like, pretend your villain isn't terribly empathic or something

This is a think piece, in case you miss that.

Sometimes I wanna sit and write out all the stuff I would've done in your place kind of thing. Like, lemme show you how to be a better sneak, a sharper thief, a wittier manipulator, a more cunning liar, a farther seeing revenger, a more thorough getting even thinker. The fail I see others stumbling through drives me crazy.

The key to all great successes is simply don't tell anyone. If you have to tell someone, anyone, then you aren't ready for the big leagues. If you can't stand holding it all in and need to spell it all out or you'll pop, you're not that terribly serious. You might still be dangerous and whatever, but you ultimately fail in evil villainry.

You can't have cult followings or pyramid schemes and be ultimately successful. You might be a terribly evil genius, yes, but you will still ultimately fail. Because someone knows.

You are the only one who can know. If anyone ever traces anything back to you for any reason whatsoever, that is fail. If you go blabbing, it's uber fail. If you actually organize, that's so facepalm fail that you wind up being the example of how to fail.

Needing to spill is the greatest weakness.

Conversely, using spill to bait, using truth and vulnerability to snap the trap, and please understand I don't mean being fake vulnerability or acting here, but literally allowing yourself to be stabbed in the back as part of the revenge, now that is heritage cognac level evil villainry.

And let's be honest. Half of you reading this just compared notes, and the other half thought of people you fear. We're not talking about Penguin level leverage and fail here, although I'd love to get hold of a few writers and shake them. We are talking every day people. Everyone holds a grudge, and half of you want to do something about it.

So the key to success is staying quiet. Winning is the actual success. Define what winning is. This is where I am so keenly disappointed in most people that I can barely take anyone seriously. Winning isn't about squashing someone like a bug. Winning is about quietly creating what you'd really like to see happen. People who succumb to thinking that bug squashing means happiness and freedom are pathetic losers and don't deserve to win anyway. Winning is about fixing the problem that creates the bugs in the first place. You don't want a bug? Turn that whole person or situation into a not-bug. Don't make it someone else's problem. Make it not a problem at all.

I know, some of you are actually thinking about killing, maiming, or at least making someone cry as a solution. NO. That's not the solution. The solution isn't about removing or screwing with anyone or anything. Winning isn't about making everything else around it worse. Your scope of vision is far too narrow if that's how you are problem solving.

The whole reason this came up is because I keep running into successions of writing prompts, writing tips, writing memes, writing flaws, and so on ad nauseam. Everyone has the answer to how to make a better villain in a story. The problem with stories is that villains lose. Even if they are winning big for a very long time, they still lose.

The biggest writing fail of our times is making the villain lovable, giving the villain an out. Villains come to their senses, they are seduced by cuteness and some kind of love, they are just sad stories at the core like the rest of us. They are human. NO. A truly evil despicable villain is so unlovable, so broken, so ruined and cruel and obnoxiously loathsome that no one could ever really *care* about that person in their wildest dreams.

Case in point, Gollum. The very best you can do is barely take a little faint pity on the guy once being a simple soul. The rest is pure foul hatred that there is no coming back from. He would never dream of taking on an apprentice, like Palpatine does. The Emperor is a doddering grandfather compared to Gollum. Let's see Palpatine pull off the biggest power heist of the universe with no Senate support, and no Force. Nothing stopped Gollum, and dang if he didn't actually have the Ring back by the time it was over. The Ring itself couldn't stop him from utterly annihilating it with his twisted love.

It's cute to make villains adorable or fashionable or something fondishly cool to be a fan of, like Pixel. Why are we doing this to stories nowadays? Why are villains doing Disney showtunes? Why is Luna Girl the kind of brat we all dream of being deep down inside?

Writer gods forgive me for slamming tips back before I'm officially published, but if you can't Khan your villain into some level of unforgivable, I just can't myself. I can't read or watch stuff that has me feeling warm fuzzies for the super villain without the entire story caving in. If I'm hoping the villain wins, it's either because the story is some genre of mockery or the story is that bad.

Draw a hard line over which your morals don't step around your villains. Make your villains so hateable that no one ever forgets them. Drop the cute and hurt yourself writing what the hell happened. Some of us are out here depending on you to stop slathering evil with fun bathtub coloring soaps. And glitter. Stop that.

Evil needs to be evil. Because that is what evil is. Anything less is propaganda. Something to think about.

we are number one

I flashbacked most of the day Tuesday. Much of it was like being back 20 years ago.




I didn't blog back then, and struggled with one real friend at a time, when I even had a friend. I had very little social introspection and very limited social assessment skills.





I've worked very hard since then to understand intellectually what I didn't understand intuitively. Because of this experience, this life, I know that changing one's perspective is possible, even being neuroatypical with dx perks, but it greatly depends on dropping judgmentalism (social engineering) and rigidity (personal comfort zones, i.e. ruts).


I've said before that it all boils down to selfish vs selfless, embracing the them with us, owning how we affect others, and deciding who we want to be by the way we handle incoming knocking us down over and over.

