Guest Post from Coco: Why Halloween Villains are Better Than Your Princesses


Or... How we all have a little bad in us...

My mother always loved the villains of stories. At least that's how I remember learning stories from her. She claimed the stepsisters' number From Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella was the best song in the show and guess what? She was right. That song has humor and snaps in an otherwise sappy musical.


Plus always better costumes. Always.

She would sing Miss Hannigan's "Little Girls" from Annie and languish in the song. Of course with four, sometimes five daughters, sometimes seven daughters, who could blame her for sympathizing? (Oh your household had a set number of kids? Well, special you. We liked to be fluid at our house).

So when I was a kid I wanted to play the bad guy, the antihero, the person who did the wrong thing. This carried over when I later became an actor and preferred to play the bad guys. What struck me, though, is that it even served me when I was playing the good guys because I would look for the character's flaws. The flaws are what make us interesting as humans, after all, and I like my characters- good or bad- to be interesting.




Here's the thing- Most of the people I love ferociously would not be the hero of a story. At least, not a good story. They would be the wacky sidekicks, the awkward friends. They might even be the villains. I love them for that. With all the polarizing contempt I see in the country right now I love people who can embrace the bad parts of themselves because it helps them be more toletrant of the bad in other people. And we could use more tolerance across the board.

Plus it makes them fun to hang out with. So this Halloween, embrace your inner villain, or at the very least your inner flawed person. Then embrace the flaws of the person next to you. You might find a person you couldn't stand even becomes someone you can at least tolerate.


Unless that person is a serial killer. Then you TAKE. THEM. DOWN.


Happy Halloween everyone!
And thanks to Caitlin and Christy for letting me shove my way onto their blog.

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