On Villainy
Exploring more about Mickey's ultimate foe.
I know we’ve discussed our villain in the past, but we’re still playing with ideas. I thought it might be fun to share some of those ideas with our loyal readers and maybe get some feedback in return.
We’ve had tons of ideas about this guy. (Or is it a girl?) But nothing is firm. And if we’re honest, anything can change at this point. That’s slightly nerve wracking considering where we are in the book. So we’d like to flesh this character out sooner rather than later. Here are three villainous traits we’ve got so far.
The Dark Web Crawler
We see our villain surrounded by the sickly blue green glow of several computer screens in an otherwise dark and underground room. They spend most of their daylight hours in their lair, only emerging in the night to do their dastardly deeds.
The Psychopath
This villain, like most villains, has 0 fucks to give. We see this person as maybe doing what they do for themselves as a form of demented self-care. They find it very amusing that others have such a problem with what they do, as they see what they do as a perfectly natural way to keep in balance. We’ve been inspired by recent marathon viewing of Signs of a Psychopath on HBO Max.
Mr. (or Mrs.) Manners
I know this has been done before, and hopefully we’ll pull it off a little differently. But this idea came to me while I was on a 6hr car ride with my children. At about the 4 hour mark I had asked one of them to “Say it with manners” in the syrupy, trying-to-keep-it-together type tone. It sounded super creepy to my own ears. And I can’t imagine how it came off to the kids.
Maybe that’s why manners are so often used in crime fiction and murder mysteries. We can be super polite while wanting to ring someone’s neck, can’t we?
By my count that’s at least three dimensions. And don’t we all want three dimensional characters?
Jokes aside, I don’t want to give too much away in case we need to use some information as a clue. And, like I said, we’re not sure how all this will work in the end, which makes it as much of a mystery to us as it will be to you.
The only way to figure it out is for us to keep writing … and for you to keep reading.