#One Villainous Scene

[ultraericthered]

One Villainous Scene: Cage Of Expectations

A brief one, but it gives so much insight and explains so much about the inner world of a character who, up to this point, was kept shrouded in mystery even though we all knew he was the villain, and also perfectly sets him up to make the decisions he ends up making.

While the later retcon tells us that Ken became a prodigious, genius boy due to a "Dark Spore" inplanted in him by accident that only "went off" when he visited the Dark Ocean, the whys and hows aren't really crucial to understanding Ken's story at this point: he's a star student, star athlete, and even something of a young celebrity within the world of science and computers. Because he is so well known and renowned, he's given plenty of filmed interviews like we see him doing here. After the interview is done, the headmaster of Ken's school comes over to him to offer congragulatory words...and then in a very shady move, whispers to Ken the offer to tutor his daughter in her studies over at his place so that she can excell in her grades at his school, saying he'd reward Ken handsomely for it. Ken plays the "I'm just a kid, I ain't THAT good" card, which makes the principal start to back off...but then he turns back around and asks the disgruntled Ken for an autograph. Turns out that beyond mere corruption and nepotism practices, the headmaster was pestering Ken about these things because his daughter's a fangirl of Ken. This does not please Ken. Who do some plain, unexceptional, low IQ girl and her plain, unexceptional, low IQ father think they are asking him for favors like this? Such matters are far below his time and efforts.

(In the English dub, this interaction is changed to some nonsense about the headmaster wanting Ken over to help him win at a video game called "Donkey Madness" prior to getting the autograph. The effect on Ken is the same, but I think it takes a lot out of the scene.)

Ken is then seen at dinner with his parents, who are acting all congragulatory and gushing over their son's interview and how smart he is and how maturely he presents himself. Yeah, they're really shitty parents. Much as they do love their son and loved his late brother, their love for the idea of being the parents of a special genius child enraptures them so much that they lose sight of what's really best for their child and his needs as a human being, and they coast off the achievements and reputation of their child without really giving back to him in any substantial way. Ken isn't really pleased with the way they interact with him either, so he gets up and leaves the table.

Then comes the big moment. An image that says so much even when so little is said (again, in the original. The dub butchered it by having Ken internally ramble the whole way, which not even Derek Stephen Prince can really save.) Ken's on the roof of his apartment building, standing in front of a barred fence. He can see the entire city from here, a city filled with mediocre people who he considers to be completely beneath him, but who will always look to exploit his gifts and use whatever he accomplishes for their own benefit, and will feel alright about themselves for doing nothing, being nothing. Ken would love nothing more than to abuse, bully, enslave, torture, or even kill the whole lot of them...but he's far too intelligent to not know better. He knows that the rules of civil society prohibit him from acting freely upon those cruel urges, making him have to conform and comply with the regulations set by lesser people. He, a Chosen One, a "perfect human", has to just sit there and take it like a good little boy, to not werewolf and go wild on these people. He's trapped. Caged like a rare breed of animal rather than the god he believes himself to be. The bars he grabs onto represents this cage, and all he can do here is snarl and shout out to city below him "INSECTS!"

But of course we know that there's a place Ken goes to where he can actually live his wildest fantasies, and act as he would naturally prefer to act towards lesser beings completely free of repercussions. The world he believes is one large MMORPG that exists for his pleasure. The Digital World, where he asserts himself as the Digimon Kaiser. And it's at this point where he starts to call that place home.

[izunias-meme-hole]

One Villainous Scene - A Monster Kills His Creator

Been on a fckin' comics hyperfixation/had a love reignited recently, and considering recent events I feel like now is a perfect time to talk about a specific walking magnet who's lived through an actual fascist regime. He's a man who's seen genocide firsthand, and it's impacted how he thinks forever. He's one of fiction's most popular knight templar's, and has almost become as awful as the types of people he hates before dialing it back or just getting stopped on several occasions. I'm talking about the Master of Magnetism, the leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants, the holocaust survivor himself, Erik Lehnsherr a.k.a Magneto.

X-Men First Class is easily one of the best of Fox's X-Men films, and a lot of that is thanks to it's origin for Magneto, which still keeps his background as a kid who survived the holocaust, but they expanded upon it by giving him a very personal tormentor in the form of Sebastian Shaw, a mutant supremacist who was temporarily aligned with the Nazi party. Shaw pretty much made Erik his lab rat after shooting the kids mom before his eyes just to see what triggers his ability to move metal. Following the end of WWII, Erik would pretty much spend a good majority of life dedicated to hunting ex-nazi's that were connected to this fucker.