It's been tough, but I can see I'm in a much better head place than I would have been if I had taken the selfish route.


And staunchly believing in finding my own social fit saved me far more than anything.


I always hated my name. I found ways to function around the self loathing and I eventually found 'my people'. I love my niches, groups, gangs, fandoms. This one tends to abruptly disappear, but I relish it whenever I find it.


Supervillain. I will own you. Come hell or high water.

still thinking through my next Lexxperience post

Yes, we all know I have an evil villain thing. My biggest obsession over them is that they all make drastic mistakes. That doesn't mean I can't love them and learn from them, though.

Unreciprocated love is all good if you still win the game.


Using people is all good as long as you enjoy them.


Your ringtone mirroring your psychosis is all good as long as someone gets it. (It's cool if you have to spell it out anyway, as long as you win the psychosis game.)


Putting all that together into finesse is just plain all good.


Brilliant game playing needs to be appreciated. That is the flaw. I can't tell you how many times I've yelled JUST KILL HIM at my TV. No, they always have to stop and explain what they're doing. See, it's not actual winning that they want. I mean, yes, they want to win, obviously, and they are powerfully motivated to do so. It's just that something else sneaks in and next thing you know, they're self sabotaging with all this talky stuff.

Real evil doesn't waste time talking. And it certainly won't stand there politely listening until you're finished making complete sentences.

Winning the game is useless if no one is left to listen to you when it's over. Or love you. Or admire your skillz. Winning is hollow and sad and empty after all the sparkles have been used up getting there.

That's why I am a loser. And I'm going to lose really really big.

On a side note, I was wondering why the heck I couldn't find a big bottle of real vanilla anywhere. This is a big deal because vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world, and my very favorite. I've been known to pay $2 and more per ounce for the real stuff. Guess what- a 4 ounce bottle in my local Price Cutter is just under $10 now. It's nearly $3 an ounce right now at Walmart.

click to shop

You can check out price comparisons if you're interested. Yes this is laughably out of stock now, but it helps one appreciate what I'm talking about. ALL the big bottles are gone.

This says out of stock on one page but not on another. I've actually paid more for this stuff.

So. I'm buying store brand real vanilla because even though I'm super picky, I can't bring myself to hand over $5 for a tiny bottle (a few drops, if you think about it) of anything else. I'm sure I'll cave when this little bottle runs out because vanilla is one of the rare food pleasures I have left. I can still taste it properly (nerve damage) and I'm not allergic to it. (Hope I didn't just jinx myself.)

Vanilla is the kind of product that requires a hierarchy of evil villains to bring access to my area. (Well, according to some people, capitalists are evil villains, which I kind of embrace, and I'm sure there are a few despicable people/aspects to the whole industry.) The reason Walmart and Price Cutter are good is because it means I don't have to buy black market vanilla.

Yes, I'm spiraling down rabbit holes this morning. Nothing is organizing my thoughts beyond mild obsessions. Just worn out, I guess. I'm booked up in PT right up till Thanksgiving, so lots of running to town kind of stuff. I don't do sitting in cars well or lots of driving well. I commuted for so many years to college and work, 3 of those years were 60 miles one way. It's just not good when I go on autopilot while I'm thinking nowadays, I have to make myself pay more attention.

I'm struggling with evil villains. They're becoming too fashionable. Plus they've been so cuted up the last few years. Everyone loves a good villain, right? Actually, the whole point to being a villain is that no one loves you at all. Or if they do it's out of pure fear or their own psychotic weirdness, like the way Vigl loves Mantrid. Blurring the lines for family entertainment only creates a cushioned illusion for those not yet tainted with abuses in all their dark glories.


If that user or the vids there disappear now after sharing that on my blog, it'll only prove a point I made a couple of months ago. I don't care who's doing it, just saying that using me to hurt fans is lame. If this is a legal claim problem from a legitimate source, the least compensation could be reinvestment in new merch.

Moving on. Really having trubba moving on this morning. Another hour has passed, I'm wandering around the house. I have to leave in 40 minutes, egads. Need to get a jam on and walk away.

one of Terry Pratchett's Igors would be perfect

I've mentioned I love my Torch browser, right? I loved it treMENdously this week. In the middle of all my Walking Dead Bethisode review posting and in the middle of all that my rug washing and floor cleaning, I ran into a missing vid on one of my spaz posts and immediately launched sideways into a search through my flash drives. Yes, I downloaded it, thank goodness. I like a youtube vid, one click on my Torch bar and *bing*, it's on my hard drive. If you have a fave youtube or two that you would feel so sad if it went poof, you need a Torch browser. Long story short, I easily replaced the video with its own copy.

I just searched 'Spock browser' and got this. Too bad it's not a mockup browser for fun. It's also too bad CBS and Viacom aren't friends with Netflix or we'd be getting a Star Trek series reboot by now.

I swear, I really did watch Dark Shadows in there, too, just like I tweeted. And worked out, like I didn't tweet. And made caramel sauce for apples. All the while I have wrestled with what to do with a business faux pas because

I need a personal assistant so badly...