The Demon's Lair

I see the old cartoons and always wonder... why does Skeletor deign to live in a hellhole? Why does Dracula live in an untended drafty castle awash with dust and cobwebs? Why does Maleficent live in the middle of a creepy crawly forest without a single wardrobe change?

Seriously. Would a crafty villain actually consider living in such sadly unsanitary conditions? Why would a crazed megalomanic with grandiose delusions live in something akin to a stinking hell pit?

Don't believe the sweet fairytale lies they have been feeding you. Villains aren't stupid. Surely by hook or by crook ( either through theft, blackmail or murder ), he would have pimped his decadent crib. After all, that creepy Gothic look is so last century.

Wouldn't he have blackmailed a couple of hip interior decorators ( dangling them off his balcony gargoyles! ) to tzsuj up the place before he invaded it? Maybe shore up the bubbling lava pits, exterminate the infectious vermin ( roaches, rats, salamanders and such ) and refurbish the crowded dungeons? Maybe toss the old creaking settee made out of the bleached bones of enemies with the spanking new Ghost chair?


Welcome to my housewarming! Admire the foliage!
Replace the seething cavernous walls dripping with blood and algae with some pretty avantgarde wallpaper more in keeping with his maleficent stature - perhaps with charmingly vile old-world crytographs depicting innocents being tortured, virgins being ravaged and cities being razed to the ground. Just the regular daily life of a successful arch villain.

But maybe keep the quiant lamps made out of the tanned hides of his mortal enemies - after all they are so hard to come by these days.

And what about the household help. Let's not even talk about the ugly, misshapen henchmen. Wouldn't a demonic overlord prefer to have delicious pretty boys clad in leather loin-cloths catering to his every whim?

Of course that's all happening in fantasy world only. In real life, it's the evil heartless moguls who run soulless multinational corporations - hence affording them a sinfully lavish lifestyle with picture perfect mansions featured on the architectural design magazines.

While the average heroes have to subsist on minimal wage ( who hires absentminded folk who fly off at the slightest emergency a continent away? ) with a broken down suburban dump barely three months away from foreclosure.

Really. Short of heavenly intervention, being a saint doesn't pay.