Jeff Mach's Blog, page 47

The Normalizer

Finally, Villainy was eradicated, and all rejoiced.

And none rejoiced so much as the heroes, who had long awaited this day.

True, they had thought the eradication might come at their own hands. They had not expected it to be a matter of science and social engineering. But so it goes.

The main thing, the important thing, was that there was no more villainy.

And the superheroes had played a critical part. They had punched the Villains, and kept on punching them, for as long as it took to foil their many plans.

And this was Most Needful, for it took much time and much research to perfect the Normalizer.

The Normalizer was exactly what you would imagine from its name. You stepped inside the small enclosure, which was basically a box with steel walls, and a helmet descended upon your head. You could have avoided or ducked, but there wasn’t a lot of room in the box, and if the head-modifier landed on anything other than your scalp, the techs would send really high voltage through the thing, so you deeply regretted not simply sticking your cranium out and taking what was coming to you. The process was painful, and might be considered both cruel and unusual, but there was hardly a legislator in the land who was about to oppose something which Zapped the brains of monsters and turned them into Upright Citizens.

The Box could detect antisocial proclivities, and amend them. It was a very good fix for a very old problem.

Bank robbers became Bank clerks. Thieves became scrupulously honest accountants. Mad scientists became sociologists. Mind-controlling masterminds became game show sidekicks.

The Heroes told a lot of jokes about how they were looking forward to finally rescuing cats from trees and helping out at fundraiser car washes.

And to be perfectly honest, we really did enjoy that stuff.

At last, Society was free of The Maniacs, the nutjobs, the destructive jerks who kept everyone else from living happy, ordinary lives.

If you have already guessed that the next stage was to invite the heroes to City Hall to collect medals for their past service, and then, afterwards, to tell them each to step into the box…then you have probably met normal people before.

Being good is not a shield. Doing what they want is not a shield. The only real protection against their jealousy, their fear, and their pettiness is obedience. The only way for them to feel safe is if they are sure that they can control you.

 

What we found out on that day is:

They would not allow us to obey them simply because we wanted to, simply because it was important to us, simply because it was clearly part of who we are, and we had proven this for decades.  It did not matter that we had chosen the paths of heroes instead of doing other things with our powers and knowledge and abilities.

Once they had a way to make it mandatory, to make it impossible for us to do anything but what they wanted, there was no chance they would let us do anything else.

At first, we went willingly.

….well, maybe not all of us, maybe not entirely willingly. But many of us were volunteers by nature and by choice.  Plus, the most enthusiastic ones jumped right into line, and those of us with even a minor hesitation or two in our hearts, we were well in the back.

So we got to watch what happened as our friends came out, one by one. And we got to see how they looked at us.

They hated us.

They hated us the way all normal people hated us. The way they had always hated us.

Eventually, to a certain kind of mine, every freak in a mask is the same as every other freak in a mask, no matter what they did, or what they do.

 

I would like to tell you that I made a break for it, that I ran for Freedom, that I took the others with me.

But all I really did was hang back and mutter into my phone.

And I recorded this message for myself.

I couldn’t beat the ingrained habits of decades, couldn’t disobey, couldn’t act in a way wholly contradictory to myself. And even if I had somehow managed, in this brief moments, to become the kind of person who could strike down officers of the law and members of the town government, do some damage and harm, and free myself…even if I got away before they could force me into the box, they would still have all of my friends. They might not be my friends anymore, but we fought beside each other, and they were dear to me still.

You who hear this, you who were once me, I imagine you hate what you were. And that’s fine. Hate me all you would like, whoever and whatever you are now.

But a part of you remembers the look in the eyes of those who were once closer to us than kin. From the bits I know, and what I’ve seen, The process doesn’t seem to erase the entire memory, just alter desires and feelings.

So I want you to cast your memory back, and think of the look on the faces of those former Heroes, now ordinary citizens.

 

Think of what it means for those of us who were once heroes, and are now, like the rest of them, nothing.

Even though they are completely transformed, normal people will never forget that we used to be what we were.

They will not be content with have transformed us, to have changed us, to have tamed us, to have trapped us. No matter that it is a much more complete Victory, a much more complete destruction, than any that Villains wanted for us; more horrifying and invasive than vivisection.

They will not be content.

Someday, they will come for you.

You need to run.

You’re home. Probably dismantling the pieces of what once was our lair. Maybe the former tools of our trade are unimportant to you now, maybe you even hate them for what they represent, but pick them up. Pack a bag. You may hate me, but if you think about this, if you really think hard about it and remember, you know that I am right.

You might have weeks and you might have years, but they will not let you live.

Normal doesn’t have to stay normal. And this time, the choice is entirely yours. Stay normal, and die. Or remember what you were, and get the hell away. Now.

And maybe, just maybe, take some of them out as you go.

Just one or two.

