VILLAINS - Don't be a lazy fuck

Villains! You either love them or hate them. Their entire foundation is to evoke some kind of emotion from the audience. Whether it’s horror, hatred or shock, if a villain can pull a reaction, they are a success.

But in a world of Moriaritys and Megatrons, there are creatures created with less deft hands that leave their intended audience scratching their heads in bafflement. If they do create an emotional response, it’s typically of disdain, if not outright mocking amusement.

“Bad” villains! No one really likes them, and if they don’t leave an impression, the story/roleplay session is absolute shite. Nothing ruins a story like a fucktarded antagonist.

But what are the earmarks of a crappy villain? How can we know when we’re confronted by a horrible villain character?

Luckily for you, dear reader, I have a pool of people to ask for ideas and personal encounters with shitty villains. I picked their brains, and they presented me with a bevy of applicable traits. With zeal, I present them to you now.

• Overt stereotypes – We don’t need them. No one needs them. If you have to rely on some cliché, maybe you shouldn’t be making a villain.
• Overuse of tropes – Having a trope or two to “elevator pitch” your character is all right, but if you have an annotated list of tropes that describe your character, what the fuck. Just stop.
• Ridiculous half-breeds – This is a given for any character, at its heart. Quit splicing everything together into some anatomically-incorrect fuckbasket. Half-demon, half-vampire, half-dragon, half-rakshasa, you cannot merge them all. You’d get a misshapen, gelatinous mess.
• Lore-fuckers – If you cannot find a feasible reason for your villain to go against long-established canon, don’t do it. I know villains tend to be antithesis to their creed or race, but that’s no excuse to completely mess with lore in order to produce your cuntweasel of a villain.
• SUPER LONG MONOLOGUES – It’s classic villain taste to occasionally go the way of the exposition. But if you War and Peace that shit, yeah, get out.
• Lack of evil deeds – Not much of a villain if you don’t accomplish anything, are you?
• Too much socializing/The Barfly – Telling heroes how much you’re going to vex them while swilling a Cosmo does not a villain make.
• Cheesy catch phrases – Unless you’re The Monarch, you need to fuck off with this.
• Super florid speech – You are not Iago. GTFO.
• “Talk big, walk small”/Bad Ass But Not – You threaten, and talk, and yammer, and spout, but when it comes right down to it, you’re the Little Debbie of the villain world. As I’ve said before, if you have to tell everyone how hardcore you are, you’re really not. And if you can’t back up your villainous oration, you can get back to the queue for the Tea Cup Ride.
• No background – WHY WOULD YOU EVEN GO ANYWHERE WITH NO BACKGROUND?!
• Lack of common sense – It’s not all that common, sadly.
• A dumb name – Snidely Whiplash works because he’s Snidely Whiplash. You are not Snidely Whiplash. Don’t even try.
• Overpowered/never lose or accept defeat – There’s no point in playing something if you expect to win all the time. This actually goes for all players, hero and villain (and anti-hero and vigilantes, etc.) alike. There are times you will not win. Invoking the Sue to metagame or godmode is righteously screwed up.
• No motive – See what I said about “No background” above.
• Telling everyone you see what your motive is – Why would you broadcast your heinous evil? You may as well just handcuff yourself or fling yourself into the Fires of Mordor.
• Labeling yourself as a villain – Why? Why? You just –  I mean – what’s the point?
• Has a “weakness” for love – What you can’t see is the expression I’m making. A real villain does not go calf-eyed over the twat he’s trying to kill. Maybe he’ll think of fucking her, but love? Ugh. Go sparkle somewhere.
• Moustache-twirling – That only worked in the old school Hanna-Barbera cartoons. You’re not a cartoon. Don’t do it. Caveat – if you’re an Old West card shark or debauched land owner, this may be acceptable. Other than that, not kosher.
• Situational “white knighting” – YOU’RE A GODDAMN VILLAIN. I DON’T CARE HOW NICE HER TITS ARE, YOU LEAVE HER TO DIE TO THE LIONS/FIRE/UNDEAD.
• Crappy accents – Just No.
• Unwilling to work on an Out of Character level with players – The cooperation between players makes for the best stories and plots. If you can’t talk to the people you’re attempting to terrorize, you may as well go wank off to your own shitty fanfic.
• Forcing actions onto players – So you’re playing a sadistic rapist. All right, but that does not give you the right to make the other player roleplay out an actual attack if they do not consent. Something that offensive and victimizing does not need to be done if the player is not comfortable with it. Having some empathy goes a long way.
• EVEN MOAR POWERFULLER FORM! – Okay, so you lost to the heroes. That does not give you the permission to whip out another, stronger version to resume the terror. That’s akin to a child’s “Nuh uh! I can control X, Y or Z, you don’t win!” Gracious losers get better reputations, which leads to more interactions.
• No weaknesses – Go choke on a dick, Mary Sue. No one wants you around.
• No audience approval – If people don’t like your villain, they’re not going to want anything to do with you. If you have done nothing but all the shit I’ve mentioned, people are not going to form a bond with your villain. They are going to make fun of it and throw rude gestures. Your interactions depend on your character, and characters that produce good emotional reactions in other players are the ones people want to continue being around.

