#or maybe anti villain

[a-legacy-not-to-be-forgotten]

Ceroba Ketsukane as a Byronic Hero

Just something I wanted to talk about, largely Ceroba and how she could be classified as a Byronic Hero.

For those of you who don't know, a Byronic Hero is a type of anti-hero. Like anti-heroes as a whole, Byronic Heroes as a definition are pretty flexible, but they do have some core things in common:

They're often portrayed as troubled, selfish, and/or withdrawn, but with a heart of gold beneath that rough exterior. They're very steadfast when it comes to their personal beliefs, but those also tend to be the source of a lot of internal turmoil, with it being a big focus on their characters. All of this comes with a heavy dose of Romanticism.

Sound familiar?

Worth noting that the 'hero' part can be pretty loose. A Byronic Hero doesn't need to be the hero, or even someone affiliated with them. It can easily fit a more antagonistic role, which I think is where the Roba fits in.

Now, the website TV Tropes (which I admittedly spend too much time on) has a handy list of common traits that Byronic Heroes have. I'll list them here and describe if they fit our fox girl.

Is usually male (though there may be some rare female examples) and is always considered very attractive physically and in terms of personality, possessing a great deal of magnetism and charisma, using these abilities to achieve social and romantic dominance. One mark against him personality-wise, however, is a struggle with his own personal integrity

Well, the male part obviously doesn't fit. Magnetism and charisma are debatable, but I don't think she fits too well with either, at least compared to someone like Starlo per say. Neither does the social or romantic dominance aspects. I'd say it doesn't fit too much, but we got other traits to go through.

Is very intelligent, perceptive, sophisticated, educated, cunning and adaptable, but also self-centered

Now this is a bit more like it. I think despite being clouded by her own emotions at times, she does have a good sense of logic to her, most notably focusing on the cunning and educated (not by her choice) aspects. And self-centered definitely fits well enough for her.

Is emotionally sensitive, which may translate into being emotionally conflicted, bipolar, or moody.

Again, I think this fits very well. Ceroba as a character is shown to very much be guided by her own emotions, leading to her aloof attitude. I can also see her having hints of confliction, especially with moments of reluctance such as her final boss encounter.

Is intensely self-critical and introspective and may be described as dark and brooding. He dwells on the pains or perceived injustices of his life, often to the point of over-indulgence. May muse philosophically on the circumstances that brought him to this point, including personal failings.

While these injustices may be her own, they absolutely do play a role in her motivations. Personal failing and musing over them is another big part of her character and I can especially see it becoming more prevalent following the True Pacifist ending.

Is cynical, world-weary, and jaded, often due to a mysterious Dark and Troubled Past, which, if uncovered, may reveal a significant loss, or a past misdeed which still haunts him, or, conversely, that he may be suffering from an injury committed against him.

I don't think this one needs any explanation. It's well known that the Kanako incident absolutely haunts her and is her main driving force.

He's extremely passionate, with strong personal beliefs which are usually in conflict with the values of the status quo. He sees his own values and passions as above or better than those of others, manifesting as arrogance or a martyr-like attitude. Sometimes, however, he just sees himself as one who must take the long, hard road to do what must be done

This also fits her. She is definitely driven by her own ideals while usually ignoring that of others. However, while she may be slightly arrogant, I don't think she puts her beliefs as above or better than that of others. She seems to fit more in the 'I'll do what must be done' category imo, but I'm open to other interpretations.

His intense drive and determination (lol) to live out his philosophy without regard to others' philosophies produce conflict, and may result in a tragic end, should he fail, or revolution, should he succeed. Because of this, he is very rebellious, having a distaste for social institutions and norms and is disrespectful of rank and privilege, though he often has said rank and privilege himself. This rebellion often leads to social isolation, rejection, or exile, or to being treated as an outlaw, but he won't compromise, being unavoidably self-destructive.

Intense drive and determination might as well be Ceroba's middle name. She does seem to be fairly rebellious. Not politically, but she does seem to very much clash with aspects of monster society, such as those beating the war drums for an invasion of the Surface. And while she may not be treated as an outlaw, her attitude does give her a sense of being isolated from others, which absolutely would result in being self-destructive for her should she refuse to change her way.

And that's my two cents. Even if you disagree with me completely, I'd very much love to hear on what you guys think.

[skellizo]

Rewatching some dsmp and other mcyt stuff and fuuuuuuuck if Tommy were to play a villain like role or something akin to his Patient Zero character I would be watching doesn’t matter what server but give Tommy the freedom to write a villain character and I know that he would hit that shit out of the park

[shiftingwithmars]

No because Ben belongs in a horror movie fr.

