#villain coding

[taigan-hse]

Matangi said “hold my okolehao.”

[animentality]

[kianamaiart]

Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl: Villains

[crewdlydrawn]

Hell yeah—one caveat, as a 90s TMNT trilogy lover… he didn’t die from the trash compactor.

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta villain-integrity="final-boss-coded"> <script> ARCHIVE_TAG="THE_SHREDDER::SLAUGHTERHONOR_VS_MOUSEMORALS" EFFECT: retro myth-making, masculine psycho-coding, shellshocked nostalgia overload </script>

🛡️ BLACKSITE SCROLLTRAP — I Don't Care What the Rat Says. Shredder Didn't Give a F==k.

---

Hello again, children of nostalgia. This one’s for the boys who remember Saturday morning violence as theology. This one’s for the girls who secretly preferred the villain’s voice. This one’s for the men who still carry Shredder’s ghost in their jawline.

Let’s talk about the only ninja warlord who ever mattered.

Before social justice ninjas. Before therapy-coded villains. Before corporations started putting trauma in every backstory like it was soy in protein bars.

Shredder didn’t care about your feelings.

He didn’t blink. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t ask for a flashback.

He was here to shred bloodlines and leave orphans. Not resolve anything. Not teach a lesson.

He showed up for violence and legacy. The two most masculine religions on earth.

—

Now picture this:

Your criminal empire is dissolving. Your top soldier got body-slammed by a skateboarding turtle. And the only being who still knows your fighting style is a f**king rat living in piss water with four reptilian TikTok-aged sons.

Do you back down?

Do you log off?

Do you cry?

No.

You climb a rooftop.

In full chrome armor.

Knowing you're about to die.

And you fight four mutant martial artists — not with gadgets or tech — but with rage, precision, and the ghost of feudal Japan pulsing through your blood.

He didn’t use poison. Didn’t ambush. Didn’t whine about fairness.

He walked into the moonlight like a villain carved from black steel and said:

> “Let’s f**king go.”

—

Shredder didn’t ask for justice. He embodied vengeance without explanation.

Did he lose? Of course.

That’s why he’s mythic.

He died in a trash compactor. Like a war god fed to the machine. It took New York’s full mutant might to put him down.

Even his defeat was more cinematic than 90% of Disney finales.

—

Let’s break this down, because most of you forgot how real this was:

✅ 4 superhuman teenage ninjas ✅ 1 rat who’s literally his spiritual rival ✅ His entire army of orphaned street kids gone ✅ No weapons upgrade ✅ No backup ✅ Just honor, spikes, and suicidal testosterone

He showed up anyway.

Shredder wasn’t a villain. He was a warning.

He was the blueprint for final bosses who don’t monologue. Who don’t heal. Who don’t ask the audience to understand.

He was the ancient masculine archetype wrapped in violence, grief, and steel.

—

And now?

You’ve got Reddit users calling him "one-note." Blue-haired nostalgia reviewers acting like he was too mean. People who think “depth” means a villain has to cry about their parents.

You’re soft. And the world knows it.

Shredder didn’t do interviews. He didn’t podcast. He didn’t write a Medium essay about his mental health.

He trained. He conquered. He shredded.

And when death came?

He met it in armor.

Not in a hoodie. Not in a flashback. Not in an apology.

—

> You train for decades in the deadliest art on earth. > You kill your rival. > You build an army from the angry and forgotten. > You mutate yourself with alien ooze. > You look God in the face and swing anyway.

And you want to talk to me about moral nuance?

> He didn’t lose. > He ascended.

That’s not a villain. That’s a doctrine.

—

So go ahead. Get excited for the next female-coded lightsaber moment. Pretend Shredder was too violent. Pretend your childhood villain was too shallow.

But when the final battle comes? When you're outnumbered and drowning in softboy excuses?

You’ll hear the steel echo in your bones — and realize you needed him.

More than you ever needed the rat.