Villains are not easy to make. They’re even worse to try and wriggle into plots. There are fine lines that should NEVER be crossed, and you should always be conscientious of them. Take a look at what makes a villain successful in media, and you will get ideas as to how to play your villain to success.

Professor Moriarity, Megatron and Magneto are excellent villains because of the traits they espouse. They are calculating, secretive, charismatic, cut-throat and have managed to carve out their own niches. Their reigns of villainy are long and marked with extraordinary schemes that catch their opponents flat-footed.

The Dursleys, Dolores Umbridge, The Joker and Loki are awesome at pulling emotions from their audiences. The best part about them, and the other aforementioned, is that each of these villains believes that what they are doing is right. They don’t see the wrong in their actions; they are acceptable responses to various stimuli. We as observers know their actions are wrong, but in their hearts, they are the protagonists. They are doing what needs to be done.

Characters like Dr. Horrible and Ozymandias straddle the rift between protagonists and antagonists (which is another ball of wax entirely). Dr. Horrible longs to be a villain (and join Bad Horse!) because he sees the wrong in the world. He knows it needs to be fixed, but it cannot be done glad-handing and following oppressive laws. Ozymandias, too, sees what is going wrong, and through his great intellect, understands that prolonged warfare between the countries of the U.S. and Russia would result in many deaths and greater tragedies. They took the hard option. They did what needed to be done, regardless the outcome, or blow to their reputation.

Those are good villains. Those are the men, women and things that serve as the drives for wonderful stories. There’s no joy or excitement in the hero being handed everything on a silver platter. They should have to work for it, against a capable and believable aggressor force. And it is your responsibility, as a villain player, to create that challenge and meet your opponent on a field not strewn with misapplied tropes and horrible accents.

I am 90.6% sure that other players enjoy having to work for their victories, and appreciate a well-presented villain. That last bit takes into account crazies who write crap concepts and run around with Mary Sues. It’s an awful percentile, I know, so don’t be a part of the 9.4%! WRITE A DECENT CHARACTER.

QUICKIE #3 - Exceptions

Online players like to state that there are certain concepts they don't want to interact with. Here's an example I ran across in Champions Online.

PLEASE NOTE: I will not play with you or acknowledge you if you are playing a demon, werewolf, elf or vampire. Play a different game more to your liking.

Okay, never mind that CO lore actually has canon instances of demons, werewolves and vampires; the Red Banner Gang has a quest where you're stopping them from summoning a demon, and the Vibora Bay zone is teeming with vamps and weres. Elves can be questionable, however it's not difficult to find a decent reason for them to appear in the CO world. But, in listing concepts you're going to outright ignore, without gauging the caliber of roleplay, you're doing yourself a disservice.

There are plenty of decent players who have concepts within those four. Yes, I'll be the first to admit that people can play them wretchedly, and they should be ignored if they can't be helped, but -- what the fuck, mate.

It's a super hero game, I'm sure you'll say. Those concepts don't belong in a comic book, super hero world!

I beg to differ. And here are canonical examples of comic book characters of those particular concepts! (It took me less than five minutes to find all of these. Pfft.)

Wolfsbane!

Malekith the Accursed!

Etrigan the Demon!

Vampirella!

So. Um. Yeah. I mean, you're entitled to your opinion, just like I (sure as fuck) am, but you could at least have a cognizant and feasible reason for not bestowing your majestic attention to certain people. End of day, though? You're screwing yourself out of roleplay.

