Why are young villains better?

   When I was at school I realized something super interesting while talking to two students, one of them, a super Nintendo fan and the other (a girl) a fan of Harry Potter. My conversation with the Nintendo guy (let's call him "A") reached a point were we started mentioning our favorite games from Nintendo, and then the usual ones came in mind: Zelda, Mario, Fire Emblem, Smash Bros... And also Earthbound, one of my personal favorites; and since he didn't knew too much about the game I explained to him what was about, I clearly remember that I told him about the main villains, Giygas and Pokey, and that the second one was my favorite one from all Nintendo games.

The design of Pokey in Mother 2.

   Later on, like a week later, I talked to the Harry Potter girl (let's call her "M") about the series, it was a quicker conversation, but we had time to ask to each other things like "Which is your favorite book?" and "Who is your favorite character?", being the answers in my case The Chamber of Secrets and Tom Riddle (yeah, not exactly Lord Voldemort but Tom Riddle), and it had some sense since the most important event from that book was the existence of Tom...

Tom Riddle as a young teenager from Harry Potter and the half-blood prince.

   What do these two characters have in common? The answer was pretty obvious: they are kids, and even if they have their own adult forms I believe I still prefer them like kids, but why? What is that I like about them? Are they really that good? Will I stop asking question? The answers to these and more in this analysis: Why do I love young villains so much?

   Now first things first, we need to know who they are before making a proper revision, so I'll do a quick biography about them:

Pokey Minch (Earthbound, 1994)

   Pokey's first appearance was in Mother 2 (called "Earthbound" in America) and he's known for being one of the main villains from the game mentioned above, he's also the main villain in Mother 3, which was never released in America. He was the protagonist's neighbor, at the beginning of the game we can see that they two had a close, friendly relationship; we also see that Pokey's personality was somewhat arrogant, coward and selfish, but since those are common behaviors between a lot of kids one can hardly see him as a bad guy, or even as a threat; for now we know that little Pokey only thinks for himself and doesn't have two much respect for people. He follows Ness (the protagonist) with his brother Picky to the top of the hill next to their houses just to find a curious object that fell from the sky, this event marks the beginning of their adventure, but in two different ways: one of the them met lots of friends, helped people on need and fought to save the world, while the other left behind all his loved ones, put people in trouble and fought to obtain world domination.

"Look at that meteorite!"

   It's worth to mention that Pokey also has an adult facet in Mother 3 called Porky (Don't really know why he is called like that, I suppose that's his name in Japan since the game never came out from the country of the rising sun), in this game he shows some new faces like his need for establishing his own society and all that political trash, which finally led him to have a finale that's even worst than death, if you played the game then you'll know what I'm talking about :)

   In conclusion, we can say that Pokey is the perfect example of those annoying and materialist kids who think they should receive everything from their parents, the only difference here is that this kid took the reins of the situation by himself and obtained something that he couldn't get from his parents's pocket: power; and since he proved to be a deeper character than he seemed at the beginning of the game (reaching the point when we realize he was actually out of his mind) you know the thing is bad: power and madness aren't a good combination. Did I already mentioned that he reached immortality?

Tom Marvolo Riddle (Harry Potter series, 1998)

   Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort or simply "who-must-not-be-named" is the main villain from the Harry Potter series, he's described as a powerful magician who fights to control the magic world (something that he actually did in the 8th Harry Potter book: The Cursed Child); he physically resembles a snake: vertical pupils, two snake-like nostrils that replace his human nose and a sharp and penetrating voice, besides a cold and whitish skin. Every big thing came from a simple and small fundation, in Lord Voldemort's case, a child, as it is clear at this point; but of which kind? How was he like?

Kid Tom Riddle from the Half-blood Prince.

   Initially Tom was born in a little muggle orphanage at London, in December 3th, 1926, where he'll live for 11 years before receiving an offer from Dumbledore himself to attend to Howards School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Life wasn't easy for Tom until that day, her mother died in childbirth and his dad abandoned her before she gave birth; this event meant an important evolution in Tom's personality, thee reason why he hated Muggles was because of his father's abandonment. In Hogwarts he quickly became one of the tops students. Life was good for little Tom as he estabilshed himself as a promising prospect, until he started having a particular interest for dark magic, so much so that he asked to his professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts about Horcruxes (basically the reason why we have so much Harry Potter books). After graduating, he wanted to be a DAtDA professor so he could recruit young wizards for his army, but he was eventually denied; because of this he eventually shatered his soul into several pieces and reached his "almost-inmortal" status.

Yeah, the guy was crazy indeed, he even changed his name as an adult because he considered Tom to be a common name. He knew he was special, he went from being the non-talented kid to be the best on everything, such a filthy muggle name was not suitable for the Salazar Slytherin descendant, it would also remember him about his father, so he decided for the name Lord Voldemort. Some people say that his personal insecurities about his mixed heritage as a half-blood wizard was the fuel for his evil transformation, but one thing that is for sure is that he developed intense thoughts of resentment about his environment that escalated into a huge and dangerous hatred. He was specially manipulative with the people around him too, with important people, like professors and peers; he mastered not only the dark arts of magic but also the dark arts of human psycology, only Dumbledore was able to see through this facade though.

