varric is probably seeing the grim future when his publishing house publishes a posthumous “newly discovered lost manuscript” of his, which just turns out to be the first draft to Hard in Hardtown
Enemies to “ugh I can’t believe I’m saving your life” to “ugh we have to work together or the world ends but it’s not like I like you or anything” to “oh we actually connect pretty well but that doesn’t mean anything” to “I would die for you but don’t read too much into it” to “I’ll kill anyone who lays a finger on you” to Lovers.
so I’m thinking about supervillains (because when am I not) and that really is, like, the ultimate gig if you hate traditional work but live for the drama.
I’m not talking about your Lex Luthors or your Red Skulls or your Doctor Dooms here. not even your street level crime bosses like Kingpin or Penguin. they all have Goals and stuff and are usually down with actually hurting a lot of people to achieve them. I’m talking, like, much lower level villainy here.
I’m thinking of the peeps who just want to make some quick cash smashing up a bank or a jewelry store or some other cliched crime location. all you have to do is pick a gimmick, cobble together a costume, then show up and show off some flashy powers/tech enough to impress people. you don’t even need to hurt anybody, just spook them enough to get them out of your way while you take the cash. it’s essentially high stakes LARPing.
UNLESS, of course, you’re some unlucky fool who lives in a city with an Actual Superhero around, in which case the game suddenly becomes incredibly high risk/high reward.
the bad news is that the odds of your schemes being foiled dramatically increases, although that honestly won’t even be a problem if your local prison has sufficiently Arkham-esque security.
the good news is that you get an archenemy to flirt with!
small local supervillain resorts to desperately staging a romance with the local hero in order to boost their popularity on social media.
why do they need to boost their popularity? so glad you asked. I ABSOLUTELY think a villain with enough charisma/novelty appeal could get away with crowd funding. Kite Man has a patreon and people literally give him money to buy bigger and more elaborate kites just because he’s such a nice change from all the psychotic clowns and fear gas-spouting scarecrows and killer plants that the people of Gotham are used to. hell, most of his patrons are Gotham residents. (he thanks them by posting pictures of each elaborate new kite rig, with the caption HELL YEAH! it’s the only way he communicates and people eat it up.)
and you know what gets people interested/wanting to see more of you? tons of speculative tweets and fan art of you and your friendly local hero, who’s increasingly baffled by all of this.
but Makenzie, you’re asking, why would this hypothetical supervillain even need to crowdsource more money if she’s already out committing bank robberies and shit? SO GLAD YOU ASKED.
according to our friend google, the average bank robbery only nets are 4300 dollars. which sounds rad, but is barely going to be a dent if you’re, say, in student debt. add in your rent, car payment, any teammates and/or henchmen you have to split the profits with, the price of updating your costumes or tech, and general living costs, and I can very much believe a lot of lower tier villains are still strapped for cash.
so they’ve got to get these side hustles, crowdfunding, selling their own merch and stealing shit off of heroes during fights just to auction off to fans.
I just. really like broke villains who aren’t even particularly evil, just trying to make a buck.
anyway back to that fake romance shit cause I know y’all eat that up.
obviously heroes aren’t supposed to accept money, it’s all about the Goodness of Their Hearts, etc, but my duuuuude. there are plucky young college-aged heroes out there too and they are s t r u g g l i n g. and if people will donate to a villain’s campaign, they will ABSOLUTELY shell out for someone who once stopped a bus full of orphans from exploding.
what I’m saying is. completely and mutually staged hero/villain romance. there is not “gotcha!” moment when they fall in love for real. maybe one or both of them have partners. possibly they’re incompatible based on sexual orientation/gender. maybe they’re just genuinely not into each other. but goddamn if they’re not going to shamelessly keep their weird shipper fandom alive.
If you ever think history impressive or grand, here’s a story for you:
Right after ww2, Jews were freed, but basically had no citizenship to speak of, and the allied forces weren’t that!helpful. So a group called the TTG was formed to help emigrate (read: smuggle) Jews from Central Europe, to Mediterranean ports, where they would take boats to Israel.
The TTG did this by piling the Jewish refugees into trucks bearing British insignia, their operatives dressing up as British soldiers, and just openly driving to port cities.
If they were ever stopped by actual military forces, they would say they were a part of a covert supply missing, under special orders from Major Tuches. They would stress that the contents of the trucks was super secret and to not be disturbed under any circumstances. They saved over 300,000 Jews like this.
If that sounds reasonable to you, here’s the thing: TTG stands for Tilhas Teezee Gesheften, and the operatives named one Major Tuches as their commanding officer whenever they needed to.
Or, to translate that into English, the event that saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees was called Operation Kiss My Ass led by Major Asshole.
i'll apple your turnover 