GENDER - Stop being a bitch

Gender in the internet age is a funny thing. We’re redefining it on an everyday basis, throwing out old rules and penciling in new ones. Regardless where you encounter it, it remains an important fixture in communication and interactions.

Within the gaming environment, it serves as a giant, glaring beastie. Given that most games were tailored to a male audience for the longest time, the advent of the “girl gamer” as been a hot button issue in the recent past. There are websites and blogs a plenty about the mythological creature, jokes and memes and everything else under the sun.

But does it really matter?

In roleplaying scenarios, the greatest joy is being able to portray a character the player isn’t. In gender roles, this could be a male playing a woman, or vice versa. Given the predominance of males in roleplaying games, it’s not uncommon for that female Night Elf to be puppeted by a chap. In fact, the common joke is that “there are no women on the internet”, and that every female player one encounters is just a man in disguise.

The anonymity inherent in the ‘net makes this all too possible. People masquerade as something else, even on an out-of-character level. I’ve experienced it myself; a close friend from back in the day initially introduced himself as a girl. It was only after some time and a buildup of trust that he came forward as a young gay man. So for me, the “Big Reveal” isn’t all that surprising. People will go to any length to put out what they want people to believe.

This brings us back to the “girl gamer” cliché. The spectrum of flavors is numerous, but there’s one in particular that gets my goat like few things. The girl gamer who focuses on the “girl” part. I’m sure you’ve run across them, they’re not hard to miss. They make sure you don’t miss them.

(Use of “girl” is due to laziness more than anything. I’m not going to politically-correct myself. Fuck that noise.)

They are the players that make a great big deal over the fact that they are “real girls”. They understand the mystical power of female genitalia on the (typically) heterosexual male gamer populace. They go to any length to assert their femaleness over their friends, to the point that any goal or accomplishment they achieve is sullied by their gender. It should not be a bragging point, that you’re a female and you did X or Y and ha, look at how cute you are pwning some n00bs.

No.

These are players, especially in roleplaying games, who trade in hard currency their gender, rather than their talent. Their abilities to improv and story-tell is overshadowed by their tits and ass. Their cute, provocative “selfies” get more attention than the background stories of the characters they play. Because, really? They spend too much time telling everyone they know that they are really female (really!), than putting a well-thought out character with an interesting back story.

They abuse their gender to get their way. They use it to escape situations where normal repercussions for inappropriate behavior would see them taken down a few pegs. They assert their femaleness to drive home their side of the story, even if it has the truthfulness of the National Enquirer. They are a female, so therefore they deserve special treatment.

Mind you, guys do it as well, but they’re not conditioned to use their gender to one-up their opponents. However, in female-dominated games (as you may see in non-MMOs, like message boards or journal games), the “token male” is often given preferential treatment. I’m not a misandrist; it’s still annoying as fuck whenever someone makes a big deal about their gender.

It seems more common, though, for female gamers to play the gender card.

Which brings me back to my earlier query – does it actually matter?

We’re fucking roleplayers, people. What should matter are the characters we play and the stories we make. Backgrounds and tiny details to shape a character into more than a two-dimensional run-down of tropes and stereotypes. Having fun and making epic tales to reminisce about later on.

I don’t really give a fuck about the four hundred pictures of you that you’ve plastered all over social media. I don’t want to hear about all the “wild and crazy” things you do outside of RP time. I won’t pander to you if you’re having a bad day because your iPhone has been shit, or whatever other superficial shit might’ve happened. You’re pandering for attention.

If genuine awful shit has happened, I’ll offer sympathy. But if you, as a player, are more important than any character you roleplay, then you’re hollow. Shallow. Why are you even playing? Aren’t the character and the story supposed to be more important?

And especially, don’t fucking hide behind all the idiot males you’ve managed to shanghai when you fuck up. If you’re going to behave poorly, screw people over and cause drama, expect and accept responsibility and the fall-out that will happen. Don’t escape behind your feckless man-army. Cowardice is not an attractive trait in anyone. And if you spend actual time trying to fuck over someone’s game time because you feel slighted due to not getting your way, don’t expect me to do anything but laugh when it blows up in your face.

I believe in player equality. I don’t offer special treatment based on gender. I will behave the same towards female players as I do males. I generally only care about gender so that I use the proper pronoun when referring to said player. I care about the character you play. I want to see an intriguing and evocative concept. I want to feel inspired by your wordplay and details.