So why are children usually better villains?

Childhood is the strongest denominator of anyone's life, doesn't matter if we talk about real or fictional people (unless you want to make a poorly developed character). The presence of parental figures are essensial for the interpretation of the world, specially in the first years of life; simple stimuli like the reaction of your father after you broke that expensive vase can transform into the interpretation that what just happened was something terrible, the feeling of fear when he frowns makes you think that the world's gonna end, and after the heart slows down, a sensation of remorse strikes, and all this usually in a matter of seconds. Of course, for an adult, or at least for many of us, feeling these kind of emotions have become normal, certain stimuli also affect some people more than others too; but to think that these guys have perfected the control of these biological responses to the point that they are able to transform them into something positive for seizing their objectives, at such a young age... that my friends, that is scary. If someone can have so much intellectual maturity at that point of his life, imagine when he is an adult. The point of being a villain is that you already have a clear idea about what you want to do or what you want to be, and in some cases, you already achieved the big prize and the real challenge is to stay at the top (before the heroe reaches you, at least); so when we talk about villains and merge them with the concept of them being kids, you usually cannot suppose that those kids haven't already reached a certain milestone that makes them believe that they are able to get to their target, one has to be positively and 100% sure that what you have at that point is what you'll use for world domination or revenge on a certain individual. The rational boundaries that sometimes appear in our heads when we think about breaking the law are non-existent, can you do it? Yes, can you get away? Yes; and that's all that it takes them to decide whether you become the bad guy or not; also, when you're young, some times the awareness of the consequences lacks, so this may be another another reason as to why they may be impulsive with their actions.

And you may say, "Bro, that also happens with adult villains too". True, adult villains also know their capacities and have the tendency to act whether the award overlaps the risks, but if you think about it, how much maturity would you have needed to be both a villain and a kid in such a short period of time? By this time, I mean the period between your first influences, the ones that forged your true character, and the transformation of those into your life projection. My point being, the pace where you process all these things I talked about is huge when you're a young villain, and this can translate into a higher intellect, fast adaption to the unforseeable and a tremendous attention to detail (the devil is in... what again?). I'm am one of those who firmly believes thay emotion and intellect are stricly bound, so when you move one of them, you consequently affect another and so on, the flexibility of these two also make them easier to mold when you're young, in the sense that a less stubborn personality resonates in the way you perform your evil plans, I mean, have you ever tried to convince an old man that he's wrong? It may be one of the most difficult tasks known to man, and it may get worst if the old man is also a villain.

And one of my favorite points, is that being a young villain makes you almost immediately more scary. Imagine yourself in a scenario where you find a very suspitious abandoned house that you discovered in the dark woods, upon further inspection, you find a dead body of a grown-up person, stabbed several times, with blood everywhere, and for your bad luck the perpetrator is looking at you directly, knife-on-hand. Now, imagine the individual being an adult; in this case what you immediately think is naturally, to run, but imagine that for some reason you have time to think about what's going on (you froze time or whatever), what you can probably suppose in that gap is that the killer probably had something to do with the victim, he hated him for killing his kid, or his wife, or he simply enjoys murdering, you know, basic adulhood stuff. But then, imagine if the killer is a kid, first thing that probably comes to your mind is 1. Why? Why was such a young kid able to do this terrible thing, what reason could an infant have to commit such a bloody act? 2. How? How did the kid pulled it out? Does he/she has such a strong physical capacity to be able to take down a fully grown human being? - This last question can also be eventually translated to "What comes for me, now that he has spotted me?", and before you say "it was on self defense!", we're implying that he's a villain here, so he'll most likely charge at you in order to stab you. 

Dramatization©

I don't know, but in this situation the young villain always seem to have more mystery around him, like he has some kind of special power that makes him take down his enemies. This feature makes them fell like unpredictable forces and almost like omnipotent beings. Fear of the unknown might be one of those conditions that affects the most people regardless of its nature, whether it's claustrophobia, social phobia, arachnophobia or acrophobia; what really affects you is the potential unforeseeable outcome (what'd happen if I'm trapped, they reject me, it bites me, I fall...) and there's few things more unpredictable than a young powerful enemy.

So what to take from this analysis? First, the intellectual and emotional features of a young villain are usually higher than your average adult bad guy. Second, young villains tend to graduate from Atrocious University sooner. Third, they can scare the heck out of you. And fourth, I love young villains, they are awesome. I started this article in July of 2018 and only got to finished it in October of 2023, I knew I was fast, but this really exceeded my expectations. I may do a couple more articles in the next months, or maybe next year, who knows; what I'm happy to know is that at least this one will be here every time I come back so I can laugh my ass off, and also remember times where things were simpler, or not! Bye for now, myself from the past.

Start on Funchal, 22 of July of 2018 - Finished on Lisbon, 30 of October of 2023.