#dont smooch the worst bad guys you break their backs and hold their heads aloft in pride

[twitchesandstitches]

A young heroine, so inexperienced her breasts were barely bigger than her entire upper torso, timidly raised a hand that was a complicated fusion of tentacles, claw bits, and a giant cybernetic piston-cannon. “I have a question regarding the Paragon Code.”

Terezi Pyrope, Marshall enforcing the code and acting as internal affairs for the Fleet in this particular area, waved a cane at her lazily. “Go on, kid. What’s the question?”

The heroine gulped. “Um. I’ve been fighting with a villain-type and I keep feeling these weird romance-y feelings. Like, I want to kiss them, maybe... and date them, when we’re not fighting or there’s a conflict going on...?”

Terezi nodded. Ah. She knew about this sort of thing.

“And...” the heroine said heisitantly. “I wanted to know what the Code has to say about this...?”

Terezi took the Code and popped it into her mouth, chewing throughtfully. Possibly so she could read it, and just as possibly to see if she could freak out the heroine. To her credit, the young initiate didn’t even blink. “Hrm, okay there’s some thoughts about this, so the important question is: how evil is the villain you’re having flirty thoughts about?”

The heroine considered and raised her hand up and down. “Hrm. She could go worse OR be better? She’s just robbed a few places, high-jacked a moon this one time. She hasn’t killed anyone or partaken in any crimes, but I feel that maybe it’s just sheer luck that no one’s died, or worse. Like I feel that she might not care if someone does get hurt...”

Terezi’s expression grew uncharacteristically grim. “Kid. Listen to me here and now. Okay?”

She got a fearful nod.

“If the villain is harmless, doing no real damage and not actually getting people hurt, than there’s no issue. Sure, there might be moral issues involved but, as long as you’re not actively aiding them, the crime is on them, and not you. Flirt all you want, and maybe push them away from the bad guy life.

“But if they are hurting people... if someone dies because of them, if they kill someone or take them into captivity, or set off a war? And if they don’t give a damn about the suffering they cause as long as they get something out of it, or they enjoy the pain they cause... that is another thing altogether.”

She poitned a claw urgently at the heroine. “It’s your duty as a hero to stop them. At all costs. You make sure they never, EVER do something like that again. Remember: you being there is supposed to make everyone glad and reassured, that all the suffering is about to stop. You make bad things stop happening. That is what heroes are for.”

The heroine nodded, more confidently. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And if that villain is really, genuinely bad, you cannot hold back. You don’t act on those romantic feelings, and you don’t let them just walk away after hurting people. Your decision.” She looked serious now. “Gut them like a fish, if they’re gone bad enough. Digest them, even if you’ll spit them out later. WHatever it is, you put them down hard, and you stop them from making it worse.”

Terezi sighed. “Look, having sexual or romantic feelings for someone isn’t a violation. But it is a violation to let those feelings win if that person is going to be genuinely evil. If people get hurt, or worse, because you decided that getting to be romantic with someone you know is a genuinely bad person was more important than keeping them from doing harm... well, than anything they do from there on out CAN be considered your fault.”

The heroine looked very grim. “...Yes, of course.”

“So ask yourself, ‘what kind of hero can look at someone who does horrible things and think that she’d still rather flirt, knowing what that person has done and what they’re GOING to do?’”

The answer, the heroine knew, was that there really wasn’t any option at all.

You stopped them. Non-fatally, if you could. But you stopped them no matter what.

No real hero would ever dare put their sexual desires over saving the day. Villains prioritized selfishness over the lives of others.