===

🧠 More masculine-coded warfare posts: https://www.patreon.com/TheMostHumble

⚔️ Mythic villains. Ritual memory. Scrolltrap rhythm as a weapon.

🧬 Stop apologizing for the era that raised you. Honor is a fcking blood sport.

</div> <!-- END TRANSMISSION [HONOR SHREDDERED — COWABUNGA WAS NEVER ENOUGH] -->

[greykolla-art]

My favourite thing about Alastor is his hoard of gal pals!

He’s just a cool and charming dude that women feel comfortable around…And is also a power hungry eldritch horror.👌👌👌

[solshii]

behind the scene is lbh telling (begging) sy that he can pluck his feathers whenever he needs to write (and preferably with his mouth)

previous || extras || next

[onionninjasstuff]

carrying each other :з

[prokopetz]

Queer-coded villains are one thing, but the ones that really perplex me – and I've seen multiple instances of this, mostly in pre-2000 media, though with some later examples – is when the baddie has all the surface-level signifiers of a queer-coded villain, but instead of doing anything particularly gay he just conspicuously admires his wife, and the text of the film makes it clear that this is meant to be understood as deplorably unmanly. Like, fellas, is it gay to not hate your wife?

[writingwithcolor]

The protagonist of my story is pressured into killing, should I refrain from making her Jewish to avoid stereotyping?

@run-remi-run asks:

Hello, I'm developing a teen character living in Michigan and have been considering making her/her family Jewish; however I'm worried they'll fall into the evil Jewish person stereotype. The teen is the protagonist of her story, but she is pressured into killing at least one person. I understand that villains in media being portrayed as Jewish or with Jewish features has furthered antisemitism, and I understand my character isn't exempt from this just because I see her in a positive light. Should I refrain from making her Jewish?

This doesn't fit the stereotype

If the whole idea is that she’s pressured into doing bad things, that doesn’t fit the stereotype or trope at all because the trope has us as evil masterminds but in your scenario she’s the one being manipulated. The negative trope isn’t just “Jewish person does something bad” it’s a lot more specific than that. -Shira

Any Michigan influences?

Commenting strictly as a Michigan resident: is there any reason why you included the character’s Michigander origins in your question? Is there something about Michigan that’s influencing how you think a Jewish character might be depicted or viewed by others in your story? I’m asking not to be interrogatory, but out of curiosity and need for clarification.

–Jess

Evil Jewish person stereotype

Shira’s answer speaks directly to this and a lot more concisely, but I wanted to take a minute and go deeper into the phrase “Evil Jewish person stereotype,” for the sake of helping break down what’s actually happening and why it works the ways that it does.

There are two forces at work here, not unrelated to each other but not identical either. One is the portrayal of evil characters using tropes that suggest Jewish coding, and the other is a cultural suspicion of Jewish people’s motives and actions. They’re two sides of the same coin, perhaps, but I’d like to look at them separately, since the difference--that one refers to fictional characters and the other to actual people--matters in the context of reading and writing fiction.

Jewish coding in Villain characters

There are aspects of a character’s physical appearance that can suggest Jewishness even as we acknowledge that Jewish individuals don’t necessarily match those looks. Those might include a hooked nose, hair that is curly or red, a sallow complexion, an angular face. These attributes are not inherently bad: a text portraying them is antisemitic when these attributes are a visual signal of bad motives or are only present in bad characters and not good ones. Although not at issue here, it’s worth noting that these attributes can also raise questions in settings where all Jewish characters have them, because the flip side of these attributes being used to denote Jewishness is the erasure of Jewish people who don’t have these looks. 

 There are also aspects of a character’s personality that are repetitions of historical accusations against Jews, justifications for violence or persecution rather than reflections of genuine events. These might include greed, arrogance, bloodthirstiness, and a willingness to hurt or kill children for personal gain. These tropes have accrued over centuries in spite of the fact that every single one of them runs counter to any genuine Jewish values because ultimately, they’re not based on real-world actions by real-life Jewish people, but a product of leader after leader over time riling up their followers into dehumanizing a minority population, for the usual reasons people have for dehumanizing minority populations. 