Just to see how it feels.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post The Normalizer appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Scientific Attachment

I.

There are some weddings where you drink because there’s an open bar. There are some weddings where you drink because it’s a pity-invite from your ex, who wants you to know there are ‘no hard feelings’. There are some weddings where you drink because the company at your table is awful.

And every once in a while, you hit the jackpot, and you get all three.

Rashid was doing his best to ignore everyone and everything around him, behavior which is, at weddings, deeply impolite, mostly impossible, and largely the best policy, particularly if there appears to be any danger whatsoever that the band might play “Sunrise, Sunset”.

He made it a point to tip the bartender for every drink; this was both a mild inhibitor on how much he drank, and a rueful reminder to himself that, like many freelance journalists, he was about two weeks away from throwing away his press pass and waiting tables. This would have hurt his pride and harmed his ability to write on a regular basis, but probably would have helped him eat on a regular basis. The combination of too many trips to the buffet, and too few empty shot glasses, left him in a state of semi-sobriety which made him unable to completely tune out his table companions. They, in turn, were such a blazing battery of burdensome boors that it really, really made him question whether the bride hated him, a lot, even more than he’d thought she hated him—or whether it was simply that he, himself, was a complete and utter boor, and the bride could think of nowhere to put him where he’d cause less social damage than at a tableful of loathsome, uninteresting, self-obsessed idiots.

They were all scientists, he was a science-writer, and at least they all shared one commonality: they all hated science writers. Oh, not all scientists, and not all science-writers; but it might be uncharitably (and truthfully) suggested that the weaker one’s grasp of a field, the more one will defend its supposed ‘honor’ unto the death, hoping that in elevating the profession, they might obscure a few failings of their own. These were sloppy, angry, bitter scientists, scientists who had all wanted to do something else, but went where there was grant money, or, more accurately, went where other people got grant money and were desperate enough to pick up the dregs of the profession. And he was about as comfortable with science as he was with discovering live moray eels in his suit-jacket; he’d fallen into science writing as a result of a few decent articles which, if he was honest with himself, were really human-interest profiles of people who happened to do physics or chemistry. But now it’s what people expected with his byline; and nobody wanted to buy anything else he wrote.

He would later recognize (in his own mind, if not in public) that it was one of the Crashing Boors who first brought up the idea: “Why do scientists who work on catastrophes together end up getting married?”

It turned out that he was not the only bitter ex at the table, and the question had arisen in the midst of some extended commentary on the tackiness of the marital couples’ attire, choice of caterer, choice of hall, vows, and general personal habits. It was the sort of sloppily boozed-up snark which makes for good conversation among horrible people, and (having expended the remains of his cash on the biggest pour he could beg out of the beleaguered bartender) his memories of eventually joining in and, in fact, having quite a good time were not, in retrospect, his proudest ones. Or his clearest ones. He awoke the next morning with the kind of hangover which makes you wish someone had shot you the previous night, out of pity; and the kind of dim recollections which make you wonder why nobody had done so.

And still he had The Question.

II.

And it was a good question, something to keep it light following a succession of quite challenging events. It might be a good puff piece; and puff pieces were really his meat and drink. So directly after he’d thrown up some breakfast and poured a stiff Worcester sauce and soda with a dash—a drab—a splash—a fistful of whiskey—he got down to research.

It had been a tumultuous two years, and he had covered most of it; surely as much of it as he humanly could. Rains of fire, rains of fog, the absolute uprising of the Fortean society, madness simply everywhere, and if you want to talk about Stonehenge, don’t. And it had, indeed, caught the public’s eye that some of the couples were photogenic (for scientists) and also (it did appear) in love.

The wedding had been the Aliens couple, the ones who fought off that extraterrestrial attack which looked like it would be a big deal and then it was perfectly fine, minus a few thousand journalists dead.

He investigated further. The earthquake couple—oh, it wasn’t an earthquake when they got together? That part came next.

The City really only had a few top-notch scientists (I mean; how many would one expect?) and if it happened to attract an extraordinary amount of strange happenstances, it was, after all, a busy, buzzing City, a great City, a famous City; still, had anyone else ever suffered from a plague of mimes? Doctors Wesson and Winchester made a handsome couple, very fond of pie and bullets, though not simultaneously, and some might say that their solution to the mime-crime was elegant, if not without a certain cost in broken windows.

And looking at the records, from my dinky little desktop in my dinky little apartment…

We’d averaged about five more “unexplained but likely destructive events” per year than any city you could name. This looked suspicious.

Which meant it was excellent grist for the mill of an article about confirmation bias, a discussion of how you can take silly, if sometimes meaningful, unrelated things and correlate them together to wind up with the Kaballah, tax codes, and the rules for indoor baseball; each a series of peculiar and unlikely occurrences, all adding up to…nothing. It looked silly from the outside, and it was silly on the inside, and he could work with that. If there’s one thing readers of popularized science enjoy, it’s having a good laugh about the silly mistakes non-scientists make. Ha-ha!

