Alt title: “Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.” ― Malcom X.
Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam. -Klingon proverb
I have always loved the bad guys. Darth Vader, Klingons, the biker gang who lived across the street from us when I was 3-5, I was a not friendly child who was terrified of a lot of people but if I saw a gangster looking person, I always gravitated to them. I have always had a nebulous pattern around this, if they are just evil then no. Just dumbly violent, no. It took me until the last ten years or so of analyzing my love of villainy in aesthetics and actions to figure out what it is about this that draws me.
I am going to get a little woo here so deal with it.
Aesthetics aside, as I’ve looked back at a lot of my fiction, people I love, people I’ve bee friends with etc and the types of people I put into this category they aren’t evil in the moral sense necessarily. Most of the time they fall under the category of people who do wrong or very wrong things for the right reason. The first time I heard that phrase I think it was Gibbs on NCIS and it all made sense to me. Yes, I’ve been thinking about this very hard.
What attracts me is the pain. I am attracted to the moment a person understands how, where and why they are fucked up, then they take that fucked upness learn to live in it and use it. Then fuck some things up in pursuit of justice on some level. I am not at all attracted to the men who want to watch the world burn for funsies, I never like mindless fuckery. I don’t like the type of people who make their reputations and money on the backs of abusing others, who make celeb status and behave like rabid assholes. That to me doesn’t fit villainy as I am talking about here.
In terms of my own ideas about morals and ethics, often I find myself on the side of the wronged who have lost their shit. And understand, this is not about people who do things like commit atrocities for money, for imagined slights, racism let’s be clear fuck those people. They are not villains they are just evil down to the soul. I’m talking about people whose actions on the front of it seem evil. Killmonger, Magneto etc. Do note, I purposefully am not using the vile phrase anti-hero.
When I talk about villainy, being the antagonist, I’m talking about when your ethics mean, you might have to get grimy. What follows here might mean you like me less and that’s okay, just hear me out.
My attraction to these grey areas lives in my own knowledge of myself. I am not nice. Not by default. I was an unfriendly baby, an eye rolling toddler and until I was taught otherwise had no problem solving a problem with violence or the threat of it. For instance, when I was 8-9 years old a boy, I didn’t like would not leave me alone. He wanted to talk, to play, and on that day, he fucked up. He picked me up and I did not like it. I went for his eyes then when he threw me on the ground I stood up, got in his grill, and said, “if you touch me again, I will knock your dick in the dirt.”
I didn’t know my parents overheard; I wouldn’t know until years later. I do know that once that boy looked in my eyes, to quote Keyser Soze I showed him a will. My fists were balled up, I was standing as tall as I could (for reference at that age I was the size of an average 5 year old) and I was ready. Fast forward to the middle of the panini, a man tried to put his arm around me as he hit on me. I pushed him into oncoming traffic and told him if he tried it again one of us was about to die.
So many decades apart I am the same person. Like most villains, I can be harsh, mean and punitive. I am more comfortable with grimy people than not, the only reason I am not more physically violent is I’m old and don’t want to go to jail which has not always been the case. I connect with the deep need for justice, for right, for ethical if not always moral. When my mother told me about it, she said after her and my father stopped laughing, they talked about whether or not to do anything about it and decided not to.
For a long time, I felt like something was wrong with me. I have always been able to sink into the grey areas of right and wrong, of separating general violence, asshole violence and strategic violence. I learned when and how to use my rage and pain. I taught myself not to be afraid to be bad, to be the necessary asshole. I don’t believe that the best life is clear of assholery, violence or strife. Sometimes, I believe and have smacked someone in the mouth (adults only), so they learned not to do whatever they were doing.
I believe that a good society can’t be without people like me. One approach to life, morality and ethics is rarely good in practice and sometimes, you need to call the motherfucker who will. I have slapped a few Karen’s (not in modern times because jail), I have fought grown men, I’ve been the person standing staring down somebody in public. I am not easy to violence emotional or otherwise these days for my own sanity. It wasn’t until I looked inside and held my most judgy mirror up to myself did I figure this out.
The difference between someone like me and say a troll or the type of person who yells in public a lot is that I have learned the one lesson I needed to and here I will quote DS9:
Intendant Kira: I could never make them understand, violence is a precision instrument. It’s a scalpel, not a club. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV Series) Shattered Mirror
I spent most of my life desperate to hide my violence. Save for moments like the boy picking me up, I did not get in fights at school, I learned to be nicer to adults, like most of us I tried so hard to really drink in the lesson that violence is never the answer and yet, I saw around me it sometimes is the answer. For a few years I was too quick with it and at some point, after dropping the elbow of vengeance on a man for standing too close to me, I found where I fit.
I accepted my own nature without judgement. I don’t feel bad that when I see some of the shit people say to others, I want to slap them in the mouth. I don’t feel bad that sometimes when men behave badly with me, I am figuring out how much damage I can do to them in a way that will leave marks for later identification if need be. Sometimes I daydream of being the Punisher, I do. I will burn your village to the ground, I will hurt your racist uncle asshole’s feelings, I will embarrass a Karen so bad they cry real tears and while it isn’t nice, it is who I am.
I don’t believe that violence, emotional or physical is inherently bad or wrong. Much like anything else how it is used, who uses it and why matters. I believe that it is necessary in society to not achieve homogeneity of behavior but, to know your own self enough to know where you fit and how to deal with the “less desirable” parts of ourselves.
The only reason I can talk about these things without shame is because I have done a lot of internal work to understand why I feel this way. Why when I’m in public and feel unsafe, I walk towards the street dealers and gangsters and not the “nice” guy in the business suit. It is why on a visceral gut level, I’ll say with my whole chest, how much I identify with the “bad” guy.
Suppressing ourselves to seem good is not power. Power is in truth. Power is in learning to set aside some of the things society says about us so we can think about ourselves and our behaviors and figure it out. I’ll end with this.
The only reason I am capable of peace now is because I got very honest with myself about my capability for war. And that is enough.
Today is a good day to die. -Klingon proverb