They're not really a barrel of laughs. They can be a lot of fun in small doses. I mean, I'm not a cannibal or a millionaire (if there's any difference, amirite!) it's quite enjoyable to slip on the mind of a total axe-crazy sociopath for a bit. Villains react in different ways to the rest of us. They see a problem and they can totally kill their way through it in unimaginably brutal ways, and that's fine, that's expected of them.
But the thing that makes them villains worth writing about and not just one-shot murderer characters (and there's plenty of those on Gallaetha already) is that they believe they're in the right. As people, we're all the protagonist in our life's novel. Villains are the same way. Brent Campbell genuinely believes that he is a positive force in the world and anybody that dies for one of his whims is doing the world a service; Narak is the most chivalrous motherfucker you'd ever want to meet but he'd still eat a baby if he was hungry; as for Tim... that poor bastard just has a fishhook to hell poking out of his throat.
I've been trying to reconcile their atrocious actions, and they are atrocious, with their own self-image, and it has been knocking me a bit askew this past week. Things have gotten dark.
It's been totally worth it, after a few more scenes I can start the process of merging my villains and my heroes so that one side's awfulness is reflected off the others' positivity. That's what I'm looking forward to getting to. It's really what the whole book has been about up until this point. There's a really cool thing coming that I'm not even allowed to talk about because it spoils everything, but it makes all the depression and darkness worth it.
Anyway, that's why I haven't updated this thing in a while. Not because I've lost interest or anything. I actually have a story that just has to get rejected by a few more places before I can post it here.
It's a good one too. Horror this time. Everybody likes horror, unless it's late at night. So I'll try to post it in the morning.