It was a pity that the next event would involve him.

III.

Science fiction has tremendous predictive powers. This is sometimes attributed to the perspicacious, foresightful, free-associating high intellect of those who read and write science fiction; this answer is promulgated, coincidentally, almost entirely by those who read and write science fiction. The same types who point out depressing logical mundane explanations for otherwise exciting supernatural events have a rather simpler answer: if science fiction is out there, putting itself in the business of writing about weird possibilities full-time, it’s fairly likely that, over the decades, some of those things will come about, in one form or another.

Still, the appearance of a large, amorphous, absorptive being one could only describe as “blob-like” seemed ridiculous, and Rashid had high hopes that he was witnessing a hoax. Part of this was because he didn’t want to attempt to learn the restructuring of biology necessary to fit this occurrence into our current understanding of how things work; part of it was because the blob-thing was between him and escape, and was heading towards the knot of terrified diners.  (All Rashid had wanted out of the day was a cup of coffee and a slice of pie; he’d had only half the coffee, and wasn’t quite awake yet. It does make sense that a hungry creature would head towards restaurants; it was only every other thing about this which made no sense. A blob? Like in the movies?)

The rescue was quite anticlimactic, which is, honestly, how most of us would prefer them to be. If we’re not actually living in cinematic universes, we’d probably like our deliverance from likely death to be as simple and devoid of excitement as possible. Nevertheless, Rashid saw it with his own eyes, and he went home, not quite full of gratitude, rather more full of the question of, “Why would a pair of chemists happen to be carrying tasers?”

IV.

Hiding information in plain sight is more rare than you’d imagine from detective novels. (Why are you getting your ideas of reality from detective novels?) And the reason for this is that people don’t have to see a thing in order to trash it. Your diabolical hiding place, using the beautiful antique pepper shaker, becomes vastly more moot when someone simply swipes the thing in the hope that it has resale value; or simply smashes it out of the love of hearing crashing noises.

Once you know that it’s there—once you’ve tracked down enough disasters, once you’ve seen what scientists become media darlings, once you see how many ‘storybook’ celebrity weddings they have, once you correlate several of them and do a couple of searches—it becomes easy to track down.

The company’s PR person denies everything.

“Disasters are just a gimmick that we use in our internet ads,” she says. “We’re a respectable company,” she says. “You’re off your rocker,” she says. “We offer a highly reputable and aboveboard matchmaking service,” she says. “You’ve got no proof,” she says. “We are extremely concerned about the rise in monsters and disasters in the past two years. We offer our fullest condolences to all those affected by cataclysmic circumstances. We thank you for your concern,” she says, and she hangs up.

Rashid stares at the phone for a while. He’s got three editors interested in this story. None of them want an exposé. All of them want a cute, chatty, funny little article which will take peoples’ minds off the giant ape which is currently attacking the metropolis.

At this time, Rashid has forty-five dollars in his bank account, and a half-dozen bills coming due in the next week or so. He really doesn’t have any proof. He could write a fluffy bit of confection, make the whole thing a joke, get paid, and hang on for a bit more. It’s not like he loves his job. Sure, if he wrote the piece they want, it would effectively end up being a piece of propaganda, a misdirection, free publicity for the website, which, if ever confronted in public about the relationship between recent disasters and their services, could laugh and say, “Oh, sure, just like that article!” And then everyone would have a good laugh until the swarm of giant crocodiles landed. But at least he’d have some cash, and he could get back to working on his novel.

Rashid looks at his desktop, where he’s already composed a good lead and a rather funny first hundred words.

Then he deletes it all and begins packing a bug-out bag.

 

V.

“That’s what we liked so much about you,” said the nefarious leader of the despicable secret organization. “Determination, and a desire to do the right thing as you saw it, despite the cost.”

“Please stop talking,” said Rashid. “It’s very demoralizing. I get it: you’re going to kill me, which is why I imagine you feel safe telling me your secrets. And it’s quite interesting, but really, I feel dreadful right now. I’d really appreciate a swift, merciful death. No need to drag out the suspense.”

“Kill you?” said the leader. Around her, assorted shadowy figures wearing face-concealing hoods and tasteful three-piece suits, looked at each other and giggled, or just laughed out loud. “Of course we’re not going to kill you. What do you think we are, monsters?”

“I think you’re people who’d release monsters and other horrifying things upon the world just to get scientists laid,” responded Rashid. “So I’m not really sure what your plans for me are, but they can’t be good.”

