CEO: This episode of Terrible Writing Advice is brought to you by Megacorp!
And I guess Skillshare helped.
Are you struggling to write a compelling villain?
Is it just too much work to create a nefarious baddie to properly challenge your main
characters?
Is there a way to cheat and create an easy, faceless antagonist to oppose the good guys
with near zero effort on the writer’s part?
Writer, what you need is a Mega corporation.
Here at Megacorp we provide all of your antagonist needs so all a writer need do is sit back
and rake in that cash for the cheap cheap price of your ethics and self awareness.
Concerned about the upfront world building cost of creating a Mega corporation?
Don’t worry.
Megacorp makes its easy.
Just follow our guide and soon any writer can find themselves building better worlds.
Megacorp is the best solution for menacing the heroes with a wide variety of sinister
assets.
Are the empire’s storm troopers failing to impress?
Megacorp has its own team of high tech private military contractors on call and ready to
deploy in a moment’s notice.
These cutthroat mercenaries are as well armed as they are ugly and they are very ugly complete
with savage ‘bad guy’ scars and psychotic dispositions.
Yes these soldiers were likely veterans who served their country faithfully before being
forced to join the PMC due to hard economic times and yes they likely suffer from untreated
PTSD, but we will overlook that as the main characters mow them down without remorse.
These PMCs also come equipped with the latest combat drone technologies because what we
fail to spend on PTSD treatment for our mercenaries we spend on high tech robotic weapons instead.
Our PMCs are so powerful that they can wage multi front campaigns to conquer entire nations
despite the absolute crippling expense of waging modern war.
Should our PMCs not be enough of a threat then Megacorp has a far more terrifying weapon
to wield against the heroes.
Lawyers!
Even the most deadly of heroes can easily be mired in red tape and petty bureaucracy.
See you in court goody two shoes heroes.
Why do would we resort to litigation after extra legal death squads?
I uh… it was in the memo somewhere.
Our crack legal teams keep Megacorp’s public record spotless and anyone who says otherwise
will be sued into the stone age faster than you can say ‘libel and slander’.
Megacorp does this just for fun since we own the government anyway.
We could just make it illegal to post negative review of our products and save ourselves
a ton of legal fees, but that would cost the story the writer’s poorly researched court
room scene.
Speaking of money down the tubes, Megacorp is so expansive that we run everything.
From the government, military, economy, education, colonization, every aspect of life is under
Megacorp’s control.
But how can the audience know that a sinister megacorp has taken over the world?
Well they won’t miss it because our slogan and logo is pasted onto pretty much everything.
Will this dilute the value of our brand?
Of course not.
We trademarked the concept of ‘brand’ after all.
It is important to remind everyone that we are everywhere and that our sole goal is to
turn a profit from everything.
We own the police.
We own the hospitals.
We probably own you.
Sunlight?
We purchased that a few years ago.
Great investment.
We now have an autopay feature to make sure you don’t miss a payment for your sunlight
and oxygen bill.
We even own the bio engineered plague that is ravaging the population as well as the
cure which we will withhold giving the virus plenty of time to mutate and further kill
off our customer base as well as drive up wages in the plague’s aftermath.
Should we have thought this out further?
Of course not!
The highly skilled board members of Megacorp would never second guess themselves, mostly
because the actual hierarchy of Megacrop is suspiciously absent minus the odd corrupt
CEO.
Megacorp is not a dynamic organization filled with a plurality of perspectives and individuals
with their own motives and goals.
We are a nebulous and monolithic organization that exists solely to commit evil acts and
sometimes to act as a strawman.
We are here to let the audience know that money is bad and that you should give as much
of it as possible to the author.
Creating a multi tiered organization full of intrigue and power plays would only distract
from the author’s soap box.
Having the heroes try to navigate the ruthless world of cutthroat corporate politics, trying
to distinguish friend form foe and stay one step ahead of the endless web of betrayals,
sabotage, and the duplicitous charisma of ambitious corporate officers might sound like
an interesting story element, but doing so would only create problems for the writer.
This is where Megacorp can really shine as its monolithic nature saves the writer from
coming up with a justification for why any of these ‘extremely intelligent’ corporate
officers thought that the military would totally pay top dollar for a zombie bio weapon.
A bio weapon that converts potential customers, investors, and share holders into more zombies.
Clearly we can all see the value in that.
In addition to zombies, Megacorp also has a wide variety of other useful products.
Our bio-weapons division has an extensive xeno biology project as we strive to turn
a captured alien creature into a weapon.
We will continue our attempts to turn this creature into a bio-weapon even after it escapes
and destroys our multi billion dollar starship before forcing us to nuke our off world colony
complex along with our expensive secret lab.
