn't mean you need to sympathize with it.  I wrote a while back about the character of Carol Last from Alice Oseman's amazing novel Radio Silence, who I find to be one of the most deeply repulsive characters I've ever come across, because what motivates her is pure sadism (all the while wearing a smug smile).

Oseman's story works because we've all known people like her, who use their power to hurt people simply because they can, who take pleasure in making their subordinates' lives miserable.  What's worse is because of that twist in their personality, a frightening number of them become parents, bosses, teachers, and -- as we're currently finding out here in the United States -- political leaders. 

The reason this whole villainous topic comes up is because of a paper published in the journal Psychological Science called "Can Bad Be Good?  The Attraction of a Darker Self," by Rebecca Krause and Derek Rucker, both of Northwestern University.  In a fascinating study of the responses of over 235,000 test subjects to fictional characters, Krause and Rucker found that people are sometimes attracted to villains -- and the attraction is stronger if the villain embodies positive characteristics they themselves share.

For example, Emperor Palpatine is ruthless and cruel, but he also is intelligent and ambitious -- character traits that in a better person might be considered virtuous.  The Joker is an essentially amoral character who has no problem killing people, but his daring, his spontaneity, his quirkiness, and his sense of humor are all attractive characteristics.  Professor Moriarty is an out-and-out lunatic -- especially as played by Andrew Scott in the series Sherlock -- but he's brilliant, clever, inventive, and fearless.

And what Krause and Rucker found was that spontaneous and quirky people (as measured by personality assessments) tended to like characters like The Joker, but not characters like the humorless Palpatine.  Despite his being essentially evil, Moriarty appealed to people who like puzzles and intellectual games -- but those same people weren't so taken with the more ham-handed approach of a character like Darth Vader.

"Given the common finding that people are uncomfortable with and tend to avoid people who are similar to them and bad in some way, the fact that people actually prefer similar villains over dissimilar villains was surprising to us," said study co-author Rucker, in an interview in the Bulletin for the Association of Psychological Science.  "Honestly, going into the research, we both were aware of the possibility that we might find the opposite."

What seems to be going on here is that we can admire or appreciate a villain who is similar to us in positive ways -- but since the character is fictional, it doesn't damage our own self-image as it would if the villain was a real person harming other real people, or (worse) if we shared the villain's negative traits as well.

"Our research suggests that stories and fictional worlds can offer a ‘safe haven’ for comparison to a villainous character that reminds us of ourselves," said study lead author Rebecca Krause.  "When people feel protected by the veil of fiction, they may show greater interest in learning about dark and sinister characters who resemble them."

Which makes me wonder about myself, because my all-time favorite villain is Missy from Doctor Who.

Okay, she does some really awful things, is erratic and unpredictable and has very little concern about human life -- but she's brilliant, and has a wild sense of humor, deep curiosity about all the craziness that she's immersed in, and poignant grief over the loss of her home on Gallifrey.  Played by the stupendous Michelle Gomez, Missy is a complex and compelling character I just love to hate.

What that says about me, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.

On the other hand, I still fucking loathe Carol Last.  I would have loved to see her tied to the railroad tracks, Dudley Doright-style, at the end of the book.

But I guess you can't have everything.

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