Villains Victorious! (not to be confused with Disney Villains Victorious) is a post-a-day blog written by the fictional "Mr. Big", a Sizeshifter Supervillain. The blog presented a "realistic" (but not Grimdark) super-powered world and explored the logistics of being a villain.
Genre conventions were largely enforced in-universe, justified by the setting's single source of powers: a quirk of biology involving non-human mitochondria. Potential supers evolve through "stages" of power, each one initiated by some sort of physical or mental trauma.
The site is hosted on Blogger at http://villainsvictorious.blogspot.com/
and has not been updated since 2014. The content is Creative Commons licensed, and the characters, situations, and details can be freely used elsewhere.
This work includes instances of the following tropes:
- Agent Scully: Mr. Big. He's convinced (due to the influence of his mentor, the late Professor Pulsar) that everything in his world has a rational explanation. It helps that he's generally right, and part of his job in educating new villains is getting them to think about the hows and whys of their adversary's abilities.
- Badass Normal: Stage 2 humans are the "stronger, better, faster" people often described as being at "peak human condition".
- Barrier Warrior: Bluescreen, an astrophysicist turned G-man with force field powers.
- Boxing Lessons for Superman: Mr. Big recommends villains learn mundane skills because their powers can be jammed (interfered with) or jacked (stolen), and they still need to make a getaway in such cases.
- Brought Down to Normal: Power jammers and jackers can do this to any super. The self-identified 'angel' Illumina can do it permanently, which freaks the hell out of Mr. Big.
- Cape Busters: The Grasscutters, a mercenary organization made up of ex-KGB super assassins.
- Cape Punk: Reconstructing classic comic book tropes such as the no-kill policy, death traps, and other staples of the genre.
- Code Name: Mr. Big's early advice breaks down names to avoid.
- Conspiracy Theorist: A whole website of them, called Wavelength. Mr. Big notes that the site is actually right just often enough to keep reading it.
- Conveniently Empty Building: City planners have been building hardened shelters for decades, and the first sign of a super-battle erupting in a city calls for an evacuation. This isn't an economic hardship since supers can also rebuild things faster.
- Create Your Own Villain: Mr. Big explains why it's best to give the impression that this happened: other heroes will treat you as that guy's problem, because "nobody likes cleaning up someone else's mess."
- Cute Bruiser: Saki, the Japanese girl who dresses in Sweet Lolita and uses a Megaton Punch to knock heroes out. She's an internationally wanted super-terrorist who's been around since the 1970's, and has a long and complex history.
- Death Trap: Mr. Big recommends using death traps for pragmatic reasons: because supers power up when they're badly hurt but not actively killed, not only do you want overkill, a death trap is more likely to get the job done than your typical attacks.
- Elemental Powers: A surprising number of people have powers that center around the four Aristotelian elements, despite the scientific nature of powers in the setting. Mr. Big explains why - the power you get is influenced by your unconscious expectations, and the elements are deeply ingrained ideas.
- Evil Minions: Discussed.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Though the setting has no overt magic, religion, or aliens, and only a single source of powers is known, a vast number of "supernatural" elements are explained, known of, or at least possible thanks to the Applied Phlebotinum of super-mitochondria. Mr. Big has personally written about vampires, werewolves, assorted undead, angels, aliens, ancient gods, Agartha the Inner Earth, and other esoteric topics.
- Fossil Revival: Some supers are capable of this using a process dubbed "anaphasic synthesis". Mr. Big discusses the possibility of resurrecting dinosaurs and hints that this either has been done, or might be done soon. The blog stopped updating soon after...
- Game Changer: In-universe, the OKC bombing and 9/11. Not because they caused significant property damage and loss of life - super-battles had done that before - but because such devastating attacks had been carried out by anonymous mundanes, not brightly-colored, easily-identified bad guys.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Where do super-powers come from? How can a super regenerate not just damaged, but destroyed tissue? One of the reasons that para-biology isn't better understood is that the field is starkly terrifying once you really start to get into it.
- Government Agency of Fiction: ACTION, the American Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Operations Network. Founded in 1996 due to public outcry for more support of superheroes.
- Great Escape: Mr. Big uses his powers to break into a CIA secret prison to rescue a villain buddy.
