Everybody Loves a Bad Boy

            You love bad boys. You know you do and if you say you don’t you’re lying. I can prove it.

            By definition, bad boys are bad because they make bad decisions.  Bad decisions are responsible for everything that has ever been suspenseful, sexy, or exciting ever. These decisions, by their very nature, create drama, conflicts, and problems. You may recognize these as the elements that make a story, well… a story. It is pretty impossible to make something interesting without one of those components. I defy anyone to write a story longer than five pages that doesn’t involve one bad decision, and then try to get anyone other than their mom to suffer through it (moms will read anything and say it’s good, they are completely delusional).

Here is an illustration of a bad boy making a bad decision

            Now what do I mean when I say bad decisions? They are not the same thing as stupid decisions, because choosing to wash your cat with Pine Sol isn’t interesting. Bad decisions are like deciding to take a Christmas Party hostage so you can rob their vault (or deciding that you are the one man to stop them), falling in love with a member of a rival family, or stealing porridge from bears. They involve taking risking, making people upset, and going against the beaten path. Anything that creates problems, opposition, or causes plans going awry, can be traced back to a bad boy somewhere.

The double thumps-up was pretty edgy in the 1970's

I could make a comprehensive list of all the bad boys in storytelling, but it would just be a list of every interesting character ever, and I don’t have that kind of time. I can give an example of a character that doesn’t make bad decisions though. If you have ever seen the Star Wars prequel movies you may have noticed these characters called Jedi. They don’t make any bad decisions, and it shows. Try to watch one of these characters (wait, a character need feature and traits. How about people… no that implies personality. Um, how about specimen. I think that has the right cold emotionless feel to it. Anyway) specimens for more than 30 seconds without yawning so hard that your soul flees the abyss of boredom that your body has become. Sitting around and talking in a calm fashion is not interesting. You know what is interesting? Flipping tables. Bad boys flip tables.

They are all holding laser swords and yet they still look boring

You may know bad boys by other names, such as loose cannon, rascal, scamp, rogue, or scoundrel. You may recognize these as descriptions of many, many famous characters from books, film, and all other forms or storytelling. Good boy are too busy staying home and working on the family farm while brushing their teeth twice a day to get a story told about them. Good boys do what is expected of them and don’t make trouble. Good boys are incredibly tedious and I’m already tired of talking about them.

Only a mom could find this picture interesting

Now if you still don’t like bad boys then you are missing out. They may cause a lot of problems, but they are also the ones who fix problems. You can’t solve a problem without opposing something. Bad boys can be traced all the way back to (and past) that first proto-human who stepped out of the trees and into the savanna. Some good decision making monkey was probably say “Look out, there are lions and junk out there”, but the bad decision making man just said “Whatever dude, if you need me I’ll be throwing pointy sticks at zebras”. What I’m trying to say is that we wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for bad boys. I would at this point like to make it clear that bad boys includes females, it is just that the term alliterates, and is therefore more entertaining to write with (sorry about that).