#it's always the villains isn't it. ...it's always the villains

[artigas]

look, the second that i learned that emerald fennell's next project is wuthering heights, i audibly groaned. to say that i had zero expectations would be an understatement. i was bitterly hedging my bets that i would detest her take on WH because, as someone who thought saltburn was fine and promising young woman was ethically shallow, i'm pretty resigned to the fact that i'm always going to find fennell to be, fundamentally, a bit insufferable. like, she is a director who has demonstrated (to me) that her capacity to write, direct, imagine, and construct stories is on a very short leash and is very explicitly tethered to her lived experience. she isn't paul thomas anderson or ava duvernay. she isn't celine song or chloe zhao or autumn de wilde. the worlds she constructs are very, very small and very adjacent to what i imagine to be her own. in a way that is, i think, far less palatable than greta gerwig, emerald fennell seems truly incapable of constructing a story that is not built on whiteness, wealth, and how that speaks to a very specific kind of privileged (and often self-vindicated) womanhood.

so, anyways, the casting of jacob elordi as Heathcliff makes me want to lick rust. because it's really appallingly offensive and and you would think (!!) we'd collectively evolved past the point of whitewashing when source materials actually include people of color! like, you'd think we'd finally stop ignoring how Heathcliff being a non-white racialized other is indivisible from the conflicts of the story and a core undercurrent for his character motivations. like, you wouldn't think that in 2024, Emily Bronte is still more radical than hollywood. so, i'm fuming. but maybe we should also think about this as a blessing in disguise because woe betide the day that fennell of all people is tasked to center a film around a villainous black/brown man lol

[altocat]

When Sephiroth start feeling lust for Cloud post-Nibelheim?

I’d like to think it starts five years after falling cause the thought of him lusting over teenage Cloud makes me ‘….’

He may be the villain seeking out to destroy the world but I like to think he does have standards. Can’t stoop to the level of pathetic humans.

Sephiroth's attraction to Cloud was thankfully not at all present when he was still a teenager lolol Sephiroth never thought once about him at all. If anything, Cloud being nothing more than a young, innocent trooper had given him more reasons to try to protect him as they moved through Nibelheim. But that was only when Sephiroth's completely checked out mind even registered Cloud's presence, which was not very often.

Years and YEARS afterwards is when things start to shift. Sephiroth is fixated on making Cloud's life completely MISERABLE during the events of FF7. It isn't until a bit later, following his defeat, that Sephiroth's emotions gradually begin to shift. Around the time of Advent Children, Sephiroth finds that he not only needs Cloud in order to survive, but that his malice has gradually expanded into something MORE. Oh don't get me wrong--he LOVES torturing the guy. Adores it. Can't live without it. And any time they fight is magic. But Sephiroth also finds himself longing to possess Cloud's heart just as strongly as he longs to possess him body and soul. Thus, he'll keep coming back. He doesn't care if it's through different universes or different timelines--he'll ALWAYS come back. This is what they were made for. This is all Sephiroth could ever really want.

[desperatelyneedcoffee]

Robin, Spoiler and Nightwing are all out on a mission. They're fighting the same group of people but have been split up thanks to super shitty circumstances. Batman, Red Hood, Red Robin, Black Bat and even Signal are still grouped together - they're on two different roofs but they're still close enough to help each other - but their mission isn't related to the other.

Batman and Oracle completely underestimated how dangerous the first group of villains were, leading to the 3 vigilantes getting injured. Like, really injured. Like, calling out for your parents injured because you don't have any other option.

Robin came out with a bruised cheek, a couple stab wounds and a dislocated shoulder. A dislocated shoulder he could deal with but there's only so much he can do after being stabbed. The injuries weren't even the worst part to Damian, it's the fact that he was quite literally backed into a corner by a large group of people. Despite having been taught to always be prepared and never underestimate people, he did exactly that after Oracle 'confirmed' they were medium level thugs. He was reluctant but he did call for Bruce in the end.

