Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-A-Villain — Villain so is just normal actually
"I'm a regular guy. I can't stress that enough. I get out of bed in the mornings and I put my pants on one leg at a time, I have the same dreams and fears as any regular guy. None of that I want to rule the world nonsense, understand?
"I dream ordinary. I dream of a job, for life if I want to stay in it, which pays for me to live. I want wages that cover rent, I want places to rent that don't make me sick. I want the town I live in to feel like a place, not a punishment. Somewhere that houses community, not just sucks my will to live. Somewhere for families to exist. Somewhere families can afford, where they can be happy. Is that bad of me? Does that sound bad of me?
"I'm not standing on top of a skyscraper with a death ray pointed at police headquarters. So I gotta ask, why am I getting the same treatment as if I was? Why am I a villain? Why do they want to kill me?
"Is it because I have these small, ordinary dreams? Is that how far the world had come apart? A guy, a regular guy, dreams of fulfilling work and not starving and a home and a partner and maybe kids some day and asks so why can't I have those? and that's, that gets you a death sentence?
"They want to paint me like I'm a ranting spandex-clad supervillain because then it's easy to dismiss me. Dismiss the fact that I don't want anything special; I want what everyone wants. That the way they hate me, the way they want to kill me, that's how much they hate all of us. Why are they in charge of us? Why in they in charge of how we get treated? We outnumber them, millions to every one of them. How come we're taking it?
"They don't want you to ask that. They don't want you to look at me and see yourselves. They don't want you to stand here with me, because there are millions of us. Because they can't stand up to us, if we stand up to them, in our millions, and simply say no. No violence, no theatrics, no supervillainy. Just no, folks.
"They need you to turn on your TV and hear me screaming in fear and anger, and reporters just like this interviewer making up some silly name for me. I'm not Deathmonster 3000 or whatever. I'm just a guy. My name's Jim. And I'm not a villain; neither are you. We're just regular people, and we deserve better than this."
He stares, owlishly and earnest, into the camera, and Brenda gives him the professional, formaldehyde-preserved memory of a smile.
"Well — Jim," she says. "You can't really deny that you're a forty-foot-long dragon-shaped synthetic organism built from recovered alien technology by a governmental weapons lab; I don't know how regular our viewers will find that—"