What would life be without people like me?

Evil. It's a word that says so much, and yet so very little. How do you tell if a person is good or bad? Is there a radar? Do all good people act like uncompromising, incorruptible, tragic figures? Do all bad people speak in exposition and want nothing more than to take over the world for no good reason? Only if there's a bad writer involved. As any person who has actually ventured outside and experienced reality can tell you, you can't really assess anyone's character with simple adjectives. In a historical context you can probably get away with it because of hindsight. But otherwise you can't simply say that the Pope is the perfect example of righteousness and godliness just because he's the pope, or that any given politician is only one step away from becoming a character in Dr. Strangelove. It just doesn't work that way.

Of course none of that makes for very good drama now does it? Fiction is allowed to have shades of gray but you can always tell who the protagonist is and who the antagonist is. For those who may not know a protagonist is the one the story centers around, they always face some sort of obstacle (antagonist) and than go through a great personal change. Now the thing to remember is that there is a difference between an antagonist and a real villain like me.

An antagonist is a broad term that could be used to describe anything from a force of nature to inner emotional turmoil. We villains fall into a subcategory of that term. A good villain's job (no pun intended) is to stop the hero. A great villain's job is to make the audience think that the hero might be wrong. There are two sides to every story, and just because you have your name in the title doesn't make you automatically right! You see, fiction does have one thing in common with reality; the need for conflict.

I am the Fiend. My work is to analyze fiction's greatest villains (and the not-so-great-ones) and show my audience that without them, the story loses all meaning. I have named this blog after a quotation from a b-movie called "Wish-Master 2" in which an evil genie states that "Evil is one half of a perfect sphere" and overtime I will show you all why that claim is true.