- Healing Factor: Every super at Stage 2 or above has one, explaining why even "unpowered" vigilantes don't get stuck in the hospital for weeks or show visible bruises after a night's work cleaning up the streets.
- Hero Does Public Service: Mack Atlas, the strong-man of the Metahuman Task Force, is a blue-collar construction worker. The MTF specializes in repairing damage done by super-attacks.
- Heroic Build: Justified. Most supers have an alternative metabolic mechanism, meaning there's nothing standing in the way of becoming perfectly sculpted Greek gods.
- Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Heroes wear them to attract attention. When you're bulletproof and the civilians around you aren't, who do you want the bad guys to shoot at?
- High-Speed Hijack: What's the best way to rob an airplane? Hijack it while in the air.
- Making a Splash: Pelagos, the aquatic archaeologist, has control over water. Mr. Big gives several caper options for villains with similar powers.
- Meta Origin: Super-mitochondria that give powers in response to trauma. Got your powers after a Freak Lab Accident? Sound traumatic. Got your powers at puberty? Puberty's definitely traumatic.
- Military Superhero: Rare, though the Army keeps trying. According to Mr. Big, it fails because boot camp requires breaking down and rebuilding a newbie, and it's hard to instill discipline into a demigod. Apollo, the first publicly acknowledged super, was in the Air Force.
- The Needless: Most supers are at least somewhat independent of eating, drinking, or breathing. Their enhanced mitochondria find other ways to power their cells.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: A byproduct of how powers work. If a source of trauma doesn't outright kill you, you gain powers that would help you deal with it. In other words, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Children of Lilith, who gain superpowers like their Children of Eve counterparts, but who evolve into fantastic, monstrously ugly abominations thanks to what amounts to a birth defect. The stigma of their appearance drives many to villainy.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up and Not Growing Up Sucks: Since gaining and improving powers extends your lifespan and slows your aging, kids who power up are stuck as kids... for potentially a very long time. The supervillain Saki looks around 13 as of the year 2015, and got her powers by surviving a bomb blast in 1945.
- Our Angels Are Different: Illumina, a self-proclaimed angel who comes off as a goody-goody All-Loving Hero.. with the terrifying (and so far, unique) power to permanently steal your super-abilities. Mr. Big notes that "the biggest restraint on Illumina, right now, is Illumina." Since she hasn't provided any other evidence of a higher power backing her actions, nobody's actually sure if Heaven is real or not.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires are supers with a hybrid metabolism: they actually absorb sunlight during the day (becoming lethargic in the process) and drink blood at night. An aversion to sunlight is actually an allergic reaction which not every vampire has, the way people with a peanut allergy can become severely ill, or even die, from something other people can easily eat. The most notable vampire in the setting is Faduma, a warlord in Somalia.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Discussed.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Since supers' bodies can supply their own energy without needing to consume normal food, breathe, and so on, sometimes the body... just stops supporting the systems that do those things. The resulting zombies, liches, and other forms of undead are considered urban legends for the most part.
- Perky Female Minion: Pyrepower to Mr. Big.
- Power Nullifier: Jammers and jackers, or people who can interfere with or steal superpowers. The self-proclaimed angel Illumina is the only person who can jack a power permanently, at least as far as anyone knows. The rest of the time, governments use chemical power nullifiers to safely transport and incarcerate criminal supers.
- Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: As a basic biological phenomenon, you can temporarily lose your powers due to stress. Part of the purpose of establishing a villainous identity and mindset is to avert this problem.
- Really 700 Years Old: It's strongly hinted that there are supers hundreds or thousands of years old wandering around the world. None of them seem interested in gaining publicity.
- Religious Bruiser: Illumina, who's a skilled brawler when she's not the Combat Medic.
- Required Secondary Powers: Almost always present, due to the mechanism that provides powers: as a safeguard for the individual's survival, you won't gain powers that are more lethal to you than the danger they were meant to avert. Mr. Big interviews Hurricane Hal, who talks about the 'slipstream' that lets speedsters do a lot of their magic, and creative uses for it.
- Secret Identity: Any woman who can give birth to a super-child will always give birth to supers. If your identity is public, your parents and siblings can be targeted for their biological potential to breed more supers.
