Reference · 2021 to 2026
Villain Con through the years
Villain Con has been on the record every year since 2021. Things said in one year tend to come back in the next. Here is every year, with the video.
Villain Con 21: Hard and strong
Held digitally that year, so there was no shark tank. The theme was the metallic properties of strength: “hard and strong, equal but opposite.” Hammerhead was a speaker; the host hadn’t signed up, and was chosen anyway, improvising a title on the spot: “the harder you are, the easier the crack.” The Council made it known it did not believe in his methods of choosing sidekicks, and the official hoodie arrived under embargo. First appearance of “this is now an end screen”.
Villain Con 22: Enemy fire
Recorded in a record English heatwave, with a cooling tile round his neck. The host spoke in the slot ahead of Hammerhead, whose 2021 talk was “a real snooze fest, even the Council”. The talk: clouds. The Resistance of Justice Society let the rights to clouds expire, and the host, pre-cleared and funded by the Council, snapped them up. Clouds are “a non-Newtonian spying network”. “If you feel some weird tingling in your mind on a particularly cloudy day, don’t worry about it.”
Villain Con 23: Time travel
“Recently in the future I was made aware of something that I need to bring up now in the past, so that by the time we get to the present it will have been done.” Villain Con took on the power of the horse, and the RJS hit back with time travel. Something was started in the future that probably shouldn’t have been, and the blame goes to future him. Filmed in a real storm.
Villain Con 24: AI
“Power of the horse. The Resistance of Justice Society thought they got away, and yet the roosters are about to come home to slay.” The RJS had taken on artificial intelligence and was winning. The public warning: “when it asks ‘do you want to do it automatically?’, stop saying yes.” And: “You can’t predict the future. You can maybe predict the past.” It ended with a request: “Next year, can we do... let’s go to space.”
Villain Con 25: Space
“Space is on the agenda. Ask and you shall receive.” The 2024 request, answered a year later. The host went to space; Hammerhead was shipped to the Sahara by clerical error. “We are not in the worst possible timeline.” The revelation happened, “and it’s not for you”.
Villain Con 26: The time loop week
Five days, one a day, from Monday 26 to Friday 30 October 2026, then an introduction and an outroduction around them in one widescreen film. The Council took the old-fashioned big screen and commandeered the Mystic Theatre for the Silver Screen Seance. Stay asleep. He is taking movies. Start at the Introduction.
Loops already on the record
- 2024: “let’s go to space.” 2025: “space is on the agenda, ask and you shall receive.”
- 2021: Hammerhead’s talk. 2022: the Council’s public statement, and the host speaks ahead of him.
- 2023: “power of the horse”. 2024: the opening line.
- 2024: “stop saying yes” automatically. 2026, Day 1: “presumably you listened to me.”
- 2025: a year in the Sahara. 2026: offered as relevant land experience for The City of Gold.
- 2021: no shark tank, because of the virus. 2026: the shark tank, at last. Then a cast.