{"id":2466,"date":"2014-05-08T07:00:59","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T13:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2014-05-05T14:54:27","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T20:54:27","slug":"better-angels-violator-of-the-villainous-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/2014\/05\/better-angels-violator-of-the-villainous-nine\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Angels: Violator, of The Villainous Nine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Violator\"<\/a>Written by Greg Stolze and illustrated by Kurt Komoda, \u00a9 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n

Violator started out as a criminologist named Nahari Sengupta. He was fascinated by costumed, powered criminals (and who wouldn\u2019t be?), neglecting his family and friends to pursue every scrap of data, every piece of evidence, every crackpot theory advanced on the internet.<\/p>\n

He noticed that supervillains were roughly fifty times<\/em> more likely to display signs of schizophrenia\u2014reacting as if to voices no one else could hear, primarily\u2014than the baseline average American. The grandeur of their crimes, coupled with their inefficiency\u2026 that struck him as a pattern too, one that couldn\u2019t, just couldn\u2019t<\/em>, have escaped the notice of the people in this peculiar criminal subculture.<\/p>\n

The most egregious examples, of course, were the terrifying yet queerly incompetent Villainous Five. His colleagues were dubious, to the point of derision, about the premise that powerful villains were also intentional screwups<\/em>, but that bothered him less than having Ripperclaw drag him out of bed at three in the morning, throw him through a window into an open door in the Cat O\u2019 Nine Tails, then leap after him saying, \u201cHey, guess what? You were completely right!\u201d<\/p>\n

They explained. They demonstrated. They unpacked the entire subculture, to Sengupta\u2019s growing excitement and interest. Then they told him that he\u2019d have to recant and destroy his own theory\u2026 because if he didn\u2019t, the Hellbinders would lose their best hope of keeping their demons down.<\/p>\n

Nahari agreed, on the condition that they allow him to join their number. Though dubious at first, they\u2019ve found him a cunning and brave #6. He even insisted that they injure him really, really badly so that their credibility as monsters would remain unparalleled.<\/p>\n

CUNNING<\/strong> 3, PATIENT<\/strong> 3
\nGreed<\/em> 1, Generosity<\/em> 1
\nEspionage<\/em> 2, Knowledge<\/em> 2<\/p>\n

SLY<\/strong> 2, OPEN<\/strong> 1
\nCruelty<\/em> 1, Courage<\/em> 1
\nCowardice<\/em> 1, Endurance<\/em> 1<\/p>\n

DEVIOUS<\/strong> 3, INSIGHTFUL<\/strong> 2
\nCorruption<\/em> 2, Nurture<\/em> 1
\nDeceit<\/em> 2, Honesty<\/em> 0<\/p>\n

POWERS<\/strong>: Impossible Beauty, Body Control<\/p>\n

ASPECTS<\/strong>: Ghost Form, Horns<\/p>\n

PRIMARY SINFUL STRATEGY<\/strong>: Devious<\/p>\n

\"Better<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Greg Stolze and illustrated by Kurt Komoda, \u00a9 2014. Violator started out as a criminologist named Nahari Sengupta. He was<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[18,11,220,289,312],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-better-angels","tag-character","tag-greg-stolze","tag-kurt-komoda","tag-villainous-nine","tag-violator"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1wrNI-DM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2469,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}