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A random bitchy non-fiction thought I had today…

“Write With Empathy” Is Killing Your Story — And This Week’s Trump vs. Musk ShitShow Proves Why

Neutered Villains & The Soggy Oatmeal Apocalypse



By Wendy C Allen

You want to write a good story? Throw out the limp, overcooked advice to “write with empathy” and “create relatable characters.” That kind of syrupy workshop fluff is designed to sell classes, not build books.

Look at the chaotic hellstorm going on between Trump and Musk right now. Two egomaniacs. Billionaires. Out-of-touch cartoon villains screaming obscenities at each other across the digital void, one threatening to expose federal crimes and the other swearing to deport him with all the grace of a drunken toddler in a gold-plated diaper. Is anyone relating to either of them?

No. But we are all watching.

Why? Because relatability is a lie. What readers want is compelling. What they want is mess. What they want is someone so damned obsessed with control, or rage, or fear of being replaced, that they’ll burn the world down just to win one more power play. THAT is character.

“Write with empathy” has become code for “make your character nice,” or worse, “make your character palatable.” But powerful characters are often not palatable. They’re not nice. They’re barely human.Was Macbeth relatable?

No — he was a paranoid warlord high on prophecy and blood.

Is Quaraun, the Pink Necromancer, relatable?

Hell no. He’s a narcissistic, murderously dramatic jellyfish-haired Elf in resplendent rhinestone silks, limping around the apocalypse with two psychotic lovers and enough trauma to drown a lich. No one “relates” to that — they watch it burn.Are Trump or Musk relatable?

No.

Why?

Because in the real world, villains never are.

In the real world the only people who can relate to villains are other villains.

That’s why Musk and Trump are only relatable to each other and no one else.

Trump and Musk aren’t empathetic. They’re not vulnerable in the way craft books love to describe. But they are crackling with character. Every post they throw online is a novella of hubris, betrayal, obsession, and petty revenge. If you saw their behaviour in a novel, you wouldn’t say: “This isn’t relatable.” You’d say: “I can’t stop reading this.”

And that’s the difference.

Relatable characters ask for sympathy. Fascinating characters demand attention.

So if you’re sitting around trying to force “empathy” into your villains, or sanding the edges off your protagonist to make them feel more “real,” take a lesson from today’s political bloodbath: let your characters be insane. Let them be dangerous. Let them be ugly and loud and vengeful and wrong.

Because no one wants to read about a perfectly balanced, morally gentle soul who’s just trying their best. They want the unhinged billionaire with a god complex tweeting treason at 3 a.m. because someone dented his ego.

They want Quaraun screaming “I AM NOT FRAGILE, I AM BROKEN!” while unleashing sea slugs and unicorn porn in the middle of a diplomatic summit.They want spectacle, not therapy.

This need to empathize with every villain has turned storytelling into an emotional rehab centre for fictional mass murderers. What happened to letting bad guys be BAD? Villains used to be delicious chaos. They used to love being evil. They had panache. They monologued. They laughed when they blew shit up. Now they cry into their cornflakes because daddy didn’t tuck them in right.Look at The Joker — the old-school one.

The “I set a hospital on fire because I was bored” Joker. The “wanna see a pencil trick?” Joker. That was peak villainy: unpredictable, nihilistic, cartoonishly evil for evil’s sake. No one needed to know if his childhood dog died. The not knowing was scarier. The chaos was the point.

Now look at modern reboots: “He’s like this because society failed him.” Yeah? So what? A lot of people get bullied. Most of them don’t paint their face white and shoot late night hosts in the face.Same for Lex Luthor.

He was the template for the sleek, smug billionaire megalomaniac who knows he’s smarter than everyone and loves rubbing it in. Now? Rewritten as a misunderstood genius with abandonment issues who just wants daddy’s approval? Gag. That’s not a villain. That’s a fucking therapy worksheet.“Relatable” Villains Suck the Soul Out of Fiction

They’re a lie. Most villains in real life don’t have clear, emotionally tidy backstories. They’re a sludge of arrogance, entitlement, and cruelty. So why do fictional villains have to be neatly broken instead of gloriously monstrous?

They’re boring. The moment your world-destroying necromancer stops to cry about how he just wanted his mommy’s love, you’ve killed the tension. Readers want dread, not group therapy.

They excuse villainy. There’s a trend now to explain away evil like it’s some kind of unfortunate glitch in the empathy algorithm.

Fuck that.

Sometimes people are evil because they like it. Because it gives them power. Because it’s fun. Trump and Musk are living proof of that.

  • Trump is evil because he likes it. Because it gives him power. Because it’s fun for him to watch people suffer.
  • Musk is evil because he likes it. Because it gives him power. Because it’s fun for him to watch people suffer.

We can SEE from the actions of real world ACTUALLY REAL villains, that they don’t need to be relatable to capture the attention of their audience. So why the fuck do authors think they need to make their fictional villains relatable?

Let villains have FUN again. Let them be terrifying, magnetic, repulsive, larger than life.

Let them be BoomFuzzy cackling over the corpses of his enemies while calling Quaraun horny cream-filled eclair in front of a dying noble court.

Let them be Quaraun with venom in his voice, threatening to turn a man’s brain into ash because he dared to say the word “frail.”

You think readers relate to that? No. But they remember it. They feel it. That’s the point.

You want to write a real villain? Don’t give them a sob story. Give them a motive they enjoy.

Let them revel in the chaos. Let them be proud of their monstrosity. Let them own it.

Villains don’t need therapy. They need better writers.

