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In chapter 11: Things have changed.
Excerpt from the cached version of a now-deleted blog post from blogger “dustinastorm”.
So, there was an interesting thread on a discussion board the other day about why anyone would choose to be a supervillain. Really, it started with the question “why would anyone decide to commit a crime when you know there’s a Superhero on patrol?” Some discussion later brought it around to Supervillains at least have an excuse because they could potentially win a fight against a Superhero. And then the discussion turned to why anyone would choose to be a Supervillain.
Okay, but why would they?
There are a few theories. One is just that people with superpowers can decide to be criminals the same way people without powers do. Honestly, that’s the one that rings the most true for me. Some people are just going to take the shitty way out, y’know? If you can phase through walls, or hypnotize people into doing what you want, maybe robbing a bank seems like a really easy way to make a living.
Another theory is that it was inevitable as soon as we started having Superheroes. Most people who like this theory refer to it as filling a vacuum, and reaching equilibrium. That merely by having Superheroes, there have to be Supervillains, because… honestly I don’t know. This one doesn’t make much sense to me. If it was inevitable just because some bad people got powers just like some good people did, then I’d get it, but that’s just rehashing theory one.
Theory three is maybe even more out there, and yet it makes more sense to me than theory two. And that comes around to the age-old stoner-faux-philosophy debate of “like, who decides who’s a villain, man?” But really… how much of our definition of Hero vs. Villain is in the branding? At least a few people have pointed out that we don’t really have many “freelance” Heroes anymore. Honestly, the old Defenders of the Light, before it was the kind of corporate entity it is now, were almost the closest thing we had.
There’s sort of a sliding scale from good to bad that goes: Hero - Antihero - Vigilante - Villain.
Heroes, and even the sort-of antiheroes like Corridor, are almost always part of one of the big organizations. The biggest one regionally is the Defenders of the Light, of course, but then there’s the more widespread “League of Princesses” that encompasses a large number of heroines over the entire country.
Vigilantes, like the former and founding members of the Defenders of the Light, are independent, but are regarded as being barely above outright villainy… despite the fact they are pretty much completely retired, and were genuinely heroes for years.
So why is it that when Heroes leave an organization they seem automatically to be shuffled out of the Hero box, regardless of whether their actual actions have changed?
And back to that question for everyone who took a class on moral relativism: Who defines villainy?
( Chapter 11 )
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