“It’s not just to get scientists laid,” responded the leader, archly. “It’s our goal to make a better world by creating—”

“Super-scientists? That’s a terrible idea. Do you get all of your ideas from movies, or something? Scientists aren’t like the caricatures you find in the movies! Sure, some of them are world-changing geniuses, but it’s about as rare in science as anywhere else. Most of them are just as fallible as everyone else. They usually know their own specialties, and even the most brilliant, intuitive thinkers among them still advance through slow, careful, incremental progress; there’s no reason to think that ‘scientists’ contribute more to the world than ‘plumbers’, and every reason to think you might just as well choose artists or authors, and even they…”

He trailed  off. The leader chuckled.

“Of course; you’re quite right. We are, ourselves, scientists, and the descendants of scientists, most of whom made some horribly botched discoveries. Oh, I’m sure that some of them were looking for weapons, or were simply short-sighted. Induced seismicity is quite real; industrial accidents are all too real; most of the strange catastrophes you’ve seen have been the by-products of well-known technologies, special effects, and lots of money. (We don’t actually know where the giant ape came from; we still find that disturbing.) Likewise, we caught you through the simple employment of talented and unscrupulous mercenaries and significantly less surveillance technology than you’ll find in any well-funded dictatorship.

“Scientists are probably better-equipped, by their training, than, say, accountants—nothing against accountants; however would we amortize all those earth-movers and electronic siren-calls without them? But the real key, the key that our forebears lacked, was that it’s almost always foolish to have high hopes for human strength.

“No, our faith is in human weakness. In foolishness. In self-delusion. Scientists are uniquely pressured to know everything, analyze everything, understand everything, have answers to everything; like politicians, but with quieter voices and (rather by definition) intense scrutiny of their every claim.

“Now, teach a scientist that a disaster can come, and in its face, the scientists become the heroes of film and movies.

“It’s our belief that some of them will step up. Sure, right now, they join us on a whim, as a joke, and looking for a date.

“But watch them solve an impossible disaster or two, and do so whilst impressing someone who has been, if not perfectly selected (if we had an algorithm for that, we’d be wealthy enough that we wouldn’t need hairbrained schemes, eh?)—no, not perfect, but beautifully matched. People do odd things to impress potential mates.

“We can trick the scientists into thinking they know how to solve giant world-threatening problems. Do it often enough, merge enough scientists, perhaps produce a generation of kids, half of whom will rebel and go into some dead-end like being novelists, but half of whom will go out there to knock the socks off their parents’ accomplishments.

Rashid said, “That’s crazy, you know.”

“For the first time, one of the people next to the Leader spoke up. Rashid didn’t know her purpose, but from the way the others looked at her, he suddenly realized he might have gotten their hierarchy wrong.

“Certainly it is,” she said. “If there’s one thing that’s unmatchable for eliciting powerful positive primate response, it’s sheer, dopamine-fueled, unhinged insanity. That’s why this works.”

VI.

Rashid—“Doctor Thompson”, now—never really did approve of demolishing a city just to get some scientists to make out, even with the best of intentions, even with what had been, in the course of the last ten years, increasingly visible positive results.

That’s why, one of the first things he and his husband had done, after adopting their first two kids, was move to a nice place in the country. Somewhere secluded enough to let Rashid work on his novel (still not done!) but close enough that they could be in a major metropolis in an hour, if something happened to it.

No, not “if”.

When.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Scientific Attachment appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Bandersnatchery

If there’s one thing that you’ll never catch

It’s the pain of the bite of the Bandersnatch

They don’t exist–obviously, natch–

They’re not in your closet, and not ’bout to hatch….

No-one know what a Bandersnatch is

So when it tentacle-attaches

Lock your mind and close the latches.

Who needs Prometheus when we have matches?

This is the Bandersnatch I seek:

It’s not Egyptian, Atlantean, or Greek

It dwells in the heart of each circus-freak

It’s sometimes mild, but never meek.

Here, while humans jump at shades,

And try hard to make their minds unmade

When we brew our own fear like lemonade

And hold it in our heads, where it should never have stayed—

My solution’s strange and befitting

It will come for you, wherever you are sitting

Out of the closet, through small spaces flitting

And ravel up your soul like tattered knitting.

The Bandersnatch is your bogeyman

It lurches along on a logy plan

You could be getting sunlight, or eating a hoagie

(Or engaging in activities roguely)

But, instead, we are frozen, unmoving

At this monster no-one is unproving

In the back of our head, the beast is grooving

Forkly tailed and cloven-hooving.

Now this is the thing unbidden:

Bandersnatches (like all monsters hidden)

Gain power most when you believe, and fear them,

When you’re sure of them, but dare not go near them.

There are many more things in the world, Horatio

Than fit neatly into the Golden Ratio

But to our mind’s darkest place we owe

Not a single bit of our lifetimes grace. Oh!

Bandersnatches thrive on fear

And if you’d like yours to un-appear

Look for bravery in your chest (it might be near)

And straight towards the discomfort, boldly steer!

