Villain: “You and I are very much alike, you know.”
Hero: “I realize that.”
Villain: “Doesn’t that trouble you?”
Hero: “Why would it? I share most of my genome with sewer rats.”
Villain: “But our similarities mean that, deep down, you’re a bad person. There’s nothing stopping you from being just as evil as I am!”
Hero: “Sure there is. I’m stopping me.”
Villain: “But in your heart you crave—”
Hero: “Sometimes when I’m in a crowded building I get the sudden urge to just boop a stranger right on the nose. But I don’t do it, because that would be super rude and weird. Does having that compulsion in the first place make me just as much of a weirdo as if I had acted on it? Maybe it does in your eyes, but to the would-be boopee, it makes all the difference in the world.”
Villain: “We’re not talking about booping noses, we’re talking about killing peop—”
Me: “Look, dude, I’m sure murder can be really satisfying. But I’ve decided that I don’t want to murder people, and I think that’s very sexy of me. Look at me. With a little self-restraint, you might have had what I have.”
i love this. the hero turning the “we’re not so different” speech back on the villain
Fun Fact, thats, more or less, something that wealthy people in China and Japan did, they were called “musical floorboards.” Designed to squeak when stood upon. A person could make noise all the way down a corridor.
The residents and servants knew which floorboards made a sound and avoided them. But a burglar, or assassin didn’t. If you heard the creaking of floorboards, you knew danger was coming.
Even better, despite what movies may show, a lot of the old west was founded by Chinese immigrants, so there could have been carpenters around who knew how to make the musical floorboards!
They were also called Nightingale Floors, and looking up to make sure I had the right term, I found they were super clever! They were more than just ill-fit boards or whatever makes floors creak normally, they actually used little metal bars under the boards placed into small holes in the boards to cause the creak.
The best things on the internet are when someone makes a joke and then Miss Frizzle rolls up for an educational adventure.
