Things apprentices are no longer allowed to do

Mr. Big here. I'm back and things are settled.

This list is, of course, entirely hypothetical. Were any of my apprentices to do these things, dire results would be in store for them. Hypothetically.

1. Apprentices are not to kidnap superheroes without their mentor's permission.
2. No diet soda spills on my DVD cases.
3. Apprentices shall not make personal use of the expensive knockout gas being used for another caper.
4. No prisoners shall be made to wear costumes which make them sexually uncomfortable.
5. Prisoners shall not be forced to take part in any re-enactment of a children's cartoon.
6. Villains do not publish "Chained Heroes" calendars featuring heroes in any state of undress, and prisoners shall not be told they must pose for such things.
7. Prisoners shall not be forced to watch romantic comedies or "chick flicks" for more than 4 hours, even with "close supervision".
8. Apprentices shall not take selfies with prisoners in the background.
9. Selfies with superhero prisoners in the background are not "photobombs".
10. Apprentices shall not videotape "dance-offs" with prisoners.
11. Prisoners shall not be coerced into participating in "dance-offs" using threats of a hostage's safety.
12. Posted videos including anything on this list or other similar nonsense shall not go onto the villain's primary YouTube channel, and belong on their own channel or as a private video.
13. Comments shall always be disabled for all YouTube videos posted by villains or their apprentices.
14. Apprentices are not allowed to use tears to garner sympathy from their mentors.
15. Apprentices do not have the last word on what is or is not fair. The world isn't fair.

The normal guide will resume shortly.

Why hamminess works, and why experienced villains abandon it

I talked yesterday about "bad" dialogue, hamminess, and so forth. I said something that apparently surprised a few readers - ham works, some of the time. So let's get some definitions on the table, kids.

Hamminess is the act of imparting superfluous drama to your words and actions. There's a lot of reasons for ham, but that's what it is at the end of the day.

Drama is the creation of tension over what's being done and to whom. You watch movies, attend theater, and binge-watch shows on Netflix to find out what's coming next and to see it happen. Even if it's terrible things happening to characters you love, you're still drawn into it.

Tension is the mental desire to resolve an uncertainty. Will the bomb go off? Will your characters escape the blast? Will John marry Marsha? All that bullshit. Stories are interwoven blobs of tension that - hopefully - pay off at the end.

In short, ham is a shortcut to attention management. It's like adding spices or seasoning or extra butter to a bland meal - it's unhealthy, but people will chow down on that shit anyway. It's the pointless action sequence or love scene meant to keep asses in seats during the movie, because nobody will watch the thing otherwise.

So why does ham work? Because people like the tension, and they especially like the payout. People love it when their lives produce drama that wraps itself up neatly for their entertainment. Even if what they're being fed is pablum, they'll lap that shit up.

Ham is important because there's two very different narratives going on. Say for a second that you're robbing a bank - a cliché all its own, but what do you want? If you've read my guide and planned your robbery out in advance, your internal narrative goes something like this: "Walk into the bank - lay down demands - demonstrate powers to ensure compliance - seal the door if possible - get civilians and security to disarm and lay down - collect loot - assume manager pressed the panic button - assume cops are on the way - start internal timer for typical police response time to this location - finish looting - get away using powers or previous arrangement."

That's not super dramatic. That's just a checklist of items that you've worked out and are running through in your head. There might be some unknowns, like "superhero shows up unexpectedly", "cops arrive early", "teller is a superheroine in disguise", or whatever, but you just jump right to "run away" in the event of something you're not prepared to handle. You do, right?

Anyway, remember that there is this other narrative running through the heads of everyone else in that bank. "By Odin, a supervillain! He's masked! He's going to kill us all! My will isn't made out. My kids are at school, they're in danger too. Is he after me? What does he want?" Sure sounds scary, doesn't it. It might have variations like "I've got this pistol, maybe I can be a hero and get that pretty teller girl to like me by saving everyone" or "I don't get paid enough to be security on this gig, so I'm going to lay down like he says" or whatever. But in general, most people's heads are not filled with the same story that's going on in your head.

Here's another true fact. People feel better when the expected thing happens. If people are expecting you to be violent, be violent. If people are expecting a calm, methodical shakedown of the place, do that thing. Your reputation, the mood of your chosen city, and a bunch of other factors play into this. But until you know those things, you do know two things. First, that you're a supervillain. This comes with a ton of baggage all its own. And second, you're committing a crime.

