Even monsters have mothers.

Absolutely right, Tom. Riffing off SOTL again, while Buffalo Bill may be a heinous figure, he had a world view that made sense to him. He thought his problems would be solved by changing his sex. When denied the opportunity by three sex change centers, he did -- in his mind -- the next best thing: Create a female body suit to wear. The fact he had to kill size 14 women, then skin them to sew his suit is problematic, of course. But BB had inspiration -- in the form of moths.

There is a tiny moment in the movie, right before the Final Struggle sequence where he is with his moths and pulls one out of its cocoon. Staring at it up close, he says, "So beautiful... so powerful." That's what he wants, he wants to slip out of his male cocoon and transform into a female butterfly. We see that in his creepy dance bit of business where he tucks his penis between his legs and spreads his 'wings' (his robe), proudly for the video camera to record. That is his Attractor character, that self-image. And the moths are his Mentors.

So yes, while BB is mentally deranged, he becomes that much more creepy when we go into his life / persona to understand and how and why he is who he is.

I love this topic, this is the best kind of shop talk - the villains. And you're touching on something here that no one ever really talks about - sympathy for the antagonist.

My favorite bad guys often get there own "save the cat" moment late in the script, before the showdown. Inversely, a lot of heroes have selfish, frustrated whack the cat moments around the "all is lost" area.

Great topic.

@HAB: I think a major reason why so many Nemesis characters come off as two-dimensional straw men is because the writer is uncomfortable entering 'into' that character's psyche. But that is precisely what the writer needs to do!

Think about it: Is a 'Bad Guy' scarier if we keep them at an arm's distance or if we gain some insight into their persona, particularly something with which we can identify? That makes a reader's entire relationship with a Nemesis that much more complicated and interesting, moving the dynamic from "I-It" to "I-You".

Once again riffing off SOTL, there's a great moment specifically to that point: "It puts the lotion on its skin." That's what Buffalo Bill tells Catherine Martin the first time we see her in the pit of BB's house. He uses the term "it" to refer to her, notably something serial killers are said to do in order to depersonalize their victims.

But what does Catherine do? She cries and cries, then says repeatedly, "I want my mommy, I want my mommy." Who among us can't relate to that on an existential level? Now BB is forced to confront Catherine as a person, no longer an It but a You. And what does he do? He has a violent outburst. "Put the fucking lotion in the basket!"

That is a metaphor for what we want when we write Nemesis characters: Move them from an I-It relationship with the reader to I-You. When a reader can identify / sympathize with a Nemesis, it elevates the reading experience precisely because we have been sucked into the Nemesis' world view and experience.

This is one of many areas where lessons of acting can be applied as lessons of writing. If you're judging a character, you probably can't play that character truthfully. It's a life lesson, too. Dismissing someone as crazy is too easy. Most people that do lousy things have motives that are clear to them. Getting robbed once can make you buy a gun. An IRS agent that showed your father's struggling business no mercy and a beat cop who was mean to neighborhood kids in your childhood can make you distrust the government. Depression over your wife and kids dying in a car accident can make you let your home and appearance fall into disrepair. Suddenly, you have a ghoulish looking, foul smelling guy in a run-down house who rants about the government, cries, and carries a gun. He scares the piss out of all the neighborhood kids, but do you really blame him for any of the things that make him seem scary?

This is obviously an extreme example, but there's a lot of it in life. I've seen a fair number of outrageously harsh parents with strong paranoid streaks to them who were the children of Holocaust survivors. Guess where those traits came from?

@Amos: Couldn't agree more about writing and acting. In fact I did a 5-part series called "What the acting craft can teach writers about the writing craft". You can Google search that on the site to see those posts.

That training as an actor to drill down into a character and find what I like to call a character's Core Of Being is hugely helpful in developing that instinct for a writer.

Hi Scott, You may have answered this elsewhere, as I am slowly making my way through all of your posts. I'm working on a script where the protagonist falls from grace. She goes from innocent, quiet, meek to self-serving, dangerous, and violent but in a way that she has justified as necessary to achieve her goal. The audience will connect with her in Act 1, feel empathy for her, and they'll even want her to succeed in a way...until they see the lengths to which she'll end up going. For this, I'm struggling a little with the nemesis. Will the nemesis have the opposite journey? We'll really dislike this person in the beginning, but in the end they were right? Can my protagonist fall from grace and the nemesis remain a shadow figure throughout? This story is dark, uncomfortable, and truly horrible. So, I know I need to have some moments of hope and light to keep it from drowning under its own weight. Any thoughts you have or films you would recommend that might touch on this would be appreciated. Thanks, as always, Dawn

I may have answered my own question just minutes later when I saw your post about movies without a nemesis or a nemesis who is a non-character. Perhaps my nemesis would be the system/world that my protagonist is forced to operate within, which leads her on this path of destruction and ill-fated justification...