It's been awhile, but once again I return to this long lost bit of the internet to muse and be ignored. As the title suggests, there will be spoilers here, especially for RWBY (as the last 2 week's episodes are what sent me down this road.) I'll also talk a bit about the nature of Terra from Teen Titans, and who knows where else I'll meander.
(I told you, RWBY spoilers.... if you haven't seen through V6 E12, be warned)
Many things have happened in RWBY the last few weeks, but the one that got my attention was a very particular aspect of the battle between Blake and Yang on one side, and Adam on the other. After all this time, Adam Taurus finally "unmasked" himself and we saw his face. A face that has been tattooed with "SDC" (Schnee Dust Company presumably).
Now, Adam has been one of the clearest out and out villains the show has. A man driven by rage and anger, a faunus who deeply feels the offenses against his people and lashes out as brutally as he can. Now, this isn't new for the character. We've seen the seething rage in him almost from his introduction, and we've certainly seen it grow over the last couple of seasons into a deep froth. He's Magneto at his coldest and angriest, but perhaps even more so.
Yet, at the same time, seeing the tattoo, and seeing the casual persecution of the faunus throughout the series, it's clear that he has become a villain who was broken by others. The lash of persecution has driven him beyond the brink. He's certainly still evil, and his actions drive that point home time and again.
This seems to be a constant in our literary development of villains any more. Villains have a "reason" a cause. They were in some way, created by the malice of others. Anakin may have been troubled, but he was not driven past the edge until the death of his mother and the manipulation of Palpatine and so forth.
It's been interesting to watch the evolution of Terra in the Teen Titans. If you go back and read the original "Judas Contract" series in the comic, she's portrayed as being pretty much a "bad seed." Yes, she worked with Slade, but you get the sense that the malice, anger and evil that lived within her was part of her very nature. In more recent versions (From the 90's Teen Titans and the more recent DC Animated Movie of the Judas Contract), she's much different. She's troubled, but fundamentally manipulated into her evil by Slade, and in one form or another finds a level of redemption.
Is evil from within or without? The answer is often... yes. That is to say, there are people who are broken by circumstance and manipulation and are twisted into being something else. So certainly, a villain like Adam is a very real thing. We can look at history and find any number of examples of people who are like that.
Yet, it's also easy to find people in history who are drawn down an evil path on their own. Perhaps by their own boundless ambition, or maybe even by something which is just "wrong" within them from first causes. To ignore those things is to shift blame and responsibility. To say "every villain is a victim" is facile and ignores the darkness which lies in man's soul.
There is a place in both, so this certainly isn't meant a complaint about Adam. He is what he is.
The evil of Salem is a bit harder to fully grasp, because there are so many ingredients to the stew. Her Rapunzel like origin certainly hurt her, but so much was driven by her rage at Oz's death. Her natural and profound sorrow was transformed into anger and a sense of being ill used by the world. Then, she turned herself into a catspaw between the dark and light, and eventually "fell into the darkness" entirely. Is she victim or villain? It's... hard to say. A bit of both really.
This is something I struggle with in my own writing and creating of villains. I may never actually write these stories, but I can give a short precis to get the idea across (a great deal is in my head, but I rarely write. It is what it is.)
One of the major characters in my current thinking of the world of Panthelia is Centina. She's a child of the Ulurakith (like Alelneia, but not from the same family.) Now, the Ulurakith are a bit of a mixed people. They have some noble qualities, and some very troublesome ones. That's intentional. One thing about them is that they are great believers in physical strength and ability, and almost turn it into an idol. The flip side is that they not only distrust magic, but actively despise it. It's evil, untrustworthy and the like.
However, in Panthelia magic is something which can arise in certain people for no fully understood reason. It's almost parallel to mutants in the Marvelverse (at least in that respect.) What do you do if you are a people that loathes magic and a child with affinity arises? Well, Centina is one of those kids. She was already a bit suspect in that for an Ulurakith, she was small and scrawny as a child, terrible in a people that idolizes strength.
How did her mother respond? Well, she turned upon her own flesh and blood. She was duty bound to raise the child until age 15, but from that point, she threw Centina out, and did everything she could to make Centina outcast in her little community. There were a very few who disagreed, but Centina, almost in despair, chose to simply leave town, desperate and alone.
Is mommy dearest a villain? Most certainly. Her motives are such an overweening attachment to the traditions of the Ulurakith that she turned upon her own daughter. So, her evil was born of both the internal and the external.
On the other hand, you have Barakan, a dragon who is determined to be the top dog (er, dragon.) He's not even really sure what he wants to do with that power, but he knows he deserves it. His evil is more or less internal. It's boundless ambition, even if undirected. (He does have some yes-dragons who speak in his ear and reinforce that inanity, but they're only pumping up what was already there.)
There is a place for both in stories.
I may post up some more later on Centina and momma, as she's a pretty hard character to get your mind around, and raises other tricky questions.
Well this meaningless ramble is over.
