#sympathetic villain
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A Villain who never really reforms but still finds ways to build bonds (dare they call them friendships?) with members of the Hero's team so if they're looking to switch sides, if they’re generally hard on their luck, facing a bigger threat, all else fails, etc. they know where they can turn if they so choose
A Villain who may take care of their own team (and by extension the heroic allies they make) better than the Hero takes care of theirs
A Villain who may end up being targeted by Superhero, who may gravely injure or kill them and doesn’t understand why so many of their hero teammates are so upset/angry/turning against them for it
#whump#whump prompt#writing prompt#superheroes#sympathetic villain#villain whumpee#unsympathetic hero#enemy of my enemy#unconventional
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Bro honestly I'm so checked out when it comes to 'sympathetic villains.'
Like I'm beyond sick of stories where the bad guys commit countless atrocities but characters in the narrative bend over backwards and twist themselves in knots to treat them with kid gloves. 'Yeah Scumbag McKillingFields may have blown up several city blocks and graphically skinned someone alive on camera, but I'm sure we can still reach them you guys! His father never hugged him!'
Like, fuck right off with that.
Just once I'd love it if the heroes hear some guy lay out whatever bullshit justification they have for how they act and lay into them regardless. Because having bad things happen to you is not an excuse to do worse things to other people.
Either go all in with a pure evil bastard, or don't have them constantly do awful things while so-called heroes wring their hands over it.
Make more Jack Horners.
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Hope Is A Thing With Feathers, day 29
Twenty-eight times Nathan Summers had to watch Wade Wilson die (and the one time he made sure it would never happen again).
A drabble collection for @febuwhump 2024
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Nathan Summers/Wade Wilson, Mature, whump, graphic depictions of canon-typical violence, Wade dies a lot (no like a lot), Nathan Summers Is A Controlling Asshole, emotional abuse, kidnapping, sympathetic villain
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day 29: not allowed to die + immortality
Nate’s boots are a mess when he wipes them at the door of the bunker, but none of the blood is his.
And none of it is Wade’s.
None of it is Wade’s because Wade (and all of Wade’s blood) is here. Safe.
Wade’s room is a gentle place. It glows with fairy lights, and the bed is heaped with soft, silky things. Nate visits Wade often. Sometimes he tells Wade about his day. Wade never says much back, but that’s alright. Sometimes Nate paints Wade’s nails and they watch sitcoms. Sometimes he just holds him, reassures himself that even after Nathan Summers is dead and dust, Wade Wilson will remain.
Because at the center of Wade’s room is Wade, encased in the blood warm metal of the techno-organic virus. It weaves gently through his skin, hugs each and every joint. Wraps lovingly around his brain — even his thoughts are safe from the poison his mind used to spew. The TO can’t actually consume him, not in any way that matters. Healing and virus balance in eternal battle; the last battle Wade will ever face.
Nate fixed it.
Wade is here. Wade is safe.
Wade Wilson will never die again.
Hope is a thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all.
- Emily Dickinson
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⇒⇒⇒ Start at Chapter 1 ⇐⇐⇐
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← Day 28 ||
#hope is a thing with feathers fic // read on Ao3
#hope is a thing with feathers fic#febuwhump#febuwhump2024#febuwhumpday29#my work#cablepool#cable#deadpool#nathan summers#wade wilson#whump#whump writing#hurt/no comfort#major character death#kidnapping whump#sympathetic villain#emily dickinson#hope is a thing with feathers#hope is the thing with feathers
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I LOVE sympathetic villains and I'm so checked out when it comes to people shitting on them.
Like how many fucking times have we gotten a "tragic hero"? You could spend the next 24 hours listing them off and will still be unable to mention them all, because of the sheer volume that exists in every form of media.
Why do people happily put up with tens of thousands of tragic heroes with dramatic and trauma filled backstories,and then throw a shit fit when they see a villain who dealt with horrific childhood abuse or lost their entire family? Seriously what the fuck.
So bring on tragic and sympathetic villains. I love backstories and being shown WHY someone acts that way.
I MUCH prefer multi dimensional characters instead of the one note wonder of "I'm just evil for no reason, let me do the mustache twirl."
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Sleep Problems
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
#whump#hurt/comfort#hero x villain#med whump#hospital whump#heroes and villains#hero x villain community#hero whumpee#villain caretaker#caring villain#sympathetic villain#supervillain whumper
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Exactly. I love sympathetic villains not because I agree with and support their actions but because they remind us that people have a reason for turning out the way they do. Virtually no one is evil just for the sake of being evil. Empathizing with a villain means recognizing a shared humanity—that we are all just flawed human beings capable of making bad choices…and that it’s never too late to come back from those choices and reinvent ourselves. We are all capable of great evil…but we are also capable of great love.