Disney used to know how to make villains.



Jafar? Gay-coded power-hungry snake man with a god complex, enslaving sultans, dressing like a goth warlock, and hypnotising the hottest man in Agrabah.

Maleficent? High Queen of Petty. She didn’t get invited to a party, so she hexed a baby. That’s iconic.

Ursula? A sea witch, a literal drag queen inking deals with desperate souls for her own amusement. Every line she delivered was venomous glamour.

They were flamboyant, confident, terrifying, fun. They were there to chew scenery and spit curses. You loved to hate them.

Then came the live-action era.

And what did Disney do?

They defanged their own villains.

They retconned them into victims.

They gave them feelings.

And not interesting feelings — they gave them the soggy sandwich of sympathy.

Maleficent (Live Action):

The Mistress of All Evil reduced to a misunderstood fae godmother who didn’t mean to curse the baby. She only did it because she was betrayed — boo hoo, King Husband dumped her. She becomes Aurora’s protective fairy aunt and the curse becomes a metaphor for female trauma healing.
It’s not terrifying. It’s not majestic. It’s a Pixar PSA on boundaries.

  • OG Maleficent: “Now shall you deal with me, O Prince. And all the powers of HELL.”
  • Live-Action Maleficent: whispers gently while crying into moss.

Jafar (Aladdin 2019):

The animated Jafar was unhinged, serpentine, power-mad. He turned into a genie and tried to enslave reality. Live-action Jafar? Some mumbly bureaucrat with dad issues. A low-energy palace intern throwing passive-aggressive tantrums. No danger. No drama. Just beige desert sand.

  • OG Jafar: “You will BOW to me!”
  • Live Jafar: “I just want to be Sultan because I wasn’t born a prince.”

Ursula (The Little Mermaid 2023):

Gone is the gleeful cackling octo-drag queen. Now we’ve got flat impressions and softening every evil move with awkward jokes. No seductive power, no command of the screen. She’s not even camp. She’s sad clutter.

  • OG Ursula: “So much for true love! HA!”
  • Live Ursula: “Oops! Did I do that?” laughs like sitcom filler.

Do you realize if media hadn’t tried to make fictional villains boring and relatable, we might not have this Musk Trump shitshow going on right now? Did you ever think of that? Half the people who voted for trump claim they did so because “He was more entertaining to watch then the other candidates.” What does that tell you? It tells you people got fucking bored of having not villains in their books and movies any more so they voted for a real live villain to run the country JUST SO THEY COULD BE ENTERTAINED!

Disney doesn’t believe in villains anymore.

They believe in marketing arcs.

They believe in franchise tie-ins and sad origin stories with merchandisable trauma.

So villains can’t just be evil — they have to be redeemable, misunderstood, relatable.

Because evil doesn’t test well in focus groups.

Why curse a princess out of spite when you can cry about your betrayal trauma and get a three-movie arc on Disney?

Let villains be villains. Let them revel in power, in cruelty, in seduction.

Not because they’re broken, but because they like it.

Because it thrills them. Because the world is theirs to dominate or destroy or twist into opera.

Make villains unapologetic again. Bring back gothic theatre, not trauma-core fluff.

I want Maleficent melting castles with green fire.

I want Jafar charming snakes out of sultans.

I want Ursula doing makeup tutorials while stealing your soul.

Then maybe people will stop voting for real live villains to run the country.Make Villains Evil Again: Because watching Trump and Musk claw each other’s egos to death proves we need REAL bad guys back in fiction.

This is a war cry.

A line in the sand.

A battered, blood-streaked parchment nailed to the crumbling doors of traditional publishing.

Writers of the next generation: You need to stop being scared little rabbits and start writing real villains again.

We are drowning in a sea of soggy-ass, simpering, misunderstood antagonists who are too busy crying over childhood trauma to actually do anything evil. Every villain now needs a redemption arc. A sympathetic backstory.

It’s like villains aren’t allowed to be villains anymore — they have to be rebranded as “morally complex” wellness influencers with frowny-face emojis and lavender-scented emotional growth.

ENOUGH.

It’s time to Make Villains Evil Again.


Look around. Look at the real-world villain spectacle that’s unfolding right now — Trump vs. Musk, two billionaires tearing each other apart in a glorious shitstorm of ego, spite, greed, and revenge.

  • They’re not tragic.
  • They’re not redeemable.
  • They are spectacularly, operatically EVIL.
  • They’re not “relatable.” They’re fascinating.
  • They’re not sad. They’re dangerous.
  • They’re not broken by the world. They want to break it.

They’re not characters in need of empathy. They are villain archetypes in the flesh, and watching them implode live on social media is the most compelling storytelling spectacle of the year. Because you don’t look away from a villain. You stare. You marvel. You feel the dread crawl under your skin. You remember them.

That’s what a villain is supposed to do.

So why the hell have modern writers neutered their villains into bland unscary oatmeal?

Why do we keep getting Darth Daddy-Issues instead of Darth Vader?

Why do witches sob into mirrors about their trauma instead of throwing down hexes and devouring kingdoms?

Why are writers so scared to let their bad guys be bad?

It’s because writing workshops, MFA programs, and social media “writing advice” circles have convinced everyone that a character must be “understood” to be “valuable.” That everyone must be relatable.

But villains don’t need to be understood. They need to be feared.

They don’t need to be likable. They need to be memorable.

They don’t need to be softened. They need to be UNFORGIVING.