This is where ham comes in. Supervillains are bright, loud, and theatrical. That's our overall reputation. So start with the ham. "KNEEL BEFORE <your name here>! If you value your lives, deliver your goods! And open that vault, or I'll rend it asunder with my <your power here>!" That sort of business. This is unconvincing against professionals who've dealt with villains for awhile, but it works wonders on civilians.

This also explains why ham falls out of favor as you get more experience. First, your capers become more sophisticated, and put you into a different crowd of people. Those people can see through the ham, so it doesn't serve its intended purpose. A thing that becomes useless in the capers you're doing should be discarded. And second, your own reputation and personal style will become more and more distinct, as should your public speaking skills, meaning that ham is no longer necessary to cover that deficiency. You will have a reputation that you can play on, and you'll have the experience to know how.

Rules for Villains: Large Ham, hold the restraint

I was asked by the supervillain Mole Master about the role of cliché quips. While I talked earlier about presentation and showmanship in general, I can go into more detail here.

As a refresher, your primary goal as a supervillain in a social situation is to control your audience and keep them from being too much of an obstruction to your real plans. Very few people achieve their real objective by just standing around talking, unless you count Congress. So let's look at what monologues, dialogues, and verbal wit can do for you.

Control of information

Sun Tzu says, "all warfare is based on deception". Deception is the dissemination of falsehoods or half-truths. Or to put it another way, deception is the control of information. How does your opponent get information? By watching you, but also by listening to you.

What do you want to deceive your opponent about?

The nature of your plan. The easiest way to do this is not to tell him. The more cunning and subtle villain will explain the wrong plan. The cleverest villain will explain the plan and lie in such a way that the hero tries to stop the wrong thing from happening - or actively aids the villain. Not saying anything requires no special skill, so we'll focus on misdirection.

"Die Hard" is the canonical example of this approach. Hans Gruber needs access to a vault that's sealed with an electromagnetic lock, so he tricks the FBI into shutting off the power by telling them that he's got hostages and wants prisoners released. His brother performs a similar act of misdirection in "Die Hard With a Vengeance". The "Mission Impossible" and "Bourne" movies offer similar tricks, but from the hero's perspective.

The easiest way to get good at this is also the most time-consuming: actually plan out all the details of two capers. The first is the one you want your enemy to think you're doing. The second is the one you're actually doing. At every point, think of what you're doing, what could go wrong, and so forth. Then for the fake caper, write some dialogue between yourself and a hypothetical hero, or the police, or whoever you expect to be there. Set it aside, think about something else for a day or two, then come back and re-read all your dialogue. Does it still hold up? Does it give anything away? Can you improve it? Repeat until satisfied.

The purpose of this planning is to come up with specifics. People will be convinced of just about any kind of bullshit if you sound like you know what you're talking about, and the way you do that is to provide specifics. For example, it's common for newbie supervillains demanding money to ask for it in "non-sequential bills". This is obviously a correct thing to ask for, and it gives the appearance of competence and experience doing heists. It won't save you if you actually don't know all the other ways money can be tracked, but if your goal is to sound convincing, it's good.

Your next move. The feint is a traditional tactic. The verbal feint is just a variation on this theme. Your best ally here is expectation - what the hero, the cops, and the crowd think you're about to do. This depends as much on your reputation as your actual caper - a violent villain will be expected to make violent moves. Play up expectations with appropriate dialogue, then do the unexpected.

How well you're doing at carrying out your plan. Your ability to project overconfidence, underconfidence, or confidence in the wrong thing is crucial here. Your ability to emote - to act happy, sad, frustrated, fearful, or whatever - is more important than word choice, so this requires a lot of practice.

Tools for deception

Hamminess. If you saw "Star Trek" and remember Captain Kirk, you have seen ham in action. Same with the 1980 "Flash Gordon", with Brian Blessed as Vultan the hawkman. Ham is overblown, ham is spectacle, ham is panache.

Ham is the tool of choice for two types of villain. The first is the newbie. Someone who's starting out and can't emote deceptively can use ham to mask that weakness for awhile, because the loud bombast is distracting and that's good enough. The second is the experienced villain who's naturally hammy. If ham is in your blood and you've been at the game for awhile, you can get away with it. Most villains abandon ham after they get some capers under their belt, but a few come back to it.

