One of the things that is mysterious and terrible to me about the common depiction of evil in fiction is that the typical image of a villainous villain seems to have almost nothing to do with the personality of the villain as a person, and everything to do with the manner in which they are depicted.

A villain might be an overbearing parent, or an unreasonable boss, or an incompetent scientist, but those are individual problems that could be fixed by the writer. A villain is someone you hate because they stand in the way of the hero doing … something. In most cases (at least in the sort of fiction I am talking about), there is almost nothing about the villain as a human being, or even about their appearance (except in the first instance), that suggests anything like the qualities that make someone an obstacle to the hero.

Well, this does not seem to be the reality, because modern fantasy is also full of monsters that are almost human in appearance, and yet who stand in the way of the hero. An army of robots can be a metaphor for ambition (a robot wants to become a person, but the programmer has forbidden it), or it can be a metaphor for sexual frustration (“I have to have [sexual conquest], or I will be undone”). A serial killer can be a metaphor for his own sexuality (“I’m a cruel abuser, will you be my girlfriend?”). A serial killer can desire to be freed from his prison, but this desire can simultaneously be a metaphor for desire for affection (“I want to be loved. Who’s going to give that to me?”).

It is much easier to imagine a human being as “a villain” than a monster, and you can imagine a human being in almost any situation as “a villain,” but it is rare to find a monster in any situation that needs to be explained away. (Compare: “I’m nowhere near as fucked up as I seem … ”)

Am I missing something major here?