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?

    CaptainBoyHole Try reading Akame ga Kiru Zero and that might give you an idea on how to brainwash students without taking away their personalities. For context, that's Akame's origin story where she and a group of orphans are indoctrinated and trained as assassins for a corrupted empire and think they are killing for the good of the country.

    For supervillains, you can say that they adhere to this "idealistic" concept of rooting out the weak and ensuring only the strong survive, or that people with powers are fighting for their freedom to escape the oppression of those without powers, who seek only to control and manipulate/enslave them.

      CaptainBoyHole Brainwashing wouldn’t rlly make much sense. I’m assuming that such a villain academy would require the students to be clinical wackos as an enrollment requirement...

          CaptainBoyHole To raise villains, you need to treat them like heroes. Make them think that what is good is bad and vice versa. If you try hard enough, you could even find the bad in something virtuous.

          For classes, ignite their competitiveness while they are still young. Meaning that you should integrate a sort of system that makes them want to strive further. Take the S-System from Classroom of the Elite as an example. It grades the students in real time and assigns them a numerical value. And each of their actions could possibly add or take the class points from each class. For your supervillain school, you should take their points when they do something that is deemed bad by the school. By doing so, not only will the students follow the school rules, they will also do whatever it takes to add more 'points' to their class.

          As for the transfer students, make them question their morality through both the school and the students they are engaging with. A time will eventually come in which the transfer student concludes that what he previously believes was right turns out to be wrong all along. It's like one of those tips in a self-motivating video where you say 'I'm handsome' to yourself everyday in the mirror until you actually believe you're handsome.

            CaptainBoyHole

            I think you need to focus on the characters here to make them more concrete. There are a million ways to do this, but I would suggest you just focus on things making logical sense from the characters perspective.

            If the schools mission is to create villains, then maybe kids are taught from a young age to value traits like power and fear above mercy and compassion. Kids are impressionable. They tend to believe whatever the adults they trust (parents or teachers) say. Therefore, focus on the thought process of the teachers in your school. Why do they want to raise kids to be villains?

            They may want henchmen. In that case, teachings blind loyalty to the school would be ideal for them. Questions like “why are we doing this?” Would be answered with answers like “it doesn’t matter, your purpose is to follow our orders. Don’t ask questions!”

            Perhaps they have a rival school that produces heros. In this case, both sides need an ideal they believe in. Here is a really good example that I like: The X-Men comics/movies. Most people see the brotherhood (led by magneto) as the villains. The X-men (led by Professor X) are to heros. However, that’s not true. They both want to create a world that mutants can live in peacefully without persecution. What they disagree on is how to do that.

            The brotherhood wants to kill all humans. All of them have been hurt or attacked by humans in some way and want revenge. Because of their terrible experiences, they don’t think that humans and mutants can peacefully coexist; therefore, killing the humans is the only way they can live a normal life.

            The X-men have either not had these terrible experiences, or they forgave the humans. They still believe in a world where humans and mutants can live side by side. As a result, they want to save humans and prove they can be trusted.

            These two factions both make logical sense. Neither of them kill for no reason. Their goals are the same. Often they work together or save each other. Magneto and Professor X are actually really good friends. They just disagree about getting along with humans.

            This is a long winded way of saying that you need to know the motivation of your villains and villain school. It will solve your problems. Teachers just tell kids that ideal, and they make logical decisions to work towards that goal. Their motivation can be money. It also could be power related (something like “our powers make us stronger, so we deserve to rule the world”). You could also make up anything else so long as it makes sense and is consistent. Please don’t just make them evil for no good reason...

              I remember a light novel that had a similar feel to your idea. But that school was full of murderers. The LN was called Psycho love Comedy.

                2 months later
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