SquawkRadio Comments

I’m so WAY ahead of you on this one.  I beheaded my ex-boyfriend in my very first book.

I’d go with Gilvert & Sullivan--let the punishment fit the crime. I’d punish arrogance with humiliation, and worse, self-knowledge. I’d punish willful ignorance with lessons learned the very hard way, at the criminal’s loved-ones’ expense, as well as his own. I’d punish lies with learning that one’s own life has been a lie. Sanguinary, aren’t I?
But wouldn’t really, someone’s knowledge that his life has been an evil waste, real, irrefutable knowledge, of that, and that everyone he loved (in his own warped way, of course) wouldn’t that be the worst possible punishment? Instead of the biblical truth setting one free, the truth will be the death sentence. or, perhaps, eventually, redemption.

wow. I need my tea.

martha

I hate to sound like Pollyanna but, I can’t really think of one single person that I feel the need to shred up on paper. 
Actually, the more I think about it…
It’s a well documented fact amongst nurses that some of our patients are sent to us not from the OR or the ER but from hell!  I have seen the tiniest, sweetest little ladies turn into positive monsters while recovering from hip surgery.  They pop Vicoden as often as allowed, cuss at staff, and become demanding about the temperature of everything from their food to their room.  They want you to call their doctor at 3:15 am because they have a headache and the Vicoden just isn’t cutting it.  They are impossible to please and the only way to deal with them is from the other side of the building. 
I think I’d take all those patients and turn the tables on them.  I’d stick them in a sick ward with about 10 people.  All of whom are recovering and none of whom are reasonanable and let them have fun trying to figure out how to make all these people feel better.  And remember the Vicoden just isn’t cutting it.

You know what Eloisa, I feel better.

I had a boss once who backstabbed me in a major way resulting in me being fired and not able to work in that field again. But i don’t have to write her in a story so that she gets her comeuppance. it happened in real life and was so delicious. her incompetence and deceitful nature was uncovered about a year after I left--she now works at a fast food place. But it would be interesting to work to work that story into one of my novels

Oooo Kay, I love it!

And Teresa Medeiros, I always knew you were a dangerous woman to cross.  How could I not when your last book featured a toothless, drooling ELOISA?????  You’re so lucky I am the angelic person I am *g*.

Tammy, I know just what you mean--well, not the way a nurse does, but I see it at home.  My husband is actually fairly reasonable for someone with testosterone running around in his body but he’s had a cold for the last three days.  You’d think he was dying.  I kid you not!  Thank goodness, even the little old ladies go home someday, right?

Eloisa

Why do you ask such tough questions before I’ve had my morning caffeine fix? 

* heads to kitchen dreaming of ways to further villify the evil grandmother in my life*

Trolls? Hansel and Gretel get their revenge?  Maybe thinking about such things when half asleep is bettere...I don’t feel nearly as guilty as I usually do…

Maybe the big bad wolf got her! Woo Hoo! *evil cackles*

Oh, where do I start?  *g*

My mom thinks that every mother that I write about is about her in some way, shape, or form, and especially when I was younger and she find my writings, she’d ask why are all the mothers of your main characters dead or evil? 

But let’s see… I think killing off or sending people into exile are really good.  And public humiliation is always nice.  *g*

Hmm.  I have quite a list of those I kinda use as “comical vehicles” as it were.  They’re self-absorbed, vain idiots--and the hero/heroine mocks them, so to speak--and these SAVIs never realize what a complete waste of oxygen they are.  But assuming that anyone who knew me, read any of my books, etc--if they did “find themselves” in my book, would they manage to stop being such SAVIs long enough to realize it’s them?  Probably not.  (Think Gilderoy Lockhart by JK Rowling, who she says is the only character she truly made like someone she used to know--but who would never realize it was himself.)

If by some miracle the SAVIs ever figured out I wrote about them and pointed it out, the convo would be like this.  “This is me!” “Is it?” “Don’t deny it!  It couldn’t be any more me...we even have the same name.” “What a coincidence!” “You’ve made me look like a blazing idiot!” “Really?  *I* have?  I’m not sure I could be credited with the whole of that...”

However, I think Teresa has the right of it.  Behead the b**tards.  *pops a bon-bon*

Gilderoy Lockhart is a real person? Wow!  Fascinating!

Eloisa

Years ago I read a short story (I can’t remember the title or author!) about a man who was waiting for something special to define his life and it turned out the thing that made him special was absolutely nothing.  I always thought that would make a great revenge on someone extremely egotistical - to find out he or she is totally ordinary.  I guess that is what happens to lots of villians in stories. 

