Standard villainy, also called baseline or bog-standard villainy, refers to the sorts of villainous actions that do not pass the general heinous standards. It describes the actions that are considered merely "typical" villainous behaviour, and such actions are not enough to stand out in any setting regardless of it's in-story standards. Villains who only ever commit these crimes and never anything worse cannot qualify as Pure Evil, Near Pure Evil, or Inconsistently Heinous, but instead are always classified as Villainous Benchmarks.
Actions usually considered baseline villainy[]
- Being a bully, jerk, or otherwise unpleasant person.
- Stealing valuable objects.
- Assaulting or attempting to assault someone.
- Harassing or attempting to harass someone.
- Killing or attempting to kill a small number of people (e.g. less than 5).
- Killing or attempting to kill someone actively opposed to oneself. This is called "kill the heroes" villainy.
- Defamation (slander/libel), hate speech, obscenity, doxxing, or other speech-related crimes.
- Kidnapping or falsely imprisoning someone.
- Cruelty or abuse towards non-sapient or non-sentient animals (or creatures whose sapience the villain is unaware of).
- Attempting to conquer a place (even if it's a very large place like Earth).
- Defrauding or conning someone out of their belongings.
- Brainwashing, possessing, or mind-controlling someone.
- Crimes committed by accident, like manslaughter or criminal negligence.
Exceptional cases[]
- A character who commits a small number of murders or who engages in "kill the heroes" villainy can still stand out if said murders are carried out in an aggravated or exceedingly cruel, gruesome way or if the victim was an especially innocent person (like a baby).
- Some bog-standard crimes against the person (assault, harassment, kidnapping, etc.) can pass the baseline if they are done in a way that is excessively painful/aggravated and/or deeply mentally traumatizing for the victim. This is how violent sexual assault can stand out while simple sexual harassment doesn't.
- Accidental crimes could still stand out if the person responsible knows what they did but doesn't feel remorse, and if they either benefit from or are proud of the crime.
- Possession, brainwashing, and mind-control can stand out if the methods of doing so severely harm the victim in the process.
Work-dependent[]
If a work has a morality standard of "complete innocence" or something close, then it is possible for an act that would normally be considered bog-standard to actually stand out if it manages to darken the tone of the story. For example, a villain committing a single act of murder in a hitherto-totally innocent work with no previous deaths can give that villain an incredibly dark tone presence that allows them to stand out.