Puns, quips, and word play. Intentionally bad verbal tricks are used to defuse tense situations, lower stress levels, and impart a theatrical air to an otherwise-scary caper. Being able to rattle off funny quips on the fly is definitely a skill that requires more time than I have to teach. As with a lot of things, the key is to practice and keep working.

Like a good caper, a good quip must be used sparingly and not repeated when possible. George Carlin threw away his material and wrote fresh acts every year. He said there's three levels of comedy: funny, funny with good ideas, and funny with good ideas and compelling language. For villains, "good ideas" really means "things I want to make people believe", but otherwise the rules of comedy are a good start when writing such things.

Threats. This is the opposite of verbal humor. Where the intent of corny dialogue is to lower stress levels, a good threat is meant to raise it, or to convey a feeling of menace even when you don't really intend to hurt anyone. This is the tool the veteran villain uses to keep cops at bay, or make the hero question his own actions.

The problem of threats is that they have to be followed through once in awhile or they lose their power. Threats of violence, especially, can lose potency once you become any sort of known quantity to law enforcement, unless you actually do hurt people. Threats against property are far more lasting, and far less problematic to carry out.

Rules for Villains: Power loss

Villains should always, always have a Plan B. And if possible, a Plan C, if their powers desert them.

Jamming and Jacking

Here's a scenario probably none of you are preparing for: you're doing a heist, you're about to get away, and suddenly.. the power leaves you. It feels like shock, the oxygen draining out of your tissues. Suddenly you can't run fast, or fly, or whatever you were planning to do. And none of your other powers work. And there's someone watching you, and smiling really scarily.

What has just happened to you is how about 10% of all villain captures a year take place. Power nullification, or "jamming", is a really obnoxious thing to have happen. But it can and does happen. How do you get out of it? Preferably by having escape routes that don't depend on your powers being active at the time. Oh sure, you can use them beforehand to arrange it, but a hidden getaway car can't be jammed.

How do you deal with it? It depends entirely on the abilities of the jammer. Sometimes you just need to get out of range. Other times your body's metabolism will get rid of it naturally, and you just need time.

The worst thing to deal with is the subset of jammers who acquire your power at the same time - called jackers. If you've been jacked, all you have is your natural healing factor to protect you. If you are lucky, you'll have more familiarity with your powers than the jacker. A few paranoid villains, or ones with a dedicated jacker hunting them, carry their own countermeasures around with them. I can't stress enough how unwise this is unless you actually think you'll need them - but if you do, it's the smart thing to do.

Remember how I said earlier that athletic skills like parkour and martial arts are important for any villain? This is one of the reasons.

Loss of Confidence

Powers come from your body and mind. Like anything else, from doing math to having sex, performance anxiety can rob you of your abilities temporarily. New villains who rush to do their first caper without practice and planning sometimes get so scared that they lose power. Well, at that point the cops just come in and bust them, obviously.

There's nothing to do about this but practice, train, and psych yourself up beforehand. Get in the spirit of being a villain, get that mindset firmly in place, then go do your caper. You'll feel incredible. Psychologists call this experience "flow".

If you lack this, there's probably not a lot you can do on the scene. Afterwards, of course, you should be incredibly motivated to get practice. But "afterwards" in this scenario is usually "in jail", so don't go in without feeling ready!

Mr. Big's words of wisdom: proper preparation prevents power problems.

Rules for Villains: Identity

Some people treat villainy as a full-time profession, others as a hobby. A few people dive off the deep end and go full villain, taking it on as their full time identity. That's fine, but here's a few things to remember. Some of them you really should know by now if you're in the game.

First, a word on super-biology. The super mutation is something you get if your mother had the potential for it. The father doesn't really enter into it as far as science can tell. But, if your mom had the potential, all of her kids will have power too. Let me tell you, this discovery really threw a monkey wrench into countries where giving birth to girls was frowned on - and it's probably going to topple a few regimes after a few generations of super-girls come into their powers. There's a ton of opportunity here for the right sort of person. But I digress.

Second, family is a weird thing. Parents are something more than human to their kids already, and siblings can fight for years, or feel responsible for each other, in weird ways that defy explanation. I'm no psychologist, I've just seen it happen too many times to think it's a coincidence.

