History Literature / ConfessionsOfADListSupervillain

* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Patterson/Davros family. Lazarus Patterson's Father is involved with a super-soldier project experimenting on the Davros sisters, who also happen to be Air Force pilots. He proceeds to have an affair with and possibly [[spoiler: knock one up]], puts her through the experiment anyway. Afterwards, one of the sisters develops psychic powers, while the other shows no evidence of powers. She does, however suddenly go through an entire pregnancy in a month before dying while giving birth to the [[SuperSpeedster fifth fastest woman in the world.]] Patterson Senior lies to the surviving Davros, telling her that the child died as well. Lying to a psychic proves ineffective. [[StartOfDarkness Davros starts calling herself General Devious, murders old man Patterson, and becomes one of the world's leading supervillains]], taking young [[spoiler: Maxine Velocity along for the ride.]] Lazarus Patterson, meanwhile, grows up to be the Jerkass that everyone knows and hates, with an ongoing enmity with Devious and her niece.

* TheChick: Aphrodite has this role in the Olympians (along with being TheEmpath) and HATES IT.

* RichIdiotWithNoDayJob: Ultraweapon is apparently this. He made part of his original armor but has since used a core of engineers to make the rest of it. He now coasts on the profits and prestige from 'his' work.

* VillainBall: Lazarus Patterson was incredibly rich and well-connected, which allowed him to remain one of the world's leading superheroes despite his incredible {{Jerkass}}-ness. His power from within the system even put him in a perfect position to deal with Cal, what with [[spoiler: the ability to launch assassination attempts pretty much with impunity like he did with the C-Class Bots, ruin Cal's business ventures as he did by destroying the robots Cal had leased to Florida, and ruin his personal life as he did by egging on Mind Over Mather's MindRape SnuffFilm plan.]] As things stood just before the fight in Los Angeles, Paterson could have continued to strike at Cal pretty much with impunity, while living the life of a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob and a new beautiful woman every week... if he hadn't [[spoiler: built gigantic, advanced, super-illegal atomic-powered warbots. It's never really explained what he originally planned to do with them, since he couldn't possibly sell them to the government or any other legitimate buyer, and the only two supervillains who seem to have the resources to buy them are also mortal enemies of Patterson. In any case, the mere existence of these robots is enough to turn the government, Superheroes, and many of his own employees against him, leading to his downfall.]]

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Deconstructed. The sex is better when Cal and his lovers genuinely care about one another.

* BalefulPolymorph: Cal is forced to do this to himself so he can infiltrate one of General Devious' underground bases.

* ItIsPronouncedTropay: It's not "Mechanical," it's "Mechani-Cal"! Wendy keeps getting it wrong. The Bugler, FriendlyEnemy as he is, actually takes care to pronounce it the right way.

* ShoutOut: Paper Tiger is named after Creator/CTPhipps, author of ''Literature/TheRulesOfSupervillainy'' and one of the supervillains in the universe is named Merciless. Jim Bernheimer also publishes that series.

* AliensMadeThemDoIt: [[spoiler: Wendy and Cal have sex under the influence of a psychic. This torpedoes any developing attraction between them.]]

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* GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere: The arrival of Tyranosorcerer Rex. He's a godlike dinosaur wizard from 65 million years ago. {{Justified}} by the fact, even though this is insane, it ''is'' a comic book superhero universe.

* NinetiesAntiHero: {{Reconstructed}} with Cal and the New Renegades. They're more brutal and ruthless than normal heroes.