My purpose in using the word was not to contrast good us to bad them, but rather to emphasize that the action Prismattic disagrees with (that of withholding one's opinion) is a move forced by an incentive that needn't itself have been set (and shouldn't have been set if Prismattic is right that opinion withholding is bad), and so it's more reasonable for Prismattic to complain to the incentive setters than to the incentive followers. Does that make sense?

The "people aren't villains of their own narratives" line always struck me as a little glib. Villains believe they're not villains, but does that mean they falsely believe they're some particular thing that truly is not a villain, or does it merely mean they correctly believe they're some particular thing that they falsely believe is not a villain (fail to label as villainous)? In my intuition these are two different things and the saying uses the plausibility of the disjunction of the two things to suggest only the first thing. Clearly villains usually gain some sort of satisfaction from their role in the world, perhaps even moral satisfaction, but that's not the same thing as there having been a good-faith effort to be a hero. I don't know, I may just be confused here.

Anyway, what matters is who's a villain in God's narrative (in the atheist sense of God). :)

People punishing norm violations aren't the villains of their own narratives, they think they're responding rationally.

Which does not necessarily mean we should change the way we treat them. They can tell themselves whatever story they like. And by punishing them appropriately they will either change their behavior or, perhaps most importantly, those witnessing the punishment will avoid the behavior that visibly invokes community disapproval.