Everything I Needed To Know About Life, I Learned From Supervillains · 2:13pm Oct 22nd, 2014
Everything I Needed To Know About Life, I Learned From Supervillains
is an awesome blog post by PJ Eby, author, self-improvement guru, & LessWrongian, on his blog, DirtSimple.org . I can't improve on it; I'll just quote part of it:
In the movies, the villains typically:
- Have a vision and goals, for how they'd like things to be in the future
- Believe that they deserve -- and are capable of obtaining -- everything they want in life
- Proactively seek the fulfillment of their goals, and persistently work towards achieving them
- Are willing to plan and prepare for years, then execute that plan in a well-disciplined manner, having anticipated as many issues as possible, with well-thought out contingency plans
- Are very willing to delegate most tasks to their staff of loyal, highly-motivated employees... who they somehow managed to recruit, train, and persuade to follow along with their shared vision.Meanwhile, the heroes tend to:
- Be reactive, rather then proactive -- they wait until something bad happens, then try to solve the problem afterwards
- Be reactionary, rather than progressive -- they try to put things back the way they were, instead of changing them for the better
- Rarely promote a shared vision, preferring to work alone or with only a partner or two... who they don't trust with anything really important!
- Rarely anticipate the possible failure modes of their plans, to the extent that they plan anything at all!
- Use their talents and abilities rarely, for emergencies only, instead of keeping them in top condition or proactively using them to improve things
- Not believe they personally deserve anything good out of life, or that things will ever get better for them... I didn't really think all that much about it, until this past week. It just seemed like an amusing, cynical observation about Hollywood: that movies are designed to make people feel better about their crappy lives, by allowing them to subconsciously identify with the "good" guys.
...
But that was only because I didn't realize just how much this applied to me.Or that on the inside, I was still trying to be the hero.
And that it was perhaps the single biggest source of pain in my entire life!
...
What's good about being special? "I'm better than everyone." What's good about that?
...
- If I'm a hero, I won't get hurt
- If I'm a hero, it's okay that I'm alone or have few friends
- If I'm a hero, it's okay that people look down on me, because that's just my secret identity
- If I'm a hero, I'm strong on the inside, even if I seem weak on the outside
- If I'm a hero, it's okay for me to strike at those who hurt others, the way they hurt meAll in all, the superhero fantasy was more attractive to my 7-year-old self (the approximate age where these thoughts originated) than I'd ever realized. And consciously, it had never even occurred to me that they were anything but idle daydreams and escape fantasies.
I had no way of knowing that, when I adopted this superhero ideal, the following personality traits would come along with it:
- If you're a hero, you're just strong and successful and equipped... automatically -- you don't have to practice or work out or really do anything at all to become successful (Impatience with details and implementation)
- If you're a hero, you should never use your powers (talents and abilities) for any personal gain... unless it's an emergency. (Procrastination, not to mention failure to pursue non-work goals)
- If you're a hero, it's your job to right wrongs... not to make good things. (Perfectionism!)
- If you're a hero, it's your job to do the impossible, or at least the extraordinary... so leave the ordinary things to ordinary people (More perfectionism, not to mention elitism!)
- If you're a hero, you have to rely on yourself... so don't share your secrets with anyone, or expect anyone to be able to help you with your problems... frankly, it's laughable that they'd be able to understand your issues, let alone help. (Arrogance, closed-mindedness, and other a**holery)
- If you're a hero, everything is serious business. Deadly serious. All the frickin' time. You can enjoy other people being happy, but don't expect to have any free time that can't be interrupted for something more important. (Recipe for struggle, suffering, and general life imbalance.)
The post goes into more depth on how this subverted his attempts at self-improvement. I don't know if his course or books or whatever it is he's flogging are good, but I think this post is brilliant.
okay, gonna read this later because it seems very useful. I'll just note that the villains in My Little Pony, however, seem largely ineffectual, and actually follow the hero model more closely; while the mane six (Rarity, Twilight and Dash, especially) follow a more villainous pathway, where here villainous is meant as "effective+other connotations".
I wonder what implications that has.
Wonder if this is why (in part) why the Marvel movie series has had the type of impact it has?
Thor: Lost it all on his own pigheaded battle lust, and only becomes an actual hero when brought down to normal and learned some darn humility.
Captain America volunteered for the superserum, and was in the militery before that.
Hulk might have gotten his powers through accident, but he's not only a brilliant scientist (something that requires lots and lots of work), but near his entire charachter is about controlling and mastering his powers.
Heck, Iron Man's whole shtick is that he built his own freaking powers.
