"I'm the villain."

There are words, phrases that exist which are unutterable. The words to ask your crush out on a first date. A request for time off from an overbearing boss. A plea to your abuser to stop making your life a living hell. These words all have one thing in common: they require courage to say.

Not everyone is born with courage. Still fewer ever develop it, train that invisible organ in their mind, thicken their skin enough to let their feelings free. Their crushes go unanswered; their work piles up; their life remains a brutal and morbid cyclone of put-downs and violence.

Other words require courage to admit.

"I am gross."

"I am perverse."

"I am worthless."

"I am human garbage."

To speak these words out loud would be to give up, to acknowledge weakness. Opening up and becoming vulnerable makes those around you insecure; it makes them look at you with eyes of pity and disgust. So they are words that also join the others.

These feelings, left unresolved, will eat away at the core of the human who holds them close. Over time, they twist and sully their inner self to match these words. Their countenance will warp into a scowling, unrecognizable mess. They will lose sight of their identity and become a shell that can no longer be helped.

This is their belief.

One such worthless man sat at his desk. He looked down at his warped and lumpy palms. He felt the lump in his neck, the itch of the hairs digging into his skin. Looked at the blank black monitor in front of him and saw a fat, disgusting pig. Something unlovable. Something wretched, with sunken eyes and disheveled hair.

He has no job; nothing he could hold and maintain. He has no education. He dropped out of college during his first semester when the stress got too high. He had no friends. After high school, they hadn't kept in touch. Everyone had grown up; everyone except him.

All he had was books, anime, and figurines of the Starkeepers earned with the scraps of his allowance. An allowance he saved by not buying food, stealing from his mother's wallet, and selling his trading cards in high school. The real heroes. The people he aspired to be.

The Starkeepers? They were the real heroes, Magical Warriors that fought against Malice. They made millions in merchandise and sponsorship deals; Starkeepers were on every TV station. It'd only been a few years since their rise to popularity, but everyone in America knew who they were. They were practically gods.

Here he was. A worthless simp. At least he'd heard that the Starkeepers gained power and faith from his purchase, the idols sitting on his desk. He'd done his part to help humanity. Even his indecent thoughts would help them, wouldn't they? Ugh. He feels pains of guilt for even directing those vulgar feelings at their statues. Not that it would stop him. Another thing to feel guilty about.

Another thing to drown out with the purchase of yet another video game. There was something freeing about playing video games. You could be someone you weren't. Even a disgusting creature like him could be someone who looked normal for once. Could forget that he was going to live and die with this face.

[Ding!]

Finally, Chimeric Champions was installed. He'd been lucky enough to earn a beta key for it; Textile had been very selective about what people got to play their new game. For whatever reason, he needed to submit all kinds of information to gain access to their beta. Medical forms, educational histories, and psychoanalytical questionnaires on the website.

The worst of the examination had included a picture of himself. He knew it would be worthless to clean up. That would be putting lipstick on a pig. There he was, pale skin, brown hair, hazel eyes. There was a tinge of yellow in the iris, but he'd been assured by the examiners it was magically insignificant. He would never develop powers like the Starkeepers.

Against all odds, they had accepted him. Maybe they just wanted a normie to beta-test the program? Perhaps they wanted the opinion of a man like him. He knew games tried their best to market to his demographic. Surly white men found their way to the cover of every box, grizzled and masculine figures with hard-boiled backstories.

He wasn't sure why they bothered. Nobody was going to buy a game with generic, boring white man #356 wielding a pistol in both hands. They should have put a girl on the cover if they wanted to sell the game. Let them play a girl. But no, they insisted that they knew what his demographic wanted, what he wanted to do.

The game booted up, prompting him to register and pick a name. He didn't have to think very long. [Amanda] was always his go-to name; 'a man, duh!' That's why he'd chosen it for his password and login. That's what he told all his friends whenever they'd teased him for it, which they hadn't.

They never had. He wasn't sure what to feel about that. He'd prepared the excuses and ran them through his head several times. Markus had prepared answers, counter-arguments, and lectures on why he was allowed to have that name and play as a girl character.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Which, of course, he did play girl characters. I mean, why would a guy want to play a guy character? They looked gross and ugly. Even if he didn't want to play oversexualized women, he preferred playing them over looking at some dude's weird shoulder muscles. Games were supposed to be an escape from a reality, not a reminder of his pitiful existence.

