Supervillain School

[CaptainBoyHole]

So, i plan to make a story based in a superhero world with certain individuals having superpowers, some having an unnatural intelligence, and deciding to dress up in costumes for various of reasons. You know, the typical stuff.

My main character will start off as a child who has a strange power. She is taken by her mother to a certain school for 'extraordinary children' which is just a front. It's a school meant for raising future villains and preparing them to officially enlist into their villainous organization. There is an elementary branch, junior-high branch, and then a high-school branch before they're sent off into the official organization.

What i need help with is figuring out exactly how the hell would something like a school for villains even work without mentioning something simple and easy like brainwashing the kids. Or can i have these young children brainwashed and have interesting personalities? That's another thing i'll need to think about.

How can you raise an entire class of villains with all of them wanting to do bad things? What about transfer students that weren't in the system since young? The normal person wouldn't think about robbing a bank or other villanious activities. Figuring out exactly how the teachers will be able to distort the minds of these kids in a way that still makes them at somewhat like normal kids in school is what I'm struggling with.

How would the classes be taught elementary through high school? What kinds of classes would there be? What would a villainous organization want from their future members besides loyalty?

TLDR: Supervillain School. How would that shit function?

 

[Samuel_Spader]

Very interesting...

Well, for starters, you need to have the Supervillain School have some sort of goal. Like maybe the founder of this school wants nothing but setting the world in flames because, maybe, he wants to prove a point or just simply because he hates the world. It doesn't have to be revealed at the beginning, but it helps having that goal in mind to make sure the plot flows well.

About the recruitment of the children, maybe the school have some sort of a list that oversee the progress of a child who's about to be recruited to see who has the tendencies of becoming a villain, and who doesn't. To those who has, they just train and teach the children to become more vile, and to those who does not will be brainwashed by someone with the ability, maybe from torture, or just simply wreck their immature mindsets to fit the school's goal.

Lastly, about the classes and the teachings, maybe like the X-Men series where Professor X's school teaches the mutants just the same as your usual schools, but with some extra curriculum that will be useful for bad stuff or perhaps the teachings have some hidden propaganda or something.

I think this is the best idea I can give to you, for now.
Hope this helps.

 

[Vhail]

If the school enrole the children young enought, what they will be taught will be what they will believe in. They will not know that what they believe to be correct behaviors are in fact see as evil by the rest of the population. And that would not be brainwashing. With this, you could even push dilemna to your caracter were they will have to reflect on their acts and ultimately have to choose to keep acting like they are since youth or try and change for better. But your past always catch you up.

 

[glenn-fletcher]

I actually once wrote a story featuring a supervillain school on another site, or at least wrote it partially. In my story it was a secret thing founded by a conglomeration of supervillains for their own children, given that they couldn't go to public schools or private schools if their parents were public information. It was more of a funny story so it had stuff like a "Mad Science Club," classes on proper ways to rob a bank, and stuff like that.

You seem to be doing a different take on the idea where its a school that grooms kids into supervillains. I have a few questions for how that would work. Wouldn't the school be pretty quickly found out with each graduating class coming out as supervillains? It'd be a little suspicious that every kid coming out of this school is a villain to say, heroes trying to investigate their origins. Or are the supervillains not public after they graduate? Like, is this being used to slowly build up some kind of secret underground superpowered army of bad guys? If so, are parents just handing over ownership of their children to this school? Why would they do that?

I think defining the purpose of the supervillain school and how it stays secret from the heroes in the setting is something that should be settled before worrying about how the classes are handled.

But about that, I definitely don't think you should try and use brainwashing in the story. You're right in that it would destroy the personality and individuality of each student. Just have the lessons tailored to make the kids question authority and the structures of today's society, or generally just try to push them towards the beliefs of whatever villain is running the whole show.

Like, does the villain want to establish a dictatorship? Have the teachers build him up, the headmaster, as some great guy who can do wrong. Have him show up and give inspiring speeches to the students. And as the classes go on, get more extreme with it. Gradually move from "Headmaster Supervillain sure is a great guy, ain't he?" to "Headmaster Supervillain really should be in charge of the entire world and rule over it with an iron grip, shouldn't he?"

If you want to be as realistic as possible, research the tactics cults use bring in new members. It might sound silly that someone can just be slowly over time brought into holding crazy beliefs without brainwashing if they're a normal person, but it happens a lot more than you think.