I knew that's the old origin stories 'just' retold and they're hardly perfect examples... but I do genuinely wonder if them breaking from the old 'villains plan, hero's reacts' cliche might be in part why people love them so?
Interesting perspective on character design, especially if you consider the rise of antiheros in popular culture within the last few years. Makes you wonder if we all intrinsically became aware of this contradiction in terms without ever putting it into words like this.
2549358 Other than their origin stories, the cinematic Marvel heroes tend to be reactive, fairly reactionary (they are proactive in finding ways to maintain things as they are), they prefer to work alone (Half of the Avengers is they trying to work towards a common goal without having to rely too much on the others), etc.
Hell, Iron Man only decides to do something after getting kidnapped, and only confronts his partner after getting repeatedly stabbed on the back.
I guess that means I am the hero I deserve, not the villain I need.
2549454
...Yeah, I can see it that way to, now that you mention it.
2549358 Compare Tony Stark to Lex Luthor, and you'll have a very even baseline: they pretty much have the same advantages (technical genius, swimming in cash, loyal sexy personal assistant), [1] but one becomes president while the other tries to tell the government where to shove it.
Which one is the hero? One's politics might push you in one direction or another, but we're all reasonable enough to know that other reasonable people see things differently. According to PJ Eby's standard presented here, it's obviously Stark, but does that make him the good guy? Is he making the world a better place or just using his talents to patch up the bleeding wounds of the world?
Is Lex the villain because he believes he's the guy most qualified to run the country? (hint: he probably, objectively is) or is he the bad guy because he opposes Superman?
The answer, of course, depends on the writer, but looking at the most common versions, I'd say I (as a normal person with normal intelligence and low-average resources) would rather live in Lex Luthor's world. Unless Mr. Stark has decided to make electricity free for everyone, everywhere. That'd be awesome.
[1] It occurs to me that Twilight has these advantages [2] as well.
[2] Excepting that the sexiness or her assistant is more debatable,
as it's not a defining characteristic.
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5331373/memes/What%20Is%20This%20I%20Don%27t%20Even.jpeg
You and that guy blew my mind right here. Goddayum, it's... so plausible, actually!
I can see why this would be relevant to the conversation we were having. I would say this lesson is actually the one really good thing I learned from Dramatica. Their confusion regarding protagonists and antagonists made me seriously think about who the protagonists and antagonists were.
It's true that one of my conclusions was, "the Dramatica Theory of Story Structure is probably bollocks." If they couldn't be consistent and clear about one of the most dramatic implications of their theory, they must not be paying much attention!
At the same time, I also concluded that, "I want to read (and write) more stories where the heroes behave like villains and vice versa, because in most narratives it's the villain who is really motivated to fix problems in their life while the heroes are surly and/or snarky losers. Real life heroes act like fictional villains and vice versa." Even if I think they got it right by accident rather than intention, I still think they hit on something that most people never realize.
EDIT: Full disclosure. My familiarity with Dramatica is over 99% based on the software engine produced using the theory, and the materials directly included with it.
After all, physics, human behavior and women's breasts all work the same way in real life as they do in comic books, so--yeah, why not turn to comic books for ethical guidance?
Now you've done it. I'm going to have to write a superhero chapter in Letters for this...
Why else is David Xanatos so popular?
It is a good thing we in the Evil League of Evil hold no illusions about such things.
2549667
This is actually pretty well-known, and is why there is sort of a generic "action movie protagonist" who is very easy to project onto. Think Neo from The Matrix, but indeed, the Hero With A Thousand Faces in general is very easy to use in this manner, as a vehicle for audience projection, if the character isn't given much unique to identify with. The departure from the world of the mundane into a more exciting world at the start of the journey is crucial for such, taking you from being a normal person to being a hero, a very common power fantasy, especially for people who are not terribly proactive themselves.
I wonder if power fantasies for people who are self-employed differ significantly from those who work for other people and have no desire to run their own business. That would be interesting, and might explain why certain characters (such as some of Ayn Rand's) appeal especially strongly to some such folk, because they are much more "villainous".
It is interesting that Batman is the most interesting DC hero in many ways, and yet is more "villainous" in some ways - his superpower is basically being crazy prepared, and thus he does a lot of planning, and while he is reactive in some stories, he is proactive in others, actively hunting for bad guys as the world's greatest detective. He is often depicted as a contemplative planner.
2549348
Rarity and Rainbow Dash are ambitious, sure, but Twilight varies much more; she is often very reactive, taking orders from Princess Celestia, though sometimes she is proactive (Feeling Pinkie Keen, for instance). Rarity and Rainbow Dash are highly proactive.