Writers: It’s Time to Get Your Balls Back


Stop trying to write the next sad misunderstood villain who was just a victim of a bad society.

Stop writing slow-burning tragic arcs where the villain turns out to be good deep down.

Stop writing gentle genocidal maniacs who just want a hug.

Write villains who love being evil. Who don’t want your pity. Who don’t regret their actions. Write villains who’d poison a kingdom, laugh over the ashes, and then fuck the corpse of the crown.

Give us villains who:

  • Smile while stabbing their lover in the back.
  • Kill for the thrill.
  • Monologue like gods.
  • Take pleasure in watching the world suffer.
  • Write a villain who is proud to be hated.
  • You don’t have to explain them.
  • You don’t have to justify them.
  • You don’t have to make them cry.
  • Let them ROAR.

The old stories understood this. The villains of ancient myth, of epic fantasy, of pulp noir and grand tragedy — they stood tall in their evil. They were theatrical. They were relentless. They were fun as hell to write.

We didn’t need to understand Sauron. We needed to fear him.

We didn’t need to empathize with the Queen of Hearts. We needed to get our heads cut off.

We didn’t need to relate to Maleficent. We needed to BURN with her curse.

But now?

Now every villain is a therapy session in a trench coat.

No more.

This is the rebellion.

This is a call to all the writers out there scribbling in journals, wrangling chapters between jobs, building strange beautiful worlds in secret:

You have permission to be terrifying again.

You have permission to make your villains evil again.

You do not need to make them soft, or sad, or safe.

Let them be cruel.

Let them be monstrous.

Let them have fun.

You are not writing to soothe the world. You are writing to shake it.

Let Quaraun snap and summon a swarm of sea slugs.

Let BoomFuzzy laugh like a lunatic as he poisons a roomful of nobles.

Let your villains burn bridges, bones, and backstories.

Make Villains Evil Again.


And let readers fall to their knees in awe.

Put villains back into fiction so people will stop filling that void by voting for real villains in government!

The strongest writing digs into those raw, uncomfortable places — the ones that make your chest tighten and your throat catch because you know it will cut when it lands on someone you love.

That kind of writing demands courage. It’s brutal, honest, and unflinching. It refuses to sanitize or sugarcoat. It holds up a cracked mirror to the messy, painful parts of life and says, Here. Look. Feel this.

Because if it makes you flinch, it will make your readers feel. That tension, that vulnerability — that’s where real power lives.

The kind of villains we’ve been talking about? They come from those places, too. They embody the parts of us we’d rather deny, the dark truths we hide. When you’re willing to summon that, to write it unapologetically, your stories sing with life and danger and unforgettable gravity.

So yes — write the stuff that makes you clench. Write with that fire. That’s where the magic is.

Not Every Villain Needs a Fucking Redemption Arc, You Cowardly Mouse-Eared Bastards


Not everything needs to be deep.

Not every villain needs to have a tragic backstory, a misunderstood heart, and a teardrop tattoo from when society “just didn’t love them enough.”

Sometimes a bitch is just evil.

And that’s what makes her glorious.

You remember Ursula?

Not the watered-down sad sack sea Karen from the live-action tragedy — you know, the real one.

The divine, flamboyant, tentacled drag-queen sea witch who made her eels her bitch, scammed a fish out of her voice, and sang the greatest villain song in animation history while shaking her ass like the ocean owed her money?

Yeah.

That Ursula.

No one gave a fuck where she came from.

She was fabulous.

She was powerful.

She was EVIL.

And she liked it.

You didn’t need to “understand her pain.”

You didn’t need to “relate to her trauma.”

You didn’t need a goddamn prequel showing her as a little octo-baby getting bullied in mermaid kindergarten.

You wanted her to destroy Ariel and rule the seven seas with velvet gloves and lipstick made of orphaned souls.

But now?

Now every villain gets a sob story.

Jafar wasn’t a power-hungry sociopath climbing over corpses to seize control of Agrabah. Nope. Now he’s just a sad little sandboy who never got hugged enough and was jealous of Aladdin’s abs or some shit.

Maleficent used to be the literal Mistress of All Evil, a gothic goddess who crashed a royal party just to curse a baby because they didn’t invite her to brunch. Power move. Queen shit. Petty? Yes. But DELICIOUSLY so.

And then you watered her down into a motherly woodland protector whose “curse” was really an act of maternal kindness wrapped in misunderstood heartbreak?

Fuck off.

You turned a fire-breathing dragon into a woodland soccer mom with glowy cheekbones and fairy wing trauma. You took the woman who turned into a dragon and made her cry about love.

Are you high?

This obsession with “redeeming” villains is cowardly.

You’re afraid of morally complex characters who embrace the dark.

You’re terrified that kids might love the bad guy.

But guess what?

They already did.

Fans rooted for Scar.

Fans worshipped Maleficent.

Fans aspired to Ursula.

Not because they were good.

But because they were great.

They had presence. Power. Style. They were fucking awesome and they fucking knew it.

They owned their darkness.

And most of all — they didn’t apologize for it.

But now, Hollywood can’t handle that.

Now they gotta twist every villain into a misunderstood antihero with soft piano music, sad doe eyes, and a therapist waiting offscreen.

It’s not just Disney.

It’s a plague.

The whole damn industry is shitting its pants at the thought of letting a villain be a villain. They think audiences are too fragile, too soft-brained, to handle characters who aren’t secretly saints under all that eyeliner.

Villains see the world like Quaraun does — cursed, crumbling, corrupt.

Villains don’t need a redemption arc.

Villains need a fucking throne.