If you need to incorporate brainwashing, just have it be at the very end of everything. Like, have that be graduation, and have most of the classes before that be centered around growing as strong as possible with their powers. So the supervillain turn comes right at the end.

These are just my ideas. Sorry for the big word dump, but I've thought a lot about the "evil school" idea before and have a lot to say on it.

 

[Psychoturtle]

I once read a story where the local mafia had co-opted the local power school, so you hand the cop-sponsored kids and the mafia-sponsored kids staring daggers at each out over the lunch table. I would go that route to be honest, an organized crime syndicate would have the funds to run a school and a motive to use it to raise the next generation, as well as a mafia can easily slide into a moral grey area that most "villain" center stories seam to naturally slide into.

 

[mostlyharmfulll]

Apart from the good points others have alreay brought up, I think an important factor in making the students evil would be "elitism".
A good way to make someone do evil without remorse is to make said person believe that they are doing what they are entilted to do or that they are in the right. So the curriculum of the villain school should teach the mindset that they (the members of the organization that created the school) are superior being than everyone else. Of course, it should start harmless and get more extrem. Like in elementary they are being told "We are privileged", in junior-high it would be "We are superior" and in high-school it would be "We don´t need to follow rules of those beneath us".

Another important factor would be isolation: If the students were allowed to browse the internet, have friends outside the school or see the news, the manipulation would be almost impossible to pull off because the students would be influenced by other sources that would contradict the world-view the school tries to force onto them. The school should be a boarding school somewhere away from civilization, so the students are isolated and literally can´t escape, even if they realize what happens to them. The school being isolated would also make it harder for the heroes to get wind about it.

Also, the question is: How do you define "evil"? Does the organization organized crime like the mafia or are they just collecting power to take over the world one day? Or do they just want to cause chaos or destruction? Or does the leader/founder of the organization and school have a grudge against someone powerfull (like a superhero) and needs an army to take revenge? As others have said: The goal of the organization is important.

Also, there should be a explanation for why the organization goes to all that trouble. Running a school is something that takes a lot of effort, manpower and money and needs years to start paying off. Just recruiting adult villains into the organization would be faster and easier, so why take the extremely long way of raising them for years?

And lastly, one important question is: How long has the school been operating by the time your story starts? Because if the school has been around for only a few years, that would explain why the school is still a secret. It would also open up new possibilities like "The school is still in some sort of test-phase" or "The school is more a experiment" or "The whole thing is just part of something bigger".

 

[BenJepheneT]

I mean, considering you're making a story about supervillains, brainwashing children wouldn't be out of the equation. If anything, they would go the extra mile and send obscure signals through 5G towers and make everyone villainous and plunge the world into darkness. They don't even need to make a school. Just poison the school lunches and make everyone batshit insane.

The concept of a supervillain school is inherently flawed, so since you're making a world that is already crippled from the get-go, just write what you like.

 

[CatsAreCutest]

Well, for one, you can make use of a 'test', or something of a trial that separates what the school wants (Villains), and what it doesn't need (Heroes and normal kids). This way, you can also establish a ranking system, or to establish a character's personality. This also solves the transfer student problem, cuz before you transfer, yoi have to take the test. If you want to have a 'good guy' enter your school, then maybe the good guy's parents bribed a teacher or the good guy has a relative there or someone in the staff would like to turn him into a villain instead and enrolled him.

Another thing is that, you can't make your villain school without any sort of brainwashing. You see, brainwashing can be subtle and can be done from a young age. (Irl schools sometimes slightly and subtly brainwashes you, trust me. ) A school of villains with hundred or thousands of kids can't have a one track mind unless something is controlling it behind the scenes (e.g. the teachings, the teachers, the lesson, how they talk about the world and the heroes, their parents, etc.)

You can make it such that in the world that youre making, superpowered people have to choose whether they choose the dark side or the light side. Maybe being a hero shackles you through duty, laws, and fame, when some supers just want to do the things they want without having that huge burden. Maybe the government or organization behind the good guys are actually bad (or portrayed to be bad) and the villains aim to destroy it. In this case, the villains (and the school) have to have a common goal in mind to establish a sense of unity between them thats strong enough to atleast make a school.

Or on the other hand, you can go the easy way and just.. not explain it. You don't have to talk about how you can keep the villain school running, its just there, and it will be there, and maybe its set up for hundreds of years already. Your readers will not always focus on how your school is built, but rather the interactions going within it.