2549845 The problem is that we tend to do this whether we're aware of it or not; fiction influences real life to an astounding degree (see also all the court cases lost because the jurors use CSI as a basis for reference).
Supervillains typically kill or attempt to kill people on enormous scales, almost always for no reason. They may have vision, drive and forethought, but all of that is in service of horrific acts of destruction. Even Lex Luthor prefers to spend his time being a fly buzzing around Superman's head rather than make the world a better place with his genius and money--as Supes said to him in All-Star Superman, Lex could've saved the world years ago if he wanted to. Supervillains never do anything that is, on a whole, truly beneficial to anyone other than themselves (if you work for a supervillain your life expectancy plummets) because if they did they wouldn't be villains and there wouldn't be a story fitting into the mass-production framework and nobody would make any money. I don't think "Be ruthlessly driven and determined to mass-murder people because raisins" is a better lesson than "Don't do anything constructive with your life until you have absolutely no other choice."
Superheroes are reactive for the same reason firefighters are reactive: you don't mobilize to put out a fire that doesn't exist. They're never shown making the world a better place, living ordinary life with their abilities or doing anything other than resetting the status quo because the story ends after the villain is defeated and if Bruce Wayne actually improved the living conditions and social dynamics of Gotham City there would be no need for Batman ergo DC wouldn't make money from Batman anymore, which is completely out of the question.
No sane person would ever use comic book superheroes or supervillains as models of morality and sensible behaviour because normal people are not and can never be such characters. Superheroes/villains are outlandish for the sake of being cheap disposable popcorn entertainment that we consume in the same forms over and over again so that someone can make money, not for the sake of teaching us about life. And before you say "art always teaches us something", most of the people writing those comics and movies don't give a damn about teaching their audience anything, and the execs funding them certainly don't give a damn about teaching their audience anything.
I wasn't aware that Charles Xavier was a villain.
#NotAllHeroes
(And, come to think of it, offering a free, quality education in a supportive environment as a means towards peaceful integration of a minority is probably the single most sensible thing a comic book character has ever done. Hell, it's more sensible than a lot of real life activists.)
Well Bad Horse, this certainly explains our little conversation at Bronycon...
2549970
I think the point was to give some insight into why superheroes are popular and why people might be more successful roleplaying the villain rather than the hero. Morality was brought up in exactly one line in the original post, and it was just meant to convey how Original Blogger rationalizes the behavior of his younger self. I don't think anyone here believes that super villains have the moral high ground or that their goals should be adopted. Just [some of] their methods.
Fire drills. Also,
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=proactive%20firefighters
Funny how the villains are also depicted menaces to society at large, while the heroes are usually tolerated if not worshipped…
An important addition to the villain list is that they're typically willing to circumvent or ignore ethics and morality to meet their goals, not to mention ignoring the wellbeing of others.
usafawebguy.com/files/spockeyebrow.jpg
2550744
Sorry about that, I screwed up the post and FIMFiction wouldn't let me edit it.
Good point on fire drills. And there are some superheroes who go on patrol.
Another problem with this is that the villain has to be better than the hero on a practical level while the hero is better on a moral level (to the point where the Joker in The Dark Knight seems almost prescient), at least within this simple limited easy-to-produce cookie-cutter framework. Even if they're a small revolutionary group who realisically should have no chance of defeating the local authorities, they must do so nonetheless, over and over again until the heroes get it together and triumph, because if that didn't happen there wouldn't be a conflict. You could subvert this, perhaps with a revolutionary group who is initially defeated but bounces back, gathers more support, starts winning and eventually topples the
corrupt, oppressivegovernment that the protagonist works for...but would that sell? Some people would tell you it wouldn't. Are they right?Perhaps success is equated with evil, and putting things back to normal/doing one's duty is equated with good precisely so that people can see the big bad
businessman be defeated by the underdog and experience catharsis, so they go home and continue with their lives as usual, and thus the real world status quo is maintained...but I don't think that's true.Why are superheroes popular? Honestly, I think it's just because they do neat stuff, much like all the other action blockbusters. All of those vices and virtues they and villains continually represent are part of the structural limitations of the framework they're placed into.
2551204 2550744 Morals do enter into it a little. The conventional super-hero is a conservative. Things are good, and don't need fixin'. Change is bad.
That's the attitude I mean right there. As if society were perfect, and the only thing for heroes to do is put out fires.
Superman and Batman came out in the late 1930s. Remember the comics where Batman saved a black man from a lynching? Where Superman used his super-power to dig an irrigation ditch for a dying farm town? No? Neither do I.