Stephanie came out with half the bones in her feet broken, one knee cap fractured, a bloodied face from a broken nose and a fractured rib or two. Most of which came from being forced over the edge of the roof without her utility belt. ((Don't ask why she doesn't have it on idk either.)) Steph called for Bruce as her foot slid off the rooftop. The fall could have been worse but it still scared the absolute living shit out of her.

Dick barely made it out. He was sprawled out on a rooftop far away from the others, barely able to move. The fight gave him two fractured eye sockets, a broken nose, busted lip, a ruptured eardrum (which later got infected), broken ribs - one of which was jabbed into his lung, probably internal bleeding somewhere and one large cut along his leg. His face was swollen, black and blue, just like the rest of him. When he spoke into the comms, he told Bruce to get the others first and that he'd be fine.

What a shit fucking lie that was.

Batman ordered Red Robin and Black Bat to go collect Spoiler, Red Hood to collect Nightwing and Signal and him would get Robin. By the sounds of Nightwing, it was better if Jason went there instead. It would be much quicker considering he can lift heavier objects with more ease than the others, bar bruce.

Everyone made their own way back and Oracle ensured that surgery was ready and available for the three of them when they arrived.

Damian was the first one to be able to move around more comfortably since the mission, then it was Steph and then Dick. Steph was bound to a wheelchair for a while and had a lot of physical therapy to deal with. Dick was asleep for a couple days, waking up and going back to sleep every few hours. He was unrecognisable for a good few days as well as deaf in one ear.

Everyone took turns sitting with him, holding his hand, letting him know that he wasn't alone. Some would sit in silence, others would talk to him about random shit to try and make both of them feel better.

Everyone wondered what happened that night though. Babs never makes the wrong call, or at least not when it comes down to a mission. Something had to have been hacked or changed before the mission started. She and Bruce were working on finding the truth whilst the others rested and calmed down.

All three physically healed quite well but mentally they were shaken up, even if they constantly denied it. Bruce would just have to force therapy down their throats again while denying he needs it himself.

[whistlingstarlight]

C.B. is a character I don't talk a lot about bc at his core I don't think he's as deep as some people say, but there's a very specific era of the show in which I think he's at his strongest, and absolutely is a deep character.

And that's when he decides to backstab both Rusty and Greaseball, one after the other.

It's never made much sense to me why during Wide Smile, he promises Electra he'll wreck Rusty in the next race. Electra does not care about Rusty, the two almost never actually interact. The exception to this 80s London, in which they race against each other in the second heat. Obviously in this case, there's actually grounds for Electra wanting Rusty out of the running later down the line. But from Broadway onwards Electra only has one rival, and that's Greaseball.

It does make sense for C.B. to promise Greaseball he'll get Rusty out of the race. Even though Greaseball's newer rival is Electra, he doesn't like Rusty and has never wanted him in the races. His specific reasoning can vary, but however you see it, Greaseball will want Rusty out of the running. Greaseball and C.B. are also already shown to have an alliance, as it's always implied in-show C.B. has something to do with his race partner's wreck in Heat 1, and in There's Me Greaseball shushes him when he says "what a team". It's not really a secret that C.B. isn't as nice as he acts.

Electra, meanwhile, their strongest dynamic is with Greaseball. Rusty isn't a concern to them because they do not care about him. But Greaseball, he's a threat.

C.B. would naturally play on all these different dynamics. Promising Greaseball he'll help him, then instantly going to Electra and promising to wreck Greaseball makes him even more two-faced, and amps up his danger levels by making it clear he does not care about any of these engines.

C.B. pulling the strings of all three main players does still come into play later, granted, but I think it adds something to Wide Smile for his twist to be a much punchier one, where he reveals nobody is safe from him, even the engine we presumed he had an alliance with.

To me at least, one thing better than a twist where a character is revealed to be the bad guy is a villain where the twist is that they're so much worse than we first thought.

C.B.'s on his own side, after all.

