Erin Keyes is a junior pursuing a bachelor’s in studio arts. Keyes has taken a three-week course at Bobbi Brown Cosmetics and hopes to have a career as a make-up artist focusing on gore and sci-fi, two genres they find fascinating. Working past the stigma of Asperger’s has been an important facet of Keyes’ life.

Where do we start?

I’m transgender and non-binary, which means I am gender-fluid but with a masculine center. That’s me, and I prefer the pronoun ‘they.’ That’s what being queer means to me. I wish I could have the choice to appear feminine some days and male on other days, but I don’t have that choice because I have a feminine body. I can’t really get out of that unless I have a surgical or hormonal thing done … that is going to be my next journey in my transformation. Everyone transforms… your life story is about finding you.

When I look at you I don’t see someone self-conscious.

That’s due to the fact I have been working so hard to accept who I am and it goes back to acting…when I was in high school. I learned how to do facial expression because with Asperger’s and autistic disorders, facial expressions don’t really fall into the natural equation that makes up the person.

I’m hyper aware of the unstable pedestal that I am on right now. By that I mean how I can be accepted in society is really unstable. The only thing I have going for me is that I’m basically white… I’m neuro-atypical, I’m queer, I’m physically disabled because … I have hyper extension and hyper mobility which makes my knees really hurt.

As much as I wish I didn’t have Aspberger’s, as much as I wish I didn’t any of the physical things that I have, I can’t ignore the fact that they make me who I am. That’s something I still have trouble accepting; accepting me for me and loving me for me.

Talk about your take on villainry.

I find the motivation of villains to be the most inspiring. Ultimately, they have the motivation to get their villainry started before the hero swoops in and stops them. To have that indomitable villainous motivation is something I really internalize. When you think about it, you are the hero of your own story but you are invariably the villain in someone else’s story.

I’m probably the villain of a lot of cisgender, heterosexual, old white guy Republicans who basically are the most privileged in American society. You have to accept the fact that some parts of society will always view you as the bad guy. Sometimes you have to be that villain to them because they think they’re the hero when they’re actually hurting other people.

However, I don’t condone the acts of villains at all.

So you don’t appreciate the villain’s bad deeds – what is it you appreciate then?

The motivation they find within themselves to go to extreme lengths. That motivation is also found in anti-heroes, which are my favorite heroes. Normally I don’t like the stereo-typical hero who’s attractive and stands for all the good in the world. Those heroes are boring. If you find a hero that comes from a really dark place and has done some things that could be viewed as unacceptable in the past, but find it within themselves to work for some kind of good – those are the heroes I like – the villainess-heroes.

I also like heroes that are morally grey because we live in a morally grey society. There is no right, there is no wrong, there is no good, there is no evil. There are people out there that want certain things that they believe are the best for society and, therefore, themselves. Everyone has their own motivation.

Can you name your three favorite heroes?

Can I say four? Actually, I want to say five.

My top two favorite “Star Wars” villains are Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.

Emperor Palpatine is, I believe, the greatest villain to come out of science fiction. The scale in which he demonstrates his villainy is unprecedented. You look at any other science fiction franchise, a villain who has the capacity within himself to sway an entire senate and play both sides of a single war that spreads over years without revealing himself in full to either side – that is an amazing villain… and the greatest in terms of scale.

Darth Vader is one of the greatest villains in terms of motivation. He has been manipulated his whole life by Emperor Palpatine and the relationship they have mirrors the relationship Anakin had with his old master of Obi Wan. The way they are similar is that Darth Vader thinks he can one day take over Emperor Palpatine’s position when that isn’t feasible – the fact he can find it within himself to even offer his son Luke the opportunity of ruling the galaxy after all he’d been through is amazing… he also fulfills his destiny to bring balance to the Force again, showing there was still good in him.