(Superman saves a man from a lynching in the very first issue of Superman. A white man.)
Superheroes have no morality beyond conservatism, because if they do something, that means having an opinion on what ought to be done. And that means most people would disagree with whatever they did.
2549970
But: art always teaches us something, WHETHER THE CREATORS INTENDED TO OR NOT. No, they don't care about teaching their audience something, but they are anyways.
If they thought about it, they might decide to care about what they were teaching. But that's another topic.
2551397
See, now I want to write a superhero story where the hero does rescue the black man, or whatever the less-then-popular-but-morally-right issue-of-the-week is. (As long as they also, y'know, justify it. Which would be hard, going back to your show-don't-tell in Superman taught me to kill.) Or at least read one.
There's probably superhero books like that, but they sure don't seem to be mainstream.
Dammit, FIMFiction. =\
Before I respond, BH (can I call you BH?) I'd like to add something to the list of morals villains convey:
Be a slave to every base, childish, petty, short-sighted, self-destructive impulse you have and dedicate all your resources towards satisfying them rather than do anything constructive or noble with your life.
2551397
equestria.sen was right about fire drills, and in addition to that one could make the argument that society as a whole innovating superior technologies/buildings that aren't as likely to catch fire or will suffer minimal damage if they do is another proactive part of firefighting.
With that in mind, I'd like to recant my earlier point. Superheroes are always reactive, and people like Reed Richards and Bruce Wayne (the genius billionaire philanthropist, not Batman) are completely useless to the world because superheroes (and supervillains) exist to do the same thing over and over again, even to the point of somebody else taking their place in doing the same thing over and over again (Batman Beyond). They can never stand for genuine positive change (because as you said, that would mean having an opinion people can disagree with, which would drive away potential customers), nor can they ever solve the everyday problems in their world (because that would invalidate their existence, which would inhibit the production of further comics/movies), and neither can their world itself (Lex Luthor can never be imprisoned for life, nor can he get over himself and use his money to elevate humanity to Krypton's level. Gotham City can never make an exception in the death penalty for the Joker, an utterly irredeemable man whose body count eclipses that of a kaiju, nor can they ever build a mental hospital that actually works. All humans will always be bigots who can never learn to accept mutants. Etc., etc., etc.).
Those inherent flaws are devices in service to a single end goal: to keep people buying the same media over and over again.
So something I noticed. I wasn't going to comment on it, because several other people had picked up on it. But then I realized that no-one had articulated it. 2549981 came closest, and that only by example. So here I am.
This is only true when the villain is trying to upend everything and change the world. It's much more fuzzy when the villain already holds power, and the heros are the plucky underdog resistance trying to depose them. Take, for example, Star Wars. In the original trilogy, the villains:
- Are the status quo (maintain/tighten the Empire's hold);
- When they change things, are trying to change them for the worse;
- Are prone to executing underlings for trivial reasons (Vader does this numerous times in Empire Strikes Back)
Meanwhile, the Rebellion:
- Has a vision for what they want to accomplish (overthrow the empire and establish a fair representative government);
- Use what they have whenever they can;
- Don't have an option to plan for failure modes (their plans tend to be do-or-die, the Jabba's Palace rescue looked like a fallback plan but I suspect the "first" plan was a "if it works, so much the better".);
- Recruit a network, and have to work with it to get anything done at all;
- Actively seek fulfilling their vision, despite many setbacks
[1]
It's even fuzzyer in caper flicks, such as Inception. Who's the bad guy? Is there a bad guy? The main characters are out to change a status quo, but only after they get asked. The spend a lot of time planning, but I don't see any evidence that they worked on failure modes of their plans.
But then, those are also more full of moral grey area ... just like real life.
I probably sabotaged my train of thought at some point in there.
Anyways, despite this, I have a better understanding of your "evil" appellation now. I'm kinda mad at you, too. My new life goal is to "be a supervillain, and accomplish <some good I'll fill in later>". Though, the "super-" part may mean I haven't really dealt with the blocks he talks about. Guess I'll have to attack that, too.
[1] The prequel trilogy does undercut this a bit, by showing that there was a somewhat-functioning galactic government before the empire took over, and that it was a recent takeover. The Expanded Universe books look at some of the difficulties in creating a new functioning government in such a power vacuum.
All hero stories show is that ordinary people cannot compete with exceptional people. It takes another exceptional person to challenge them.
An ordinary person becoming exceptional via divine intervention and inherently able to defeat powerful foes because of moral alignment.
It's like a fantasy about laziness.
2551610
Good point. Sorry for not saying that 7 years ago.
Miss you!