Dear Villainess,
I've been a successful villain, one of the evilest in my area, for going on a decade now. However, lately I seem to be experience a sort of midlife crisis. My heart has gone right out of amassing wealth and power, terrorizing the innocent, and all the other activities that used to bring me pleasure. I feel strangely compelled to help cripples across the street. Sometimes I burst into tears at a butterfly or a fragment of music. What the hell's going on? Do I need therapy?
Signed, Dazed and Bemused
Dear Dazed,
In a situation like this, you need to take several steps.
1. Get yourself checked over by a good doctor. Just as a silly little brain tumor can send a normal guy up the clock tower with a sniper rifle, it can also have the reverse effect. In addition, have you undergone any major hormonal stressors lately? Sex change, excessive time travel, conversion to vampirism? Any of these can make a veritable Satan-on-Earth over into a whiny goth poet in less time than it takes to say, "Kill him slowly."
2. Refocus. A new set of interests doesn't have to herald the end of a villainous career. You like butterflies now? Fine. Read up on the rate of extinction of insect species in the Amazon and see if that doesn't send you on a revenge rampage for a couple of months. Another popular method of refocusing is to get a fluffy cat to pet while you scheme. No one knows why this works, but it does.
3. If necessary, don't be afraid to try something completely new. There are many examples out there of individuals who spent the first half of their lives as great villains and the second half in a totally different field. Saul of Tarsus, various Medicis, all sorts of people. Philanthropy and the arts are popular second-career choices, as is politics.
- The Villainess
Dear Villainess,
I'm in love with a hero. There, I've said it. All my friends think I'm nuts, but I just know that he's the one. What should I do?
Signed, Smitten Kitten
Dear Krazy Kat,
For once in their chattering lives, your friends are right. Hero-villain relationships are frought with conflict and have rarely, if ever, been known to end other than badly. Do you really want to become his reluctant and less-noble sidekick? Worse, assuming you're female, do you really want him to leave you just before you announce you're in the family way, sticking you with the job of raising the kid who is destined to be his arch-nemisis? Do you want arguments over who gets to hold the remote peppered with references to your various felonies like they were bad things? I didn't think so. Get over him.
- The Villainess