I woke up cheerful today (probably the result of having a quiet house again!) so I can’t think of anyone to turn into a villian at the moment.

The VP over my department (I work at a college) is such a vain and egotistical woman.  She thinks of herself as a true southern belle and believes that everyone loves her (but she couldn’t be farther from the actual truth), and she actually ordered me and her assistant to tell people how wonderful she is and how much we love to work for her when people call.  We had a going away party for an African-American young lady who worked in our department and the VP actually had us sing a farewell song to the tune of Happy Birthday and at the end she tacked on “You look like a monkey and you smell like one too” Everyone of us were totally appalled that a supposed professional would do something that stupid and tastless, and needless to say the young lady was furious.  The young lady quite graciously decided to forgive and forget since she was leaving, but she could rightly have created all kinds of trouble for the VP.

I think if I were to do away with the VP in one of my stories I would have her get fired in a huge publically embarrassing controversy where she wouldn’t be able to get work anywhere else in education and would lose her $700 thousand dollar home and $100 thousand dollar income and move into public housing and could only get work as one of the lunch ladies in the local elementary school.

Wow!! Why did everyone assume it had to be someone evil?!  I would use my husband as the template for a DH in any novel!!

I’ll have to reach back into grade school and get my so called best friend who flat left me without a tent to sleep in during Outdoor Ed!  What a witch and the slime buckets who turned their backs to me!  How would I exact revenge?  Well, I’d grab her hand and drag her butt to the 5 Points section of Manhattan at the turn of the century....and leave her there with the gin soaked dockies who slithered with the gang leaders. 

Me?  I’d gather my skirts around me so as not to be further sullied by her presence and have John Coachman take me to Delmonico’s for a late night supper with the Astors. 

Yup, that would be sweet revenge!

The know it all, can’t shut his mouth, Troll in my World would have flying dog poop smack him in the face during one of his dumb ass monologues during a wind storm.

Sorry, he really got on my nerves last week and we are currently having a wind storm! But, I think this would make a great exercise and I’m gonna have to seriously play around with the idea!

Definately, definately my ex. I would make him be an ob/gyn. One delivery after another...bwa-hahahaha

Uhh, when my brother got his girlfriend pregnant in high school, it was a big stink. Their parents, who were all divorced and remarried, pointed fingers and blamed each other for the calamity. All seemed to turn on my mother because she openly disliked my brother’s girlfriend and advised my brother not to quit high school, marry the girl if he wanted but don’t quit school; he had talent scouts approaching him left and right with football scholarships. He married and quit school, and my mother was cast as the villian because she disagreed. The other parents talked very badly about my mother, especially my stepmother and my brother’s new father-in-law, who centered in with cutting remarks about my mother never marrying my biological father. Yes, my illegitimacy was maliciously rubbed in my mother’s face and mine. So, one day my stepmother and five married men in town, including my brother’s new father-in-law, received letters from the Health Department in a major city in the neighboring state that my stepmother had tested positive for syphillis and the five men were named as partners with potential exposure. The sh*t hit that fan. The small town was in chaos, which was the biggest excitement the residents has seen in forever. Women were leaving there husbands. My stepmother was crying. People were swearing lawsuits, and all were speculating who wrote the letters that appeared to be very professional. However, no one openly pointed a finger at my mother. Also, no one was ever sued. I guess people still have no clue who sent the letters; maybe they are afraid to dig too deeply.

Well, you know I always have a morbid family death story tell....but any way....my Aunt Lottie was the devil in a short skirt at only 4ft. 9” tall.  She was all that was EVIL.  Never anything good to say to anyone, manipulative, hurtful, pitting brother against brother, making grown men cry, emptying a room by just standing by the door etc. and when she did these things you could see the glee and joyfulness in her eye.  It was just crazy.

My Aunt had 9 brothers and sisters, 30 nieces and nephews and we ALL lived in fear of her. She was my families “She who shall not be named”. My Father must have been the exception to the rule because he was the only one that she actually spoke with respect to. No one wishes harm on another person but none of us could handle the poisonand hate that she handed out towards all her family members so we all avoided her as best we could. For preservation sake.

When she died and we were all at the funeral, to be honest, none of us were sad except for My Dad and my Uncle Antoine and we were all sadden because of their sadness and the real love they had for their sister. Plus we were all thinking about all the things she had done and said to us through out all the years.  “The cousins” were all sitting together and my Cousin Marielyn says: I feel so sorry for the Devil, don’t you?  I said: Why?  I don’t get it.  Marielyn says:  Well, now that Aunt Lottie is there the Devil is on the unemployment line and out of a job unless he’s now her new assistant.  We all started laughing because she was right as far as we were all concerned.