Around 2 decades later, Erik, still continuing his mission for vengeance, would find Shaw but would almost be killed by his mutant allies. This is what ends up putting him on the same team as Charles Xavier, a telepathic mutant and the man who he'd become a close friend to. Despite forming a bond with Charles, Erik still had a burning desire for vengeance, except now it was paired with the justifiable fear of a mutant holocaust. Though his thirst for revenge would be quenched during the final act of the film when he and Charles would try to stop WWIII.

Erik once again confronts Shaw, except its mutant to mutant now. Shaw at first overpowers Erik, but when he knocks off the telepathy-resistant helmet that Shaw was wearing, Charles freezes the bastard. Though after this happens Erik apologizes to Charles, before putting on that same damn helmet, cutting off his friend as he proceeded to tell Shaw this:

"If you're in there, I want you to know that I agree with every word you said. We are the future. But, unfortunately, you killed my mother."

Erik then takes out a Reichsmark coin, the same coin that Shaw asked him to move before gunning down his mother and counts down to 3 as he moves it towards Shaw's head. Despite not being able to reach his friend, Charles pleads for Erik to stop. But it's too late. Charles doesn't stop Erik from shoving the coin through Shaw's skull as he feels every inch of agony that Shaw's unable to express. It's a deserved fate for someone that cruel, but at the same time it was the birth of a monster who would carry that belief of mutant supremacy.

This is what Magneto during his time as a villain has always been, and this scene perfectly shows that. A boy suffered through a real genocide, grew up with the fear of another happening, and ironically turned into a similar (Similar not the same) type of person to the ones that ruined his life in his attempts to do good. A prime example of how one who fights monsters can sometimes turn into the monsters they fight. Thank god, he barely avoids truly becoming that awful.

[toasterbounce]

ngl I wanna make a video essay on snows descent into villainy in tbosas I am brainrotting HARD

[its-leethee]

A couple weeks ago, I finished up a rewatch of Gargoyles the animated series on Disney plus. I was searching around for analyses/new stories and whoa! A youtuber I admire did an analysis video about one of my favorite scenes from Gargoyles. Of course, it's so good:

Demona is one of my all-time favorite characters. Her anger, prejudice and paranoia are completely understandable; it's how she's endured over a thousand years of pain and loneliness. "The access code is... alone" still moves me to tears.

If we ever get a Gargoyles reboot, I hope the problems with the protagonists' assimilationist ideology are addressed. I hope they'll give Demona the chance to have her anger validated.

Anyways. I wanted to share this incredible truth from the video:

"Being oppressed doesn't teach you how to be a good person; it teaches you how to be an oppressor."

[digikate813]

May the 4th may be about space wizards to most people, but to some, it's about when one of literature's greatest heroes almost met his end. All because of one of the greatest criminal minds to ever be conceived. 

So I wanted to look back and show how Professor Moriarty built such a legacy, with just One Villainous Scene.

[vriskan8or]

let her go

[ultraericthered]

SPOILERS FOR JOKER FOLIE A DEUX:

So, this scene covered in this post? How it was executed and all that it was meant to represent? Is THE primary reason while Folie à Deux does not work as a sequel to Joker, though it'd have worked okay-ish in a vaccum as just its own crazy thing. Because at the end of this second movie, all that was said about the paralleling of the path set for Bruce versus the path set for Arthur? That Arthur is implied to continue to "have no hope and belief in anything but himself and embrace his inner madness to cause devastation to Gotham City and countless innocents because he finds doing so funny?" Thrown out the window, into the garbage, and incinerated by how this new film's ending pulls a Gotham on us, killing Arthur off in an undignified way and exposing him as merely the prototypical Joker, with THE Joker who will fight Batman in the future, possibly the very same Joker who kills Arthur, being a different person altogether from Arthur Fleck, who before his death undergoes this James McGill arc of pushing back against the monstrosity he created and reclaiming his original identity from "Joker", walking back the first film's entire fundamental purpose.

