How systems create villains
Writing villains who believe they're right
The cruelest villains are ordinary people, their thoughts and actions shaped by systems. They haven't chosen violence. They've simply become what is demanded.
There are many systems that govern our lives. Sometimes, we operate against them, fighting to break their frameworks. Often we operate within them, and inevitably forget we are even participating, taking each step without thought of the skeleton that keeps us from collapse.
Words like systems and frameworks give an untouchable, constructed-yet-ungrounded impression. They're not nearly so mystical. They're a skeleton, and flesh and muscle are the character bound to it:
Systems are just one way the bones of a villain are laid.
Complicity is essential to systems. If you don't move the bones, the system falters. If you fight it, you crack and break against yourself and others. And yet, if you don't participate, you wither and turn to dust, long before the bones are gone.
My original plan was to write broadly about villains who believe they're right. But, as I laid out the skeleton of my thoughts, an incomprehensible monster formed. I couldn't decide where to flesh things out, and adding more bones wasn't helping that.
So, I think it would be best to flesh out smaller skeletons. A smaller creature might be easier recognised for the danger it poses.
This is “Systems”, the first born beast of “Villains Who Believe They're Right”.
Systems of Belief
Villains structured by morals, ideologies, and thoughts, and the way their choices are justified.
Belief frames the way the world is perceived, the way it is considered. Belief provides a template for what is normal, what is right and what's wrong. It shapes thought and sight, heart and compass. The bones are set rigid and upright. Never hollowed by temptation. Not laid upon a false foundation.
Suffering is given a higher purpose. Punishment becomes necessary for the greater good. Violence becomes duty. The misaligned should have their flesh stripped back, their bones corrected. If their bones break under the pressure, be assured; bones hollowed by immorality have no right to move.
The system rewards those whose beliefs are aligned. It provides relief from internal conflict. Marrow cannot be restored. Corrupted bones can only be cast back to the soil. A person doesn't need to sit with guilt when what they've done is right.
It might be hard. It might demand ruthlessness. It might cause you to crack, but it had to be done. Everyone within the system knows it, and they will come together to support your fractures. You will be stronger with alignment, rewarded for dedication, justified within and without.
Every hard choice makes you stronger. Every hard choice brings higher esteem, higher regard. To question it is to break against yourself.
It's hard to atone for what you've done in the name of belief. It requires a fundamental realignment. Re-breaking your bones, piece by piece, to set them in a better way. And they will never heal without the seams of every crack past. Perhaps, even once they fit into a new belief system, they will never exist without pain again.
So, who's to say a belief is wrong, or right? Who's to say your choices are immoral?
You know the right way, after all. You know, if things are done right, the world will be set right around you.
Systems of Belonging
Villains structured by culture, social acceptance, and identity, and the way their silence becomes self-preservation.
Belonging is a scaffold built upon loyalty. Belonging guides behaviour. A person needs acceptance, a family and community. They need a foundation to build themselves upon. Bones cannot be laid and set without structural support. Community provides the template, the space and tools to build.
When bones are shaped and move differently, they grind against those around them. They grind until they shrink, rattle until they break. The bones should be structured to fit, or cast out to wither. Challenging the group is betrayal. Criticism invites humiliation. Disagreement is hate, and silence becomes self-preservation.
Exile strips the framework of security, the foundation of identity, the paths that guided your way. Cast out, you will waste away, your bones scattered across barren dust, lost and forgotten.
The system encourages compromise, and dilutes responsibility. Loyalty is shared, decisions are supported, and any who attempt to disrupt the framework deserve their bones shattered. Bones that cannot bend cannot walk the paths provided. If they don't care for harmony, they can't be trusted.
And how can you be loyal and worthy if none would stand around you? Who are you, if no one welcomes your name into home and heart?
Bend your bones and be accommodated, reinforced against your neighbours. You will be amid the stones of a mountain, a foundational part of something more.
Systems of Power
Villains structured by authority, law, and environment, and the inevitability of how things are.
Power provides order, a clear structure of responsibility and protection. Power motivates. It imposes limitations, redistributes function. Armies, governments, money and resources all shift the balance and ability of a person. Bones are strong when structured correctly, the smaller ones relieved of splintering burdens. They should be unencumbered and leveraged, to function at full capacity.
When roles and duties are structured into the whole, they ensure order even in crisis. Discipline is necessary for survival. Authority is distributed to the powerful, and those without power will enjoy the safety, or grow stronger through duty.
Opportunities to gain standing and status are part of the rigid structure. Compliance and duty feeds your marrow into the mould, your strength into the structure. Power encourages passive acceptance. It creates inevitability, a necessary and reasonable system, a functional state of survival in which the benefits are far too immense to deny.
Once your bones are set into the system, you are a structural part of it. Breaking away from it would tear it down atop you. You would be left splintered, with no mould to set your bones back together again.
It is unavoidable, so there's no point in fighting it. It is bigger than one person, so why even try?
Participation in power systems isn't a choice, it is the way things need to be, have to be. The ways things are.