Third, as you progress up in stages, your lifespan will get longer and longer. Conservatively, a Stage 2 super has an average life expectancy of about 150 years, and a Stage 3 has twice that, and so on up. I want that to sink in. You may be young now, but you'll stay young. If they're telling stories about you now, they'll be telling stories about you in decades and you probably won't have changed a bit.

What does all this have to do with identity? Simple. The lesson here is: if you have living relatives, protect yours. Don't use your real name. If your real name is really cool, sorry, but think of something new anyway. Wear a mask, or a full-concealment helmet or something.

Who remembers those headlines from the 80s? "Eastern European super-baby factories raided". That stuff. Let me tell you what happened there. I wasn't in on that deal, but I know people who know the real score. Some supers' mothers and sisters were being abducted from their very homes and taken to other countries, and forced to give birth repeatedly. The kids were going to be brainwashed into super-powered drones. That didn't happen, because people got wise and raided the whole operation.

Every villain reading this today should be grateful that happened, too. This stuff is pretty dark for everyone I know. Plus, if that had run its course, I don't think modern villainy could exist. We'd be facing some kind of crazy military crackdown on people with powers. But everybody reading this should also remember: it can still happen, maybe on a smaller scale, but it could happen and might still be happening. So even if you don't give a shit about your family personally (you heartless jerk!), you should care because it could still affect you.

Aside from that whole unhappy chapter of history, super-siblings may decide to come after you. They'll have some misguided ideas about "bringing you back" or "making you remember the good times" or whatever convinces them that you need "saving". Or they might decide to try following you into villainy. Sometimes this is cool - provided they aren't useless. Often it isn't, and you are stuck with someone who idolizes your style but gets in the way of you doing your thing. Nobody wants that.

And remember what I said about longevity? If you get stuck in one of these situations, it will probably be going on for a long time. And I mean a long time. Don't let it happen to you!

Mr. Big's words of wisdom: protect your identity, for the sake of your family or at least your own sanity.

Rules for Villains: Presentation and showmanship!

Villainy may seem easy to the new super. Go out, rob a few banks, go to Vegas and spend it all, rinse and repeat. You can do that, sure, but do it more than a few times in the same way and you'll go to jail. True villainy is a calling - you're a bandit, a stage magician, an entertainer, a celebrity, a cad, and more. America loves its rebels, and that's you. The best capers are ones that don't require you to interact with people, since every spectator is also an unknown variable, but sometimes you have to. And let's be honest, sometimes the attention is gratifying.

So today I want to talk about presentation and showmanship - how to make an entrance, how to make an exit, and what to do between the two. This has nothing to do with escape routes or the practical problems of villainy. Instead, this is all about style. Every villain has their own style. You'll develop yours as you go.

The essentials of stylish villainy are appeal to pathos and stress management. When you engage in an act of villainy, you're doing more than just profiting. Often, you need to secure cooperation from the people on the scene, and so you're also working to get bystanders to be sympathetic to your cause. You need to be the person in charge of the scene. You usually achieve that with fear, but you can't make people so afraid that they'll freeze up or try to resist you.

Pathos is appeal to the audience's emotions. You do this through several ways in rhetoric. Not all of them are valid for acts of villainy, so let's review the ones that are.

Humor. This is sometimes difficult for inexperienced villains to pull off, so my advice is: don't try unless you know you can do it. It's a fine line between making the crowd appreciate the humor (black or otherwise) of their situation and seeming like a clownish buffoon. An example of the former is the bank robber Tellurian. He had a knack for looking at someone and announcing what he thought they were thinking from their facial expression. He spun stories on the fly while draining the bank vault, and when questioned by police, more people remembered the stories than pertinent facts about the robbery. An example of the latter is Beaver Boy, a would-be jewel thief who burrows into stores. He's, frankly, ridiculous. Nobody takes him seriously, even though he has a legitimate power, because he tries to clown around and he sucks at it.

Visuals. Eye-catching effects are both a great distraction and a great attention-getter. Prefer your powers or control of the local environment over something gimmicky. Only go with the really corny stuff if it's big - quantity has a quality all its own.