[mrdogface]

flash's villains are the best villains honestly

it's SUCH a good idea to give your bad guys an actual believable human moral compass.

i've been getting this real fatigue with batman because, having just come off the Dennis O'Neil and Cuck Dixon era, most of the bad guys are just cuhraaazy people who want to eat babies or generic mobsters who don't believe in anything except for being a dark side scrooge mcduck. during the 90s and 2000s, even the costumed villains wanted to be darkside scrooge mcducks, just with a side of quirk, or they wanted to do revenge on batman. they're all willing to eat babies or do genocides or whatever to make this happen. as a result, villains just blur together.

my brother my sister my nonbinary fister, i read all of Dixon's Nightwing and the only takeaway from his villains that i have, aside from Blockbuster just being a boring Wilson Fisk, is that Hell Hound has a sick jacket. Lady Vic is just boring Elektra, I think one of them sort of had a bird theme but he just throws knives, uhhh... i think there was a car guy and Dixon re-used that idea for Robin? or the runs are just blurring together because they are structurally identical, but where Robin attends a Life Is Strange high schollege, Dick tries to become a cop, thus surrounding himself with even more amoral murderers.

it makes every single villain feel kind of bland and whatever because they're all going to do pretty much the same things, they just do it in different quirky ways. when the villains are just mobster jabronis they don't even have that going. they're going to go ehhh spaghetti a meataballe and try to shoot batman/robin/nightwing/spoiler/batgirl, and batman/robin/nightwing/spoiler/batgirl are going to kung fu them into submission.

meanwhile it is always fun when one of Flash's bad men shows up because it's like, oh my god, finally, a believable human being who reacts to his context like a person would, and therefore creates interesting conflict with these fucking Finster creations. y'know, the personalityless clay monsters Finster makes in Power Rangers. Finster. the little white goblin dog guy.

this isn't the case with all batman villain writing - batman is famous for his villains, and they are some of the most compelling and interesting in comics, when written well, the 90s just had a lot of prolific batman writers who didn't want to do that, or insisted in coming up with original villains and peaked with fucking bane.

[nightmareweaverz]

Random rant but I just wanna say I hate what internet fandom culture is doing to me sometimes.

I am a fan of horror and romance. I adore fictional villains. I've always wanted a combination of these things in a game. But I am sometimes put off by how... babyfied everything is sometimes when such games are created. The villain isn't really a villain and the monsters are drawn in cutesy cartoony art styles. The elements that initially drew me to such things are erased in favor of being easy to digest.

AND THE WORST PART IS I'M OFTEN COMPELLED TO PULL THIS NONSENSE IN MY OWN WORK!

I'll see a bunch of people talking about how this is bad and that is unacceptable and how can you have this and that in romance. And I start to water down my horror, soften my villains, make everything "palatable to a wide audience." All because I am afraid of doing something "immoral" by writing what I want. And because nowadays there's this belief that only the purest and healthiest relationships are allowed to exist in fiction, otherwise it's going to cause everyone in the real world to believe your boyfriend being a murderer is perfectly fine and acceptable somehow.

[dragonsruby]

Considering how thirsty AA fans are over Kristoph (me included, unfortunately,) I am AMAZED I didn't hear about this part until I played the game.

Like it's PERFECT out of context, how did we not-

[cruelplatonic]

my personal headcanon is the vees were unremarkable nobodies when they were alive. i just love it as a thematic throughline for them. they love to let the public of hell speculate on them being famed and acclaimed since before death, but the the truth is they were a d-list failed influencer that got by on cheap controversey and scamming, a broke junkie who burned every shaky bridge he ever had, and a worn-out broadcast production assistant with more rejected auditions and tossed out script pitches than he could count. nobody missed them when they were gone, nobody cared who they were until they were dead.

[shakingparadigm]

what is the theory that ivan manipulated the event where till and mizi met the wagyein?

