We’re all barely tolerating you.
Even your parents are ashamed.
You’re a pretender. A bottom feeder. A joke!”
Those words didn’t just sting.
They crushed me.
Dhruv was supposedly a “friend.”
He had a way of slicing people open with words.
With me, it was full-blown condescension.
He didn’t miss. He kicked exactly where it hurt.
He even tried turning my own people against me.
Not just behind my back, but to my face.
We had our fights.
I always backed down before it got physical.
I just didn’t want to add more poison to a circle already dripping with it.
In truth?
He broke me.
I felt small.
I doubted myself.
And I walked close to the razor’s edge of depression.
Then one day I’d had enough.
I cut ties.
Burnt bridges.
Started over again.
But even from afar …
Dhruv lingered.
He became more than a memory.
He became my villain.
The symbol of every harsh challenge I had to fight past.
And in a strange way, he became the reason I grew.
That’s what villains do.
They force the hero to rise.
And the best stories prove it.
Robert McKee once said,
“A protagonist in a story can only be as intellectually fascinating and emotionally compelling as the forces of antagonism make them.”
Gabbar made Veeru and Jai.
Mr. Glass made Unbreakable (David Dunn).
Joker made Batman.
Villains awaken the hero and shape the journey.
I wanted to understand this.
So I dug into it.
What Makes A Villain Unforgettable?
1. One Bad Day
In The Killing Joke, Joker says:
“All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy.”
And he’s not wrong.
Harvey Dent had one.
Arthur Fleck had one.
You and I have had one too.
It’s the snap moment.
The day pain outweighs logic.
And something inside turns.
That’s when a villain is on the cusp of being born.
We also must understand this, though:
Heroes and villains have the same backstory – Pain.
The difference is what they do with it.
The villain says:
The world hurt me, so I’ll hurt it back.
The hero says:
The world hurt me, and I won’t let it hurt anyone else.
Heroes use pain.
Villains are used by it.
2. The Mirror We Don’t Want to See
The most powerful villain isn’t the one who stands against the hero.
It’s the one who was once just like them.
Professor X and Magneto.
Same trauma.
Same pain.
Same cause.
But one chose to build bridges.
The other ripped the metal from them.
They’re brothers in loss.
Divided by what they chose to do with it.
That’s what makes it hard to root for one without understanding the other.
The best villains are a version of the hero –
just one decision away.
3. The Terrifying Logic
Thanos didn’t want to destroy the universe.
He wanted to save it.
His solution, “wipe out half of all life” wasn’t chaos.
It was balance, in his mind.
It was control.
And that’s what made him terrifying.
He made sense.
He spoke with calm.
He believed he was the only one willing to do what needed to be done.
And for a second there …
we listened.
That’s what the best villains do.
They pull you to the edge of agreement,
then step off into the morally perverse.
Today, I no longer hate Dhruv.
He was the villain in my story.
But also the push I didn’t know I needed.
And maybe that’s the lesson:
If you’re building stories or living one,
don’t ignore the villain.
They’re not just there to be fought.
They’re there to shape who you become.
In our lives,
We don’t just face villains.
Sometimes we choose them.
We choose what we stand against.
And that decision defines our story.
As a Story Content Coach,
I’ve chosen my arch nemesis.
I stand against boring marketing.
The kind that numbs.
That scrolls past you.
That doesn’t make you feel a thing.
Because marketing should
– Move people.
– Wake them up.
– Make them care.
– Not just chase vanity metrics.
I’ve fought that villain for years.
And I’m not done.
So let me leave you with this:
What villain are you standing against?
The one that tests you, pushes you,
pulls you to the edge of reason
and makes the fight worth it …
because of who YOU become on the other side.
That’s the villain worth writing.
That’s the story worth living.