Delivery. Patter is vital. Vocabulary is crucial. Seriously, defraud someone of a dictionary. Thieve a thesaurus. Check YouTube for videos of Singularity in action. She was amazing, simply unparalleled in her ability to monologue. Practice some speeches in front of a mirror if you have to. Join Toastmasters.

Surprise. You can build up a lot of social momentum by opening with a surprising move. You don't want explosions or anything immediately dangerous, just something that holds the attention. Peoples' attention flows like a river, and you want to bust the dam and get the current flowing.

Passion. You have to care about what you're doing, and it needs to show. If your heart isn't in it, people won't care. Before you can convince anyone else you're serious, you have to convince yourself.

Competition. For you to hold the attention of the crowd, you need to eliminate competing influences. The tall blade of grass gets cut, and you need to be ruthless in applying your lawnmower. If someone decides to make a stand against you, you need to restrain them in the fairest way possible. The idea of fairness is really critical here. Don't "make an example" of people. Just make it clear that anyone who gives you trouble will be dealt with, and deal with everyone the same way.

If you can master these elements, your audience will be receptive to your program, and may even appreciate the spectacle. Everybody likes to be part of something larger, and you're giving them the opportunity to do so.

Stress management is related to pathos in some ways, but it's different enough to warrant its own discussion. Basically, any overt act of villainy will cause stress in observers. Your job is to channel this stress into productive channels - things that help you.

Members of the crowd will respond in one or more of these ways:

Fight. The civilian will be argumentative, assertive, and possibly difficult to deal with. A skilled villain can sometimes get these people to direct their aggression against each other, or some other threat, rather than you. Like water, anger flows along the channels of least resistance. If you don't feel confident of your ability to manage such feelings, though, ignore these people unless they directly get in your way. If a hero is on the scene, they become his problem, not yours.

Flight. The civilian will try to get away from you. Good - unless your plan requires the cooperation of a crowd (and why would you make such a plan without guaranteeing the crowd's reactions?), this is perfectly fine. The civilian stays safe, you have one less variable to worry about, and you can go about your business.

Freeze. The civilian will freeze up - become unresponsive, stop moving, curl up into a ball, whatever. This is probably okay, but between this and flight you'd prefer flight. Point such people out to any heroes on the scene when you need a distraction.

Fawn. The civilian exhibits friendly behavior toward you. Their reaction to stress is to ingratiate themselves with you. This is what a lot of people think of when they hear "Stockholm Syndrome". This reaction is the most annoying of the four to deal with, and hopefully you won't have to.

Some studies say that males and females differ in their reactions - that males tend toward "fight or flight", while females tend toward "tend and befriend". My experience is that in a given crowd, the individual reactions are far more important than their genders. Mostly your goal is for nobody to move, for nobody to get hurt, and for nobody to get in your way.

Stress management, as a skill, involves doing the things that will provoke the most favorable reaction. Visualize stress flowing like water, with you directing the flow of it through your actions. Too little stress, and the crowd won't respect you - and then you'll waste time dealing with them. Too much stress, and peoples' panicky reactions dominate the scene, again forcing you to deal with it.

So in short: you want to open with a surprising entrance, take charge, raise or lower stress levels to keep the crowd pliable, and engender sympathy if or when you can. All in all, not an easy thing! But doing it is the hallmark of a true master villain.

Rules for Villains: Death Traps

Alright, you've beaten up your nemesis. You want him dead, hopefully for a good enough reason to ignore my previous advice. There's just one problem. Remember how we said that the superhuman body reacts to near-lethal levels of damage by evolving defenses against it? That happens if you can't muster quite enough force to do the job instantly. Unless you totally curb-stomped the hero, you probably can't get through his skin or force field or whatever even if he's down. What to do?
Yes, that's right, the death trap!

I know what you're saying. "Mr. Big, that's so cliche. The hero always escapes those in the stories." Yeah, stop right there. Those stories are written by people who like the hero, so of course he escapes. I'm talking about the real world. Listen - if you lower a multi-ton pressure plate onto someone who isn't made of iron, he's going to die, plain and simple. I've lost count of the number of stupid villains who just decided to get a gun and shoot the hero, only to advance some Stage Two vigilante or Stage Three lowbie into the big leagues. Not only do they get thrashed and go to jail, but they leave this mess around for the rest of us to clean up. You guys know who you are. Cut that crap out.