This is the solution to Cordwainer’s Pain,

We do not need to have burning brains.

You are not destined to go insane.

Go forth! Control of your life, regain!

…or else live in slumber full of disquiet

And pretend to be calm while your insides riot.

For me? Oh, friend, I’ve gone on a diet:

I don’t eat madness anymore. I damn well deny it.

Learn, then, this mantra, here, in closing:

The data-plague keeps firehosing

Distress into our sweet reposing.

So envision a door. Envision it closing.

Lock the Bandersnatch in a chest

Made of adamant, sharply pressed.

Be not wildly distressed.

Be not, in your own mind, a guest.

Now, again, this is the thing unbidden:

Bandersnatches (like all monsters hidden)

Thrive on hurt and fear, like buzzards on a midden.

Say unto them: THOU ART FORBIDDEN.

And now, go back to the life you knew.

And should a Bandersnatch crawl through

Torment its paws with powerful glue

And teach it: it cannot mess

With you.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Bandersnatchery appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

A Traditional Air-Pirate Shanty

Say hey! for the life of an Airship Pirate,

Ho! for the Steam Buccaneer,

Carefully filin’ quarterly reports

Like clockwork, four times a year.

Drinkin’ at grog with merry abandon,

Though not too much, if you please;

Rum’s gettin’ expensive due to uncertainty in the sugarcane markets,

And doubloons seldom do grow on trees.

Sing hey! Sing ho! Sing hot-diggeto-doe!

These be the things that a pirate must know!

We sail ‘through the sky as if it were the sea!

But the sky do be better, for at least some of us have mild hydrophobia, which is surprisingly common in adults of our assorted age and demographic groups, and in no way should this be construed as a stigmatization of issues either psychological or physiological, and, indeed, as ye can tell, we have found clever workarounds for common on-the-job situations, although, in our particular case, we actually have no idea how these engines work, as they do appear to be powered by sheer plot contrivance, which be unrelated to our other conditions, but also do not be calculated to instill in us a sense that the general metaphysics of our situation be consistent.

Say ha! for the life of an Airship Pirate,

Ha! Ha! for the Buccaneer of Brass.

We fly o’er the mountain’, a lookin’ for treasure,

Though statistically, we mostly see grass.

We sail by compass and gyroscope,

And, to be quite honest, partly by hope;

We’re a bit superstitious to say this out loud,

But ye really can’t trust ye olde maps of a cloud. Indeed, in general, the meteorological and geographic arts be not wholly unrelated, but that’s somewhat in the sense that all things do in some way be related even unto each other, yes, by invisible forces connecting all life forms, or possibly gravity, or it might be a series of hallucinations brought upon us by a particularly unwise choice of ye mushrooms which we harvested from a particularly fascinatin’ sea-shanty, which is troublin’, for pullin’ a thing out of ye ethereal world of song be messin’ about with Platonic forms in a manner which Davy Jones might consider uncouth, aye, me hearties?

Me one good eye peers sternly at the world,

With a gaze fierce, and ineluctable.

Me eyepatches cover a work-related injury,

‘Tis me hope that they will be deductible.

Say whoa! for the life of an Airship Pirate,

A master of skullduggery and theft

A tropical sky-island do be awaitin’ us;

But sadly, we’ve no vacation days left.

Like stallions do our hearts beat,

With abandon, like broncos at frolic.

And tonight we shall have a low-calorie feast!

Of gluten-free bread, and baked pollack.

In short, it be, it be a wonderful thing

To be an Airship Pirate,

though some have suggested that livin’ in the skies might sometimes have a deleterious effect upon the basically down-to-Earth nature of our ignoble trade, and I can’t say that they’re wrong, although we can’t know, as we did keelhaul ’em last week, and they accidentally smacked into a pegasus, which do be pure ridiculousity as far’s I can tell.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post A Traditional Air-Pirate Shanty appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

TRAPS: The Big Red Button

What Villainous Lair would be complete without a big red button labelled “SELF-DESTRUCT”?

Really, all of them, surely? Certainly, there are some reasons why one might, ultimately, wish to destroy one’s base rather than have it fall into enemy hands, but if you’re fairly serious about your lair, it probably makes more sense to put energy into making it a safe place for you to Villainize, not an easy place to destroy. The self-destruct option should probably be quite difficult to activate. If you, the archvillain and/or leader, are unable to hit the thing, you’re quite probably already dead. If you feel you need a “blow up this fortress” option, you should probably make it fairly difficult to access.

We’ve heard this is some kind of Bond thing. We wouldn’t know. In the 13 Bond books by Ian Fleming (which are the only Bond works we acknowledge as cannon; sorry-not-sorry, Mr. Gardner) James Bond does not, in fact, hit a self-destruct button of any sort anywhere, and if he’s trying to blow up a warehouse or a ship, he brings his own bombs.

