If We Were Villains Study Guide

Melanie Rio was born in Miami and raised in North Carolina. She is a lifelong actor and lover of Shakespeare. At age six, she acted in her first show. She read her first Shakespearean play at age nine. And at age 12, she drafted her first novel. After earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rio went on to receive a master’s degree in Shakespeare studies from King’s College London and a PhD in English literature from the University of Maryland. Her dissertation explores notions of madness and early modern representations of mood disorders. If We Were Villains, which she wrote and revised while in school, is her first published novel. Her next work, a novella entitled Graveyard Shift, is expected in September of 2024. Rio currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Most of the events of If We Were Villains take place in 1997, with Oliver and Colborne’s conversation taking place ten years later in 2007. While Rio doesn’t explicitly reference any historical events, it’s useful to think about the 1990s as the backdrop for the relationship between Oliver and James. In this period, two policies regarding the rights of gay men and women were instituted. President Bill Clinton’s 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve in the military and banned their harassment—but it also banned service members from being open about their sexuality. Openly queer service members or those caught engaging in same-sex sexual activity would be discharged (typically “undesirably” or “dishonorably”). In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed, legally defining marriage as between a man and a woman and preventing same-sex couples from claiming spousal status for federal benefits. Both policies reflected and influenced public opinion to some degree, embodying the popular sentiment that both gay people and same-sex relationships should be kept as “under the radar” as possible.

Like If We Were Villains, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) follows a group of actors who perform Shakespeare’s plays as they untangle their complicated relationships with one another. Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) famously follows the two minor characters from Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet as they react to the story unfolding around them. Like  Rio’s novel, the play explores themes of fate and agency, but from a much more satirical perspective. If We Were Villains is often cited as an example of the “dark academia” campus novel. Other books in this category include Donna Tartt’s cult classic The Secret History (1992) and R. F. Kuang’s historical fantasy novel Babel (2022). V. E. Schwab’s Vicious (2013), another example, contains quite a few elements in common with those in If We Were Villains: “platonic” roommates, obsessive interests, and the deconstruction of character archetypes are all present in the novel. It’s even partially narrated 10 years after its main plot. Rio’s novel references many of the works of William Shakespeare, but it inspects the four tragedies that the characters act in during their fourth year at Dellecher most closely. These are Julius Caesar (1599), Macbeth (1606), Romeo and Juliet (1595-96), and King Lear (1605-06). If We Were Villains is currently M. L. Rio’s only novel, but her novella Graveyard Shift is forthcoming in September 2024.