Wicked, Moana, Maleficent, and so many recent novels (Medea, Circe, Queen of the Conquered, The Poppy War, Sorrowland, The Deep) tell a different kind of villain's journey--about a heroine mislabeled and condemned by society after she's been betrayed and tricked. How does her journey go? Let's find out...(a paper presented at Wiscon 2022). Youtube available: https://youtu.be/BBkMEKDD7ao

1. The
Villain’s
Journey
LOSS AND POSTCOLONIALISM
IN RECENT FANTASY

2. Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Frankel's Villain’s Journey
The World of Common Day Condemned by Society
The Call to Adventure The Scarring
Tainted Vision
Refusal of the Call Refusal of the Call
Supernatural Aid The Mentor Tempts
Constructing the Talisman
The Crossing of the First Threshold
The Belly of the Whale
The Slippery Slope
The Villain’s Stronghold
The Road of Trials The Road of Failed Tests
The Meeting with the Goddess
Woman as the Temptress
Sacrificing the Anima
Atonement with the Father
Apotheosis
Competing with the Hero-Shadow
Murder of the Weak Father
Epiphany
The Ultimate Boon Twisted Success
Refusal of the Return
The Magic Flight
Rescue from Without
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
Refusal of the Return
Turned by Love
The Magic Chase
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
Master of the Two Worlds Master of the Two Worlds
Freedom to Live Embraced by Society

3. The Villain Grows…
 In the ordinary world, he is often an outcast or monster.
 Frankenstein never had loving parents, nor did Tom Riddle
 Spurned, he creates a vision of how he wants to transform the world.

4. Stamped as Evil
 Galadriel, balanced between childhood communities, always felt judged for her
dark powers among all of them: “My great-grandmother was just the first in a
long line of people who meet me, smile, and then stop smiling, before I’ve
even said a word. No one’s ever going to offer me a lift or dance in a woodland
circle to help me raise power or put food on my table or – far more to the point
– stand with me against all the nasty thing that routinely come after wizards”
(14).
 Malice, retelling Maleficent, shows her growing up as a gifted Grace, but
shunned as the Dark Grace. “I was discarded. A squalling infant brought to the
Grace Council by a fishmonger in the common district…and though my blood
carried a spark of magic, I wasn’t permitted to taint the other Grace children
in the nursery with my presence” (29).

5. A Monster Is Banished
from Society…until she
returns

6. Forced Conformity
 In Malice, when she attends a ball, masked and beautifully gowned, she's
admired…until Rose the mean girl smashes her mask.
 Her mentor Kal finally tells her that she has a different kind of magic—her blood can
make elixirs like the Graces but only because she wished so badly for this to happen
that she made her magic like theirs. He chides her that the dominant culture knows
nothing about their people : “What gives him the right to tell you who you are?”
(146).
 Sharp-tongued wicked stepsister Sloane struggles with her inner rage. As she
channels her mother’s taunts, she recalls her insisting, “you are a wicked, wicked child
and I will never ask you to be a good girl, but I will always ask you to be better” (123).
 The bureau employs her since she can sense when a story is going wrong. She thinks,
“it wasn’t fair. The Bureau only kept me fed and free because I was useful to them,
and being useful meant embracing the parts of myself that played most into my
story. I would lose myself someday, and all for the sake of serving them a little better
in the time I was allotted” (130).

7. Scarring
 The call to adventure is a moment of
wounding, often accompanied by
physical trauma.

8. Fairytales Transformed
Then: The traditional heroine ascends from maiden
to queen, usually saving her prince, while
discovering her inner power. Her enemy is the
murderous mother or tyrannical force.
Now: Today’s YA fairytales tear down the entire
system, emphasizing its corruption. Many question
who wrote the stories.

9. The Stigmatized Speak Out
Maleficent, Joker, Cruella…
Wicked (book and musical)
Madeline Miller’s Circe
Heather Walter’s Malice
Rosie Hewlett’s Medusa

10. Villain or Scapegoat?
 Into the Heartless Wood retells The Little Mermaid—Seren
the tree spirit kills villagers at her mother’s orders, but saves
a boy she admires.
 Eventually, as with the island in Moana or the title character
in Maleficent, the villainess is revealed as taking revenge on
the people for the greedy crime of their king.
 His rule is finally destroyed as the property is returned.
There’s a theme here of looking at the motive behind
savagery and trying to repair the crimes of colonization.