There's one other thing working in your favor here. If the trap fails, you put a guy in a death trap instead of just atomizing him or something really lethal-sounding. The same cliche works for the public - they'll tend to discount the seriousness of what you were actually attempting. You'd rather look like a loony than a murderer to these people.

Here are the things you need to know about death traps.

First: The trap needs to be specifically designed to apply overwhelming levels of lethal force. I know you're all dying to try out your genetically engineered shark hybrids, or throw the hero into your smelting vat, or do some kind of wacky experiment. No, no, no. I cannot stress this enough. For example, who remembers the hero Magnum? He died, but his reporter girlfriend got tossed into a quantum furnace. You know what it did? It pushed her straight to Stage Four. The idiot villain who pulled this move is behind bars, and deservedly so. The trap needs to apply a huge amount of injury, quickly, before the body can recover.

Second: The trap needs to be geared for the hero's weakness, assuming he has one. If not, gear it for the hero's strongest defense. Again, I know what you're thinking. "Mr. Big, we want to kill the guy, not tickle him." Remember something really crucial here - his body is done adapting! If he was strong against fire before, that's about as tough as he's going to get if you do it right. And if he's specifically weak against fire, remember that he's weak because of his adaption. His body made itself this way.

Third: You shouldn't need to be around for the trap to work. In fact, you should get the hell out of town. Here's why: if it's going to kill him, it'll do so without your help. Unless your own abilities are powering the device, it'll work just fine on its own. Why leave then? He might escape it, sure. But if he does escape, where do you want to be? In the vicinity of an angry superhero who maybe even went up a Stage because you can't create an effective trap? Or in the next state over?

Some villains want to gloat at this point. Resist the urge. If you're totally sure that this trap will work, then ask yourself the important question: why is the hero still alive to begin with? If you weren't able to get him before, maybe you're wrong now. So just keep your mouth shut. You can always say a few touching words when you crash his funeral. Save the wit until then. If you really can't resist, at least take some time to polish it. Don't just improvise - work on it and rewrite it until it sings, then record it and have it played back automatically.

Some villains want confirmation that the trap succeeded. You need to have a level of confidence during the planning stage that it will, or you should avoid the attempt entirely. But if you absolutely want to be sure, station some video cameras and have them broadcast a signal. Wires can be traced, and you don't want to broadcast anything back which could lead people to your safe location. Not everyone has the electronics savvy to set something up like this, so again, don't do it unless you're confident of the results! That said, understanding surveillance electronics is a good general skill to have for a villain, so do try to take a class, or buy some books, or something that'll teach you how it all works.

For my money, the most interesting traps involve industrial machinery. This might take a little bit of travel depending on your home location, but scout out your city for abandoned buildings with machinery in them. Check out the power supply - sometimes they're still on the grid by accident. You can arrange a few backup elements of the trap, like a fuel-air explosive or bombs scattered around a factory, just in case the main elements aren't enough. Again, the key ingredient to a good deathtrap is a surge of overwhelming damage. If you're using bombs or other devices on a timer, make sure you have them scheduled properly.

Rules for Villains: Set phasers to "Stun"

Good villains never go for the killing blow. Good villains never try to really kill the hero off, except in special circumstances which we'll talk about later. Good villains fight and run away, because the first rule of villainy is: don't kill.

There's different reasons to pull your punches, depending on who you're talking about. Here's the breakdown.

Killing civilians: This is a big no-no. Unless you are completely crazy, you can threaten them, you can intimidate them, you can menace them or take their stuff, but you don't kill them. Oh, you want them to think that you could, because your threats will ring pretty hollow otherwise. But using your powers already escalates the severity of your crimes, and a dead stockbroker results in a very unsympathetic jury.

Killing cops: Also a big no-no, no matter how annoying they are. Cops are a fraternity. If you kill one of them, they will all come after you.

Killing supers: This is the biggest prohibition you need to worry about. You might think "but Mr. Big, if I kill my heroic nemesis, my problems are over!" That's a lie that noob villains tell themselves. If you kill your heroic nemesis, your problems have just begun.