It's not a theory, actually! It's confirmed that Ivan orchestrated the whole event. The true reason as to why however is still unknown. The information provides more context to this scene, though:

During the earlier times of ALNST the most rational explanation for this scene was that Till ran after a flower crown (presumably Mizi's) and Ivan followed him in out of curiosity. Now we know that Ivan was conveniently just standing there because he was waiting.

Side note, I find it heartbreaking (and maybe a little funny, sorry) that Till most likely didn't notice Ivan in this scene. That's just like him, isn't it. Always too busy running after Mizi while Ivan trails behind, an ever-present shadow.

I'm not sure how Ivan manipulated the circumstances for both of them to end up there, but it is confirmed that everything was intentional. What strikes me most is how they describe this particular scene:

I can't copy down what they said word-for-word (Patreon info), but they described Ivan watching "creepily" as Till and Mizi are faced with danger. We know that Ivan was familiar with the Cerberus wagyein beforehand, enough to touch its teeth and even to rest himself inside its maw. To Ivan, the wagyein is not dangerous, but to Till and Mizi, it could be. Ivan prepared the wagyein, led them there, and watched "creepily" from afar as Till fell on his knees, seemingly injured.

The closest I can get to making sense of Ivan's "scheme" is that he wanted to see how other children would react in a dangerous situation. Ivan's always been an observer, after all, and he's learned to survive by copying the more "normal" behaviors of his peers. This situation occured when Ivan was still young and had not yet developed his more charming mask, so perhaps he staged this encounter to study a situational response, to learn and mimic the emotion of fear. And what better subjects for the experiment than two of the most expressive and reactive humans of their batch? It helps that he was already fixated on Till beforehand, too. I think Ivan became irreversibly obssessed after this incident, especially since it's framed as a turning point in Ivan's life, comparing Till to the stars.

This is just my attempt at an interpretation, though. It could very well be for another reason. He most likely chose Till and Mizi specifically for personal reasons, not just for reaction. I'm still not sure on the purpose behind the whole thing.

The team wanted to capture Ivan's "dark emotions" through the shot of his stalking, which could relate to his more sinister intentions. His gaze can be read in a few different ways, though. Curiosity, interest, fear, etc. Maybe that's why they decided to redraw the shot in ROUND 6.

I think this better sells the feeling they were trying to convey.

[hydrachea]

Man, what a great character Hoolay is. Proud, extremely so, but not so arrogant that it'd easily be his downfall. Confident, but not to the point where he believes himself irreplaceable - even the opposite, where he sees the way other borisin see him as a great savior as a weakness. And smart. Very smart. It'd have been easy to make him a savage beast going on a mindless rampage, but instead he was extremely cautious and strategic and was playing mind games with both his hostage and pursuers. And all that made the stakes feel that much higher through the story, because the hunt is a lot more dangerous when the prey is always one step away from becoming the predator.

[aleksanderscult]

Some of you have never survived a murder attempt from your own kind and then instead of abandoning them you built a safe home for them and it shows.

[fromtheseventhhell]

"It's normal for siblings to fight" Okay well it's not normal to be extremely classist and look down on your sister for being non-conforming. Or to go to the woman who ordered the death of your pet to tell her about your father's plans, when he specifically warned you against doing so, because you want to marry the boy you saw attack your sister and her friend (contributing partially to said father's death and your sister being unable to escape on the ship he chartered). Or to think of your sibling as unsatisfactory in comparison to another when you believe her to be dead. I notice that none of the "Sansa and Arya are going to reunite and instantly have no issues" crowd ever acknowledge any of this, which makes it seem like they don't actually believe what they say about their relationship being normal and easily reconciled. People wanting them to have no issues simply because they're siblings is another example of how fandom likes to flatten complex characters and relationships. They get reduced to being bickering siblings when their conflict runs deeper than that. If the author is telling you that they have "deep issues" to work out [X], I don't understand being so adamant about ignoring said issues. I also get the sense it's about ignoring the capacity for a certain character to be flawed, but that isn't going to change the fact that her "slip of the tongue" is very likely to be revealed and a source of further conflict 🤷🏾‍♀️

