About 24 years ago, I went to the theater and watched Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I don’t remember that much about the movie, other than it had some imagery that disturbed me. One thing I do remember is that the experience of watching that movie taught me something about villainy that I’ll never forget. That is, my favorite villains are the ones that seem like they could be a real person.
Mustache-twirling figures in dark robes, cackling as lightning crashes above in a starless night sky… there’s a time and a place for those characters, but they’ve never been my favorite. I like villains that are more like Macbeth. You can see their motivations, and maybe even imagine doing what they did, if you were in their position.
To a certain point, Killmonger in the Black Panther movie was another good example of a well crafted villain. Until he burned the heart-shaped flowers, one could just about imagine him as the hero. He did some terrible things, but he was fighting for something and his motivations were clear.
Today’s villains in real life are, unfortunately, not so well written. Masked men pulling teachers out of schools and disappearing them in vans. A president standing by, looking bored and annoyed as someone visiting him lays on the floor needing medical attention. A Speaker of the House putting the House of Representatives on paid vacation while the administration denies food funding for the elderly and children. An entire political party using starvation as a bargaining tactic in order to revoke health care subsidies and maybe sneak some anti-abortion legislation in, as a special treat.
I couldn’t put any of these people in my stories and have it be an enjoyable story. It’s cartoonish villainy, and one-note motivation: greed. There’s a bit of racism involved, too, but that’s only for selecting the targets to go through the for-profit incarceration system.
To write a modern day villain, you have to depict them as valuing money more than any human life. I don’t really think the GOP is entirely filled with Nazis, though there are definitely some. To be a Nazi is to believe in a race-based worldview, an ideology that there is one race greater than all the others. When I look at what’s going with the bowing and scraping to oligarchs, I’m seeing a belief system around money, not people.
It’s all about the money. Maybe it has always been that way, but things under Trump are more clear and obvious.
The current Mel Walker story I’m working on takes place in the summer of 2024, well before the election. I have thoughts for a third and final Mel Walker novel, but I really don’t think I want to write it. The Mel Walker stories take place in what is recognizably our world. There is magic and ghosts and people with psychic gifts, but the geography and history and feel of the world is ours.
The Repossessed Ghost takes place in November 2013. The Psychic on the Jury takes place sometime between 2016 and 2019, though it could be any year. It’s a small story very much local to Sacramento. In a sense, I skipped Trump’s first term, and I try to keep the Mel Walker stories apolitical. Reading my blog, I’m quite obviously politically opinionated, and anti-Trump, but Mel Walker isn’t me, and I really do try to make my stories a break from reality.
The same holds for The Psychic Out of Time. It’s not a political screed. I’m not writing Animal Farm, and I have no interest in doing so. I want to entertain and provide escapism.
Truth be told, I want to focus on the good people can do. I want to talk about the transformative power of love. I want to feel and make other people feel hope and triumph after overcoming tragedy. I want to depict heroes overcoming their flaws in order to stand up and do what’s right. I want to paint pictures of justice with my words.
I don’t much like living in Trump’s world, and I don’t have a lot of interest in writing about it. So, I’m not sure there will be another Mel Walker story after The Psychic Out of Time, because it’s supposed to be about The End of the World, and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to capture that when The End of Our World is this cyberpunk dystopia, in which an oligarch can arrange a trillion dollar payout while regular folks struggle to pay rent and put food on the table.