My favorite “Star Trek” villain is Gul Dukat on “Deep Space 9” who embodies the concept of privilege. He thinks he’s God’s gift to the world and expects to be handed cookies for every good deed he does which really isn’t any good because he’s a huge part of an oppressive system… There’s a really unexpected thing he does at the end where he adopts the visage, via cosmetic surgery, of the people who he is oppressing to try to manipulate their religious leader. The sheer lengths he goes to achieve his goals are horrifyingly logical.

You see that every day here. You see people who say ‘hey, I have gay friends’ and expect people to view them as being not homophobic at all when they, in reality, probably hold a lot of harmful opinions. You see people who say ‘I like black women’; Dukat was infatuated with the Bajoran species which he had been oppressing. So we have white people who say they like black people when it’s really just a gross fetish.

Dukat also handed his people over to another villainess force called the Dominion. The fact he has no regard for his own people is another thing. He basically put his species on the road to its destruction. So he’s an amazing villain, too.

Another character who I really love on “Deep Space 9” is not a villain per se, but is extremely morally grey. That is Elim Garak, the tailor, or the spy. He is the fictional character with whom I identify most as a person because he’s in exile and lives in a world where he’s not appreciated as a person. He’s actively disliked by the majority of the station and isn’t trusted. Basically everyone is not necessarily wanting to get him, but may be an enemy.

That’s something that I live with every day. I look at people and know they are thinking thoughts that are probably harmful to others. There are people who take in propaganda and turn it on other people.

You can’t really trust anyone until you have got to know them deeply, so the fact Garak is in a world he can’t trust anyone because anyone could be an operative sent from his old spy order to kill him… is something I live with because I am a queer individual who has both mental and physical abnormalities; something that society, as a whole is not accepting of.

My fifth favorite villain is Scorpius from “Farscape” who is also canonically disabled, being a hybrid of the Sebacean and Scarran species. He had a lot of issues with his internal body temperatures and has to wear a coolant suit all the time. He has to replace these codant rods that screw out of his head.. it’s gross and I love it. The fact he has overcome his own disabilities and parentage to rise to the level of captain and commander in a society called the Peacekeepers which values purity over all else and will only let Sebaceans into their ranks… He’s a specter in reptilian black leather with a presence that is amazing.

Just knowing how much he’s tamed himself and how much he has to hide his heritage by being as polite as possible within the peace-keeper society mirrors my taming of myself, by not being so abnormally Asperger-ish to normal people. That’s what I admire in him: how he can inspire loyalty in others, who hate his entire being because he’s a product of an unwanted union… He’s basically everything that is an anathema to the Peacekeepers and yet he’s respected in that society.

That’s huge for me to see that, and to see how I can, too, improve myself and be respected by a society that is against a lot that I am.

A lot of Disney villains fall into queer stereotypes. So villains were my first exposition to queer representation in the media and that was huge in the discovery of my own queer identity. If you look at Disney villains, people like Jafar and Emperor’s Viceroy in “Mulan,” they are very feminine… Jafar has eyeliner and make-up and the king in “Robin Hood” is also effeminate. Scar is lovely and seductive. Ursula – her look was based on the famous drag queen Divine.

Villains are an unfortunate piece of queer representation because they are villains and are presented stereotypically, it is queer representation nonetheless. Even Governor Ratcliffe, perhaps one of the least feminine of Disney villains, has bows in his hair.

Also there are the single, spinster types you get with Yzma and Cruela DeVille, another queerish [aspect], too.

Villains have a transformation element to them. Making yourself into another being you weren’t at birth is an important theme; you don’t have to accept that status quo that was given to you at the get-go.

An awesome thing about Ursula is that she’s a shape-shifter and she chooses to remain in a corpulent, curvy, fat form. The fact she chooses voluntarily to be in that look is amazing because you don’t see a lot of fat people on screen… I knew that Urusla was bad news, but she had the confidence to be herself, when she could have chosen to be lithe and beautiful.

But my absolute favorite villain is the monster in Frankenstein… while his actions are unforgivable they were spurred because humans were crap to him because of the way he looked… his story is so what I feel every single day. I could genuinely terrify people in society just by the fact I am who I am. I can’t change that. I don’t want to change that, and I work on accepting who I am as I am.