I would say that 9 out of 10 of the evil supervillains I personally know have gotten where they are by betraying the guy before them (and I know, it's usually a guy) and the other 1 would have done so, but the previous master was coincidentally taken out of the picture before they had a chance to. They all want to tell you at the beginning that they got where they were by their own smarts and hard work, but if you ask around you will soon find out the real sordid story of how they dealt their mentors a blow in the dark of night aided by a little alcohol or a little sack-action (see what I said earlier) and the weird thing is that if they were to admit the truth they would actually be advertising themselves as being even more awesome than suspected to be able to do such a dirty act in cold blood, but almost always they have to go and downplay it all or retell it as not having happened that way at all, almost as if they had some kind of bizarre need to be good while being bad. It drives me nuts sometimes, but that is just the way it seems to be out there. That's why I can't watch those Mafia movies where they have all this moral code floating around there behind all the deceit telling them that their super powerful thugs can do this but never that because that would be against the rules or something. Me, I'm used to having my treachery straight up without all this other stuff getting in the way, and I really don't see what it adds anyway.

Capella

Many supervillains are unwilling to learn How to work with vampires, partly because of their reputation for clannishness and standoffishness (the vampires, that is, not the supervillains), and partly out of sheer inertia. In my experience, it is true that they will never let a person forget if they are not one of them, and it is also true that they will ordinarily not let that get in the way of an expert job professionally done. Once we have ironed out our differences in the preliminary stages of negotiation, vampire relations have gone about as well as they do with most other sorts of strategic alliance.

One thing which almost is too obvious to mention is their sensitivity to real or imagined slurs. "File-tooth," "pastyface nightgaunt," "flippin' batboy" — all these and more have I heard on the part of the rank and file troops tasked to work with our sanguinarian colleagues, along with pantomimed blood-sucking, snide references to retreating to one's coffin, and so forth, and these sometimes led to an escalation of tensions between communities which I would much rather have skipped. Shrieks of the damned, wails of the lackeys, the inevitable gory tokens left outside one another's sleeping quarters: all this could I think have been avoided with a few days or a week of sensitivity training beforehand.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

Occasionally I am asked about my college years by well-meaning people (for now and then I do encounter some of these by accident) and I always have to stop for an irritating moment or two and consider how I am going to spin my answer. For even though I am a renowned scholar, professor, and college founder, it never seemed to me a requirement to attend a place of postsecondary learning. Or secondary learning. Or any kind of school at all, as a student, as I am entirely self-taught, carrying on a tradition so rarely encountered any more in the developed world. It was not a matter of cost but rather one of advanced contempt for authority, as I always knew that it was always my lot to hold the reins of command, not be controlled by them.

One thing I always liked about colleges, even before I had one of my own, was the genteel air of decrepitness that hangs over the campus like a mist of stone dust, exuded by the buildings, the faculty, and the students in some kind of indescribable amalgamation of dooms. Even on urban campuses the telltale trace can be found, albeit with an admixture of diesel effluvium.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

Even if the prospect of being taken captive seems remote, and if anyone who would propose to do so would be unlikely to keep you alive, the mental discipline of learning How to escape from shackles is a healthy one for an evil supervillain, as it provides a tangible illustration of how ultimately one's welfare is one's own responsibility, not that of one's henchmen or one's sidekick.

Sometimes when I am the guest of one of my evil counterparts (literally a guest, I mean), I like to take careful note of what kind of irons they are using in their pits and in my mind fashion a plan to work my way free of them in some imagined scenario where this might be necessary. You may wish to keep this in mind if you happen to invite me over, or you may simply ignore my sidelong glances, it matters little to me.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

If you're like most people, you probably want to know the reason for the attraction of dinosaurs to evil villains. It is simple: they are outrageous attention-seekers (the villains, not so much the dinosaurs) and always insist on having the non-humanoids they command be giant or flesh-rending or whatever, rather than what a rational being would prefer (say simple, minimal and efficient). We here at evilHow, however, do know our audience, hence the article on How to send dinosaurs rampaging. The villains want it, victims have come to expect it, so there you go.

It is a little known fact that dinosaurs are not naturally the rampaging type, unlike testy creatures such as buffalo or crocodiles. The average dinosaur only wants to go about his or her business, and has to be conditioned to carry out such antics as knocking down buildings or chasing open Jeeps full of screaming humans. No different from the way a villain gets their way with anyone else in his employ, let me tell you.

One last note: the dinosaurs I know do not appreciate the "small brain" rap, especially in light of the observation that large brains has not done the human species much good. So you might want to lay off the condescending attitude, or save it for after the rampage at least.

Veeper