Wow, Billie that is GHASTLY.  What an insensitive, foolish woman.  And MistyJo...she shouldn’t a done it, as they say, but Oh It must have felt GREAT!

Eloisa

As a Shakespearean I would think you would have a wealth of appropriate punishments and no lack of material.  He was certainly one of the best at creating villians and punishing them.

Me, I am not that creative.  I do know that with 3 teenagers at home, what punishment which works on one doesn’t necessarily work on the others.

*working on my creative thinking to come up with better ideas*

Well, I have to admit that since I have been hanging out at Squawk Radio I have gotten pretty good at Pretending to be a writer. I just hope that I can keep up the illusion for another 12 or 13 months…sigh. 

Revenge? I Love REVENGE. Its so in my nature. I am a woman born under the sign of Cancer, so I have a great sensitivity and a strong protective instinct toward my loved ones.  According to my astrological sign My Strengths are that I am: Adaptable, cooperative, emotional, hospitable, imaginative, intuitive, nurturing, sensitive, receptive, sacrificially, selfless While my Weaknesses are that I can be:
Dependent, erratic, hypersensitive, immature, manipulable, moody, possessive, smothering subjective, and tyrannical. Did you know that Mike Tyson and I were born on the same day? Yeah. You don’t want to piss a Cancer off… Because we will get Even. Eventually.

Now if I Was a writer who would I use as a Villain in a story? Hmm, first I would tell the tale of the well known Defender of The Public who sold out for money.  I would have her publicly exposed through her own self-destructive quest for More Stuff. She would have a humiliating downfall. But in the end her own sense of what is right verses what is wrong would lead to her redemption. My second villain would be biased on the Worlds Most Evil Executive. She was a Liar. A Cheat. She was an absolutely ruthless worthless piece of shit. She fired innocent people to hide what she did. And then she fired another thousand, she called it down sizing, to hide what she did too those innocent people. But I knew what she did. And why. Her Daughter knew too. A few years after my dealing with this piece of human garbage I saw her daughter on news special. The young woman was a heroine addict and she was dying. I remember that her eyes were gleaming with hatred…for her mother. Call me Bad. Call me an unfeeling bitch. But one of the most satisfying moments of my life was listening to that dying woman tell the whole world how much she Hated her mother. She hated her more than I did. Which, when I thought about it later, brought me a sense of peace…and closure.  And since I am being honest here, than I will tell you what else I felt. I was glad. Because now that Executive Scum could see what it was like to Watch her daughter die. The daughter who hated her. The daughter who had destroyed herself because she couldn’t live with the fact that evil woman’s blood flowed through her veins.

So Eloisa, the truth is God is much better at coming up with Revenge then me. So if I were pretending to be a writer…then I would simply tell the tale… exactly as it happened

I was thinking, too, of Shakespere and also Dickens, who used ghosts to make their points..haunting seems to be an unrelenting sort of punishment..(remember E. Allen Poe’s Telltale Heart?) That sort of stuff freaks me out..
The subconcious type of terror (I’ve watched a few too many Twilight Zone reruns this weekend) seems to make a strong point!

Hey, I thought little Eloisa was darling in THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME!  She also had a fondness for expensive jewelry...just like you!

For another view, Tess Gerritsen wrote about this story in her blog:  http://www.tessgerritsen.com/blog/

As for me, I can’t think of too many people who wronged me.  A crush turned out to be less attractive and kind of a loser after high school so I was glad to show him up. 

Otherwise, in a story I wrote once in high school, I was guilty of writing about my parents and grandparents.  My mother caught on, I think.  There was no punishment necessarily except to point out that embarrassing your children is not a sport.  Of course, in high school, EVERYTHING my mom did embarrassed me.

You guys are all scaring me…

I have a somewhat difficult daughter-in-law. She’s French, thin, smart and beautiful, so of course we’d like to lock her in a roomful of Dunkin’ Donuts and pork rinds, with continuous reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies. I confess I thought about turning her into a lady’s maid/spy in this thing I’m fiddling around with, changing her name. She’ll just go back to France in the book---punishment enough?

I agree with several of you.  If I wrote, I could easily see myself killing off the evil villain with a bullet, or an assisted fall off a high cliff.

Sometimes, I get mad at the heroines of the stories I read when they want to stop the hero from “offing” the bad guy. She’ll yell “don’t do it, or you’ll be no better than he is.” I guess I have no compassion in my heart.....kill ‘em. I’m sure they deserve it.

When it comes to the mean, self-centered, evil women who make other’s lives a living hell, well, I think they should be given a punishment of being banished from their society circle and peers.  Rejection and humiliation are just revenge for characters like that.