That sort of twist just barely worked in Gotham, mainly because they kept Cameron Monaghan and had him play a character with a more convincing claim to being the Joker and a stronger dynamic with Bruce Wayne. But it does not work here, not if we're looking at this new movie as the canonical sequel to the film of 5 years ago. Now you can say "it was the idea of Batman and the idea of the Joker who were born at the same time, but the Batman and the Joker still have their origin stories apart from each other". Sure, that's workable ....problem is that it's not what the first movie was conveying to us. For one thing, "the idea of Batman" was not born when Bruce saw his parents murdered in front of him. That's just the origin of it, the first domino to fall towards Batman's creation and the core of what drives him in his vigilante career. But moreover, when you style the scene in a way where Arthur Fleck has his rebirth immediately after we see the Wayne parents have their deaths, you are explicitly linking Bruce and Arthur in what their future trajectories were to be.

Joker was concieved as a one-off and Todd Phillips was very clear about that. This was his own Elseworlds take one of the multiple origin stories for The Joker, and he wrote and shot it as such. Yeah, Joaquin Phoenix is way too old to convincingly be the future Joker to this universe's Batman, but nothing ever suggested we were meant to view the Arthur Fleck character as being Joaquin's exact age. We assumed that Bruce, once grown up and acting as Batman, would fight Arthur because that's what we were supposed to assume. It was the authorial intent. It was not meant to be Narrative Gaslighting. (For Christ's sake, this was the second time a movie has had the Man Who Would Be Joker be responsible for the death of the Waynes, albeit this one being indirectly rather than directly.) But by following with Folie à Deux, Narrative Gaslighting is exactly what it becomes. And all this because WB was fucking greedy for more Joker profits.

So I'm just gonna look at this second Joker movie as though it's all one gigantic hallucination of Fleck's in its entirety, "death" included.

One Villainous Scene - Put a Smile On

Whenever someone wants to bring up the Arthur Fleck version of the Joker (Joaquin Phoenix in an Oscar-winning performance), it’s usually that scene that gets mentioned first. You know the one, even if you’ve never watched the movie you’re likely aware of the scene due to all the memes it created. But for the sake of originality, that’s not the scene I want to talk about. The scene I want to talk about is actually the one after it, once Fleck’s antics on live television sparked anarchy and chaos across Gotham City, which resulted in the police car he was being carried in to crash. Because what followed gave me legit chills on my initial viewing.

We get the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne in the alley, right in front of young Bruce, except here the killer is a fanatic inspired by Fleck, even using the same pre-kill line Fleck used on television before firing his gun. On it’s own, that’s not all that mind-blowing, and I suspect many viewers groaned at having to see another rendition of Batman’s origin. But immediately, and I mean immediately after both Wayne parents’ bodies hit the ground, we cut to Fleck’s body lying on the roof of the crashed police car. And then….Fleck wakes up.

In a sense, Arthur Fleck has just been reborn. Standing before the cheering crowds he had sought for so long, he dances theatrically before noticing that his mouth is bleeding, and promptly smearing the blood across his face to form a makeshift smile, laughing as he further basks in the admiration of his worshippers. This is officially the moment where Arthur Fleck becomes the Joker. And it’s happening at the exact same time as the genesis of Batman.

THAT is this movie’s punch-line: after flirting with the idea that maybe Bruce Wayne and Arthur Fleck are actually brothers before shooting it down, we end on the revelation that Batman and the Joker ARE brothers. Twin brothers, in fact, born on the same night at the same time. And whereas Batman’s birth is the initial spark of trauma that ultimately leads Bruce down a path to heroism, the Joker’s birth is the end result of trauma, as Arthur Fleck gives up all hope and belief in anything but himself and embraces his inner madness, causing devastation to Gotham City and countless innocents….and finding doing so to be funny.

This scene is a masterstroke, showing that Todd Phillips understands the dynamic between this iconic superhero/supervillain pair and found an amazing way to put a fresh spin on it.

[hootyhoowoo]

real yearners know that getting what you want was never a part of the plan

[benevolenterrancy]

Zhuzhi-Lang, sincerely, what the fuck do you think gratitude means? I'm just curious. I just want to talk.

[nibbelraz]

Do you think this awoken anything in Mobei-Jun

[clarkgriffon]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6x19 | “Seeing Red” 

[ultraericthered]

One Villainous Scene: Her Last Bow

Umineko's sixth episode, "Dawn Of The Golden Witch", is really just as much Erika Furudo's story as it is Battler's and Sayo Yasuda's. It's Erika, as the detective, who's the main protagonist of the Rokkenjima Murder Mystery gameboard at this time just as Battler had been for the first four gameboards, with Battler himself now playing the Witch nemesis role for Erika that Beatrice had played for him. With Dlanor acting as the Watson to Erika's Holmes, we follow Erika and begin to understand her a bit better, even coming to begrudgingly like and respect the little shit in certain moments despite her remaining an evil gremlin in service of Bernkastel. But then the big twist comes that Erika, the great detective, also chose to become the culprit of this particular mystery, having murdered several of the Ushiromiyas who took her into the mansion on the night of the family conference, just to defeat Battler and win both the game and the favor of her master.

