Super Villain (74/90)

Hung out with a friend today.

I was just watching Criminal Minds again, and have been reading Deathly Hallows on and off today. I've watched a few movies lately, and started to think about the villains. Criminal Minds is creepy to think about, because all the story lines could happen in real life, or have happened. Those aren't the villains I was thinking about, though.

When I was younger I'd never admit this, but sometimes I wanted the villains to win. I didn't tell anyone because I knew that I wasn't supposed to want them to win. Good was always supposed to win, no matter what. Evil might prevail every once in awhile, but you always knew that the good guys would win in the long run.

Maybe it was because I knew that in real life, the good guys didn't always win. Maybe it was because through some stupendous twist of fate, the good guys were allowed to win. Maybe it was because you could predict that they'd always win, so they'd always be all right in the end. I'm not sure why, but I started to root for the villains.

I think I've written before about how villains have a more interesting back story. You need to know why they decided to become evil instead of good, and how they execute their plans. They generally don't have that many friends, and you can see the effect this has on people. Through villains you can see how failures and horrible situations can make someone go bad.

Not only that, but they could never win in the end, which contributed to their evilness. They just grow more and more bitter towards the world, making up even loftier plans, some with little chance of working. And they know it. I mean, if they've operated for so long without getting caught, then they've got to know this. It might be that in the end, all they want is some sort of attention, not caring if it's for success or failure.

That could be another reason why I was always drawn to them. At an early age it was established that I would get good grades and behave properly in school, so praise for my successes stopped soon after. Or maybe I just wanted to get to know them so that I would know my opponent when I met them.

I could have been preparing myself for my future, when I'd have to tell for myself who was a villain, and how to defeat them. But since everything I grew up on was fantasy, the solutions were never readily available. What I had learned from the good guys couldn't be applied in real life, so I fell victim to the villains. I got to know the real-life villains. They still intrigue me. That's why I keep some around.

There's a part of me that will probably always root for the villains. Just not for the long run.