Jewish coding in villain characters is not necessarily the same as stereotyping Jewish people as being evil. It does however support and maintain unconscious antisemitic biases. That is to say, when you meet someone who is Jewish, you’re not necessarily thinking “Mother Gothel was coded with Jewish tropes so this Jewish person probably is evil,” but if someone shows you a picture of a person with a hooked nose and curly hair and says “this person is greedy and hurts children,” exposure to Mother Gothel and other fictional villains on the same model might make you less likely to say “That doesn’t sound right.” 

Meanwhile, back in Michigan

Like Shira said, your character is not the mastermind of the murder she’s being forced into. Rather, she’s a victim of whatever character or circumstance is forcing her into it. As long as that’s apparent in your narrative, you’re not supporting an existing harmful trope or stereotype. I would treat the concept differently if this were, for instance, a dark narrative of a remorseless killer. In the current climate I would also advise against any imagery of a Jewish person of any age or agency killing a child or person of color of any kind, as that is the latest iteration of the medieval blood libel in modern times.  I would even have pause in this situation, where she’s not the author of her own act but does commit it, if she does not experience remorse or if she enjoys doing it. What matters here is her motive. 

If this character is Jewish, then that’s going to affect her approach to the incident in certain ways. While Christian and Christian-influenced secular culture regard “good” and “bad” as the ultimate thing to worry about, even at the cost of martyrdom or murder, Judaism places life as the highest value. There are very few of the laws and customs of Jewish life that one is not expected to break in order to avoid death, but one of those is murder. Now, Jewish characters make choices that aren’t perfectly consistent with Jewish law all the time, so what I’m asking is not to not write this, but to write it on purpose.

What does it do to your character?

Who is she before and after?

How many of us could truly choose to die rather than kill in her situation?

Does she own perhaps a necklace or decor item with the word “חי” on it?

What does seeing it do to her?

In what other ways does her Jewishness make her interesting and relevant as a character?

If it’s just curly hair and matzah ball soup on an otherwise Christian character, why bother. But if you’re willing to put in the time to research Jewish attitudes toward life and death and how they differ--even and especially in a teenager’s schema--from the Christian and Christian-influenced majority conception, then there’s room for an interesting narrative here. 

-Meir 

[happypeachsludgeflower]

If I had a nickel for every time a danmei had a good white/light green character with an “evil” dark color/red character as their husband, I would have— a lot of damn nickels. Why does this keep happening??

[anris-resurrection]

Aren't you a sight for sore EYE

[talesfromthecrypts]

Warlock: The Armageddon (1993) dir. Anthony Hickox

[ottostoast]

playing around with some spider-KID designs

[minzart]

I think about Neuvillette pre Iudex era, and how merciless he was implied to be at some point, and his predecessor as Iudex. and lord imagine how wild it Must have been for Furina be like, i gotta fire one guy WHO THE PEOPLE KNOW to put the dragon we need for a prophecy that WHO KNOWS WHEN WILL HAPPEN, but said dragon is very verry grumpy how do you makes friend with a dragon that does not want to be your friend??? WHILE MAINTAINING THE ARCHON ACT???

[piss-in-boots]

This man has one of the best character designs I’ve ever seen. He’s designed like a stereotypical villain with his sharp features, dark armor, and the scar across his eye…but in actuality he’s goofy and sad.

[choccorin]

thinking about dabi who gets shy everytime you two make eye contact. he lets out a soft grumble as you persistently try to make him face you, it takes a few minutes before he finally gives up on your stubbornness. the two of you look into each other's eyes, with his hands on your waist and your arms wrapped around his neck. his eyes reminds you of the color of the ocean when the moonlight reflects on it, the prettiest eyes you've ever seen— and you can't help but notice the slight hints of sadness inside them. his eyes tremble before he looks away and places his head on your shoulder. if he could blush, his cheeks and ears would be tainted with a shade of pink right now.