Guest post: Explaining the Villain

From a reader:

Often he's presented as male, antisocial, perhaps depressed and more than likely suffered some sort of childhood abuse. He has no faith in humanity or the decency of the ordinary individual. His only interest is in himself, in satisfying his own needs and maintaining his own well-being.

If you look at human instinct, you'll see our animal and rational sides.

Our animal instincts are all linked to self-preservation. The need to eat, sleep, fuck and our emotions: empathy, sympathy, sadness, fear, kindness. In society we raise ourselves to believe that emotions are good, that personal needs are questionable and only suitable to be satisfied if it poses no threat to the community around us.

Then you've got our rational half. Our self-awareness, our ability to check the logic of our own actions and moderate our instincts.

We pretend, with our apparent intelligence, that we can overcome our animal instincts, that they're unnecessary and ought to be shut down because of a strong fear that we might lose control.

If one person is too different, if they're apt to lose control or have ideas that present a threat to the majority, we will cast them out in order to protect the stability of our herd. This is the beginning of our villain. He will be made to feel defective, different and discriminated against from the beginning. Made to feel he or she is inherently wrong for things they have no control over.

The defective unit will be cast out and left to fend for himself. Once out, our young one will be welcomed back in. The invitation, however, is conditional. The person must surrender what it is about them that makes them different. People will say that its an optional trait, that this thing can be discarded, that if the person was normal there would be no problem.

Our outcast is naturally resentful and his difference may well be something that cannot be changed.

After being outside for long enough, our alien will have learned to appreciate his position. He is out of the forest and can see the trees. He can see the herd for what it is, the faults, the failures, the bureacracy and its inability to perform a logic check its own reasoning. Depending on how badly he's been treated, he will often attempt to help the individuals in the herd and free them from their ignorance. Enlighten them as to their position. They will retaliate and be scared, refuse to believe the ideas of the outcast because he's been flagged as dangerous.

After this failure, our alien will naturally be angry, he'll take the herd as prey and treat them as an enemy. He will be treated as a second class citizen, still subject to all the same rules and regulations as normal herd members but without a voice. It won't be recognised that he can provide anything of discernable value to the community. His ideas, however enlightened they might be in reality, are null and void and out of that same fear of a loss of stability, can't even be looked at in case it damages society.