Quaraun never asked to be liked.

BoomFuzzy murders people with candy and smiles about it.

They don’t cry into their backstories.

They own their cruelty, their chaos, their cosmic bitchcraft.

So let your villain be a fucking villain.

Let them slay.

Let them conquer.

Let them strut into the scene like it’s a bloodstained runway and they’re ready to set the world on fire just because they felt like it.

Stop apologizing for the darkness.

Stop editing the sharp edges down into soft blur.

We don’t want trauma therapy.

We want world domination in heels.

And if that offends your moral sensibilities?

Good.

You ain’t the target audience anyway.

“Write With Empathy” Is the Shittiest Writing Advice Ever Given

And If Relatable Characters Mattered, Trump Wouldn’t Be Screaming on Truth Social Right Now Like a Five-Year-Old Denied a Lollipop


Let me tell you something about “writing with empathy.” It’s the kind of advice peddled by wannabe writing gurus who’ve never written a character that wasn’t a mirror of themselves in a self-insert fanfic they never even finished. They wear lanyards and speak at overpriced writing retreats where everyone clutches mugs that say “Live Laugh Write” and nobody actually fucking writes.

These charlatans will tell you your character needs to be “relatable.”

You know who’s relatable? That guy next door who mows his lawn on Sunday and complains about gas prices.

You know who no one writes novels about? That guy.

Because he’s boring as dry dog shit on a sidewalk in August.

You know who’s not relatable?

Quaraun. The albino pink silk-wrapped Moon Elf with venomous jellyfish hair, laser beam nipple rings, and a literal goddamn murder cane.

You know what he is?

Fascinating. Complicated. Hateful. Gorgeous. Dangerous. Tragic. Broken.

You can’t relate to him, and that’s exactly why people can’t stop reading about him.

Readers don’t pick up a book because they want to read about themselves.

They pick up a book because they want out of themselves.

They want chaos. They want carnage. They want glittery, blood-soaked disaster queens who scream obscenities and kill people with enchanted wardrobe accessories.Which brings us to Trump and Musk.

Two billionaires, two egos big enough to collapse a neutron star, throwing bitch fits on their own private social media platforms like divorced Karens fighting over the last pumpkin spice candle at Walmart.

Now ask yourself, are these men relatable?

Fuck no.

They live on gold-plated toilets, fuck up global economies on a Tuesday afternoon just because they’re bored, and cry on the internet when someone calls them names.

But are they compelling?

You bet your ass they are.

Their daily meltdowns read like a badly written political thriller mashed up with a high school gossip blog.

Musk accusing Trump of rigging elections?

Trump calling Elon a disloyal cyborg from Hell?

It’s like someone gave two greased-up orangutans a phone and told them to LARP Game of Thrones.

Now imagine if some writing workshop guru told you: “Make sure your characters are empathetic and relatable!”

Oh sure. Let’s take Trump and Musk and water them down until they’re polite, well-mannered, emotionally balanced men who ask each other calmly to resolve their issues over tea.

Would you still be watching?

Would anyone?

Fuck no.

They’re compelling because they’re awful.

They’re memorable because they’re unhinged.

And that’s the lesson.

Your characters don’t need to be kind, or soft, or morally redeemable.

They need to be alive.

Dripping with rage, desire, delusion, obsession, madness, power, pain.
They need to walk into the story and leave footprints made of glass and blood and glitter and goddamn vengeance.

You want to write with empathy?

Fine. Have fun writing another milktoast Hallmark romcom about a white girl with a bakery and a boyfriend named Chad.

The rest of us? We’re writing warlocks who wear heels and curse the moon to rot because someone knocked over their rosebush.

You want your characters to be relatable?

Too fucking bad.

The best ones never are.

And if your writing teacher tells you otherwise, Tell the smug bastard to take their pen, roll up their empathy worksheet, and shove it straight up their narrative arc.

That gut-wrenching, stomach-in-knots kind of writing — that’s where the magic hides. The kind that makes you wanna rip the page out before anyone you know sees it, but you can’t stop because it’s true, raw, and bleeding.

You wanna write stories that slap the truth so hard it stings your own soul, stories that make your mother — or anyone you care about — uncomfortable because they see something real in there. Not some sugar-coated bullshit. Not safe-for-TV. But the ugly, the messy, the fucked-up beauty of life.

That’s the power you’re after. That’s where the story lives and breathes.

Anything else?

Just noise.

You gotta go there. Right to the edges where your guts twist tight and your hands shake a little. Where your heart’s pounding so loud you can’t hear anything else.

That’s when you know you’re writing.

Because if it don’t hurt a little? If it don’t make you nervous to hit “save” or “send”?

Then what the fuck are you doing?

You’re just filling pages. Not telling stories.

“Write with empathy”? Fuck that.

I ain’t here to coddle readers. I ain’t here to sugarcoat trauma or stroke some Karen’s feelings with gentle prose about how hard life is. I write damaged, psychotic, raving, unrelatable little fuckers with too many skeletons in their closet and half a dozen ghosts still haunting them — and I’ve sold over a million books doing it.

Quaraun ain’t relatable. He’s a pink silk-clad murder-happy Elf with fused hands, chronic pain, and zero patience for your feelings. He’ll kill you for calling him insane, then give a 3-page villain monologue about it, limping dramatically the whole time in rhinestone heels. You think readers “relate” to that?

No. But they can’t fucking look away.

They keep reading because he’s unhinged.

Because he doesn’t hold back.

Because he ain’t written with your comfort in mind.

