when the villain becomes the hero 🪞
the villain isn't the enemy, they are merely a reflection.
Since the beginning of storytelling, the villain has always been pitted against the hero. They are the evil, vengeful antagonists preventing the hero from saving the world from all its darkness. But if you look deeper, you discover this isn’t the plot at all. In fact, the story tells us that the villain is the hero and the hero is the villain. They aren’t opposites, they are reflections of each other.
From Maleficent to the Wicked Witch of the West, many villains were pushed to the outskirts so the world could be protected from their darkness. It is then that the villain embraces their role as the world’s antagonist. However, deep down, they are just fighting to be seen, heard, and valued no matter the cost.
The hero isn't afraid to face the villain because deep down there's a longing to see themselves in their eyes–what they could've been, who they are without societal pressure, and who they're saving themselves from. They desire to understand the motive behind the villain’s seemingly destructive actions.
At the same time, the villain can't wait to meet the hero to show them what it's like to embrace one's shadow and find power in the depths where many don't dare go. They desire to tell their story to show the hero that they aren’t so different after all.
"You either die a Hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the Villain" — Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
It’s a tale as old as time, light vs dark.
Even in spirituality we see the wars of the white witch who doesn’t believe in curses vs the “dark” witch (who’s always had to fight for their place in this world) curse for survival. Whether you believe in cursing or not isn’t the point here, it’s how one believes they are better than the other because of it. When we meet in the middle to understand each other, we realize that love isn’t unfamiliar to someone who embraces the shadow parts of life and that embracing the light from time to time can change your perspective too. It’s realizing that you need both, because it’s what makes us whole.
I am the hero and the villain
It is not lost on me that I have scored a percentage of the hero archetype while my work is centered around the villain. I tend to oscillate between hero and nurturer which is somewhat similar. I am not afraid of conflict, I fiercely protect those I love, and I strive to be the voice for the powerless.
I know what it’s like to be the villain and also be villainized. I’ve learned how to balance out the dark and light to find peace in the middle. I don’t have anything left to prove, but I’m aware that it is my life’s work to seek the lessons between it all. I’m a voice to the villain archetype because I know how important this work is. Storybooks and mythology is what holds the human experience in our hands and I think we can learn a lot from them. We are never just good or bad people. We dance within every possibility because we meet our reflections through the billions of people we see ourselves in. I know that just because we are villainized in one story, doesn’t mean we can’t become the hero in so many others.
The villain is the hero. The hero is the villain 🪞. and that's why they fight to meet each other in every storybook told.
how we become villains 🔪
Villains get a bad rep. People who aren’t oriented to this archetype feel that embracing the label is not in spiritual alignment with your purpose: to care, to love, and to feel.
Love this! Yes! Our Western society/ schools of thought has always been trying to enforce binaries and dichotomies in everything, and it has been largely attached to some sort of code of morality. But humans don’t work that way. We are all a balance and amalgamation of multitudes, and we are unpredictable. We can only attempt to understand ourselves and each other when we understand that
Yes, you're so right about the villain and hero being reflections. Not to trivializ or detract but that's one of the reasons I've always loved anima/manga from childhood, because their villains and heros would both be complex people with traits from both sides. It's why I've enjoyed the past decade or so where Western media finally caught on and started adding depth to their antagonists too. Like, nothing is that simple and nothing is exempt from the environs and influences surrounding.