Heroes Or Villains?

Who do you prefer and why?

Lately, I’ve been pondering this question more-and-more. With my own work, by far the two characters I’ve created who I like the most (Babayka and Yana) would be, I guess, labelled as villains. Not that I see either of them that way really, but if you were to boil it down to good-guys and bad-guys, I guess most people would consider them bad-guys. I don’t know why, but I just find it easier to create and write villains rather than heroes. It not that I dislike heroes, but I do find them a bit bland and samey sometimes. Whereas I’ve always enjoyed villains that you like, even though you really shouldn’t. While people in real life who are selfish and opportunistic infuriate me greatly, and I try my hardest to keep them out of my life, somehow when they’re fictional, you don’t feel so bad for enjoying their sinister escapades so much. You can close the book\comic or switch off the TV\computer when you’ve had enough of them and they‘re gone. You have some control over a fictional bad guy\girl.

I guess this is a longwinded way of saying I lean more towards villains (well… certain villains anyway) rather than heroes. Don’t get me wrong, I can happily read\watch\play something with a good hero\heroine as the lead, and often do, but maybe it’s just the horror writer in me that likes a good villain or monster better. For the record, I don’t consider myself a bad guy, by-the-by. I’m a live-and-let-live kind of person. I feel both guilt and empathy, two things real life bad guys often don’t. I think the act of reading, writing or playing in a fictional world can be a kind therapy, and just as some people believe that every person in your dreams represents a part of you, I also think the same can be true when someone creates a fictional world and characters. So the idea of good-guys and bad-guys shouldn’t be taken too seriously, in my opinion.

Again, I don’t dislike heroes. I would hate for people to think I’m saying I do, because I don’t. But on the other hand, I am saying when push-comes-to-shove, I do enjoy writing villains more.