Character creation was next. He looked for the gender selection first thing, only to discover that there was no gender change option. The doll displayed on the left of his vision was undoubtedly feminine, if a bit bland. The lack of customization on the gender front would no doubt irritate male gamers.

Changing monitors, he typed a few notes into the beta feedback chat; maybe the others were experiencing similar issues finding the gender selection for their character?

[Amanda]: Hey, what happened to the gender customization buttons?

[C4L1C0]: what do you mean?

[Amanda]: Aren't games like this supposed to let you change your gender? I tried to change my gender but couldn't find the buttons.

[C4L1C0]: oh.

[C4L1C0]: no.

[C4L1C0]: you mean sex buttons.

[C4L1C0]: gender is something you decide.

[Amanda]: Yes, whatever. Where are those?

[C4L1C0]: no need for them.

[Amanda]: Uh, yeah. There's a super big need. What if I didn't want to be a girl? What if I wanted to play as a guy?

[C4L1C0]: but you do want to play as a girl.

[C4L1C0]: right?

[Amanda]: Well, yeah? But what if I didn't?

[C4L1C0]: but you do.

[C4L1C0]: i genuinely don't see the problem.

[Amanda]: The problem is that you got my sex wrong. I'm a guy. What if there was another guy who wasn't okay playing a girl?

[C4L1C0]: then they wouldn't be playing a girl.

[C4L1C0]: marking this as a non-issue.

[C4L1C0]: please continue, amanda.

[C4L1C0]: your feedback is valuable.

"Ugh. This is getting nowhere," he grumbled, continuing to set up his character. If the folks at Textile didn't want to fix this bug, then they weren't going to fix it. It wasn't his place to decide what they did and didn't include in their game. He could imagine the flame wars online, and everyone enraged about being forced to play a gender or sex they didn't like.

What the heck was the difference, anyways?

He slaved away in the character select screen, developing a relatively subdued character with the options he was given. While alternatives such as cat eyes, long white hair, and bountiful tits were available, he wasn't that desperate or worthless. As long as he could be a girl, any girl, it was fine. He didn't need to go over the top; he could design someone modest and feel happy playing as them.

He could feel happy.

It wasn't long before his mundane character was complete. An average height, even a little on the shorter side. He despised how tall he was in the world of the 'real.' Brown hair like his own, neatly cropped around the shoulders. Golden-brown eyes that seemed to have a life to them his own lacked. A chubby stature, nothing like the weight of the flesh that sagged on his own shoulders, but not skinny enough to look like a twig. He wanted to play someone that looked real. Someone that looked like his ideal... ideal what? That thought terminated, never appropriately finished.

He expected to see something else next, a new spot on the character select screen, but there was no second step. He tapped at his mouse, minimized and maximized the screen in case something was missing; of course Tapestry would have loading screens that lacked any indicator the computer was working. He tabbed back to the chat, ready to let them have it.

[Amanda]: Is the game loading? The screen went black.

[C4L1C0]: let me make sure...

[C4L1C0]: our servers say you're connected.

[Amanda]: Whew. Okay, how long does the loading part usually take?

[C4L1C0]: it depends on system specs...

[C4L1C0]: if i'm being honest,

[C4L1C0]: the processing is mass-dependent.

[Amanda]: Mass-dependent? Is that some operating system? I'm running Linus.

[C4L1C0]: oh no,

[C4L1C0]: no.

[C4L1C0]: not your computer.

[Amanda]: What, then?

[C4L1C0]: how do i put this...

[C4L1C0]: where's your file?

[C4L1C0]: amanda.

[C4L1C0]: peterson, right?

[Amanda]: Markus Peterson. Yeah. That's me. What do you mean, mass-dependent?

[C4L1C0]: 'markus'.

[C4L1C0]: sure.

[C4L1C0]: says here you weigh 340lbs.

[Amanda]: ...is that supposed to be a fat joke? I'm not happy, if so.

[C4L1C0]: nonono.

[C4L1C0]: it's not,

[C4L1C0]: promise.

[C4L1C0]: okay uh.

[C4L1C0]: hmm.

[C4L1C0]: have you heard of...

[C4L1C0]: magic?

Markus felt chills run up his spine. Oh. Oh no.