(We’ve heard rumours that the film version of “You Only Live Twice” removes some of the significant nuances of both the manner in which Bond finishes that particular mission; but we’ve no interest in watching such a disgraceful thing ourselves.)

(And besides, by any reasonable 2020 definition, Bond is not a hero, even in his own mind. But that’s another story.)

Now, the modern idea of the ‘Big Red Self-Destruct Button’ appears to be somewhat parodic; by now, most of us are acquainted with the button labelled “Self-Destruct”, which either triggers a death trap, or makes the button, itself, explode, causing, one presumes rather a lot of damage to our intrepid intruders. And that’s not bad.

But it’s not really using the concept to its full potential.

If one must have the sort of lair which is likely to be visited by heroes—either because one intends to use it to destroy one’s adversaries, or because one’s foes are unusually implacable and resourceful, or (perhaps) because one is determined to drive traffic to one’s gift shop, one ought create multiple layers of traps, and not all of them should be physical. Some, in our opinion, ought to be partially, or even entirely psychological. What better time to sew confusion and unease amongst one’s adversaries than when they’ve arrived at one’s very door?

(Or window, or secret passage, or portal gate, or what-have-you.)

In practice, the Big Red Self-Destruct button is not necessarily unable to stand on its own merits. Perhaps you’ve exceptionally trustworthy servants, or unusually important secrets; or a stone-cold death wish.

But the real key with this particular item is that you need not trade-off form and function. If you want a really visible way to destroy your lair, then you’d hide it in plain sight.

Because, by the time the heroes get to your Big Red Button, they should be so utterly demoralized and confused that even if they defeat you, and they win, they won’t really know, not until they press the damn thing, what it’s going to do.

And if you do it correctly, that moment of fear and uncertainty, even if it comes just before they hand you a resounding defeat, should be so stressful and traumatic that they’re scarred for life.

It is simply rude not to give guests something by which they can remember you forever.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post TRAPS: The Big Red Button appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

The Conscientious Bookseller

This is not, of course, how most booksellers censor books. While a big, controversial work might garner an actual statement and press release, the most frequent tool used is not amplification, but silencing.

After all, when you say something ought to be banned, you give people the possibility of response. When you quietly try to ignore something’s existence, you have a good chance of slipping it past the public. Plus, you have the added benefit that, if peoples’ opinions change, you don’t need to announce that you’ve removed something from limbo; you can just put it on up.

___

CATCH-22, by Joseph Heller: “We have determined that this book, while apparently being ridiculous if you take it at face value, might have significant and disturbing meanings if you care enough to examine it.

This could cause unpleasant sensations in those whose belief systems are, themselves, rigid and unable to accept criticism, or the idea that they might be perpetuating the very horrors they seek to avoid.

We have thusly determined that it is inappropriate to sell this book to anyone who would want to read it.

It is therefore our policy that only those who do not wish to buy this book are permitted to buy this book.”

CANDIDE: “Initially, we thought this book was a great, ripping yarn with an excellent moral.

Then, someone told us that when Monsieur Voltaire referred to “The best of all possible worlds”, he was lying.

We can’t have people going about believing that the world is imperfect. No, we need people to believe that the world is either completely flawless, or else a total and utter disaster. Only by creating a clash between a pretend perfection and a pretend dystopia can we truly build the sort of apocalyptic misery which will lead us into a glorious lack-of-future.

We’ll spare you this book. That’s the best-of-all-possible outcomes.

Trust us.

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED: Fortunately, these novels are much more obscure than they once were. So there’s much less demand for even the first book, much less “The Mouse On Wall Street”, or “The Mouse That Saved The West”.

Still, it’s important to include it here. The very first book suggested that World War III was not, in fact, inevitable, and nuclear weapons might not destroy the Earth.

Also, if people read it, they might be reminded that people once thought the end of the world was eminent because of a particular set of problems, and those problems were, not utterly obliterated, but at least solved sufficiently that the threat, and the fear, were vastly reduced.

We can’t let people remember that.

How else would we frighten people into doing what we want?

 

 

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post The Conscientious Bookseller appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Villainpunk Afoot

Heroes laugh at danger and try to attack it. Villains laugh at the madness of the world, and try to reshape it.

Why do we love the defiance, the outspoken bravery and the many joys of fictional villainy?  Let’s give some background.

Did you ever awaken in that peculiar alternative universe, the one that appears to be on fire?  (Hint: If you’re reading this, the answer is, “Yes.”)  You know, where humanity has vastly more information and access to knowledge than at any other time throughout history, more ability to speak and convey messages than even the most far out futurists dreamed?  And we’ve responded to it in ways that are horrifying.

