I don’t get it. You always have these super villains wanting to rule he world, or at least a decent sized chunk of it, but I don’t get it. As I understand it, ultimate power would just mea ultimate responsibility. Everything is your problem ad your fault. “There is a famine in the northern territories sir, what shall we do?” “Sir, the treasury is low and we need to repaired all of the local road.”
Sir this, my lord that. To rule the world just means that you have to take care of everyone.
I’ll take private sector wealth and power, thank you very much. All of the pluses without being responsible for everything.
I’m sure most supervillains are just trying to get laid. It is hard enough meeting women when you are just another evil megalomaniac. But to a supervillain with absolute power, no doesn’t mean no.
Besides, you can always delegate the chores to the remaining superheros you keep around for torture. (“Batman, make your car a road paver, or everyone in the Sudan dies …”)
Now you know the reason it is hard getting someone worth a damn to run for president. Why the hell would anyone in their right mind want that job at the pay?
Maybe it’s for the retirement.
That is a good point but I don’t think that most supervillians even worry about retirement so that can’t be it. I think a lot of it is due to ignorance about the way the job actually works. Your average supervillian’s eyes are going to start to glaze over when his deputy henchmen come in talking about irrigation policy in the Midwest, budget vetos, or import tariffs. I don’t even think most of these guys went to college did they?
I think that the President should have a “bring a supervillian to work day” for all high level government officials. That way they can see what a job of that nature is really like. That should take care of that problem and the supervillians can move on to some other ambition like blowing up the moon.
Well yeah. But that’s only really a problem if you…ya know…care. Consider for a moment what Stalin (certainly a good prototype of a supervillain) would have replied to these questions:
"Hmmm…not good at all. Please move the famine to the southern terriority where I told you to put it. Or I’ll kill you.
Round up the kulaks, take their money, and put them to work on repairing the road.
Or I’ll kill you.
Or kill them. Which might mean they’ll get fed up and kill *you]/i]. Always a risk. They didn’t put up with Caligula all that long…but it worked pretty well for Stalin.
Well obviously you’re just not enough of a sociopath to truely understand the pleasures of power…therefore I nominate you for new Ruler of the World
Pffft. A* real* Ruler of the World makes all his / her petty minions and lowly underlings do the tough work while he / she basks in all the glory and riches (and gets laid).
I’ve never figured exactly what the Emperor of the Galaxy, let alone the Universe, does all day except read memos: “Sire, there’s a revolt on planet Rbtplnt. Err, it’s in the Ldzppln system. Umm, bottom left-hand corner on the star map, O Master of Destinies. Ahh, humblest apologies, Your Refulgence, but that’s planet Jmmypg - go back one, in the Jhnbnhm sector - just past Jhnpljns. Obliterate all of them immediately? It shall be done, Maleficent One.” {wipes perspiration from brow}
Some supervillains, in their own way, actually do want to help the state of humanity…just in their own, “special” way. (“There’s famine in the nothern terretories? Well, unleash a plague that’ll kill half the population. That should free up enough food.”) Maybe they think that only villain-style tactics will work effectively to fix the world, or that only one man—them—has the smarts or the skills to do it.
To some, there’s just the sheer ego boost. Any way you cut it, conquering the planet is pretty impressive, no matter what happens afterwards.
And then you have the ones who want to reshape the world into their own image, or their idea of a perfect world. (This often involves killing off vast swaths of the population, to be replaced by robots, genetic supermen, atomic monsters, etc.)
Roland, you were right in this thread, you* have * made an impact here, if only that you come up in any TFF reference, no matter how vague - your immortality is assured!
Heh. No worries; I’m still around. I’ve been trying to avoid making overt TFF references lately, and since I don’t have much to say in regard to the OP (megalomanical villians are generally given a pat background of insanity/sociopathy with a side of goal-oriented obsessive/compulsiveness, resulting in a convenient inability to plan past the realization of their acquisition of ultimate power and thereby ensuring that the writers don’t have to worry about it; that pretty much sums that up), I was going to refrain from comment. But since you were kind enough to ask, here I am. Nice to be remembered.
Sure looks that way. Don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing, but there’s probably not much I could do about it now if I wanted to. Or, as Roland put it:
Engulfed by you, what can I do
When history’s my cage?
Look forward to a future in the past.
I never got the point of supervillains who want to destroy the whole world. Don’t they realize that it would destroy them too? The worst example of this was on Captain Planet, where the villains wanted to unleash all kinds of toxins and pollutants in the air for no discernable reason. I think one or two of the villains were owners of companies that made pollutants, which is why they had a stake in it, but there wasn’t any explanation for the villainy most of the time. “Let’s dump this vat of dolphin nerve gas in the ocean… because we can!!!”
I suppose most ultimate world leaders would give the real responsibilities to underlings and just concentrate on all the ass they’d be getting.
