This week I’ll be rambling about the villain of my writing adventure: Iralis B. Maxwell. So many questions, so little time to sit in the dark with my laptop and write. Let’s begin, shall we?
The story of Ira and how she began starts all the way back in February of 2019. I was so excited to write, to shower the world with my endless knowledge of characters and their attributes. (If anyone actually cares about my character’s favorite foods you can put it in the ask box.) I found out rather quickly though that no one really bothers with your story and your characters when they’re just 2D edgelords in a crime-filled world where it’s always raining. (Unless you do it right, and make it incredibly funny and enjoyable.) So what did I do? I went back to the core of it all.
First off, I didn’t really have a villain to begin with. Close Your Eyes was a villainless story, and that simply wouldn’t do it for me. My cast needed a reason! A bastard to fight! So I created a character named Gray, who was rather short and mean and hated everyone simply for the heck of it. They just seemed so dull, and reminded me of a garden gnome for some reason. Of course, being the first draft didn’t help Gray be very appealing either. I was back to square one after trying for two months to make Gray fit into the world of CYE. They just weren’t the right person for the job.
One day, while discussing the villain character with my best friend over text, I was hit with inspiration so fast it was the brainstorm equivalent of being run over by a semi-truck and then dunked in a pond still half-iced-over from last winter’s big freeze. I named the villain right then and there and pretended to my friend that it had been their name all along.
Ira, a wonderful unisex name, means watchful, (although in the character’s native tongue Ira is a nickname for Iralis, which means “little dragon”, a great description for her) which was a nice clear quality to start with. From there, I added a love of coffee, a mixed-race heritage, a personality made up of both roses and thorns, and a slightly obsessive tendency to try and please her best friend in hopes of something romantic blooming. This somehow melded well with this character’s hatred of Willum, her competitor at work, and her passion for fixing things. I don’t know exactly how all of it came together, but it did.
So now, we’ll try to discuss how and why Iralis B. Maxwell is the “villain” of CYE. She cannot be blamed for most of the core problems that the people of CYE face. She simply can’t. It’s not her fault that Wither escaped from IRIS and its not her fault that Deema suffers from night terrors. Although she is the villain, Ira is not heartless, and she is not evil. She can’t even really to called a villain. That role better fits Wither, but Wither cannot be called a villain either in her child-like innocence and fear of crying. So the burden of the title falls to Ira, and Ira alone.
The last thing I’ll attempt to ramble about is what makes Iralis tick. She doesn’t exist just to spite her co-workers. She has her reasons, just like everyone else. Her motivation for her work as an executive supervisor at IRIS is to fix the things that are broken, the teams that don’t work and the projects that have fallen apart. Her impulse to please Cora and be deserving of praise stems from a lifetime of telling herself she is not worth the air she breathes and the space she inhabits. Ira’s entire presence in CYE derives from the fact that she plays the part of the sad, twisted creature that learned from her mistakes and grew past them, but is yet twinged by moments of weakness.
All in all, Ira is my favorite character, and by far the one I have spent the most time developing, with eight-plus months of work put into her design, personality, and place in the worldbuilding of this hot mess I call a novel.
So have fun with this long post, kids