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Two Sentence Character Study
It's 2014, and just like every other girl I need to prove I'm not like other girls.
So I learned riptide on the ukulele.
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I’m not saying it’s right for Darth Vader to just fucking choke to death his incompetent co-workers, I’m just saying I understand it.
#we’ve all been there#sympathetic villain#some people do happen to resemble a waste of oxygen#i’m the only human who doesn’t benefit from me NOT having superpowers#i’m not really a misanthropist i just have a very low supply of patience in these situations
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Villians
I've been coming up with ideas for villians in my head. I'm kinda obssessing with the idea of villans who at one point underwent some trauma based off of society's behavior, that leaves them feeling lost and scared in a very sympathetic way. Eventually they decide to try and overcome this trauma in some huge elaborate way as a villian, embracing themselves with all their flaws as someone they can be confident in, thinking they're doing good despite their horrible actions to acheive such. They see themselves as victims, and their own victims as people they want to save from the same trauma that they underwent, only to subject them to something completely different, but no less bad.
Imagine a hyperactive scrunkly little guy, who spent their whole lives wanting to zip zoom all over the place and be happy and carefree. But society is constantly annoyed with their antics, and begins to whittle them down to a depressed husk of their former selves. They begin bottling themselves up, hating themselves for showing any resemblance to their old self that was too annoying and bothersome for everyone else. Eventually they can't take it anymore, and decide that they don't care about the opinions of anyone else, and embrace their hyperactive self to it's fullest potential, becoming a super-speed themed villian whose goal is to enact petty revenge against the people who said mean things to them. They present a unique challenge to the hero, as any move taken against them only reinforces the villain's perception of themselves being hated by everyone, and thus should only be worried about their own feelings.
Imagine a villian who laments the fact that they never had any childhood friends. They have nothing but regret for the "loss" of their special one they'll never know, and begins to suspect that this is because of modern societies trends toward isolation. They decide to combat this by destroying necessary infrastructure, in the hopes that people will need to band together to survive, and only then will they realize how much they value the presence of their fellow human beings and start making friends. (Though this probably only results in those people uniting to beat their ass.)
Anyone else have any ideas of characters like these?
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Detective Comics (vol. 1) #480:
The Perfect Fighting Machine
Read Date: September 14, 2022
Cover Date: December 1978
● Writer: Dennis O'Neil ● Penciller: Don Newton ● Inker: Dave Hunt ● Colorist: Adrienne Roy ● Letterer: Karen Kish ● Editors: Julius Schwartz ◦ E. Nelson Bridwell ●
Synopsis:
Ivan Angst, leader of the hired gang called Mercenaries, Inc. seeks revenge against Batman, who is responsible for capturing most members of the criminal organization. Meanwhile, Batman is forced to take a break from his crime-fighting as his health had begun to decline in the past few days.
While Bruce Wayne recovers, Ivan Angst has hired Dr. Moon and is using his scientific knowledge in order to experiment on an innocent mentally challenged young man. Angst chose him as his test subject because of his massive body and Dr. Moon augments his physical capabilities by experimenting on him. After the experimentation is complete, the test subject which is now dubbed Gork, becomes a perfect fighting machine, unable to feel pain and capable of fantastic strength feats.
Angst proceeds to make a public challenge against Batman and Bruce is forced to go into action, in order to prevent Angst from hurting innocent people. The confrontation takes place in an abandoned construction site in Gotham City, where Batman is taken by surprise when he is attacked by Gork. The brutish humanoid is able to resist every blow by Batman and the Caped Crusader starts using deadly hits, to no avail.
At the brink of losing the match and therefore his life, Batman is only saved when Gork's organism starts to process the pain inflicted and his body collapes. Angst and Moon, who were witnessing the fight, approach the scene to learn if Gork would survive. When they give up hope and prepare to leave, Gork grabs Angst and strangles him to death for his treason, while Moon escapes from the place. When Batman recovers some of his strength, he tries to stop Gork from killing Angst, but his efforts are futile and both the criminal and his monstrous creation end up dead.
(https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Detective_Comics_Vol_1_480)
Fan Art: Batman (fanart) by dleoblack
Accompanying Podcast:
● The Overlooked Dark Knight - episode 03
#my dc read#dc#dc comics#fan art#fanart#podcast recommendation#comics#comic books#podcast – overlooked dark knight#batman#sympathetic villain
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"Join us, join the winning side. You won't have to be afraid of Villain or take orders from them anymore."