April,
Thanks for pointing out Tess G’s blog—I always forget what a terrific blog that is, and it was a pleasure to catch up. 

Eloisa

But Eloisa, I never said that my mother did it! The whole town just believed that she was the culprit. And my mother’s brother-in-law was one of the five men to receive a letter. My poor aunt was in an uproar thinking that her husband had killed her because she couldn’t take the cure...she’s allergic to penecillian, which she didn’t need to take because the whole thing was a sham. As far as I can remember, no one got a divorce over the letters, but my aunt is no longer married to that man. LOL!

I think it is always interesting when the author lets the villian sort of do themselves in.  I just finished Lynsey Sand’s The Perfect Wife and the villian actually falls to their death while trying to kill the heroine.  The hero would have done it without blinking an eye but it turned out he didn’t have to.

I’m sure there is someone I would love to make squirm in my WIP, the ex and his family comes to mind, but I’m not sure what I would do to them.  I guess since no matter how deceitful and underhanded they are that they almost always seem to come out smelling like roses, I’d do something that would reverse that.  Boil them in oil?  Not sure but it would need to be slow and very painful.

Wow, I didn’t realize I had that in me.  But I do feel better.

Have her daughter send her to Bath!

As for revenge, I have this evil character in my story line that is so ...just so...well evil that gets his in the end. And the sad thing is, he is based on a person. Granted the name is changed a bit better than Michael to Mick.

And I agree, I thought the little toothless, drooling ELoisa was just too cute.

There are people I would like to hear say Sorry, but no one I could really take revenge upon.

Honestly there is only one person I would like to “punish"-that is the pediatrician who wouldn’t take my calls about my daughter being sick. I called 5 times in 3 days-he just kept saying that I was over-reacting. Well, I didn’t listen. I called a surgeon and got an appointment the next day-he schedualed surgery for the following monday. She was 6 weeks old at the time, luckily she is fine today. I don’t even know what kind of punishment that pediatrician deserves-to this day my heart aches at how close we came to losing her.

Di

I cannot think of a single person I would like revenge on.

I have discovered two others.  My boss and the company a**kisser.  I swear you can literally hear her sucking up a mile away.

As revenge, I believe my boss should be locked away in a mental institute (because surely that can be the only reason why she hasn’t noticed the suck-up only sucks-up when she’s around--and is a total witch the rest of the time.  I need one of those nanny cameras to document this stuff.) Then the suck-up should have something very tragic and painful happen while she’s trying to work the office machinery.  No one rushes to her rescue--because she’s classic “little boy who cried wolf”

A beheading would be cleaner though.

Hee hee hee! (Rubs hands gleefully together). I would have every deadbeat client who brings me an animal who has obviously been suffering for days but claims- “But Doc, she just broke that leg this morning"- suffer the same treatment. Maybe fall down a well and not be rescued for a week or so. See how you like it!!!

I once heard Tamora Pierce declare that her villian, Duke Roger, was actually based on an ex-boyfriend of hers. “And I got to kill him twice”, she chirped.

Eloisa, like Teresa, I’m way ahead of you on this one, too.

About eight years ago, my wicked, evil, “Jim Jones” of a half-brother prevented my father from being buried next to our mother.  I vowed that one day, I would, like Chaucer, “eviscerate him in fiction”.

My plan is to have this person be a Jim Jones type character who is murdered by one of his acolytes...with a very unusual weapon.

Much to my annoyance, he’ll never see his namesake’s demise--six months after my father passed away, “Jim” himself lay down for the eternal celestial dirt nap.

oh shoot, MistyJo!  It was such great revenge; I was living vicariously through your mom.

Eloisa

I’m not a writer but I always like to hope that people will be reincarnated and of course that means coming back as anyone or anything you can think of until they learn their lesson lol.

Aahhh, sweet revenge.
Mine is coming in March - I think.

This past May I was extremely annoyed with someone who broke one promise too many. I was online looking at Karen Hawkins’ site. I wrote her about it, and SHE WROTE BACK offering to make him the villain in her upcoming book. She described all the tortures he will endure. Believe me, he deserves every one.

I CAN’T WAIT FOR THAT BOOK TO COME OUT!!!!!!!