Because in this peculiar gritty reboot, the rules have gone strange. We no longer seem to say that a person or an idea might be right or wrong, that someone might have done something good or bad. Instead, we’re told that a particular thing is, in fact, either the most hideous and vile thing, or else it is the shining avatar of all that is light and good.

We’re clearly all in of those episodes of The Twilight Zone which got cut because the plot didn’t seem to make any sense.

Now, we’re not actually about the politics of the everyday world. In the Universe of the Imagination, we are much too busy making sure our henchpeople get paid on time; our villainous ransom demands are properly spell checked; our orbital destruct rays are aimed at the appropriate targets. You know, the things that really matter.

But those who make or love imaginative worlds, realms of creativity, are all affected by the world around us.  Whether we create to comment on or to escape the Asylum, we can’t ignore the strange things which come pouring out of the Internet.  More than ever, the world needs Villains, for the same reasons we’ve always adored them:

Villains are iconoclasts. Villains break the mold. Villains shatter rules. Good? Bad? Villains question other peoples’ ideas of morality because they think for themselves, and keep the counsel of their own hearts. Villains want to change the world in ways they find appealing and meaningful, not to please some hero, some aspect of society, or something they’re “told” is right or wrong, especially without any more proof than the wrath of some horde of attackers. We’re villains; we knew we’d be attacked when we first set out to change the world.

If there’s an angry mob of villagers with the traditional pitchforks and torches, heading towards a castle, we are not that mob.  We are Dr. Frankenstein, experimenting with things others claimed impossible. We are the monster itself, barely alive long enough to have his own identity and yet already labeled as evil.

We embrace what is strange, unusual, and different, and we’re not afraid of what they’ll call us. We are the misfits. We are the outcasts. We are the outliers. We are the creators. We are the makers of strange and wondrous dark magic.

Call us what you will. We are the villains, and we are here forge our own path. Join us!

 

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Villainpunk Afoot appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Some Brief Thoughts On Dystopia

We feel like almost every imaginative world of misrule could benefit from these thoughts, though this piece uses, for its medium, the now-rare genre of Cyberpunk.

In the late 1980s, visionary scifi/fantasy authors looked around them and extrapolated a terrifying future–“cyber” because it dealt with computers and tech, “punk” because it was dark and nihilistic, yet full of a fierce intensity.

Fortunately, of course, such a world could never come to pass.

But as a public service, we’ve put together some ways you–sorry!  We mean your characters–might be living in a gritty Cyberpunk dystopia.

1.  Beware distraction devices issued by private corporations!   In a traditional dystopia, in general, the government controls the masses.  But in most cyberpunk dystopias, governments sometimes seem to just provide a framework, stretched over a series of corporate interests.

If the government issued everyone with mandatory devices which tracked their location, ruined their sleep, and kept them in a constant state of overstimulation, people would very rightly rebel.

If Individual corporations created communication toys, each with more computing power than possessed by anyone in history, and those companies competed to find the most popular ways to convince people to spend more time at those devices, even making the devices central to one’s life, it might basically start controlling how we live.

Let’s be glad our characters don’t live in that world, eh?

2.  Politics and media go mad.  This is always a controversial subject, but just remember the basics:

While many dystopias dealing with government repression are simply heavily censored, Cyberpunk worlds have so much access to information that even the forces which might otherwise aim to repress info will instead join in the general insanity.  The news in dystopian worlds grows ever more insane, more unbelievable, and more shocking every day.

Since these things are works of fiction, the world news goes from disaster to disaster, with brief glimpses of hope in between.  That creates deep dramatic tension.

This should be a red alert for your characters, since news in the real world would, of course, never do this.

3.  Fortunately, a small group of plucky heroes can save us.  Fictional dystopias are brought down by plucky groups of heroes.  This ragtag group of gifted misfits, against all odds, can identify and defeat an evil villain who is making things go awry.

…ah, but in real life, you can’t beat a dystopia that way.

Want to know how real-life dystopias go down?

So do we.  If you figure it out, please let us know?

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Some Brief Thoughts On Dystopia appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Wit and Witlessness

As I wend my path through the peculiar life of a monster, do you know how many people ask me, “Dark Lord, do you have a collection of some of your most fascinating wisdom?”

Absolutely none. None at all. Nobody. Zip, zero, zilch, zorkmid, bupkis, nada.

And so, here, by special total-lack-of-request, are some of my wisest sayings.

“Remember, the consequences of your actions will probably open a vast fissure underneath the sea, one so huge that it makes the sea which drank Atlantis look like a polite tippler in comparison. So whatever you’re doing, keep it up!”

“It’s no surprise to me: I am your own worst enemy.”

“THROW THEM INTO THE KITTEN PITS.”

“It is said that Wednesdays were named after Wotin who, upon hearing those rumours, shook the rumour-mongers so hard that their skulls fell out of their skulls, which is no easy feat.”

“It’s no surprise to me: I am your own worst enemy.”

