#I also think Luz's neurodivergent coding reads as kind of ableist as does Willow's

[thousandyearphantombunker]

CW: I'm mean here about shows and stuff people like

syndrome from incredibles, Thanos in the comics, mad hatter from Batman, tighten from Megamind, frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Red Hulk, parasite from superman and Ozai all of these villains are pathetic but they work for some reason I cannot place. A lot of stories try and write villains that are pathetic but also scary and it doesn't work- I love Starscream he can be an amazing character (he can be sympathetic or a straight up monster he can be lame but still threatening etc) and I like most versions but God can writers screw him up and he can fall flat (i love tfp i swear but god i hate their starscream! He just didn't work for me! Megatron and knockout are cool tho) Belos for some reason doesn't work for me at all- I know he should be scary while the fandom is wrong about him being a colonizer/cult leader/a dictator (he's not stop using words you dont understand the meaning of)and how insane it is that he's in a kids show (watch more cartoons there's villains darker than him) he's still trying to commit genocide and he's abusive and he's at his core got very little depth or complexity- he's really just an isekai character gone wrong- a pathetic guy with a hero complex and emotional baggage who becomes a villain- but he just didn't work for me. Neither does Jacob Hopkins- he's just Ronaldo from SU if he was written to be a straight up hate sink. I'm a lesbian latina with autism and was raised with a different sect of christan beliefs from him- I know historically this guy would have murdered me and i know he should work but something about him didn't stick the landing! The main thing I think about with belos isn't 'wow this guy is a great villain' it's 'can y'all stop being weirdly ableist toward this old man' or 'why do so many of y'all wanna fuck this man he's ugly' and dont get me started on mcu villains - their version of the mandarin, she-hulk's dumb men rights activists on reddit (seriously that's the scariest villain you can come up with? Like revenge porn is evil but really? I don't like the term man-baby- I have personal issues with how the term has been used in ableist ways- but yeah erm man babies on reddit are the best you can do for a villain? That's freaking stupid) and OMG Sutur in Ragnarok was terrible etc etc- these villains all suck!

How do you write villains that are pathetic but still work? How do write villains who are at their core whiny insecure losers but still work as detestable threatening villains? Like marvel made a character whose whole thing was that he's an incel work but so many other stories fail to write that stuff. Part of me thinks it's because these stories are desperate to make their villain into a hate sink joke but still make them scary and it fails but Tighten and Red Hulk are right there and there's no way the writers weren't purposely writing hate sinks with them! And they work! Why doesn't belos?