Following this, we can only deeply revile Erika as she's set up as Battler's "bride to be", planning to seal her victory over him and bask in his humiliation through a wedding ceremony where she plans to trap him into marriage with a binding ring and essentially rape him by defiling his body while his mind can neither consent nor resist since it's stuck in a Logic Error. Erika is on such a power high that she has embraced acting every bit as despicably cruel, petty and self-serving as Bern. But as it turns out, this loses sight of who Erika, at her core, truly is. Which Beatrice reminds her of when she challenges her to a duel of Blue Truth against her Red Truth. Invoking Erika's status as the detective, Erika remembers: that's right, SHE IS THE PUMPKIN KING DETECTIVE!, and she sheds her bride gown to return to form.

As Beato and Battler do a bit of catching up now that Battler is saved from both the Logic Error and Erika's marriage, Erika and Dlanor also share a tender moment between them that is beyond precious and moves me nearly to tears to see how close the two have grown. Afterwards, Beato and Erika take out their guns and begin the duel.

The duel eventually reaches this point where Erika is going over the case in her head with statements of details that are certifiable Red Truths, piecing together when and how Battler might have been able to slip out of the Guest Room and swap out with Kanon, who Erika believes had to have been hiding in the closet after making doing so.

...until she catches herself and realizes that cannot possibly be the truth of the case and is only what Beato was leading her to believe, and she was about to walk right into Beato's trap by declaring Kanon's hiding place to be the closet. She redirects her attention to under the bed only to then realize that there still remains a possibility that Kanon could've slipped into the closet. Erika begins to realize that both "Kanon hid under the bed" and "Kanon hid in the closet" are equally valid possible solutions, but if she chooses one, the other is likely to be the correct answer and she loses...unless she could somehow concieve of a way to expose the truth of both at once!

This becomes a moment of epiphany for Erika. While the rules of a proper mystery would render Beato's play a cheat, in a Witch's Game, it's a valid, logical move that drives her to opening up her mind to further possibilities for solutions, to potential truths that had gone unseen by her before, things she never would've considered. Taking it all in, beginning to for the first time see things through a Witch's eyes by standing as a human playing the Witch's game of truth and errors, Erika finds herself awestruck and shedding tears.

How rare is it that we get to see this? A largely unsympathetic, deliciously reprehensible villain who is still largely without empathy and remorse gets to undergo such a character arc where she gets as much emotional moments, triumphant moments, lessons learned and personal growth as a heroic protagonist character would. Prior to this moment, Erika had played at being both the Greatest Detective and the “Witch of Truth” as part of a path set before her by her wicked, abusive master, and she'd been driven both by a desire to please said master and to satisfy her sadistic urges to inflict anguish and hurt unto others rather than be on the recieving end of it. This twisted Erika into the worst version of herself, to the point where she lost sight of who she truly was and what she truly wanted to be - a great human detective who dispells the myths and illusions of Witches and uncovers the truth. But she has now gained a fuller, broader perspective of what "the truth" entails and finally sees the value in things she’d never known or understood until now, like what all there is to a Witch's game beyond winning and losing, beyond being right about The One Truth or being wrong in all perceptions of everything. Had Erika known this perspective way back when, maybe she would've been able to hash things out with her boyfriend and maybe could've avoided the heartbreak. She even thanks Beato for giving her this experience, sealing the moment when she and Beato go from being simply opponents to being also dear and valued friends.

But of course, the duel still needs to be won. And Erika plays to win.

With Erika felled to the ground, it seems that the game has been won and Beato gets to win Battler's hand in marriage from Erika. But Erika has one last shot in her gun, one final play to make...and unlike her master Bernkastel, Erika Furudo proves here and now that she is no coward. Still in pain and bleeding out, Erika struggles to her feet, dragging her body across the floor, her field of vision starting to blur as she walks, as she states that she's come to fully see, accept, and embrace her own real truth, the truth about herself. The truth that she is not a mere great human detective, but as the Witch of Truth, she is a villainous detective. She controls her own role independent of her master now, and the role she chooses to play is the one she views as best suiting her - the role of a villain, all the way to the unsightly end.