[unovaslankiite]

Prolly gonna be my one and only rwde post (cus the fanbase is rancid and I'm not rlly a rwby fan, just a person who watches the show): some of you rwby fans are too comfortable using your queerness as a shield to silence BIPOC voices about the racist writing and your 'precious' bigoted CRWBY. You guys unironically act/think that just because you have to deal with queerphobia; you are IMMUNE to being bigoted yourself and you are INCAPABLE of parroting bigoted beliefs. Cus I know there will be a dumbass ant1-rwde posters who will try to drown out this post by saying its 'lies from the EVIL RWDE!!!': You would rather weaponize your queerness to bash on BIPOC voices, while claiming to care about our voices. You would rather be complicit with the racist writers and their racist writing, just because your racist writers gave you a queer ship. There is no shame nor issue in projecting the abused you suffered onto the characters, however you refuse to see through the characters and their writing through a BIPOC lens. You do not get the right to impose your perspective of the characters at the expense of BIPOC voices, you do not get to twist our voices to be alt-right bigots because we called out RWBY's rampant racism. You do not get the right to say you give a shit about BIPOC and have #BLM in your bio when you fervently defend your bigoted company. You do not get to pretend to care about racism when you buy merch off of your bigoted company. My fellow BIPOC (especially the queer BIPOC): why are you guys so comfortable dismissing your fellow poc about their discomfort with RWBY's racist writing? BIPOC are not a monolith with the same opinions about racism in media; but some of you guys are weirdly comfortable with turning a blind eye to your fellow BIPOC getting dogpiled by the white fandom. We can and will disagree, you not agreeing as a BIPOC about RWBY's racist writing is not what I take issue with. The issue lies within you upholding the racial colourblindness in the fandom; like how the fandom was ok with throwing the racism under the bus in favour of queerness, you are ok with throwing your BIPOC peers under the bus for white queerness. Sincerely, a POC who has been watching the fandoms rampant racism problem ever since 2019.

[maxdurden]

look. no one's asking y'all to like the rat grinders. but, even the greatest rat grinders hater has to admit that it sucks that the show that started with 'people are the instrument through which the universe cares' is going this way. maybe the problem is that the rat grinders were too nuanced of a villain for tbk to handle on a comedy show—but they reached out to the nightmare king and rehabilitated cassandra. when fabian was an ass because of his toxic masculinity, it was called out in the narrative and he changed and grew.

it feels thematically disappointing to see tbk be cruel bullies all season and.... not grow? not change? not learn a lesson? the lesson of freshman year was about friendship and caring! the lesson of sophomore year was varied, but everyone grew individually as characters and reformed a corrupted goddess! the lesson of junior year is.... checks notes.... it's okay to bully/torment/kill people if you really are just that good at what you do?

look—at the end of the day this season has been very funny and that's fine, i guess (obligatory disclaimer here that i HAVE enjoyed this season,,,but that doesn't mean it's above a little criticism). but if the intrepid heroes wanted a villain to dunk on, maybe a different villain would have been a better choice (or they could focus on dunking on porter?? the actually evil responsible adult in the room). and i dont think you can blame people who were primed for emotionally satisfying, thematically interesting, character focused storytelling from sophomore for being a bit bummed that this season kinda feels like it's fumbling the thematic bag.

[romulussy]

genuinely funny (and mildly irritating) to see so many people up in arms about gerri's refusal to comfort roman lol. when the stone cold killer bitch is a stone cold killer bitch :/

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

favourite twdg villain?

I'm a fond enjoyer of the St. John's as villains. I don't know if they're my favorite just because they're only in one episode, but I love the concept of this family almost immediately jumping into cannibalism toward the start of the outbreak, dealing in human flesh to bandits, and casually feeding this group their friend's legs.

