The Villain in All of Us .

“The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings.”

—	fyodor dostovevsky

“Those who are heartless, once cared too much.”

—	Frank Ocean

     Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have a fascination with villains in stories. I often find that they have much more interesting back stories and motives than the hero. This blog post is going to be a response to my last blog post about being the hero of your own story, ( can you respond to your own post?... ). Something I have realized is that it is just as easy to become the villain of your own story... if not easier. 

     Think about your favorite movie/book/T.V show for a second. Now think about the villain or antagonist of the story. Why are they the villain? Were they driven mad? Are they trying to gain power? Are they overly jealous of the protagonist? Chances are, (if the villain is well written) that they have a back story that explains the reasoning behind their diabolical deeds. Well.... aren't we all trying to gain power? Aren't we all overly jealous of something? Whose to say we can't become the villain ourselves?

     My favorite villain in the entire world has to be Loki from Thor and the Avengers, (hear that? it's the sound of everyone who knows me rolling their eyes). I'm fascinated with Loki because he starts off the story of Thor as a child. The picture of innocence. He is told that "one day you could become king!" and he believes it. Sound familiar? Here maybe this will help, "you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up!". This promise of becoming a king *SPOILER ALERT* of course; is a lie. 

Try and tell me this adorable little cutie would hurt a fly.

       Then our little Norse God grows up and things start to head south. This is when he realizes everything he has ever been told is a lie. 

      "You can be king!"

      "You're special!"

      "You are one of the Gods! That's fantastic!"

This is something I feel we have all experienced in one way or another. The realization that you are not as special as you once thought and that it is a lot harder to be "king" than you had originally thought. This absolutely tears our villain apart and becomes the breaking point, the point where he has had enough and decides to take matters into his own hands. 

Loki focuses so much on becoming Odin's favorite that he fails to realize that he's Thor's.  (cue crying)

If you explain Loki's story as, "a young man who was promised a lie and decides to go after his dream in an unconventional way but ultimately fails while at the same time losing the trust of his family and friends" it sounds down right tragic right? You wanna root for the guy! It's only until you add context that this becomes the story of a terrible villain who will stop at nothing to achieve power. This begs the question, aren't we all a little bit like Loki? Aren't we all hoping to achieve great things? Weren't we all disappointed when we realized that we aren't as special as we originally thought? So then why don't we also have the potential to become the villain? If we aren't careful enough, this might just be the case, always remember that the villain is the hero in his own world.