But much as Erika might want to play this villain role to perfection so as to leave no room for pity, admiration and respect, the fact that she is making this last stand with such courage and is making a request so noble of the two betrothed Gamemaster Witches is not lost on them. Even Battler and Beato have to honor Erika here. Erika, who not too long ago was complicit in Beato's seemingly total and final destruction, and who murdered the Ushiromiyas on Rokkenjima to trick Battler into a Logic Error and planned to subject his body to martial rape, is most definitely an evildoer, but proves to be one with just enough qualities of decent character and inner strength that her adversaries and those she's hurt can't help becoming fond of her.

With the good-natured, semi-respectful rival trash talk out of the way, Erika Furudo stands tall and proud, gun in hand, to give her final parting line, a "self introduction", a greeting and re-establishing of who Erika Furudo was in the lore of the Rokkenjima Mass Murders, and who/what Erika Furudo believes herself to be at game's end.

A Red Truth declared. A single shot fired. Erika Furudo is no more.

You almost regret that she had to get taken down like that given the begrudging respect and admiration she’s managed to evoke….but at the same time, what an EPIC way to go out. And as we'd see in the final chapter, it's far from the last we'd see of Detective Erika Furudo, a nefarious girl of great intellect and great courage to back it up even if she has to run the risk of failure. A bitch so bad, she's <GOOD>.

[izunias-meme-hole]

One Villainous Scene - The Impaler

Elden Ring's DLC, Shadow of The Erdtree received a mixed response, but if there's one thing everyone agrees on, its that the Golden Hippo and Commander Gaius were dogshit bosses, Radahn being alive was a jumpscare, and Messmer The Impaler lived up to his hype.

Messmer has been in promotional material for the DLC. presented as another cursed child of Marika, and a zealot at that. A lucifer-esuqe demigod with a demonic snake motif that was willing to do things his mother wouldn't. He has been presented like this since day one, and his in-game presence certainly matches the expectations that have been set. One of the first enemies we encounter is a Fire Golem, a tool of mass execution, and one of the few pieces of lore that learn about while roaming the damaged Land of Shadows are that of the Impaler's successful crusade to eliminate the Hornsent. So immediately, Messmer's presence is properly established, and it's expanded upon the more we run into his forces and see the damage he's done, and he certainly lives up to this imagery.

Then... we learn things. We learn about Marika's origins, we learn about where the living jars come from, we learn about the Hornsent's own brutality, but most importantly, we learn more about a different side of Messmer. At the request of his men he surprisingly authorized a museum in his keep preserve aspects the Hornsent's culture, he was trying to figure out how to cure jarred people, and overall Messmer carries a surprisingly level of compassion that cracks through his ruthless exterior. It becomes clear that there is more to this zealot than one would have originally thought, and ultimately one thing becomes clear. Messmer had a heart, but its one he shut off in order to do what his mother requested even if she never intended to repay him for his services.

As for his curse? Messmer's curse since brith involved the same serpents that are tethered to his body. An abysmal serpent had found its way into his body, and is constantly being repressed by a grace given glass eye that Marika gave her son. Yet this curse still affected his life. The curse put great fear into Marika, this curse caused some of his own to defect, and ultimately it was this curse that would make him the perfect scapegoat for the personal vengeance crusade against the Hornsent that Marika ordered. No matter how much he denied it, Messmer was abandoned by his own mother.

Now, let us enter the actual boss fight. The Tarnished enters his chambers, and gets noticed by Messmer immediately. At first he considers them as another pest, before realizing what they are, briefly thinking that Marika granted this graceless one lordship. He soon snaps out of it, declaring that he'll burn this graceless one in the embrace of his flame. After getting his ass handed to him for a little bit, Messmer begins to get desperate, looking towards a statue of is mother and apologizing before removing the grace that repressed his curse. Then, his body appears sicklier, his power multiplies, and subconsciously he's accepted that he might never be welcomed back into the arms of his mother. And his final words?

A curse upon his own mother.

So yeah... Messmer The Impaler everyone. A butcher, a scapegoat, a good leader, a loyal monster, and a child crying for mommy until accepting that she's not coming for his ass.

[glassedplanets]

i am still soooo charmed by that one set of eyecatchers

[monhiio]

whoops gay awakening part xx

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslighter? I hardly know her!

[First] Prev <–-> Next