ASK A SUPER VILLAIN - "Maintaining A Relationship"

Even Super Villains need advice.  Ask an expert, Ask a Super Villain...

Today's letter was again posted as a comment the initial Ask a Super Villain post on the old blog:

As a Super Villain of some renown I know everything there is about being a super villain, and I’m here to help you with advice...

...however, to be as effective as I am as a Super Villain I have had to live a life devoid of emotion and without the interference of "love".  So, that means that although I know everything about being a Super Villain, I cannot help with this particular problem, because it is beyond my experience.  So, with it being about love and such and that being thing that women are more in tune with that sort of thing, I asked around my control centre and it turned out that the head engineer of the Destructo-Cannon Project, Dr Ursula Gunn, was female.  Not that I can't tell the difference, but I always just think of her as one of the guys.  Anyway, this was what she wrote before she ran from the control centre in tears for some reason:

Just remember that under cape and mask a Super Villain is just a man. Unless the Super Villain happens to be a woman, in which case just remember that under all that skin-tight catsuit the Super Villain is just a woman. And if the Super Villain is an amorphous hermaphroditic alien, then just remember that under all that ambient glowing the Super Villain is just an amorphous hermaphroditic alien. Or if the Super Villain is a giant robot from the future then just remember that under all that technologically advanced super-alloy plating the Super Villain is just a giant robot from the future. Just like any other man/woman/amorphous hermaphroditic alien/giant robot from the future, you must learn to touch his heart/her lady-heart/its twin heart-like organs/its energy crystal power source. Here are few ideas to maintain any relationship, but tailored to the specific needs of a relationship with a Super Villain. 

Surprise Him/Her/It/It With Gifts:  Everyone loves to receive flowers mutated into carnivorous creatures large enough to swallow intruders. Everyone loves to receive diamonds specially cut to refract light entering the solar collector into super-deadly laser rays. Everyone loves to receive chocolates, because chocolates are made of chocolate. Everyone loves to receive sexy underwear for their female henchmen to wear as work uniforms. Everyone loves to receive gift vouchers from Doomsday Devices 'R' Us. Everyone loves to receive Crystaline Plasma Batteries if they are a giant robots from the future. Everyone loves to receive the corpses of their enemies display on spikes.

Ask About His/Her/Its/Its Day:  Being a Super Villain is a stressful job and having someone to come home to talk to about having to kill underlings for incompetence really lightens the load.

Shared Interests:  If he/she/it/it wants to annex a neighbouring country you should try to be interested in annexing the neighbouring country, too. If you are experimenting with making your own gorilla-human hybrid warriors, see if your loved one is interested in using them for their legion of doom or asking at the next meeting of the Secret League of Super Criminals if they needs some. But don't force yourself to enjoy something that you don't and don't make your loved one feel compelled to get involved in your hobbies if it is something really don't want to be part of. And have some time apart. No one wants become the couple who dress in matching jumpsuits, cackling as they dance around the control room activating explosions at landmarks around the world remotely. Those couples are just creepy.

Make Time to Get Away Together: Many couples find a holiday together in a quiet hotel under assumed names can be a wonderful way to get away and restart a flagging relationship, or even travel to a foreign country with no extradition treaty if things go particularly badly. For the busy couple, it may just be a matter of finding enough time to get to a two person escape pod as the space-station implodes around you. As long as you can get away together your relationship should last a lot longer.

Don't have Kids: A Super Villain's life is too busy and dangerous to raise a child properly. The usual result is the Super Villain's partner having to move away to raise the child, only to die when the child comes of age leading the child to discover who their other parent was and thus set out on a mission to kill the hero who defeated and killed the Super Villain years earlier. Although many relationships benefit from living apart for eighteen years, the both dying sometime in that period thing is not conducive maintaining the relationship.

Role Playing: Civilian couples spice their love life up with games where they dress up as the Doctor and the Nurse, the Aristocrat and the French Maid, the Astronaut and the Alien Princess, or the Suspicious Looking Traveller and the Rubber-Gloved Customs Inspector. But Super Villains and their significant others have to play much more complex games. Try dressing up as the Hero and have your lover hunt your through the hedge maze of your country estate. Pretend to be in love with the Super Villain while secretly sending messages to your bosses in the government. Use body paint to make yourself look like the capital of a rival nation and paint parts if your partner's body as an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (unless your partner is a giant robot from the future who already comes equipped with ICBMs).

Food: They say that, “the way to a man's heart is though his stomach”/“the way to a woman's thighs is though her stomach”/“the way to an amorphous hermaphroditic alien's heart-like organs is literal though his stomach”/“the way to a giant robot from the future's energy crystal power source is through the primary manifold intake valve.” In a modern relationship meal preparation should be shared between both parties, but when it is your turn to cook try to make it something special. Try making the national dish of the country he invaded that day that night's dinner. Shape meatloaf into the shape of the heads of the Super Villain's enemies. Try serving the last known specimen of an endangered species for that decadent “the rules don't apply to us” feel. Or just make the simple meals from the little village he/she/it/it came from to remind them of their humble beginnings as the child of peasants, meals made just like their mother made the before they had her executed as a warning to others not to use their childhood nickname.

Communication: Always keep communication channels open between the two of you. But remember they should be encrypted to stop eaves dropping by the government.

Dress Sexily: Remember the Super Villain's spending all day with an army of femme-soldiers in their impossibly tight uniforms and that Amazonian henchwoman with the inexplicably skimpy armour. Coming home to find you in comfortable but frumpy clothes isn't going to light the fires of desire and may have them looking at the other available options. How many relationships with Super Villains have ended because of the Villain losing interest in what they had at home and falling momentarily for the feminine wiles of the hero's gorgeous scantly clad love interest who exploits the moment to steal the self-destruct codes leading to the hero destroying your loved one's Doomsday Device. Believe me, nothing ends a relationship faster than your lover being engulfed in a ball of flames and crushed by a falling laser canon.

Experiment with Bondage: As the owner of a dungeon full of torture equipment, your Super Villain lover should be quite easily lured into a cell and strapped down when the relationship reaches a stage where they are thinking of leaving you. Even the most seemingly doomed relationship can be maintained if the other party can't get free. And then once Stockholm Syndrome sets in it should be fine to untie them again.

Finally Appreciate What You Have: Always remember that what you have between the two of you is a special, wonderful thing, and that others may not even have that. There are some Super Villains who build emotional walls around themselves and hide behind the lie that they cannot afford to have the emotions of normal people because they think it makes them look weak, but those closet to them, those most loyal know that deep down the Villain has a beautiful soul looking to be released by if only they'd notice their own true soul mate is right there next to them waiting next to the Destructo-Cannon, waiting to be noticed, waiting for the moment when their eyes meet and their true desire for each other erupts like a self-destructing secret lair built in a volcano.

I hoped the advice helped as it's all I can give you as Dr Gunn has since handed in her resignation.  Something about me not being able to see what's right in front of me, which is crazy, I can see the computer terminal just fine.

If you have any problems like this or any other involving Super Villains or being a Super Villain I can give you the solution.  Just ask in the comments here or on the original Wordpress blog or on tumblr, Google+ and Twitter.

~ Doom's Unending Guardian.

[Ask A Super Villain]

[Real Life Super Villains]

The above is carried out by professional Super Villains.  Do not try it at home.