Bake Your Own Villain

So. You know how Pinterest sometimes recommends more pins based on your search history? The other day it recommended me ‘evil cakes.’ I’m not entirely sure, but I think that’s because ‘villain visual inspiration’ and ‘Great British Bake Off recipes’ are the things I search the most, so it figured it could help me save time by combining the two. Here’s one of the results. Possibly my favorite result, because it’s the most traumatizing:

Anyway, those evil cakes got me thinking about something: how creating a villain is sort of like baking a cake. So today I thought I’d share my personal recipe for baking a villain. It’ll be just like a real recipe except you won’t actually get to eat anything at the end. Because that would be cannibalism, probably. Unless your villain really is an evil cake, in which case I have a lot of questions.

All set? Let’s get started.

Ingredients

• 1 traumatic experience. Like the death of a loved one, the betrayal of a friend or a childhood of abuse. Lots of possibilities, here.

• 1 misconception about herself or the world. Or to be more specific, one that stems from the traumatic experience. Like ‘revenge will make me happy’, ‘I’m not worthy of love’ or ‘power is all that matters.’

• 1 or more issues that result from the misconception. These can be negative emotions, disorders or deep-seeded fears. If you’ve never heard the term deep-seeded fear, it’s usually something profound and abstract, like ‘fear of death,’ ‘fear of losing control,’ or ‘fear of failure,’ just to name a few.

• 1 goal. Like killing those who wronged her, taking over a kingdom or finding an all-powerful-something-or-other before that pesky hero does.

• a pinch of goodness. You know, just to humanize her a little. Maybe she hates everyone but her pet cat. Or occasionally feels guilty about the awful things she does, or truly believes that all her evil deeds are for ‘the greater good.’ Again, lots of possibilities here.

Optional Ingredients

(for additional flavor)

• a dangerous and deadly ability
• a secret admiration for the hero
• a habit of randomly killing minions when angry or upset
• stylish all-black attire (including a cape that dramatically swishes)
• startling attractiveness
• a necklace made of hapless villager teeth

Method

• Step 1: Combine all ingredients and stir vigorously, preferably in the dead of night during a full moon.

• Step 2: Bake your villain for as long as desired, at very high heat. Anything over 500 degrees Fahrenheit, probably? And ensure she has adequate time to rise. She might need to gather followers, knowledge and power before the story even starts.

• Step 3: Decorate your villain with icing that looks like the blood of your enemies. And these skull-and-cross bone sprinkles I just found, because they seem appropriate.

• Step 4: Distribute your villain as desired through out your story, while taking care to ensure that she (a.) holds onto her misconception and never discovers the truth (b.) discovers the truth and rejects it or (c.) only accepts the truth at the very end, then makes a sacrifice to emphasize that acceptance. Usually this sacrifice involves some sort of noble death, but it doesn’t have to.

• Step 5: There’s no Step 5. Congrats, you’ve baked a villain!

Did I miss any ingredients? Just want to share more traumatizing cake pictures? I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Also the above cake is by a super-imaginative artist named Scott Hove. Check out more of his work here, on his website.