The Urge to Be a Bad Character

Ali Raza
3 min readOct 6, 2022

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Photo by Ryan Olson on Unsplash

I have always admired the bad characters from books, movies, and shows.

“Every relationship is a power struggle. Some of us need to be controlled.” ― Mr. Robot

I could relate with Elliot, a black-hat hacker from Mr. Robot who was sexually abused as a kid and had the worse social anxiety, panic attacks, and dissociative identity disorder. The only thing that separates us is that I’m just an ordinary coder and not a black-hat hacker. And also, I’m missing dissociate identity disorder (hope I get that soon lol).

“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
Albert Camus, The Stranger

I admired Meursault (the protagonist of The Stranger) from the get-go. He’s a detached figure who views the world around him from a removed position. He was emotionally indifferent to others, even to his mother and his love, Marie.

“I used to analyze myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts ‘to be like the rest’ –and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again — in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Rodion Raskolnikov is the protagonist of Crime and Punishment.
In his mind, Raskolnikov is an extraordinary person who can transgress moral laws for the good of humanity. His belief that his crime is one of the reasons that prevent him from feeling remorse. Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment, murders two women early in the novel and becomes sick with guilt. Raskolnikov embodies the author’s belief that salvation is possible only through an atonement.
And yes, I could relate with him as well. I can’t go into detail because I’m still reading this book and haven’t finished so there are no conclusions but no matter what, I have this tendency to relate with bad characters.

I can go all day writing the villains I could relate with and why I think we have a lot in common but you wouldn’t wanna read that. I hate how some religious people keep bragging that the human body is perfect, humans are perfect and we don’t have flaws. Oh yes, we do! We have so many flaws that life is a constant struggle for many, be it physical health or mental.
It’s not a secret that evolution has fucked us all up pretty brutally. What we have evolved into doesn’t fit in the modern capitalist world. That need for social connections, fear of isolation, and the urge to fit in are what I hate the most. If only I had the power to remove one thing from my fragile body I would definitely get rid of this longing for human connections. I wanna be left alone completely. Like those villains.

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Ali Raza

Software developer // writer. Into philosophy, literature, and comp. science.