Empathy Isn’t Required — Clarity Is


You don’t need to write with empathy. You need to write what the character actually thinks, not what’s palatable. The Park Bench Method ain’t about painting nice little “relatable” characters sitting politely on the bench, drinking a frappuccino, reflecting on their latest therapy session.

It’s about raw fucking presence.

What do they see? What do they smell? What are they really thinking — but would never say out loud? That’s what readers want. The dirty truth. The unfiltered shit. That’s what hooks people. Not your fake-ass empathy.

Relatable Characters Are a Lie


Let me drop this on your thick skull:

“Relatable” is just code for watered-down, boring, personality-less mannequins.

It’s a trap. A trend. It’s weak writing wrapped in socially acceptable buzzwords. You’re not here to make a fucking after school special. You’re here to write someone unforgettable. And unforgettable is NEVER relatable.

Think BoomFuzzy is relatable?

He’s a blind, horny undead Unicorn King who runs a demonic bakery, talks like a Scottish porn pirate, and swears so much he turns air blue.

The fuck part of that is relatable? None of it.

That’s why he works.

And GhoulSpawn?

A Sheep Demon who can’t lie, doesn’t understand jokes, talks in lists, and hoards stolen buttons like a Dragon hoards gold? Yeah, not exactly the boy next door. He ain’t written for empathy. He’s written for impact.You Know What Readers Relate To?

Truth.

Not relatable characters — real characters.

Ugly, broken, raging, lusty, neurotic, scared, angry, fucked up little disasters. People who say the wrong thing. People who lash out. People who steal, kill, cry, explode. Characters who feel like someone the reader might meet on their worst day, not someone they’d follow on fucking Pinterest.

You don’t get there by holding back with empathy. You get there by telling the truth, with both fists and no filter.

Bottom Line?

Stop trying to be nice. Stop trying to be soft.

You’re not the reader’s best friend.

You’re their drug dealer, and your story is the hit.

Write like you’re bleeding.

Write like you’re pissed.

Write like your character is about to fuck up someone’s life and you’re here to document the fallout.

“Empathy” ain’t gonna get you there.

Brutal, uncomfortable, undeniable honesty will.

Sit your ass on that bench and write the character you’re afraid to write.

That’s where your real book lives.

  • “Write with empathy.”
  • “Create relatable characters.”

This shit is passed around like gospel, like it’s some holy truth of storytelling, and new writers lap it up because they’re scared, they’re green, and they’re desperate to be liked. And that’s how you end up with stories full of soft-ass, spineless oatmeal characters who say “I’m sorry” five times a chapter and won’t fart unless it aligns with their trauma arc.Empathy? RELATABILITY? Tell me this:When the fuck was the last time Elon Musk or Donald Trump wrote a “relatable” tweet?

Go on. I’ll wait.

These two bloated egos are living proof that being relatable isn’t what gets attention.

  • Being unhinged does.
  • Being unpredictable.
  • Being raw.
  • Being absolutely batshit with zero fucks left.

That’s what hooks people. That’s what makes headlines. And that’s exactly what makes a compelling character.

“Write with Empathy” is How You Get Beige Protagonists


You want me to empathize with the war criminal necromancer with fused bone-hands and a laser wand strapped to his nipples? No. I want to watch him burn the village down because someone laughed at his robes. I want the melodrama. I want the violent outbursts. I want the trauma and power and rage and glittering vengeance.

Musk and Trump ain’t relatable. They’re walking cartoonish caricatures inflated by power and delusion and god-complexes so massive you’d need a SpaceX rocket just to orbit their narcissism. And that’s why people can’t stop watching.

Does anyone relate to them? Fuck no. But do they dominate headlines and command attention like a drunken Unicorn crashing a bake sale with a flaming erection?

Every. Single. Time.Relatability is Not a Selling Point — It’s a Fucking Muzzle

You’re told to “write with empathy” because the industry wants you docile.

They want you soft.

They want you scared of offending the reader.

They want you to believe you have to earn permission to write broken, angry, messy, real characters.

But look at this Trump vs Musk dick-pissing contest. You think either of them sat down and said, “Gee, I wonder how this will emotionally impact my audience?”

  • No. They posted rage-fuelled shitposts at 3am while snorting power and pissing on decorum.

And now? Every news outlet is watching.

Every reply thread is frothing.

Every follower is glued to the chaos.

Because relatable is forgettable. Spectacle is magnetic.

Your Characters Don’t Need to Be Likeable — They Need to Be Addictive


You want to know how I fucking sold a million copies of my Quaraun books? I don’t fucking write relatable characters, that’s how!

Quaraun isn’t relatable.

He’s a screaming, glitter-clad Elf necromancer with trauma so deep it’s got stalactites. He’s cruel, vain, dramatic, and damn near impossible to predict.

BoomFuzzy isn’t empathetic.

He’s a horny ghost-pony pastry chef who solves problems with cock jokes, kitchen knives, and sex threats.

They’re fucking monsters.

And that’s why readers keep coming back.

You want to learn character writing from this week’s Trump-Musk soap opera?

Here’s your takeaway:

People don’t follow characters because they see themselves in them.
They follow them because they want to watch the next explosion.

So Let Me Say It Louder for the Dumb Fucking MAGA Bastards in the Back:


Empathy is optional.

Relatability is limiting.

Unpredictability, conviction, obsession, madness, lust, power? That’s what keeps the reader glued to the page.

So fuck your character’s therapy backstory.

Fuck writing them “likeable.”

