#fkv

Supervillainy tends to be a rather lonely existence. Sure they’ve got their goons and their mooks and their thugs and their stolen brains of dead geniuses that they use to generate evil plans (if you’re wondering how they’re able to squeeze evil ideas out of dead brains, they just use a regular industrial juicer) but can they really say they have any real friends? By their very nature their henchmen can’t be their friends because villains need to always see them as expendable and replaceable in case they get killed, arrested or have sudden attacks of conscious and leave the biz. Henchmen are not the most dedicated to evil. Their monsters often don’t have the capacity for friendship, their fellow villainous associates are often plotting behind their backs, the ancient demon who gave them their powers keeps cancelling dinner plans at the last minute for “work related reasons.” Supervillainy is lonely and that’s why they keep kidnapping people. (The demon doesn’t say he has “work” he literally, word-for-word, says “work related reasons.” Like what does that even mean? Does he even have a regular job? Probably it means he’s just not that in to you.)

Supervilllains are always kidnapping people. Like sometimes they’ll just be walking down the street and they’ll just suddenly be overcome by an unrighteous desire to steal a person and they’ll just whip out their knockout gas aerosol can, knock some random pedestrian unconscious, and throw them into the back of a getaway car that was just conveniently placed right where they needed it (so conveniently in fact that it kind of makes the whole thing seem premeditated but the bad guy’s evil lawyers assure us that it wasn’t). Probably then they’ll release some sort of video or image of the victim looking all distressed along with some creative spin on the old “victim holds a newspaper to prove the date shtick.”

(Creative spins on the old “victim holds a newspaper to prove the date shtick” include:

The victim will be covered in newspapers {this doesn’t work because sometimes the victim’s face is covered and that really defeats the whole point.}

A goon will be reading the newspaper in the background.

The victim will be wearing a cool little hat made from the newspaper.

A paper airplane made from the newspaper will fly across the screen and you’ll have to freeze the image at the exact right time in order to see the date on it.

The villain will take a selfie with the victim and they’ll both be holding the newspaper.

The villain will just be holding the newspaper and the victim won’t even appear in the video at all because the villain is such a drama-queen-camera-hog-wannabe.)

Then you’ll of course have to go track down the bad guy using clues from the background of the video such as: distinct background noises, the victim blurting out the location before the villain can stop them because the villain is a fool who forgot to gag them, a delivery guy showing up to drop off the pizza that the henchmen ordered (then you just need to find out which abandoned warehouses/above-ground-dungeons/white vans recently ordered a pizza), snapchat geotags that the bad guy stupidly had on. If you’re a speedster the whole thing could be over within a matter of seconds. Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy. If you’re not then it might be slightly more difficult pifficult lemon squifficult but still! Easier than stopping a disgruntled werewolf from stopping the moon’s rotation so that it will always be full (obviously I know this wouldn’t work but Wolfgang Amawolfus Wolfzart refuses to listen to reason!) All you really have to do is find the lair, punch the bad guy, save the kidnappee. (Maybe bring a hostage negotiator with you for good measure but that’s pretty much it.)

While many kidnappings are indeed random there are a few select lucky people that are getting kidnapped all the time. Reporters, policemen, mayors, rich people, butlers, that one scrappy kid who keeps poking around crime scenes and like who is even watching this kid. The first times this happens will be quite the ordeal for the victims but after a while it will become nothing more than a minor nuisance at best. You can only toss someone into the back of a van and strap them to a chair above an alligator pit so many times before the whole thing just gets kind of droll. In fact, the frequent kidnapping victim might even welcome it. Employers can’t penalize you if your car gets pulled out of traffic by a giant, villain-operated, magnet. It’s like a free vacation day. So if you don’t want to go to work you can really just goad a supervillain into kidnapping you. Which, yes, is just as easy as it sounds. If a frequent-kidnapping-victim just picks up their phone and says “Boy (or girl) I sure would hate to be kid(oradult)napped today, I sure hope that doesn’t happen,” that’s a surefire way to get kidnapped. Supervillains always bug the phones of frequent-kidnapping-victims. Some villains will even run special promotions for frequent-kidnapping-victims. Stuff like “Free T-Shirts for people who have been kidnapped more than three times,” or “Ten punches on your FKV card and you get a free sandwich.” (This is really the best one because the villain who runs this promotion, The Strangulator, has this henchman who, before he turned to a life of crime, was the best sandwich chef on the West Coast, so if you’re going to be frequently kidnapped, you want it to be by the Strangulator.)

If you’re aware of people who are FKVs you should really try keeping an eye on them, or perhaps they should hire some form of protection. Most kidnapping bad guys are relatively harmless (to the people they’re abducting, they’ll still turn all the roads in your city into quicksand with the push of a button), but some are actually very murdery (murderous). Like aggressively murdery (murderous). Disturbingly murdery (murderous). So as a rule you should take kidnapping seriously as a superhero. You never know when the Kidnapping Victim Murrderrerr will roll into town in his armor-plated white van.

One, somewhat amusing, subset of the FKV phenomenon is superheroes who get kidnapped in their secret identities. This happens when the hero’s secret identity is a high-profile figure. Usually it happens to those billionaires-with-issues™ heroes that we’ve spoken so much about. Sometimes the villain will even put out a statement saying that they will hold you hostage until your superhero persona shows up. Because they don’t know that that’s actually you. It’s a hilarious misunderstanding. If this happens to you, you should do your best to roll your eyes as often and as exaggeratedly as possible at the camera during the demands video. Hopefully one of your support-squaddies or sidekicks or super-pals who know your secret identity will see the video, have a good laugh at your expense, and then eventually come save you. They may even have to put on one of your spare costumes and pretend to be you in order to do it. If you find yourself in this type of situation you may find it tempting to just use your powers and escape like that. After all, the villain doesn’t know your secret, they’ve just used regular ropes to restrain you. Like a fool. You could easily break free with your superior strength or superior ability to turn your hands into knives but you should not! There’s no reason to reveal your identity like that. Just be patient. Someone will come get you.

Now, if you’re in a situation where your superhero identity has been captured or kidnapped, that’s a bit of a different scenario. Presumably in this case precautions will have been taken to counteract your powers. You’re in a lot more danger in this type of situation. Now, you can do the same thing and just wait for some other hero to come save you but sometimes there’s just no time for that. It’s possible you’ll have been placed in some sort of death-trap with lasers or saws or robot sharks. So you’re going to need to be creative to escape. You’ll have to do something like using whatever reflective surface you have available to you (watches, mirrors, superhero badges, prisms) to redirect the laser into the saws to cause them to fall from their spot on the machine and decapitate the robot sharks or something (this will vary from death trap to death trap, watch this space).

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