For years I’ve tried to make villains who are at times sympathetic, complicated, or even justified in their actions. For years I thought the cartoonish, mustache-twirling villains of my childhood stories were exaggerations and not realistic at all. People don’t act the way they do because “they’re just evil,” I reasoned. There are complexities and great grey areas of morality.
Having lived through the last several years of governmental cruelty, corruption, and willful ignorance, I’ve come to realize that the cartoonish villains of my childhood were not so off-the-mark after all.
It’s made me enter my “I’m making villains and antagonists who are just The Worst” phase of my career and I am not at all sorry about it. Artists are affected by the world around them, and the world around me is reflecting people whose actions are simply evil. No moral grey areas. No complications. There are some people out there who are just The Worst.
It began all the way back when I returned to this comic in 2019. Snout’s villains were “Redactor” and Rannon Mhorgs, who were selfish and racist bullies. I had no plans to make them any deeper than that. They were, and still are, The Worst.
Ragna Balebeard, while perhaps having more justifiable motivations, was still a cruel manipulator whose only true interest was her own ascension. She didn’t actually care about the plight of dwarf women, and only used it (and them) as stepping stones. She was The Worst.
The patriarchal ghost that Saritha faced in Spirit Shepherd was not a complicated man. He was a horrid, abusive father that bullied his daughter and his wickedness was so great it followed him after death. He had no redemption and deserved none. He was The Worst.
And it continues! The mysterious thing that is currently tormenting Veth, Gordi, Kaianda, Sweetwater, and Snout is a real piece of shit. The xenophobic psychic monks in Kadaz who tried to kill Veth and executed many psychic explorers who came too close are also The Worst.
I’m also done making villains who are clever. Current events have shown me that evil isn’t always “one step ahead” like some clever manipulator playing 4D chess. The evil I’ve been seeing on my news feed every day is brutish and stupid, and is successful because no one with power has the backbone to stop it. So it lumbers forward, breaking everything in its path like some brainless kaiju. I’m done with the glorification of villains whose wickedness is borne from their cleverness.
So if you see my villains being dumb, making plans with glaring holes in them, having one-dimensional motivations, and being generally awful please rest assured that I am doing that on purpose. I am, for the foreseeable future, done with sympathetic villains.
Evil makes you stupid, and letting wickedness into your heart withers you into a buffoon.