Unleash them.

Make them a flaming wreck of ego, id, and desperate drive.

Make them tweet like Trump and Musk in a pissing contest over who gets to nuke the moon first.

Because that’s what makes a story addictive.

Not hugs and Hallmark vibes.

Now toss out your “relatable protagonist” outline, grab your Rainbow Wand, and write a scene where your character burns down their moral compass and makes no apologies.

“WRITE WITH EMPATHY” IS POISONOUS ADVICE FOR VILLAIN WRITING


This advice is the literary equivalent of soaking dynamite in chamomile tea.

It kills the spark.

It turns ruthless warlords into weepy therapists.

It turns sadistic space tyrants into abused toddlers who just wanted a hug.

And it turns new writers into insecure messes who waste half a chapter trying to make their necromancer palatable instead of powerful.

Look around. Look at Trump and Musk today.

  • These two aren’t relatable.
  • They’re not humanized.
  • Trump and Musk are a pair of fucking narcissistic monsters throwing gasoline at each other and lighting it with their egos.
  • They don’t give a fuck about empathy.
  • They don’t ask to be understood.
  • They demand to be seen.

And that’s why Trump and Musk dominate every fucking screen today.

“RELATABLE” CHARACTERS? NO ONE RELATES TO TYRANTS.


The news keeps screaming:

  • “What Musk is saying is treason!”
  • “Trump paid to rig the 2024 election!”
  • “This could change everything!”

And people aren’t glued to it because they relate to Elon Musk’s technocrat billionaire tantrums or Trump’s greased toupee paranoia.
They’re glued to it because it’s chaotic, horrifying, and completely detached from normal human experience.

Like watching two comic book supervillains have a public meltdown because they both wanted to build a death ray first, but neither knows how to code anymore without interns.

  • Musk is threatening to leak secrets that could allegedly send Trump to the electric chair.
  • Trump is threatening to deport Musk like he’s a rogue Martian who overstayed his welcome.

What the fuck is relatable about that?

NOTHING.

And that’s what makes it fascinating.

And that’s the lesson writers NEED to learn. No one wants to read about your fucking morally grey villain. Because wishy washy villains are boring.

EMPATHY IS A NEUTERING TOOL


You want to write a Joker? You want to write a BoomFuzzy?
A deliciously unhinged, sex-crazed, pastry-murdering, undead Unicorn chef who flays his enemies and grinds them into jelly-filled doughnuts?

Then fuck empathy.

Your villain should be scary.

Your villain should be irredeemable.

Your villain should make your readers wonder if maybe you, the author, need psychiatric evaluation.

The Joker was never better than when he just wanted to watch the world burn.

Lex Luthor didn’t need a sob story. He just needed money, power, and the kind of ego you’d need a space probe to measure.

But now?

Now we’ve got Joker crying in his makeup chair because some bully stole his lunchbox in 5th grade and Lex Luthor is just “a misunderstood genius with abandonment issues.”

Boo-fucking-hoo.

EVIL DOESN’T NEED AN EXCUSE



Let’s stop pretending that being evil requires some soft-focus flashback scene to justify it.

Musk and Trump are living proof that villains can be villainous without some tragic origin story.

  • They are pure, unfiltered ego.
  • They lie, cheat, threaten, rage-tweet, and claw for power like it’s oxygen.

And the media? The public? Writers?

They eat that shit up.

Because it’s addictive.

They are the villains of real life.

And no one gives a shit why they are the way they are.

We just want to know what the hell they’ll do next.

WRITERS: STOP GIVING YOUR VILLAIN A THERAPIST


If you’re a new writer reading this, and you’re trying to make your genocidal space lich relatable by giving him mommy issues and a soft-spoken hobby in watercolour painting…

STOP.

Let him be evil.

Let him be terrifying.

Let him be the eldritch flaming horror that dances in your reader’s nightmares.

You don’t need to justify the darkness.

You need to unleash it.

TAKE A LESSON FROM MUSK AND TRUMP: RELATABILITY IS FOR HALLMARK. EVIL IS ENTERTAINMENT.


Trump and Musk are today’s chaotic spectacle because they are villains unburdened by introspection.

They don’t apologize.

They don’t grow.

They burn everything and dare you to look away.

And that’s exactly how your best villains should act.

So toss out the empathy.

Shred the relatability.

And write your villain like they’d eat Elon Musk and use Trump’s bones for salad tongs.

You don’t owe your readers a reason.

Just give them a force of nature in silk robes with blood on his lips and no regrets.

MAKE VILLAINS EVIL AGAIN: A WRITER’S BATTLE CRY TO RECLAIM THE DARK SIDE


You trembling keyboard warriors, scared of your own shadow and terrified to write real villains. I am here to rip the mask off the bullshit advice choking your creativity and demand that you start writing villains who actually love being evil — not some sad, cuddly emotional train wreck who’s “relatable” because mommy didn’t hug them enough.

We are living in the age of the greatest villain spectacle the world has ever seen: Trump and Musk, two grotesque, greedy, power-hungry megalomaniacs throwing tantrums across every media outlet, unrepentant, unapologetic, and utterly unrelatable to any normal human being.

And what do we do?

  • We watch.
  • We mock.
  • We meme.

But we also learn. Because these real-life monsters are the perfect example of how villains don’t need empathy. They don’t need backstories. They just need to be villains. And they own it.

And here’s the brutal truth that no timid writing guide will dare tell you:

Your villains should be more like Trump and Musk than your watered-down, sob-story-riddled rejects who are terrified to be hated.

