I bet you thought I was gonna do my little Welcome to 2014, here’s my one rinky-dink goal for the year and dip out, didn’t you? Oh ye of little faith…

See here’s the thing: I’m earnestly doing rewrites right now because the other voices in my head—the ones you don’t know about, the ones who don’t let me sleep or take control of my hand during boring ass conference calls and draw themselves or the ones who have big plans like “Make me an action figure!” or “Remember that graphic novel? There’s the thing called Comixology where we can post for free…”—yeah, those folks won’t shut up. But because I’m knee-deep in making Come Hell or High Water ready for you, my bright-eyed, bushy-tailed wicked little readers, I tend to approach the world through the lenses of my characters. And right now, I’m living La Vida Lucifer—I’m going to apologize in advance for whatever else happens on this blog.

Antywayz, in 1984 Anna Mae Bullock AKA Tina “I Did It First, Beyonce, Stop Dick Riding” Turner asked a quintessential question: What’s love got to do with it? Well apparently a lot: I was going over some of my old posts about villains (which I do just for amusement) and realized there was a nice segment of them whose villainous exploits were triggered and maintained by good old-fashioned L-O-V-E. I mean, these cats did everything from boiling bunnies to becoming immortal…let’s take a look:

First up, Alex Forrest. You remember her, doncha? She’s the only reason (for real) you know who Glenn Close is (because, seriously, it ain’t because of Damages). She and Michael Douglas had a hot and sexy, stolen rendezvous and one of them caught the vapors. I won’t ruin the surprise but “someone” broke into “somebody’s” house an put their pet rabbit on the stove. And that was just to get his attention. Your girl tried to ruin his life and marriage, faked a suicide attempt, and finally came at him with a knife and my man’s wife shot her.

That’s just the first one on the list. It doesn’t really get any better.

You got Gaston from Beauty and the Beast fame. Now his crimes in the name of love aren’t so bad: when Belle spurns his advances, Gaston has her father committed, leads a torch and pitchfork assault on the Beast’s castle, and shanks Beast in the back while your boy is trying to save him. This is a Disney cartoon. While I am not a fan, Gaston does have a pretty hilarious Twitter account.

But wait, there’s more!

Disney came back with another damaged soul for us to examine. Davy Jones CUT OUT HIS OWN HEART AND HAS AN OCTOPUS FOR A FACE! You need me to say more? Fine, Davy Jones is the ferryman for purgatory, taking souls between life and death, so he could kick it with his woman, Calypso. And when she didn’t show up one day in 10 years, my man imprisoned her in a human body and started destroying people with a giant squid. And he cut out his own heart and put it in a box. I mean damn.

Maybe it’s a stretch but have you seen Gollum? This cat has a 3-hour segment on My Strange Addictions because he has a passionate love affair with a ring. And oh did he let himself go! Smeagle killed his best friend, started eating raw fish, goblins and people, lost his teeth and his hair, and declared war on the sun (you know he needs SPF 3000). He gained a split personality and was so in love with the ring, he tracked it for 60 years (in a loin cloth!), bit Frodo’s finger off, and dove into a volcano to save it. And it wasn’t even alive…

Shit, even the finest show on television is a victim of the same thing: Walter White AKA Heisenberg is driven to set up a meth lab, commit numerous murders—he poisoned a woman, set up automatic weapons in his trunk, orchestrated the killing of 9 people in 2 minutes in prison, blew half of Gus Fring’s body off, and ran over 2 people with an Aztek. Y’all this was a highschool chemistry teacher. But he loved his wife and kids.

But love in the villains worlds makes folks do some otherworldly stuff. Look at Dracula. In the Bram Stoker version, my man loses his woman and curses God enough to become a blood-sucking immortal. Dracula outlived everyone he cared about, ate hundreds of other people, killed the entire crew of a ship commuting to London. And then created an entire race of people who, worse than Gollum, can’t have sunlight (except him), can hypnotize people, make somebody eat rats, turn into bats, wolves, and fog, and can’t be killed by normal means.

I’m gonna end this with my main man. You know I’m a Darth Vader fan. You know this. Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader over love. He gives up everything he knows, betrays his friends, kills a bunch of kids, tries to kill his teacher/ace so he learn how to live forever so his woman won’t die. Then he turns around and chokes her out, loses her anyway, gets burnt to a crisp, tries to kill his son—twice, tortures his daughter, and blows up a planet. This is the worst case of PW in cinematic history.

I’m gonna wrap this one up a little diddy from the J. Gelis band that sums it all up. Catch ya next week!