The thing that’s different about dressing an army instead of yourself which lots of supervillains don’t seem to fathom is that while it is good and expected to make yourself look like a dangerous lunatic, it’s no fun for your minions to go around with that message while they’re out there trying to be feared rather than ridiculed for their style options. So we here decided that it’s time to call for an end to the frivolous armor and uniform styles we have been starting to see out there on the killing fields, starting with the pointless cutaway midriff fad (notably popular among a few misguided Amazons I could name) and continuing with the manic Bedazzler™ look, till we get to the unfortunate butt inscription craze, which obviously does nothing to enhance the image of a villain’s fighting force (even when they retreat). If only we could get the guys on the other side to mess around with their army uniforms like this we would be on to something, though they seem to be weirdly insensitive to the call of fashion for some reason, so obsessed with their olive drab still after all this time. All we are asking for is if people would take a moment or two to think about exactly what they are doing with their paramilitary wings and ask themselves “is this enhancing the image of evil that I want to project, or taking away?”

Capella

I am gratified that our writeup on how to control earthquake faults has met with such an enthusiastic reception, and were I a lesser being would surely be humbled. Since our original post here on the topic, reports of tinkerers the world round with their audacious boring machines and their chronomagnetically focussed shock front generators are just the kinds of thing that we here have been aiming to foster all along, endeavors universally acknowledged to exemplify the very title of “supervillain.” I personally can claim a most tangible sense of identification with those who feel a drive to loosen the primal forces of Nature in order to set right an injustice which has been dealt to one by one’s inferiors. Whether one is intent on demolishing an ancient capital or on stirring up a mountain of seawater to do one’s bidding, to unleash the titanic energies of the planetary crust is to engage in an absorbing activity which only few can say they have mastered.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

Fate and good planning have worked in your favor and conspired to give you a huge number of captives now which have to be moved a long distance from Point A to Point B for whatever reasons you might have, and you do not happen to have a number of empty railway cars going in that direction at your disposal. The simplest and most elegant solution is simply to have your minions point them in the proper direction and get them marching on foot through the elements and hazards of the road. You do need to pay attention to the troops under you as they form a cordon around the body of prisoners, with regular shifts and provisions as during the rest of maneuvers, however there is a bit of a break in that you do not need to provide anything at all for the captives. As an additional bonus, this sort of large-scale and visible brutality will invariably help to cement your horrifying reputation for evil and ruthlessness long after the march is over as part of an appalling inhuman villainous campaign.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

Now it’s been a couple of years since I posted about the biggest bit of culinary advice here on the site — How to serve man — and I have to say that I think it pretty much holds up over time what with all the various entertaining functions we’ve put on and the general opinions of our guests of various sorts and shapes, and I am proud to say that not a single one has said a word against my various culinary experiments, not ever (except for Veeper, but he says he only does veggies and that it’s nothing about the cooking). But of course everybody knows experience is the most useful of all teachers and I did want to update the readers about some new trends that they ought to be in mind of if they want to sound halfway knowledgeable whenever the subject came up wherever they might be without having to be the kind of person who reads foodie blogs, which I wouldn’t want this to become.

Capella

Sometimes I get asked by those who don’t know me whether I myself am a shapechanger. I guess it’s understandable, given how rare my kind is seen around lairs and such, but it still tends to rub my scales the wrong way. The thought of suddenly busting out into something with limbs all over the place, naked and tailless, with that bizarre distribution of hair, still just strikes me as wrong on a visceral level. This gives me respect for those who try to combine their armies with those of werewolves and other therianthropes to gain that elusive edge. The social organization one finds among the werefolk has some aspects stemming from the animal side and others more influenced by human ways. You have to understand which is which, too. I’ve seen cases where matters deteriorated quickly to the point where the only thing that could have gone worse would be outright defection followed by general carnage, all because one side didn’t take into account the cultural differences between the two sides.

Did you know that the name for a group of bears is a sleuth? Me neither.

Veeper