Like... what the hell was this family like before the outbreak that all three of them were like, "Hey now listen... nothing should go to waste, the dead are eating people so why shouldn't we? We gotta survive and in our defense, we only target those who were gonna die anyway... like y'all."

Dude, Mark was shot in this shoulder with an arrow. He wasn't going to die from that injury. It's so fucked that these seemingly friendly people took the group into their home and then fed them Mark's legs.

If we take the idea that everyone is infected and have the capacity within themselves to become walkers, to become monsters, then the St. John's were infected long before the outbreak, y'know? Not literally, but something was wrong with them and the outbreak just further spread that infection and changed them.

But again, are they my favorite? I dunno if I can say that since I have a lot more appreciation for Lily now. Yeah, some of her writing gets a little wonky in ep3 of TFS when she goes on her monologues and shit, but y'know what? I'm into it.

You have to remember who we're talking about and the fact that she's the antagonist; Lily isn't some anti-hero in TFS who secretly has a heart of gold that's brought to light because she reunited with Clementine... she's a fucked up woman who did fucked up things in the name of survival. She's full of rot now. She sees kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers to protect her home as a means to an end, but she doesn't actually give a shit about the people she's taking. They aren't people to her, they're as the episode title suggests, toys in her game. The only one she sees as a person is Clementine, and while that makes her hesitate at first, she sees Clementine's a prize to bring back.

She remembers what happened in S1; her father had a heart attack and as she tried to save him, Kenny smashed his face in with a saltlick and then expected Lily to just stand up and help him get back to his family because "he did what he had to, he made the hard choice." Yes, Larry was a piece of shit. No one liked him, and you can even question Lily on him and she'll tell you that he has a lot of pain. Yes, it makes him an asshole, but he's still her dad and he's all she has. I mean... the simplification is daddy issues, but in all seriousness, I don't doubt for a second that many of Lily's issues stem from Larry being a shitty father to her.

Then everyone thought she was losing it when she insisted there was a traitor in the group, which she was right about, but she was unstable. She was unwell, but how do you help someone like that when you don't have training to go about it? Then Lily ends up killing either Carley or Doug and the group turns on her, and either she's left behind or she steals the van and runs away.

Then we don't know what the hell happened to her until we see her again in TFS, but like... a lone woman with decay festering inside of her joining the delta? Exposing her to their methods? I mean, what else did she have to lose? She had nothing, she lost everything, and she has a lot of issues. Survival is easy when you're numb, when you don't care about the individual; they're all just cogs churning to make the system run, and if a piece doesn't cooperate, you get rid of it and find a new one.

Plus I think there's something to say about Lily not wanting to be perceived as weak again. That whole display she put on in the cells? Telling the story of what happened to Minerva and Sophie? I get the criticism that it feels like Lily did a 180 between episodes but like... yeah dude, because it's a performance. It's not just her and Clementine anymore. It's a display of power and authority. She's playing the part and thriving in it as she ensures everyone else is terrified of her.

But then when Clementine and AJ get the upper hand? Again, she's not afraid to play up the pleading to earn enough sympathy to spare her- hell, just to let their guard down enough to strike and get the upper hand again. I mean, she's got nothing else to lose, right? If she doesn't go for it, she'll be killed and sure, you can kill her anyway but at least she tried.

Honestly, I look at Lily in TFS and still see that scared little girl playing the tough bitch, just like Carley said in S1. It's just now escalated from "tough bitch" to a downright vile person. She's so... lost? I suppose? Lost within herself and the monstrous means she's taken to survive.

I get the criticisms of how she was used in TFS, but for me, it's like when people complain about Minerva not getting the redemption arc she supposedly should've gotten, y'know? There's no saving her. Lily was never on our side, and there was no getting her on our side. She wasn't ever going to redeem herself. Even if you spare her and she drifts away on her raft, can someone like her actually find redemption? Or will she just find another group that'll feed into her rot?

Truly, I say let her be horrid. Let her be the piece of shit villain with a few fleeting moments of humanity. Let her drown in the blood she's spilled.