11. Mistaking Who’s the Hero
 Some heroines try to prove they’ve succeeded in
man’s world by outcompeting them and taking
over their hierarchy
 Sigourney Rose seeks the throne, hoping to be
chosen one
 However, this world is all illusion; the slaves have
acted without waiting for her.

12. It’s all Illusion, like the
Patriarchy
 Her peers are mysteriously murdered
 The king has already died, and an illusionary
puppet gives commands, as he rules over a decayed
palace also shored up by illusion, like the Wizard of
Oz’s pasteboard head.
 This way of life is crumbling and unsustainable
 With everything taken from her, Sigourney
strives for empathy and to find her buried
spirituality.

13. The Harry-
Draco Split
 Most often the villain’s
shadow is his perfect rival
and peer:
 Thor vs Loki, Buffy/Faith,
Draco Malfoy and Harry
Potter (or Tom Riddle and
Harry Potter).
 X-Men and Game of
Thrones are all brother
rivalries.
 Each villain knows the hero
gets all the admiration, so
he goes the other way.

14. Why don’t I
have what
she does?
But they’re
both asking
it.

15. Seeking Vengeance
 Transformed by her goddess, Medusa’s titaness mother tells her this is “an opportunity to
be powerful and feared. An opportunity to right the wrongs the world has forced on you” (88).
She challenges Medusa to make history see her as an avenger, not a victim.
 As Medusa’s rage finally bubbles up, her mother sends her to a ship of sailors to destroy
them. “I funneled my bitter hatred through acts I deemed as justice, using my curse to protect
women from ever having to endure what I went through…I told myself I was righting the
wrongs the gods never would and, I believed, in a perverse way, that I was finally loving up to
my name. Protector” (100). She thinks, “If I could make the world my victim, then perhaps I
could forget what it had felt like to be one myself” (100).
 However, her mother, like the snakes in her hair, are manipulating her to serve their goals.

16. Apocalypse as Vengeance
 The classic fairytale image is reappropriated as
one of empowerment and rebirth. In fact, they sink
the patriarchy’s ships, appalled by the slave
traders’ savagery.
 In another flashback, they declare war and decide
to “sink the world” (128). They form rings and
create a twister, a typhoon.
 As the ocean folk see the humans, they recognize
them as kin. “This does not make us more gentle.
It has the opposite effect. We send endless waves
of salt water onto the land, flooding the whole
earth. This is only our first assault. We remember”
(140).
The heroines actively destroy the patriarchal world

17. After your masters have made you a
weapon, how do you return?

18. Epiphany

19. …or Death

20. Master of
Both Worlds

21. Or Appointing a Successor

22. The Past is Lost…We’ll Rebuild
 The Lost Way of Avalon with magical women’s ancient knowledge is
burned by the vengeful patriarchy.
 This destruction paves the way for new growth—emphasizing the
cycling of the heroine’s journey rather than the hierarchy of the
hero’s. Ghosts, their spiritual foremothers, remain. “They keep
burning us. We keep rising again” (415).
 After this, Bella and her wife Cleo collect spells from around the
world, “preserved in rhymes and hymns and sewing samplers” (506).
The new ones “Come in odd forms and unlikely languages—Spanish
prayers and Creole songs and Choctaw stories,” suggesting a global
alliance born from nature in the next library (507).

23. Works Cited
 Callender, Kacen. Queen of the Conquered. Hachette, 2019.
 Harrow, Alix E. The Once and Future Witches. Redhook, 2020.
 Hewlett, Rosie. Medusa. Silverwood, 2021
 Kuang, R.F. The Burning God. Harper Voyager, 2020.
 – . The Dragon Republic. Harper Voyager, 2019.
 – . The Poppy War. Harper Voyager, 2018.
 Maguire, Gregory. Wicked. 1995. HarperCollins, 2004.
 McGuire, Seanan. Reflections. 47North, 2016.
 Meyer, Joanna Ruth. Into the Heartless Wood. Page Street, 2021.
 Miller, Madeline. Circe. Little, Brown and Co., 2018
 Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. Del Rey, 2020.
 Solomon, Rivers. Sorrowland. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
 Solomon, Rivers et al. The Deep. Saga, 2019.
 Walter, Heather. Malice. Del Rey, 2021.

24. vefrankel.com
More on the journey