“I’m not an 900 year old vampire. I’m three 300 year-old vampires in a very large cloak.”

“To the world, you may be one person, but to the moat monsters, you’re dinner.”

“They put a stake through my heart,

and cut off my head,

and thought I was deceased.

They were half right.

They killed the man,

And so set free the Beast.”

“We apologize for any confusion. We’ll be returning you to your regularly scheduled chaos shortly.”

“I am proud to be a member of the United Organization of Disorganized Disunited People Who Don’t Get Along Long Enough To Even Decide On A Name For This Organization.”

“Remember, you can’t HYDRATE without HYDRA. This is why you summon mythological Grecian monsters every time you buy a bottle of water.”

“At least you’re not in that bleak and dismal timeline wherein MTV still exists but doesn’t play music videos anymore.”

“My evil alternative Universe self entered my apartment through portal technology, took one look at my facial hair, flipped through one of my books, said, ‘I’ll just show myself out now’, and disappeared.”

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away. On the other hand, a team of well-trained, highly-coordinated horses might, by logical extension, give me significantly more trouble.”

“Despite popular opinion, you cannot beat titanic amounts of stupidity with equally titanic amounts of stupidity.”

“It has come to my attention that I have lost some followers through being offensive.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.I NEED TO OFFEND YOU ALL UNTIL YOU ALL LEAVE!!

Now, time for me to get back to [insert horrible thing here].”

“What the heroes thought they were doing, of course, was defying Evil, for Evil can never truly see the world around it, lest it understand that Evil is forever doomed. This would be a very potent reason if it were backed by, say, facts, or historical evidence.”

 

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Wit and Witlessness appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

George Orwell: Three Treacheries

George Orwell betrayed all of us. The utopia of his novel “1984” is an insult to the real utopia within which we are now privileged to live.

This is not intended as an exhaustive examination. One could go on for days about the many errors and the deep shortsightedness of Mr. Orwell’s work, except that one’s phone keeps pinging.

Though that’s not a bad place to start. Take Orwell’s “Telescreens”. The Telescreen was a device found in the homes of a vast number of persons; it was a huge screen which constantly both broadcast propaganda, and likewise was a television camera / microphone which might, at any time, be observed by the powers-that-be. Mr. Orwell notes,

“You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”

What rot!

Who among us would desire the unpleasant state of being unmonitored for significant periods of time? How would our corporations know which new delights to offer us, catered carefully to our tastes and interests, if they were not able to, not simply look at us or listen to us from time to time when we’re, but rather observe us essentially wherever we are and whatever we do? Certainly, humans can’t store and process that kind of information, but computers certainly can. Likewise, they can analyze it all. Mr. Orwell failed to take into account the incredible inventiveness of the human spirit. and thus, his technologies were incredibly lacking. Why, they couldn’t even record us.

And take that tired trope, that of the confiscation of books and other historical or creative media. This ancient and unworthy idea could be traced back, at a minimum, to Plato. Sure, we all know that unrestricted access to knowledge and art are the death-watch beetles of destruction of all things appropriate and correct; who could or would ever question the benevolence of the censorship which keeps us from the infinite terrors of being corrupted by wrongthink. But it’s ridiculous to suggest that we need the physical removal of those items. I have long built a library of used books, and not only are they subject to decay, their bindings breaking, their pages crumbling over time―but also, they have the weakness of being unchanging.

And, indeed, for a while, I was quite upset to note that, for example, the Internet had rewritten words in ways which so differ from their prior meanings that they are essentially new words, and that it had done so without ever noting that there were older and more challenging meanings. But quickly I found: it is okay. I need not be upset, because nobody will believe me. Were I to bring up these things, I would be, quite rightly, recognized as an adversary of all things which are suited and seemly. Therefore, I am taught to withhold these things, and thus is our society enriched by unity and harmony.

I could go on, but as my time is limited, I would like to spend the last of it on this infamous idea, once again from “1984”:

“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”

This is utter nonsense, because we have no enemies.

You might think this an odd statement, since, obviously, we are beset on all sides by those of fouldness so great that we cannot speak of it―and, indeed, we are forbidden from doing so in any real detail, lest it infect us.

But in truth, in general, we know that our enemies are just pictures on a screen. They are not human. After all, we cannot and must not reason with them, speak with them, or for a moment consider (and pray hold back your justifiable loathing at this idea) make any sort of peace or compromise with them. They are not like us in any way, and though they appear to speak our languages, and, deceitfully, they sometimes look and act in ways which are similar to our own, they are simply malevolent forces of nature. They aren’t real. And it is this modest idea that I must add to current understandings:

Only we are human.

So, I abjure you: do not be fooled by the traitor Orwell. His visions of a glorious Future did not match the beauties of our kindly and benevolent Now.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

The post George Orwell: Three Treacheries appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.