"Heh...Wow. You honestly think I follow them because I'm afraid of them? No. You don't know them at all. But I think you'll be afraid of them after they come for me and they see how you treat your prisoners."
#whump#whump prompt#writing prompt#team whump#superheroes#sympathetic villain#unsympathetic hero#captivity#interrogation#villain x lackey#loyalty#dialogue prompt
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We could have had it all...
[First] Prev <–-> Next
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#wei wuxian#jin guangyao#nie mingjue#oh man....the NieYao dynamic....All these complex emotions and ties to each other and they *aren't* canon?#Sorry fellas but the way you proposed writing your bro a letter of recommendation & agreeing to it was very fruity.#And *then* Lan Xichen shows up. And both JGY and NMJ are head over heels for him and have been for ages apparently.#Its like they found out that LXC had been two timing them this whole time and their response was: “UM. HOT?”#I'm tempted to redraw these three as that one bisexual-core image with Anne Hathaway. You know the one. It fits.#It's strange seeing all of this fondness in retrospect compared to the betrayal you feel in The Untamed after a longer build up.#Initially it felt like 'oops we made him a little too 2 dimensional as a villain - quick make him more sympathetic'.#JGY even had a scene with him kissing babies. As any politician would do to improve their image.#but it does come around to really showing a more authentic JGY and the tension between him and NMJ.#As an angst lover I am personally all for 'what could have been' relationships and they DO have it all.
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I think y'all are sleeping on this.
"you seek gortash? His soul is already suffering at my hands. This is the fate of all those who fail me"
If you use speak with the dead in gortash after you kill him, he's not there, he's already been taken by Bane to be tortured forever. I won't spoil what Bane says after this but can we all agree how fucked up it is that Tav is ringing gortash' spirit phone and Bane picks up like "yeah he's busy being in agony, can I take a message?" And then presumably goes back to torturing him for all eternity and NO ONE says anything???
I'm gonna try it on orin too, presumably she's suffering something similar. They both needed to die but I don't think forever torture is an appropriate punishment for both of them. Orin is definitely worse than gortash, both in terms of danger level and sheer body count.
#enver gortash#bg3 gortash#gortash#maybe im just too sympathetic to assholes with tragic back stories#well played larion#once more making me care about villains and feeling bad killing them
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the plot of inquisition is fairly basic/unoriginal imo UNTIL you factor trespasser in as the real ending. that elevates the story so far beyond a simple fantasy "bad monster guy wants to take over the world. the plucky hero and his friends stops him" to something much more compelling. the moment you find out corypheus was really just small potatoes and you should have been worrying about the unassuming, soft-spoken elf who you thought was your friend and would always be by your side.... unparalleled. of course trespasser shouldn't have been a dlc I mean... we shouldn't have had to pay extra for something which is absolutely critical to the story of inquisition, but anyway...... it's truly the plot twist of all time. corypheus was a bit blah as a bad guy but really he was just a distraction- all you've been doing this whole time is cleaning up solas's mess so he can freely carry out his plans. solas is already an incredibly good villain, just being able to see and get to know the "human" side of him for an entire game is amazing set-up for da:d
#dragon age#dragon age inquisition#meredith was also a great villain. bc she was on some level sympathetic and complex#she had motivations beyond Being Evil even if they became warped into something extreme#(i don't mean we should feel sorry for her. i mean she was written as human)#patrick weekes being lead writer when he wrote trespasser Bodes Well imo#solas#dragon age talks
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I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.
I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.
The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...
Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.
I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.
And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?
It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.
To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.
In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.
Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.
So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.
What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.
Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?
#squiggposting#pharma apologism#i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain#so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash#i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent#what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving#is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt#and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists#so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character#so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of#'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him'#but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid#and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like#the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of#being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths#then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part#and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts#and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine#this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer#and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like#how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil#and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit#like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma#but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel#and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple#bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed#but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal
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day 9: it's time for crime ♡
(prompt list for femslashfeb)
#minifemslashfeb2023#ace attorney#aurametis#aura blackquill#metis cykes#'shut up simon. you know exactly how I felt about her.' etc etc#aura blackquill's villain origin story was having love in her heart#isn't that tragic!!!#does it justify her actions? perhaps not#does it make her sympathetic? some may say no#to me she is so sad though. to me she is so sad#she lost everything that day and she never got it back#she lives bitter and resentful and mad with grief#p.s. i love aura and I have so many thoughts about her#it's about letting women be messy and vengeful!!!
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