Violence shaped by systemic complicity
The villain's choice to survive the systems they're bound to.
Just as love can drive harmful decisions, so too can the systems we're built around.
If they're as rigid as bones, as limited in capacity, their form will come against something they cannot navigate. Whether that is another, or their own limitations, it doesn't matter.
The system requires participation. Comply, or wither away.
Those who believe they are right, who are socially guided, and submit to the insulation of hierarchy, are understandable. We all make the same choices, every day.
Belief silences guilt. Belonging silences doubt. Power silences rebellion.
Becoming a villain is easy.
Simply keep moving.
Systems of Belief
Villains structured by morals, ideologies, and thoughts, and the way their choices are justified.
Belief frames the way the world is perceived, the way it is considered. Belief provides a template for what is normal, what is right and what's wrong. It shapes thought and sight, heart and compass. The bones are set rigid and upright. Never hollowed by temptation. Not laid upon a false foundation.
Suffering is given a higher purpose. Punishment becomes necessary for the greater good. Violence becomes duty. The misaligned should have their flesh stripped back, their bones corrected. If their bones break under the pressure, be assured; bones hollowed by immorality have no right to move.
The system rewards those whose beliefs are aligned. It provides relief from internal conflict. Marrow cannot be restored. Corrupted bones can only be cast back to the soil. A person doesn't need to sit with guilt when what they've done is right.
It might be hard. It might demand ruthlessness. It might cause you to crack, but it had to be done. Everyone within the system knows it, and they will come together to support your fractures. You will be stronger with alignment, rewarded for dedication, justified within and without.
Every hard choice makes you stronger. Every hard choice brings higher esteem, higher regard. To question it is to break against yourself.
It's hard to atone for what you've done in the name of belief. It requires a fundamental realignment. Re-breaking your bones, piece by piece, to set them in a better way. And they will never heal without the seams of every crack past. Perhaps, even once they fit into a new belief system, they will never exist without pain again.
So, who's to say a belief is wrong, or right? Who's to say your choices are immoral?
You know the right way, after all. You know, if things are done right, the world will be set right around you.
Systems of Belonging
Villains structured by culture, social acceptance, and identity, and the way their silence becomes self-preservation.
Belonging is a scaffold built upon loyalty. Belonging guides behaviour. A person needs acceptance, a family and community. They need a foundation to build themselves upon. Bones cannot be laid and set without structural support. Community provides the template, the space and tools to build.
When bones are shaped and move differently, they grind against those around them. They grind until they shrink, rattle until they break. The bones should be structured to fit, or cast out to wither. Challenging the group is betrayal. Criticism invites humiliation. Disagreement is hate, and silence becomes self-preservation.
Exile strips the framework of security, the foundation of identity, the paths that guided your way. Cast out, you will waste away, your bones scattered across barren dust, lost and forgotten.
The system encourages compromise, and dilutes responsibility. Loyalty is shared, decisions are supported, and any who attempt to disrupt the framework deserve their bones shattered. Bones that cannot bend cannot walk the paths provided. If they don't care for harmony, they can't be trusted.
And how can you be loyal and worthy if none would stand around you? Who are you, if no one welcomes your name into home and heart?
Bend your bones and be accommodated, reinforced against your neighbours. You will be amid the stones of a mountain, a foundational part of something more.
Systems of Power
Villains structured by authority, law, and environment, and the inevitability of how things are.
Power provides order, a clear structure of responsibility and protection. Power motivates. It imposes limitations, redistributes function. Armies, governments, money and resources all shift the balance and ability of a person. Bones are strong when structured correctly, the smaller ones relieved of splintering burdens. They should be unencumbered and leveraged, to function at full capacity.
When roles and duties are structured into the whole, they ensure order even in crisis. Discipline is necessary for survival. Authority is distributed to the powerful, and those without power will enjoy the safety, or grow stronger through duty.
Opportunities to gain standing and status are part of the rigid structure. Compliance and duty feeds your marrow into the mould, your strength into the structure. Power encourages passive acceptance. It creates inevitability, a necessary and reasonable system, a functional state of survival in which the benefits are far too immense to deny.
Once your bones are set into the system, you are a structural part of it. Breaking away from it would tear it down atop you. You would be left splintered, with no mould to set your bones back together again.
It is unavoidable, so there's no point in fighting it. It is bigger than one person, so why even try?
Participation in power systems isn't a choice, it is the way things need to be, have to be. The ways things are.
Violence shaped by systemic complicity
The villain's choice to survive the systems they're bound to.
Just as love can drive harmful decisions, so too can the systems we're built around.
If they're as rigid as bones, as limited in capacity, their form will come against something they cannot navigate. Whether that is another, or their own limitations, it doesn't matter.
The system requires participation. Comply, or wither away.
Those who believe they are right, who are socially guided, and submit to the insulation of hierarchy, are understandable. We all make the same choices, every day.
Belief silences guilt. Belonging silences doubt. Power silences rebellion.
Becoming a villain is easy.
Simply keep moving.