- Self-Duplication: The secret power of the Fractal, a brooding vigilante who uses it achieve Stealth Hi/Bye (by canceling a dupe when nobody's looking), become a polymath (by assigning numerous dupes to study different skills), and seemingly already be wherever the criminal he's chasing is heading for (by sending multiple dupes in different directions).
- Shapeshifter Baggage: Averted thanks to supers' Healing Factor: excess mass comes from the same "place" that lost or destroyed tissue does, and unneeded mass goes back there.
- Shipped in Shackles: Chemical shackles, specifically. There's still several ways to get around them.
- Sidekick: Mr. Big hashes out the pros and cons of sidekicks for villains, concluding that they're mostly "a hero thing".
- Spandex, Latex, or Leather: Starter villains are advised to dress for protection at low levels, but once they become bulletproof, spandex better for a few different practical purposes.
- Super-Empowering: Vampires, werewolves, and certain other types of supers can infect others. Faduma, the vampire queen of Somalia, uses this ability for humanitarian purposes, as well as building an unstoppable vampire army.
- Superhero Gods: Mr. Big receives credible evidence suggesting that the myths and ancient gods of Egypt were supers playing out political power games using super-dinosaurs as pawns. Worse, the implication is that one of these ancient gods is still alive and was the person responsible for sharing this evidence.
- Superheroes Wear Tights: Because they've got awesome bodies thanks to their supercharged physiologies, villain supers are advised to weaponize the resulting Fanservice to distract or sway civilians who see them.
- Superhero School: Ranging from good-hearted institutions of learning to cynical mercenary mills. Mr. Big gives a few examples.
- Superhuman Trafficking: Attempted in the 70's and 80's, but thankfully averted due to international military action. The bright, theatrical "hero vs. villain" combats of the modern age are a conscious attempt to soften the public perception of supervillain and avert another case of this.
- Supernatural Martial Arts: Mr. Big considers all supernatural powers to be bunk, but gives several scientific explanations for popular ninja or martial arts tricks.
- Super-Speed: Discussed.
- Supervillain: The blog is geared toward educating villains on the practical process of being this.
- Supervillain Lair: Discussed. Mr. Big's cardinal rule is "build lairs to be expendable", and explains why many lairs will have a Self-Destruct Mechanism: to take out the waves of cops and/or heroes who are here for you, and to destroy evidence of your crimes.
- Take Over the World: Deconstructed by Mr. Big, who points out why this is a stupid idea.
- Telepathy: Apparently not a part of the setting. Mr. Big's evidence? The world hasn't been taken over yet.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted. Pyrepower watched herself burning alive for seventeen hours after a car accident with a drunk jock, then got blamed for the accident and had her entire life ruined. After recruiting her as an apprentice supervillain, Mr. Big sends her to therapy for her emotional issues.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Mr. Big recommends villains obey this on purely pragmatic grounds. There's also rumors of a secret organization called 'the Pact', which promises to resurrect supervillains who swear allegiance to it. If so, the authorities are better off holding a supervillain in prison (where they'll know what he's up to) as opposed to killing him (and possibly letting him come back and cause more trouble).
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: THE way powers manifest.
- Villain Team-Up: Lucky for the heroes, this is rare. Mr. Big's reasoning is simple: the more villains involved in a caper, the smaller the take for each of them. While most heroes have consonant goals (justice, saving the innocent), most villain motives are idiosyncratic.
- Villainesses Want Heroes: Pyrepower, Mr. Big's apprentice, has a fascination with young superheroes, including plans to capture some of her own. If the followup is any indication, she has some... strange ideas about what to do with them.
- Weaponized Teleportation: When teleportation is discussed, it includes reasons why teleporters can't just kill people by extracting vital organs.
- We Can Rebuild Him: While Mr. Big doesn't think much of most rumors about military super-cyborgs, Project Equinox has him worried... For the most part, this trope is averted, since super-technology is notably absent.
- World's Strongest Man: Mack Atlas. Mr. Big says this: "There is no weight he has been unable to lift so far. Everything he's ever failed at lifting failed because it broke under its own weight, not because he was unable to provide leverage." He's able to tackle battleships and move mountains. What does he do? Construction.
- Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Mr. Big recommends a no-killing policy for villains for public relations reasons, since he basically assumes a villain will be caught sooner or later and "a dead stockbroker results in a very unsympathetic jury."