THE DEATH OF THE VILLAIN IS YOUR FAULT


You — yes, you, the new writer clutching your “write with empathy” handbook — are the one who has neutered villains into soggy oatmeal blobs. You are the one who has drowned evil in a sea of sob stories and “trauma” so that your readers won’t hate your characters. You want them “relatable.” You want them “complex.” But what you’re really doing is making villains boring.

  • You’re turning Lex Luthor into a misunderstood nerd.
  • You’re turning Joker into a depressed clown with daddy issues.

Well I sure as Hell ain’t turning Quaraun, the Pink Necromancer, into a whimpering wraith who apologizes for his own magic.

This is literary malpractice.

TRUMP AND MUSK ARE THE VILLAIN BLUEPRINT FOR THE 21ST CENTURY


Look at the news this week: Musk spitting fire on X, accusing Trump of rigging an election, and Trump threatening to deport Musk for visa violations. Both of them are naked, vile, ego-fuelled monsters playing a game of public nuclear meltdown, each trying to out-bully the other. No apologies. No justification. Just pure, raw, villainous energy.

They do not ask for empathy.

They do not invite understanding.

They revel in chaos, and that’s what makes them fascinating, terrifying, and real.

As writers, what are you afraid of? That your villain might be hated?
Good. That means you are doing it right.

THROW OUT YOUR SAFE VILLAIN FORMULAS NOW


Forget about making your villain “relatable.”

Forget about giving them a sob story to explain away every single act of cruelty.

Forget about humanizing them to the point they’re indistinguishable from your protagonist.

Write a villain who wants to watch the world burn.

Write a villain who crushes bones because it’s fun.

Write a villain who bathes in their own wickedness and wouldn’t change a damn thing about it.

This is what readers crave.

This is what readers remember.

This is what makes stories sticky, unforgettable, and full of bite.

A BATTLE CRY FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF WRITERS


I ask, no, I demand you to stop the scared pussyfoot bullshit and start writing real villains again.

Let villains be vile. Let villains be grandiose. Let villains be unapologetically monstrous. Let villains wear their wickedness like a crown of spikes and laugh as they drip venom on the world.

The villains who dominate your stories should make Trump and Musk look like choirboys by comparison. Let your villains be so bad that readers love to hate them, fear them, and want to live inside the story just to watch what they’ll do next.

TRUMP SCREAMS MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN; HOW ABOUT WE MAKE VILLAINS EVIL AGAIN


We have spent too long apologizing for evil.

We have sanitized villains to make them palatable for fragile readers.

We have made heroes out of villains and villains out of heroes.

But the real villains — the truly unforgettable ones — do not need your pity.

They demand your respect for their pure, unfiltered, unapologetic nastiness.

When you see Trump and Musk throwing down on social media, stop chanting “Make America Great Again.” That’s the sound of delusion.
Instead, start chanting “Make Villains Evil Again.”

HERE IS WHAT YOU MUST DO, WRITERS


Stop giving villains mommy issues.

Stop making villains feel guilty for their actions.

Stop explaining their every choice with childhood trauma or “misunderstood genius” nonsense.

Stop worrying about whether readers will “like” your villain.

Instead:

Write villains who revel in their power.

Write villains who are as dangerous as a nuclear meltdown on Twitter.

Write villains who are the apex predators of your story’s ecosystem.

Write villains who own their wickedness like a goddamn monarch.

IF YOU WANT TO CREATE VILLAINS WHO MATTER…


Look no further than Trump and Musk’s disaster this week.

They are the living embodiment of what happens when villains stop hiding and start being villains.

It’s messy, it’s chaotic, it’s terrifying — but it works.

It grabs headlines, dominates conversations, and commands attention.

Your villains should do the same.

BEWARE THE NEUTERED VILLAIN


Writers, if you continue down the path of “empathetic” and “relatable” villains, you risk killing your stories dead before they even begin.

Villains without venom are villains without teeth.

Villains without teeth are just protagonists in bad wigs.

It is time to stop tiptoeing around the truth: Evil is entertaining.

Evil is fascinating.

Evil is powerful.RISE UP

So rise up, next generation of writers.

Cast off the chains of political correctness and literary nannying.

Make your villains vicious, glorious, and unforgettable.

Make villains so evil that the world remembers them long after the story ends.Make villains who act like Trump and Musk.Make Villains Evil Again.

The most powerful writing comes from the places that make your stomach clench when you think about your mother reading it.

That one sentence? That’s the damn scalpel slicing through the bloated carcass of every bullshit “how to write” guide that tells you to stay safe, stay marketable, stay palatable. That line is gospel.

Because real writing — the kind that grabs you by the throat and drags your trembling soul across the page — does not come from comfort. It doesn’t come from empathy. It doesn’t come from checking boxes or writing characters you’d “want to get coffee with.”

It comes from the dark, filthy, gut-churning basement of your brain.

It comes from fear. From shame. From rage.

From the places you hope no one ever sees.

Especially not your mother.

Especially her.

If you’re writing, and you’re not at least a little bit terrified someone you know will read it and see you naked on the page — you’re not writing, you’re producing content. Beige, nice, forgettable fucking content.

Want power in your prose?

Then bleed.

Write the thing you swore you’d never tell.

Say the thing that makes your family stop talking to you.

Expose your character’s darkest urges, their shameful pleasures, their bloodied secrets — not because it makes them relatable, but because it makes them real in the most uncomfortable way possible.

You want to write a villain?

Write the thing your mother would slap you for saying aloud.

