Why Do Villains Use Disability as a Tool for Evil?
I have had a couple of people (I won’t disclose names…Karen…) verbally harass me over the internet write to me about how “more writers don’t need to think that disability is a good tool for evil.” In reference to this post: How to Hide Your Villain… (to be completely straight forward, I have edited this post before based on people’s concerns and comments to make it more sensitive to the subject matter, as I have no desire to hurt or offend as much as help writers be inspired to write better characters and stories.)
I couldn’t agree more! It’s sick to think that someone would actually pretend to have a disability or injury in order to prey on others.
But there seems to be a disconnect here between great hopes and reality.
It doesn’t seem like writers think that disability is a good tool for villainy.
It seems that villains think disability is a good tool for evil acts.
A writer’s job is to observe, think, imagine, and write. There is very little originality out there.
So where do writers get these ideas from? And why are people harassing and targeting writers when clearly there is evidence that evil people do this sort of behavior?
Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy is known to have brutally murdered many unsuspecting women while he was alive.
There are true accounts of how he would get to the women.
During times he would go to the beach. He would bring a “board” and a sling. He did not need the sling mind you. He was perfectly healthy.
He would then wear the sling he didn’t need to appear injured and then target a woman and ask for her help to get the board on top of his car.
He wanted them to think he was injured to appear less of a threat more like someone needing help so they would trust him more and not be concerned about getting close to him.
I don’t know where he got his ideas from, but I am one writer who didn’t give it to him.
Have his actions given me ideas for villains? You bet.
Momma Dee Dee
In recent years a mother named Dee Dee forced and manipulated her daughter into pretending to be a person with disabilities so that she could “take care of her” indefinitely.
This mother manipulated her child for more than 20 years forcing her to the wheelchair she didn’t need.
Dee Dee forced medications on her daughter and multiple unnecessary surgeries in order to keep her needy for as long as she could. The psychological issues here are massive.
It does not seem like a writer came up with this. It seems that a mother chose to selfishly do these terrible things to her own daughter.
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Seisaku Nakamura
Known as the Hamamatsu Deaf Killer. He was a person with the disability of deafness. He stabbed nine people to death over the course of his life. He has the characteristics of a serial killer.
Juan Robles
A wheelchair-bound gangster charged with robbery and threatened to kill a woman. You can look up more about him here.
Daniel Roque Hall
A person with severe disabilities, wheelchair-bound, suffered from Friedreich’s ataxia was caught smuggling £300,000 worth of cocaine in his wheelchair.
You can see from these real examples, most authors don’t go out looking to slander certain people. (Some do, of course, but this writer isn’t one of them.)
Listen, the point of an author giving a villain a disability or having the villain fake a disability isn’t some attack on people with disabilities.
That would be like saying, you made the person without a disability a villain? That’s an attack on people without disabilities.
The line of reasoning is flawed.
We as a people need to get away from labeling and identity labeling in stories.
Why can’t a person, wheelchair-bound just be a person, and if we write them doing good things, they are a person that does good things?
If we write them doing bad things then they are a person doing bad things. Not everything has to be a personal attack on a group of people.
In this faulty line of reasoning, Silence of the Lambs attacks a group of people, the tv show the Flash attacks people, Mr. Glass attacks people, the list could go on and on.
In real life, it doesn’t matter whether you are a person with disabilities or not, people from all types and all backgrounds make good choices and bad choices.
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People in real life with disabilities have made evil decisions (look at the real-life people above). People in real life without disabilities have made evil decisions. Some people in real life have even pretended to be disabled or have disabilities to commit certain crimes.
If these things happen in real life, why can’t writers write about them?
Of course, this is just my research on storytelling and reality. It’s just my opinion. You are most certainly welcome to your own. Please feel free to leave a comment about the subject matter as you please. 🙂 (I can’t promise you it won’t turn into a juicy, dramatic post >:) )
Some people who wrote to me verbally attacked my character and told me to “educate myself.”
I did. I have. And I will continue to.
(Let’s not be those kinds of people. I’m guilty of saying these ignorantly in anger. Who isn’t?)
The next time we are tempted to yell over the phone at the customer service person or let the guy that wrote the article “have a piece of my mind,” let’s try to phrase it in a different light that isn’t so “shoot first, ask questions later.”
Final thoughts
If villains in real life do it, why can’t writers write about it?
Why Do Villains Use Disability as a Tool for Evil?
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Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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Why Do Villains Use Disability as a Tool for Evil?
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