1. First, most importantly, you just killed a guy! What did he do to you to deserve that? If it was self-defense, and you picked a hero as your nemesis who you knew was likely to use lethal force, that's your mistake. Go back and re-read the introduction. If not, then you're still a terrible person. The best heroes are the single biggest source of entertainment for a good villain. If your hero isn't giving you the time of your life, one of you is boring. Find out which, and fix it.
2. Second, unless you killed the last hero on earth, there will be more. And they will come for you. You think cops are a close-knit group? Superheroes are tighter than spandex.
3. Third, unless you are some sort of world-breaking badass, odds are excellent that you'll fail anyway.

Why would you fail?

It's time for a biology lesson, kids!

All superpowers emerge from a single source, as far as anyone's ever been able to prove. Some people call this a "mutation". The truth is really a lot scarier, but I'm not going to talk about that here. The important thing is that it happens in stages.

Stage 0: this is a normal, mundane, factory-sticker human being. Some supers, like the vampire variants, can change this, but for the most part, if you're born at zero, that's where you stay.

Stage 1: this is "latent". You have the potential to develop powers. This stage lasts between one to three weeks after you're born, depending on whether you're a Child of Eve or a Child of Lilith. Not sure which one of these you are? It doesn't really matter, but basically you're a Lilith if you're an ugly monster and an Eve otherwise.

Stage 2: this is "potentiated". You're stronger, faster, smarter, or all of the above, than a regular human of your age and upbringing. Most of those brooding vigilantes of the night will be at this level, because they can't fly or shoot lasers or anything. They're more of what they already were, but they don't have actual superpowers yet. Their healing factor is pretty good but not amazing.

Stage 3 and above: this is where it's at. You have some specific power. You have a healing factor which is pretty impressive. If you're reading this guide, this should be the minimum level of power you possess. If not, sorry, but you're going to get curb-stomped by a real hero.

How do you go from one stage to the next? Stage 1 to 2 happens automatically after birth. Stage transitions after that happen when the body is subjected to life-threatening injury. The mutation will rapidly evolve to keep you alive, and to deal with the original problem.

But here's the thing. All supers at stage 2 have a healing factor. It just gets stronger as they go up in stages. Which means: if you badly hurt a super, and it's not enough to kill him, you just made him tougher.

I cannot emphasize how central this is to the rules of villainy. You don't want a tougher hero, do you? Of course not! So don't do anything that would cause it to happen!

Mr. Big's words of wisdom: Shoot to stun, have your fun. Shoot to harm, you've bought the farm.

Rules for Villains: Picking a good name

I cannot stress how important it is to pick a good villain name.

There's five classes of villain names.

First: the scary name. If you have scary powers, maybe that's okay - people will know what you're selling when you give them your business card. But for the rest of you, grow up. If your name talks about "Blood", "death", or "war", and your powers can't walk the walk, go home and rethink your choice.

Second: the corny name. In the old days, people had some really ridiculous names. Why? They didn't think about other peoples' reactions. They'd say the name in their head and go "oh, that sounds good". A quick trip to the playground of any grade school and half an hour of the kids' time would have shown them how graphically their choices could be dissected and mocked. These days, things like Twitter and Brickwatch are daily reminders that how something sounds to other people is important.

Third: the obscure name. I don't care if you name yourself "Terror Incognita" because you teleport your victims to a distant wilderness, the literary reference will be lost on 80% of your audience. Maybe you're okay with that, but expect people to get it wrong or slap you with a nickname you dislike.

Fourth: the generic name. Do you have any idea how many Children of Lilith take a name like "Ogre" or "Crusher"? If you're going to squat on a name, be prepared to fight very hard to make it your own. Try something like "The Oakland Ogre" if you must - that way, you can at least tap into some civic pride. It sounds unlikely, but a shout-out to a city, a sports team, or things like that will get a lot of civilians on board with your program.

Fifth: the good name. Reminiscent of your powers, easy to remember, not so pretentious that people need to take you down a peg with a nickname, and unique. I hit on "Mr. Big" after a lot of searching, but I'm lucky in that my powers are relatively rare. I've known bricks that went for years without coming up with a winner. But you know what? Sometimes, that's okay.

If you're really stuck, just go out and do your thing. Don't get talky, just show up, make some threats, smash some cars, steal some jewelry, whatever. The press will label you. If not them, some genius on the Internet will come up with something. If they pick a winner, use it! It's not like they can sue you for stealing their idea - you're a villain, remember?

Mr. Big's words of wisdom: Don't be a geek, pick something unique.