Ah yes, sweet revenge.  Old Klingon proverb says, that Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.  Well, that might be, but it can be really fun to imagine revenge swooping down on someone you truly and utterly despise.  Take my EX for example.  I visualize a time machine...taking him back to the middle ages....somewhere where the plague hit quite viciously.  There....I feel better now!!  *evil laugh*

--dorothy

Mostly I don’t care for punishment (ok I am human, so I do in a way) but mostly when someone does me wrong, guys, mother, back-stabbing friends, I feel like I want apoligies more than exacting revenge....or be put throught ringer would be nice also…

But this is a creative exercise.....for a guy, maybe get stuck in an unwanted marriage that should be punishment enough for anyone...we for the guy I’m thinking of....a back-stabbing friend....how about a horrible rumor that makes her unmarriageable....for my mother.....um I’d rather not go there.......

Well, as far as revenge goes, I’d love for things that protrude to rot and fall off of my ex. And I’d wish horrible things to happen to him, but then that monthly check (which I’ve had to go to court multiple times for) wouldn’t come anymore. Too bad the things I wish on him seem to come back and affect me somehow.  Revenge against him just isn’t as much fun as I’d like it to be.

I had a boss once that probably wore Prada.  I know she went shopping at Goldsmith’s (now Macy’s) one day sale every Wednesday.  I was ready to quit and try another career after her. I used to make up stories and have her as the victim of a horrible murder/scandal/freak building collapse.  Therapy and amusement all in one. 

Mai

All the comments about horrible mothers got me to thinking about the being who gave birth to my husband.  As my dear Auntie commented after meeting this woman “I’ve seen better mothers at the bottom of a vinegar jug.”

After allowing her daughter to marry at the age of 14 (!), and her husband ran off with her daughter’s classmate a couple years later, she abandoned her sons (age 12 and 2) claiming she couldn’t care for them. (The boys were raised by their dad and teenaged stepmom).

Over the years my MIL has proven to be the most self-involved, manipulative, uncaring woman I’ve ever had the displeasure to know.

When my FIL passed away, she crowed about outliving the SOB.  She’s consistently forgotten about her granddaughters’ birthdays, graduations and weddings, never even bothering acknowledge she got the invitation to our daughter’s wedding a few years ago.

If I ever have need of a horrible mother in a book, I sure have an inspiration at my fingertips.

Ann in IL said… Aahhh, sweet revenge.
Mine is coming in March - I think

How Cool Is That! Oh Ann I AM Sooo jealous! And happy for you too! Heck, Nobody wants my villains…not even me!

I just joined this group yesterday, but I finished reading “Yours Until Dawn” three days ago & noticed the baby’s name.  It’s actually what made me check the website to see if it was a reference, & sure enough, it was

This is hard. I don’t have any strong feelings of anger or hatred toward anyone, but I do have very definite mixed feelings about my grandma on my mom’s side.
I love her, but she is so insanely selfish and so determinedly unhappy that I strongly dislike her often.

I don’t understand how someone can be as unhappy as she is—and always try to make everyone around her feel likewise—for no discernible reason. I don’t want to punish her in a novel, exactly. I just want to smack her upside the head and “fix” her.

I’m not expressing myself well, but I think y’all know what I mean.

Cinthia...that’s positively spooky!

And don’t you think it’s interesting, everybody, how many of us know someone whose bad temper/bad behavior is basically just inexplicable?

Weird.

Eloisa

I guess I’d take out my former boss, and boy howdy, I’d do it with a vengeance.  I thought she was just awesome when I went to work for her at “the best firm in town,” and I slowly began to realize that she didn’t exactly have her head screwed on tight.  Her husband and children were neglected (the kids didn’t even call her mom; rather, they called her by her first name), and she bought them off with gifts and money.  One of her daughters came into the firm one day at noon, dead drunk with a handful of friends...when Bosslady quietly tried to get her to leave, the daughter swore at her and belched in her face in front of basically every employee there.  I felt sorry for her then, but as time went by and things started to heat up for me personally (nothing I could do was ever good enough, etc.), I lost all sympathy.  After one particularly devastating 1/2-hour tirade that left me shaking and in tears, she absolutely lost it--she grabbed me by my upper arm, flung me across her office, and left in a huff.  There was a bruise there by that evening, and I turned in my resignation letter the next morning.  (By the way, my DH and I took pictures and all that, but chose not to press charges, in case you’re wondering.)

Thanks to her, I no longer feel confident applying for any job within my field here in this small town, mainly because everyone knows her and would wonder why the HELL I decided to leave “the best firm in town”...and that is not an easily answered interview question.  Working at “the best firm in town” turned out to be the worst experience of my entire life, all because of one messed-up woman.

So yeah, I’d probably write a medieval and have her not only grow up poor, but have to go into a life of prostitution to make ends meet, have 14 children who all turned out to be sickly, and then, to cap it all off, she’d catch bubonic plague.  Maaaahvelous.