Five Interesting Phobias that I Didn't Make Up

Part of the joy I find in writing paranormal and fantasy fiction is the freedom to explore creatures and places not of this world. This opens up the ability to stretch the imagination a bit and do what I love the most—make stuff up! But in my research for my stories, I’ve discovered that often reality is stranger than fiction.

What Makes a Good Villain?

When I’m crafting a villain who plays upon the deepest fears of my characters, I strive to make one who is more than skin deep. I want the reader to be just a little sympathetic to my villain while he strikes terror into the heart of my heroine and/or hero. The process is often referred to as avoiding making cardboard characters. I like to think of it as the whole villain you love to hate.

Phobias Can Be Stranger than Paranormal and Science Fiction

Since my stories are often laced with laughter, I often like to find emotional and/or quirky methods of combat outside of blood and gore for my hero and/or heroine. In researching one of my stories, I stumbled across phobias. I realized that there were a multitude of them that I never heard of, some so unusual that it sounded as if someone made them up in a fictional story.

No Laughing Matter

Phobias are defined as an irrational fear or aversion to something, and as ridiculous as some of them may sound, they can cause true distress to the person affected by the phobia. Therefore, I don’t intend to make fun of anyone who might suffer from one of these unusual phobias, but I might occasionally utilize one or two in a story.

In fact, I used an angle on one of these phobias I listed below for a villain in a manuscript I’m working on. I’m not going to tell which one it is and ruin the surprise. I’ll let your imagination run wild with how I incorporated it into my character.

Five Interesting Phobias

1.     Ancraophobia- also known as anemophobia, is an extreme fear of wind or drafts. Apparently telling someone "Don't get blown away" is more of a concern to some than I realized.

2.     Aulophobia- an unknown, persistent fear of flutes. Luckily my daughter plays this terrifying instrument (to some) so if we’re ever faced with a villain with this phobia we already have the non-violent weapon of choice.

3.     Arachibutyrophobia- the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. As an avid lover of peanut butter, I’d be in trouble with this phobia. With National Peanut Butter Lovers’ Day this month (March 1^st), it seems that there would be a lot of unhappy people if they couldn’t indulge in this tasty treat.  

4.     Pteronophobia-the fear of being tickled by feathers. Seems that those old cartoons had it right all along when they pulled out a feather to battle their enemy.

5.     Asymmetriphobia- the fear of mismatched or asymmetrical objects. I’d never be out of ammunition for a villain suffering with this phobia. All I need to do is pull out the mismatched sock drawer in my laundry room to strike terror into the heart of the villain who suffers from this.

These are only a few of the odd phobias I ran across in my cyberspace searches. It seems that there is a phobia for just about everything.

What’s the Most Unusual Phobia You’ve Heard Of? 

Author Bio: Maureen Bonatch grew up in small town Pennsylvania and her love of the four seasons—hockey, biking, sweat pants and hibernation—keeps her there. 

While immersed in writing or reading paranormal romance and fantasy, she survives on caffeine, wine, music, and laughter. A feisty Shih Tzu keeps her in line. Find Maureen on her website, Facebook & Twitter

From the Archives: The Best Villains Ever

Veronica sez: One from the Archives today...I vote for Ming the Merciless myself:

So. Who's the best fictional villain of all time?

I know, it's impossible to answer, but it's a great conversation starter. In fact, next time you find yourself in an awkward silence with several people you have no idea what to say to, give it a shot; it's clutch. 

What I love about this subject is that it gives us a reason to scroll through our internal Rolodexes of awesome movies and epic novels, a chance to remember and relive those characters. Pennywise the clown scared the sh*t out of me. I was twenty. I never looked at drains the same again. 

But does scariness make a villain great? For some people. I put up the question to my FB crew last night in preparation for this blog and got so many novel, witty and contrasting answers that it made me think. What makes a villain great...to everybody? One of my best friends came up with a great line that I told him I was going to steal. Jesse DeStasio commented, "The real menace comes from having a part of us slightly agree with them [villain]." Isn't that true? Colonel Jessep from A Few Good Men comes to mind for me, but there are so many others.  

