What do you think of this idea?

There are so many villains based on the Seven Deadly Sins, I sort of want to make villains based on Deconstructions of the Seven Heavenly Virtues.

For instance:

• Temperance - A Knight Templar teetotaler who wants everything that isn't good for you regulated by law, and is willing to instate a dictatorship to do it.
• Kindness - Someone who paints smilies on people's souls or traps them in perfect Gilded Cages or Lotus Eater Machines.
• Diligence - A villainous Determinator who will stop at nothing to achieve their Above Good and Evil goals.
• Humility - A religious fanatic misanthrope who believes themself and the rest of humanity to be worthless, and that only those who accept their worthlessness will go to heaven, so they purposely destroy people's self-worth.

edited 18th Dec '10 9:35:58 PM by LeighSabio

This is clever. go with it!

Chastity and Patience seem pretty simple, but it's going to be hard to make Charity an outright villain.

Charity would be deconstructed Robin Hood, methinks. How do you do it for patience?

On-topic: I like it. Especially if you can make them gray or blue/orange, rather than absolutely evil.

edited 18th Dec '10 11:48:35 PM by RedWren

patience is the ability to endure the unbearable with grace is it not? perhaps All Your Powers Combined, Viva La Evolution, or Awesomeness by Analysis would be appropriate abilities? As far as personality perhaps they are chipper way too chipper bordering on Joker level madness or Evilly Affable?

I think that example for 'kindness' could use some rethinking. All of the other examples are how you could take the virtue and overdo it so much that it becomes bad. The kindness one just doesn't seem to fit. What happens if you overdo kindness? A sort of All Take and No Give relationship of the second type perhaps, and the person smothers everyone with stuff and attention until they can't fend for themselves.

It's pretty easy to do this, actually. You just have the character call it something it isn't. For example:

"I'm being kind to the boy suffering from cancer by telling him his death is justice because 'good always prevails' and 'everything happens for a reason.' It will help him as he comes to terms with his rightfully-untimely death... What? I'm doing what I should be doing: looking at the bright side of things and keeping a positive attitude. If anything, you should be praising me for my steadfast devotion to justice and impermeable hope."

It's actually initial-apathy turned into schadenfraude (sadism) by some twisted logic.

This is an awesome idea! About Chastity, we could just go with a typical "sex is evil" ultra-Puritan. And yeah, Charity would be a Robin-Hood type figure Gone Horribly Right.

man this is 40 k level awesome

Patience should be an irresponsibly neglectful leader. Despite horrible casualties, Patience waits cheerfully for the established plan to work.

Maybe Chastity should be an Emotion Eater who takes not only people's sexual lust, but all their emotions as well. They're left as emotionless husks. >:D

Patiance should be Master at the Xanatos Gambit. When he fights crime, it should happen because he says so. He should be a master planner. Waiting for the precise moment to strike.

You know what would be awesome? If you could somehow weasel all seven of these into the same story.

Also, can anyone think of heroic characters based on the Seven Deadly Sins? That would be harder, I think. But Lust, at least, could be an Ethical Slut.

edited 22nd Dec '10 7:56:34 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

I've just come up with a coherent plot for this. The Seven Heavenly Virtues, disgusted with the fact that Humans Are Flawed, are trying to make the platonic form of humanity, a human that is absolutely ideal and prefect in every way. Unfortunately, doing so requires them to Kill All Humans and destroy their souls as well.

• Charity: Is the ringleader, a Knight Templar who is disgusted with humanity's flaws and thinks they are doing humanity and the world of ideals a favor by destroying humans.
• Chastity: An Emotion Eater who leaves a person an Empty Shell.
• Diligence: Determinator and Implacable Man who will stop at nothing to achieve the goal.
• Humility: Sucks away a person's self-preservation instinct
• Kindness: Traps people in Lotus-Eater Machine, paints smilies on people's souls.
• Temperance: ??? (I've got nothing that would work with this story)

The Hero will be some sort of flawed Anti-Hero.

edited 22nd Dec '10 8:44:04 PM by LeighSabio

Temperance should be the PR branch of this operation, lulling people into complacency by insisting that they're moderate and show restraint. Since temperance means control and moderation, maybe he's fond of the Golden Mean Fallacy.

Edit: There should be at least one incident where Our Hero displays each of the Seven Deadly Sins, and is still perfectly sympathetic.

edited 22nd Dec '10 9:44:24 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

I'll admit thinking of the sins as Heroes is tough. All I could think of was Envy. For some reason, I can't help of think of a Batman type of character. Someone who looks at superheroes and can't help but feel powerless, forcing them to take further steps to be something more than superhuman.

Patience should be the only one of the heavenly virtues that knew their actions were wrong, but still didn't do anything. An Anticlimax Boss who gives up without a fight, insisting to the end that the problem resolved itself.

Sins as heroes, I like it.

Lust- Ethical Slut sounds good.

Gluttony- Can be humorized as The Big Guy. Have him be a gourmet, too.

Sloth- The Smart Guy. Rejects extremism because of said sloth.

Pride- The Hero. A rebel against the oppressive villains.

Anger- The Lancer. Justified in said anger, which is what keeps him going. Still, not completely condoned by the other characters.

Greed- This guy wants wealth and power- but for the right reasons. Greed wants to help people once these goals are obtained.

Having trouble with Envy. Anyone?

Envy could use his envy of those with a better position in life to drive himself to work harder and be smarter.

But I think it's virtually impossible to have heroes based on the Sins not display the Virtues. In short, while I disagree that Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, etc. are necessarily bad, it's harder to say Humility, Temperance, Charity, etc. are not good. The only Virtue I really disagree with is Chastity (and maybe Humility, if taken too far).

I still think that Humility should be a misanthrope who thinks everyone's worthless.

Envy could be a fangirl/fanboy bordering on Fan Hate who idealizes a certain person to a Draco in Leather Pants extent and wants to be just like them... just thinkin'