Everyday Canvas

Villains and intimidation

Prompt: Paramhansa Yogananda said, “Some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others.” In how many different ways can you make your characters use such a control tactic on one another?

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If I am writing an occult/supernatural/fantasy, I would have the actual heads cut off, provided the headless could develop new heads. I think metaphorically, too, developing a new head after someone cuts yours off works very well, in real life. You have no idea how many times I have conjured up new heads in my old heads’ places.

Can you tell I am now reading Harry Potter books in my old age? But I digress, as I am all Pottered up.

Anyway, other than in fantasy writing, say, inside a more realistic venue, this sort of thing usually happens in the space and time where the control-crazy characters (in short, villains) usually dominate. It could be their physical or psychological space where they feel the familiarity and their ownership strongly.

In that same setting, scene, or space, one of those villains’ best weapons is deliberately making their victims wait in suspense just to flaunt their importance over the victims. These types of controlling villains even have their offices set up in such a way as to exude power because they like to judge and criticize the victims from their perch of power.

Another of their tactics is to put the victims on the spot by naming them and asking them questions and expecting answers in detail, so they can pick on any one detail to send their victims to that emotional guillotine, or they may overwhelm them through negative humor poking at the victims weaknesses through their invented bureaucracy, such as excess paperwork, by-laws, and any other roadblocks they can think of, or they give multiple and opposing directives to confuse and bully the victims. Even in situations where they are needed, they may act as if losing patience and threaten to walk out on the projects.

They may also employ scratchy or satiric formality or physically or emotionally uncomfortable closeness as they have no respect for personal space. For example, a historical fiction villain may address his victim as: “Sir, after you, please. I do wish, with due respect, a good friend like you walk ahead of me, for how skilled you are with or without the sword is phenomenal; therefore, I beseech you, in total camaraderie, to not give any difficulty to my gentle guards while they accompany you into the dungeon.”

On the opposite end, villains may use their physical superiority, such as their height, by towering over the victim, raising their voices to show negative emotions, or trying to intimidate them by pointing out unreasonable consequences to their actions. Also, like common salesmen, they try to give the other character little or no time to decide with the hope that their victim will have no choice but give in.

I am sure there are other ways I couldn’t think of at the moment since there may be as many methods of intimidation as there are villains in existence. But they're there, and I hope you, too, can come up with a few examples.