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Apr. 11th, 2025 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feotakahariI’ve only used her once, but at some point, I want to bring back my villain Goldie. She’s a career criminal in a superhero setting, dabbling in many things, but focused on stealing high-value items, often working together with teams of other non-powered criminals. Her main interests are hedonism and the money to support that hedonism, but she avoids anything that’s addictive or impairs her thinking.
Goldie has no powers within the fiction itself. Her power is essentially metafictional: there is nothing she would rather die than do, so her death doesn’t fit most themes.
This manifests most obviously in its negative aspects. Goldie doesn’t enjoy violence in and of itself, but there’s no harm she wouldn’t do to take what she wants. She’s loyal so long as it benefits her to work with others, but she’s equally ready to backstab you if she thinks she won’t get caught or can spin it to not hurt her reputation. Goldie would rather kill a friend or a lover than die, rather kill a child than die, rather destroy a priceless artifact than die, and so on.
But Goldie can’t be killed by her pride, because she would rather admit her mistakes than die. She can’t fall victim to greed, because she would rather give up everything she owns than die. She hasn’t a vengeful bone in her body, because vengeance is too likely to get you killed. No matter what choices you force her to make, she’ll always be back later to try to steal something else. And she can be back, because she’ll always find some depth to stoop to or devil to deal with that restores her wealth and influence. (One that won’t get her killed, because Goldie isn’t an idiot either.)
Goldie does have a potential weakness: she doesn’t really understand why people act differently from her, and looks with suspicion upon everything from altruism to religion to transgender people. (Oh yeah, Goldie’s a bigot.) In theory, this could illuminate a theme about how failing to understand people will kill you. But if her life was on the line, she’d put genuine effort into trying to see things from your perspective.
Goldie has no powers within the fiction itself. Her power is essentially metafictional: there is nothing she would rather die than do, so her death doesn’t fit most themes.
This manifests most obviously in its negative aspects. Goldie doesn’t enjoy violence in and of itself, but there’s no harm she wouldn’t do to take what she wants. She’s loyal so long as it benefits her to work with others, but she’s equally ready to backstab you if she thinks she won’t get caught or can spin it to not hurt her reputation. Goldie would rather kill a friend or a lover than die, rather kill a child than die, rather destroy a priceless artifact than die, and so on.
But Goldie can’t be killed by her pride, because she would rather admit her mistakes than die. She can’t fall victim to greed, because she would rather give up everything she owns than die. She hasn’t a vengeful bone in her body, because vengeance is too likely to get you killed. No matter what choices you force her to make, she’ll always be back later to try to steal something else. And she can be back, because she’ll always find some depth to stoop to or devil to deal with that restores her wealth and influence. (One that won’t get her killed, because Goldie isn’t an idiot either.)
Goldie does have a potential weakness: she doesn’t really understand why people act differently from her, and looks with suspicion upon everything from altruism to religion to transgender people. (Oh yeah, Goldie’s a bigot.) In theory, this could illuminate a theme about how failing to understand people will kill you. But if her life was on the line, she’d put genuine effort into trying to see things from your perspective.
