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Features
Essays, lists and features that cross many villains at once: the archive's data, the myths about psychopaths and the bigger questions.
14 articles
PsychopathyWhich medium has the coldest villains? 998 villains in numbersWe compared the 998 villains in the archive medium by medium. The coldest are in animation; the most violent, in anime.Read →Life courseHow the villain has changed, decade by decade850 villains dated by decade. From the 1960s to today, both average violence and coldness have risen.Read →Feminist criminologyFemale and male villains: what the data saysOnly 11% of the 998 villains in the archive are women. Compared axis by axis, the biggest gap is in manipulation.Read →Feminist criminologyThe most fascinating villainesses in fiction (and in criminology)When a man kills in fiction we ask how; when a woman kills, we ask why. That difference says more about the audience than about the villainess.Read →Cultural criminologyThe rise of true crime: why we can't stop watching real crimeMillions of people fall asleep listening to someone narrate a murder in forensic detail. The victims were real, and their families are still alive.Read →Life courseThe monster factory: how fiction turns trauma into a villainThe best villains no longer arrive in the world with horns but with a broken childhood. Are monsters born or made, and when does the past stop explaining?Read →Cognitive criminology7 cognitive biases every great villain exploitsThe best villains don't pick locks: they pick your decisions. Which mental shortcuts do they exploit to make you help bring about your own downfall?Read →PsychopathyX-ray of evil: what the data on 998 fictional villains revealsWe scored 998 villains on intelligence, violence, manipulation and empathy. What portrait of evil emerges when you look at all of them together?Read →Rational choiceThe 10 most intelligent villains in fiction (according to criminology)From the most courteous cannibal to the student with a notebook that kills: ten minds that made intellect a weapon. What do the ones three moves ahead share?Read →PsychopathyThe coldest villain in fiction: why zero empathy defines the monsterA shark, an internet myth and an SS commandant share the same empathy score in our archive: zero. Same number, very different void.Read →Social learningVillains molded by a toxic father: parenting, control and violenceAzula, Dabi and Feyd-Rautha didn't have fathers: they had owners. Criminology knows how much risk that leaves in a child, and why that risk is not a sentence.Read →NeutralizationThe apprentice who betrays his master never sees himself as a traitorAnakin, Saruman, Syndrome and Darren Cross admired the people who trained them, then turned on them. What does a disciple tell himself to justify betrayal?Read →Rational choiceFrom Polyphemus to Poseidon: every Odyssey villain is a case fileHomer's poem has no single antagonist but an archipelago of them, and every monster Nolan brings to the screen hides a human mechanism.Read →PsychopathyThe KRIMINIS Report: What 451 Fictional Villains Reveal About Evil451 villains scored on four axes and cross-referenced with 100 criminology theories. Fictional evil has a profile, and it isn't the one you'd guess.Read →