“Who or What is a ‘Skullmageddon’?” You might be asking.

If you find yourself misfortunate enough to read incel blogs and forums on a regular basis (as I briefly did to research my video on these clods), you’ll notice that their main complaint…is that they can’t get laid and that the government doesn’t provide them with girlfriends. What did you think I would say?

With that being said, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll notice that a secondary complaint they have is that they are disparaged and despised by general society in addition to women, and that it would be nice if they could get a sympathetic word in the cultural zeitgeist at some point; perhaps a positively portrayed incel character in a television show or a film.

It’s a fair enough argument, I suppose—albeit I’m willing to bet that the oft-racist and sexist incels would unhappy to realize that “…if people like me are on TV more often I’ll get laid more often!” argument is the exact same thing that unattractive women of all races say. But then I started thinking—have there, in fact, been any characters in works of fiction that could be identified as being incels? And if so, can they truly be said to embody the incel, er, “lifestyle”, such as it is?

And as such, there is! There is a character who embodies the incel philosophy (which is to say, the overwhelming knowledge of your datelessness) and strives to overcome it—a character who despite his datelessness is competent, goal driven, stylish, and a hellacious fighter. Granted, he’s a villain, but, hey, the dark triad and all that, right?

That character is Skullmageddon, the villain of the 2014 video game Double Dragon Neon.

Double Dragon Neon has been described as a power ballad to 80s nostalgia, and was the first video game in a long time to plaster an ear to ear smile on my face every second I was playing it (as a side note, it wasn’t just video games that DDN was nostalgic for; everything from music to mullets is touched upon—and as a martial arts movie fan, I adored how the Lee brothers were doing spinning crescent kicks rather than spinning hook kicks, as was the style at the time). The plot is what every Double Dragon plot has always been—your disproportionately attractive girlfriend got punched in the stomach and thrown over some thug’s shoulder, and it is your task to clobber every single person in the city to get her back.

In this game, however, rather than the standard human crime boss, the villain of the game is Skullmageddon, who comes off as something of a “Yellow Peril”-tinged Skeletor. And this is oddly fitting, that a game that is the embodiment of every 80s adolescent boy’s fantasies has an 80s cartoon villain as its Heavy.

His dweeby voice and scant moments of poor judgement aside (“Helicopters can’t fly upside down? Of course they can!”) aside, Skullmageddon is a competent and legitimately threatening villain (while still being comical, just as the dorkiest incel can be threatening if he’s holding a shotgun to your head). He has a garishly impressive sense of style, a fair amount of non-sexual social skills—as seen in the size of his organization—and, most importantly, he’s quite capable of kicking the asses of FUCKING CHADS like Billy and Jimmy Lee. I emphasize the Chadliness of the Lee brothers, because when you come to Skullmageddon for the final battle, and his explanation of why he kidnapped Marianne? He tells you explicity “…all I wanted was a date!” before powering up and charging into the final battle.

And at the very end of the game, when the studly Lee brothers inevitably triumph over Skullmageddon and throw him off a cliff, what plays over the end credits? A tragic ballad sung by the villain, in which he sings about how lonely he is and how the EVIL CHADS ruined his chance at happiness.

And with that the game is over…and Skullmageddon takes a massive punch to the groin. Which truthfully sums up my opinion of the incels: they’re pitiable and deserve a small amount of sympathy, but ultimately I would only encourage them to stop being shitasses. Whining about women on the internet doesn’t help them or anybody else, and nor do violent sperg outs that get people killed (which, really, Skullmageddon’s whole scheme basically is).

Thus, Skullmageddon represents the best an incel could possibly be: a competent, brave, and valiant dateless loser, but a loser nonetheless—and he is the closest an incel can come to being portrayed positively in fiction. There can never be a true incel hero because a whining, self-pitying philosophy cannot create heroes.

And I would implore them to learn from the example that the incel life is one of failure but…clearly they have no inclination to learn. Thus, if you want your positive representation so badly, this is the closest you’ll get.