A Chicken Named Eggdrop

it’s currently titled “Wake Up, Nerd” and will probably be a little over ~52k words once ive put in the final polishing scenes

main characters feature little gay molly mormon Melody Taylor, cool rebel gay Aggie Riley, world’s goodest boy Jacob Trujillo, and Meatloaf the terrible ugly cat

takes place in salt lake city, UT in 2015 (gay marriage being legalized across the US and the church’s original exclusion policy are plot points)

deals with heavy/warning-warranting subjects like death, assault, and lots of internalized & church-typical homophobia

despite the heavy stuff, is Overall a very lighthearted and sweet and optimistic and honestly pretty saccharine story

“nerd” in the title is so relevant. the driving force of the whole story is love of disney movies and cosplay and comic-con. 

contains gems such as:

Wow can’t relate

But this is how he chooses to fight Rogercop -

It’s the oxymoron that attracts us. Billowing black cape, terrifying worldviews, a willingness to make the streets run red with blood – and you know what would be hilarious? Them trying and failing to make morning pancakes. You know what would really hit us in the feels? Watching them show tenderness around a special someone.

Having a villain with a domestic side is lassoing a black hole, and it’s a tantalizing thing to watch. However, anyone who’s indulged in these daydreams with their own villains has probably encountered one very specific issue: it makes them less evil. They lose their edge.

For example, look at Crowley from CW’s Supernatural. This was a guy to be feared at one point; arriving out of nowhere at unexpected times, always playing both sides of the conflict, and you could be certain he would skin anyone necessary to get what he wanted – usually without getting a single drop of blood on his impeccable suit.

Flash forward to recent seasons, and we’ve seen Crowley cry and whimper more times than Dean has died –which is saying something. At first, it was fascinating to discover this powerful character actually had a tender side; and now, when Crowley makes a threat, we’re about as afraid as when any low-level demon makes one. This is because his evil was too compromised. He let himself go.

How can we avoid this mistake with our villains? The answer isn’t making them crush puppies and hate butterflies at every turn; it’s in balancing their core scariness with their softer side – giving them complexity, giving us a bit of “aww,” and making their eventual whiplash back into ‘terrifying’ all the more wonderful.

For this, we’re going to use Epic of Lilith by Ivars Ozols as an example. This book centers on arguably the original female villain – Lilith, the first woman of the Garden of Eden, who got on the “good guys’” bad side by refusing to submit to someone who was clearly her equal. There won’t be any spoilers below, but if you give the book a read (it’s an easy page turner), the points will be driven home stronger.

Plus it’s a book with a great female villain who isn’t objectified (don’t let the cover fool you, seriously) and prose that isn’t full of sexual over- or undertones. Talk about a win, eh?

Here we go.