Make her clutch her pearls and pray for your soul.

Make her wish she’d never let you read Stephen King under the blankets at night.

Because that is where truth lives.

That is where your voice sharpens.

That is where readers stop seeing words on a page and start seeing you.

Unfiltered. Unforgiving. Uncaged.

So if your stomach doesn’t clench when you write it, if you don’t hesitate before you hit publish, if you wouldn’t rather be flayed than let your mom see it…

You’re not there yet.

Dig deeper.

Bleed harder.

And then set the page on fire.

We’ll feel it.

We’ll see you.

And we’ll never forget what you wrote.

| ©2025 Wendy Christine Allen | All Rights Reserved |

The Park Bench Method To Writing (and the series of articles and rants that go with it)

I've Written An Entire Series on The Park Bench Method of Writing. Here are more of the articles in this set: 

The Park Bench Method To Writing (Just the article - no prompt lists)

The Park Bench Method of Writing (the really old long, rambly post from years ago; the long page with over 10k writing prompts and lots of lists)





What Is This Site?

I'm an author. This is an author home page. It's about me, my life, my books, my hobbies, my home town, and anything else that applies to me and my life. 

Since starting my writing career in 1978, I have written 130+ novels, 2,000+ short stories, 6,000+ non-fiction articles (ALL are found on this site), a few dozen stage plays, 12,000+ blog posts, and a few comic book scripts for Disney's Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck (I only worked for Disney one year (in 2005) and only wrote a few stories for their Danish comic books).

NOTE: I ONLY write the Quaraun series (aka The Twighlight Manor series aka The Adventures of Quaraun the Insane). In recent years there has been an issue with impersonators trying to pass books off as written by me, notably several non-fiction and Erotica books. I write neither nonfiction nor Erotica.

ALL of my books and their cover arts are listed on my website here. Beware of any books you find claiming to be me. If the books are NOT listed here on my website, they are NOT my books.

In fiction works, I specialize in Weird/Bizarro Tales set in 40th century CyberPunk-Quasi Medieval, Cozy Dark Fantasy and Science Fiction worlds featuring an intersex Elf and his Faerie husband main characters.  I DO NOT WRITE ANY OTHER SERIES - THIS SERIES IS THE ONLY ONE I WRITE.

Non-fiction (found ONLY here on my site) is daily updates of events in my life, and how-tos on how I write my novels.

I DO NOT write Erotica.

I DO NOT write books with HUMAN characters.

The Erotica books and books with Human characters, that you are finding, are written by scammers trying to impersonate me.

There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter. If you find any such books, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322

The FBI believes the people behind the impersonation accounts showing up, are relatives of the woman who murdered my son.

146 Portland Ave, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, is NOT FOR SALE.

And I'm sick of real estate agents who are too incompetent to research land ownership before they show up to stick a for sale sign in my yard.

The fact of the matter is, my son was murdered in 2013, and the friends and family of the murderer think it is funny to keep ILLEGALLY listing my land for sale, because apparently their child murdering bitch friend didn't hurt me enough by crippling me with a golf club, ripping my baby out of my 8 month pregnant belly and beating his brains out on the ground with a golf club.

Also, her friends and family like to gaslight me by doxing me on ufo and alien abduction forums, while pretending to be me, and trying to make it look like I believe in ufos or aliens, even though I think people who believe in ufos are raving lunatics and people who claim to be alien abductees are crazy. 

Worse, they've also taken to harassing my WW2 vet homeless friend, by calling HIM an alien, demon, or cryptid and sending alien crazy ufo nutjobs at try to "catch him".

So, yeah, my son was murdered and the murder's friends and family endlessly harass me, my friends, and my family both online and offline, and I'm not happy with it at all.

There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter.

The FBI is looking for information into:

  1. identifying my son's murderer, 
  2. identifying the scammers who listed my land for sale, 
  3. identifying the impersonators who pretend to be me both online and offline, 
  4. the harassers who are harassing the homeless man and sending the UFO nuts to harass him... 
  • If ANYONE tells you 146 Portland Ave Old Orchard Beach, Maine is for sale:, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322
  • If ANYONE tells you I believe in aliens, demons, or UFOS, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322
  • If ANYONE tells you my homeless friend is an alien, a demon, a cryptid, or named Etiole for sale:, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322


I'm going to repeat it because I'm tired of people showing up and making offers:

146 Portland Ave, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, is NOT FOR SALE.




| Home | Index |



How did you build your audience?
Not online, that's for sure.
aka How to sell ten million books
aka How I sold ten million books.



The Park Bench Method of Writing

(just the article)

or

The Park Bench Method of Writing

(with the list of 10k writing prompts - takes a LONG TIME to load - SEVERAL MINUTES!)



Why I am not proud of Disability Pride Month.
In fact, I think it’s deplorable and downright offensive.



I Think UFO and Alien Believers Are Weird Here's Why...




Testing Out AI aka Conversations with ChatGPT-5:



My thoughts on the Rapture 2025 Rumours, that are on both Etiole's birthday and my 50 year anniversary: September 23rd:





Thank you for stopping by and have a nice day! ꧁✨🌸🔮🦄🔮🌸✨꧂

And if it’s your birthday today: ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ🐇་༘࿐꧁ᴴᵃᵖᵖʸ☆ᵇⁱʳᵗʰᵈᵃʸ꧂🤍🎀🧸🌷🍭

Wendy Christine Allen 🌸💖🦄 aka EelKat 🧿💛🔮👻
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