Maybe it's because I was such a wuss when I was growing up (everything gave me nightmares) but I liked villains that were scary but...funny. One of my all time favorites is the Kurgan from The Highlander movie. He was this huge, scary-looking, predatory immortal who could only die if his head was cut off, but he was funny in a grotesque kind of way--leering and blunt. He had personality; I can still hear his deep, gravelly voice and I saw that movie several eons ago. 

It was pointed out to me by Mr. DeStasio (he takes his movies seriously, even had a list of this very subject in his phone already to go) that the Kurgan's flaw is that we can't sympathize with him. Maybe so. But he's still one of my favorites. 

Then you got your creepers. Javiar Bardem's character in No Country for Old Men anybody? He was good. Quintessential Darth Vader? Hans Gruber in Die Hard? Lord Foul in the Unbeliever series? I could fill three pages and I bet you could too, but there's a secret ingredient that they all have, an overlapping theme that ties them together. Ready for it? *drum roll* 

They all evoke emotion. 

They make us feel. Whether it be fear, anger, outrage, horror, fascination, dread--take your pick. Without emotion, a villain is just a car without an engine. A guitar without strings. Captain Crunch without the crunchberries. And that's no good.   

Here's some of the votes I got last night:

1. Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (never seen)
2. The governor in The Walking Dead (I've only seen the first season)
3. Maleficent in Maleficent
4. Vincent in Collateral Damage (never saw)
5. Smurf Cody in Animal Kingdom (never saw)
6. Heath Ledger Joker in The Dark Knight (I saw this one!!)
7. Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs
8. Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter
9. Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest
10. Wicked Witch of the West Wizard of Oz

And of course, in keeping with the theme of Here Be Magic: Sauron

Feel free to add. :)

Afflicted with wanderlust at the age of seventeen, Steve has lived in seven states, served briefly in the U.S. Air Force as a Pararescue Trainee, and has a profound aversion to mint chocolate ice cream.

Author of the Last of the Shardyn trilogy:

Book I  Drynn, 

Book II Through the Black Veil

Book III Blood Sworn

How the Villain Stomped on My Outline

I outline.  In the world of writers, I am a plotter, not a pantser, an architect, not a gardener.  For the most part I follow my outline, though the story usually stretches and grows as I go along and new, juicy ideas are added.  I’d never really run into the well-known phenomena of a character refusing to do as I wanted—until Soul of Kandrith.

After having written book one, Gate to Kandrith, I knew my two main characters quite well.  Lance may have grumbled a bit, but neither he nor Sara gave me any serious trouble.  All was going along swimmingly until my villain, Nir, the high priest of the God of War, strode onto the scene.  He snorted with contempt at my neat little outline.  “That wouldn’t stop me,” he said, and he stomped it flat.  His actions wrenched the storyline into a much darker place than I had originally intended to go.

When I sat down to do the second draft, I made a note to myself: “Make this less dark.”  And I tried, I did, but Nir dug in his heels and refused to cooperate.  I eventually conceded that he was right, that it would be out of character for him to act the way my outline dictated.  And the darkness and peril made the storyline more compelling.  Furthermore, I came to realize that lightening the darkness too much would take away from my themes of slavery and sacrifice.  So I let it be. 

So when you reach that section, just remember it wasn’t my fault.  It was Nir’s.  Blame him.  Hate him.  And cheer when he gets taken down at the end.

 The conclusion of the Kandrith duology

Lance is a healer and wielder of slave magic, a power that demands sacrifice. He gave up his health to gain the ability to heal others, but he's powerless to cure his beloved Sara, who sacrificed her soul to save Lance and all of Kandrith. Returning her soul would negate her gift, at the cost of his life and the freedom of his homeland.

Now Sara is but a shell of the noble, spirited woman she once was. All that Lance saw and loved in her is gone, but he refuses to give up on her. Charged by his sister, the ruler of Kandrith, with a mission to encourage a budding rebellion within the aggrandizing Republic of Temboria, he leaves with Sara in tow. But not before Wenda's soulsight detects a spark within her.

Amidst the escalating dangers in hostile territory, Lance will have to risk both his beloved and his homeland in a final gambit to save them both…

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