I mean we can’t stop trying to weaponize the alien now.
We’ve sunk too much money into this project.
Does this alien life form do anything that a human weapon cannot?
Not really, but I’m sure we can sell it to the military anyway.
Just like we sold them that super powerful death robot that did instantly turn on them,
but surely they’ve forgotten about that now.
Yes we could sell the military a cheaper war-machine that is basically a lemon and thus make bank
on all of the replacement parts, but that would undercut the hero’s victory.
Speaking of those pesky heroes, they won’t be able to do anything to stop Megacorp in
spite of our many many weaknesses.
Our corporation doesn’t need a PR department because Megacorp is always willing to fight
no matter how bad it makes us look.
We all know real life corporations are just the textbook definition of brave and will
always fight to the end and never just instantly fold when faced with even a small vocal minority
of negative opinions.
Megacorp is beholden to no one.
How do we keep our shareholders happy?
We don’t because we are far too busy running the government in spite of how little profit
there were be in having to act as a nation state bloated by crippling defense spending,
social programs, and other services that do not generate revenue but are still required
for a society to function.
We will of course brutally oppress the population meeting rioters with expensive tanks and death
squads rather than really cheap bread and circuses.
How do we keep in the black?
We… um… well we own a monopoly on contrivium.
Hopefully the revenue from our contrivium sales will be enough to prop up the rest of
our imploding pet projects as we continue our relentless quest to convert all of our
capital in zombies.
Megacorp is all about profit even though all our evil acts would cut into the bottom line.
It is important for the audience to think Megacorp is evil in order to distract from
their own contributions to an unsustainable and gluttonous consumer economy that promotes
a culture of short term thinking and praying at the alter of savings.
Any nuanced discussion of the topics of environmental destruction and ecology should be simplified
for the consumer into ‘trees good, industry bad’.
I’m sure the irony will be lost on the paperback reader.
After all “resources exist to be consumed”.
And if you act now, Megacorp will throw in a free mercenary miniboss to hound the heroes
until at least the halfway point or your money back.
Act now.
Remember, never blunder always plunder.
Megacorp, the only villain you will ever need!
Side effects may include zombie outbreak, xeno-parasites, author soap boxing, and poor
reviews.
Consult with an editor if soap boxing continues for longer than three paragraphs.
Ask your beta reader if Megacorp is right for you.
CORPORATE STOOGE: Sir, we secured this video’s sponsor, Skillshare, from the ancient conspiracy.
CEO: Right, right.
How much did we pay that hacker?
CORPORATE STOOGE: It was six figures at least.
CEO: Right.
Double his pay.
Then shoot him.
But use a cheap bullet.
No sense in wasting money.
DARK LORD: There it is.
At long last I shall recover what is rightfully mine!
Which come to think of it is everything, but especially Skillshare.
CEO: Ah.
There you are, Dark Lord.
Assistant.
Cancel my 3oclock.
School is session.
DARK LORD: I will now take this power for myself and…
CEO: Yes yes.
Look, DL.
Can I call you DL?
Im gonna call DL.
Le’me ask you DL.
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
Well if you ask me he needs take a shower and then hire someone to do the manual labor
for him.
Listen, DL, you wanna know how I got to the top?
I earned it through hard work!
I got up early in the morning and murdered baby seals with an oil taker every day!
That made me rich… somehow.
You wanna know how rich I am?
I’m so rich I cloned Karl Marx just so I could shoot him.
Ha!
Take that you union sympathizer.
DL: Is there a point to your ramblings, pudgy man.
Also your cat is quite overweight.
CEO: Yeah, my cat is pretty fat, but that’s not the point.
See, you think Skillshare with its over 20,000 classes in writing, design, technology, and
most importantly business is the key to unlimited power.
You think that getting a premium membership will open the door on unlimited access to
high quality classes to improve your skills like this class on making fantasy maps.
And you would be right.
But doors open both ways.
You and the other worlds in the Terrible Writing Advice expanded universe don’t understand
what these sponsorships really are.
And much like my ex-wife, some things are best left buried.
Which is why I’m not going to tell anyone that the first 500 TWA fans can get 2 months
of Skillshare for free if they go to skil.sh/twa9.
I mean the link is in the description below, but no one ever checks that
Oh, and DL. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to you go.
DL: What!
You cannot fire the Dark Lord!
You will feel the wrath of my legions of darkness that will march forth from my bleak dungeons.
CEO: Oh that?
Yeah, we already sold your wasteland to a developer.
Gonna turn that into a fantasy themed golf course.
Anyway, we are done here.
Security!
Don’t feel too bad, DL.
After all, I’m playing a bigger game.