[mikkeneko]

watching Jiang antis go, as a Scum Villain reader, never ceases to be kind of wild

[gayfortheplot]

I know we're ignoring canon right now, but can. Can we just talk about Dabi's ending for a second? Because like. What the fuck? This guy's been suffering his entire life. From being abused by his father, to being kidnapped and experimented on while he's in a coma, just to escape and go home to find out his worst fears have come true, his family abandoned him, they never really cared. Then, he spends the next 8 years homeless, where he damages his body so much to the point he's being held together by staples? How painful was his daily life?? No wonder he wanted to die. His life was hell. And now, he spends his last days alive trapped in a fucking fish tank, in excruciating agony (you cannot tell me he isn't in any pain. He has no fucking skin left, along with his other injuries. Not to mention the emotional and psychological trauma once again inflicted on him). He doesn't get to choose whether or not he wants to keep living through this nightmare. He doesn't get to choose whether or not he wants Endeavor to visit him every day. No one asks him his opinion on any of this. They decide for him, and he doesn't have the strength left to protest. He can't move, can't talk, can't do anything. All he can do is sit there, watching on helplessly, with the knowledge that after his death, his family will once again leave him behind and forget all about him. He'll never see the League again, the only people in the world who actually loved him unconditionally and never saw him as a problem or a mistake. He has to die with the knowledge that he failed. His family won't ever truly see him as a person, and he never, not once in his life, got to be happy.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

fans: omg our innocent little meow meow! she's such a baby 🥺🥺 poor traumatized kitten protect her at all costs!! 😭😭

the character in question:

[percki]

loveybug is too busy thinking about kissing to fight supervillains... anytime an akuma shows up she hits it with a comically large hammer harley quinn style until it's flat and she can go back to unsubtly flirting with chat noir

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

When I see stuff like this I kinda want to bash my head into a wall:

To start off, I’m not sure whether this person was commenting on book or show Cersei, but honestly, it doesn’t even matter because she’s so much more than the ‘ambitious villain’ or the ‘murderous girlboss’ tropes in both the book and show.

(Of course, I do have my issues with the way Cersei was written in the show like most people but this is simply a rant post so I’m not going to go through the differences of Show vs Book Cersei)

Cersei is a female character who was shaped by her environment, who’s insecurities were created by her environment, and she’s a woman who’s idiotic mistakes can be traced back to how her environment shaped her. She’s much more than a murderous girlboss, she’s both a victim of the system and also a beneficiary of it, while also acting as an agent of it to keep the status quo while also desiring what the system denied her.

Cersei is NUANCED and complicated and even now people hate that about her and want her to have been a purely evil woman handcrafted in a vacuum, ignoring the context of her life because readers would rather not engage with Cersei’s victimhood and nuances because that ruins their idea of: She Was The Problem and Always The Problem. (People would rather say that she deserved her walk of shame instead of interacting meaningfully with the theme of systematic gender-based violence that is so prevalent in Cersei’s story. The exploration of patriarchal violence in Show Alicent’s story is done so horribly in comparison.)

And what really pissed me off about these tags is that this person has clearly decided that they don’t care to interact with the nuance of Cersei and are fine with flattening her, and yet they shit on others for not liking Alicent.

Because of the way Alicent is written in this show, she almost always has a ‘woe is me I can do no wrong’ attitude, which of course drives people away from the character (woe is me I deserve to take a child’s eye 🥺). However, what actually annoys me is how she’s made out to be stupid, foolish, ignorant, and inconsistent due to the horrible writing of this show, all of which are deviations from her book characterization. Also, I despise it when people want me to support writing decisions and changes made in adaptations that are downright misogynistic and are meant to attract the male gaze.

But what pisses many people, including myself, off is how the changes made negatively impacted many other characters. Alicent’s terrible characterization is like a black hole that distorts and warps the whole story! It’s annoying af!

So when people like this say: ‘She’s nuanced and people just can’t handle it 🙄;’ I say: No. She’s horribly written and a different character from the book and people have a right to be critical about these changes that stripped a female character of 1) her agency and 2) her intelligence!

And the thing is, there was little reason for the writers to have made all these changes to Alicent’s characterization! In the book she is an interesting character with clear motives and understandable reactions. She’s cunning and ambitious and acts the way a noble lady who became queen would. And despite her clear ambitions and dislike of Rhaenyra, she still makes a comment wondering about who would protect the Princess from Ser Criston, and yet she then takes Cole into her service after his falling out with Rhaenyra. That’s a perfect example of nuance! Show Alicent could never compare to book Alicent’s clear moral values and consistent disregard of said moral values in pursuit of power.

And because of this, Book Alicent isn’t easy to stomach. It’s hard for most people to come to terms with a character like her and it’s even harder for people to feel sympathetic for her at the end when she went mad with grief.

On the other hand, Show Alicent was designed in a way to garner pity, and when the writers felt like her current arc wouldn’t be enough to garner the specific reaction they wanted they would then throw in a time skip and suddenly she’s completely different and yet still Thee victim. She’s designed to be as sympathetic as fucking possible! The camera angles, the background music, and the lighting is set up in a way to make sure you the viewer feels pity or sympathy for her! Cause that’s her role in this series! She’s thee Ultimate Victim!

But too bad for the writers as many people are fed up with this kind of inconsistent writing. Even when the writers created a whole new challenge for Alicent where she’s shitted on by the green council and forced to face the beast she helped to raise, I and many others could never feel any satisfaction as it was clear that once again Alicent was being made to be Thee Ultimate Victim who was just led astray by the patriarchy and was a victim of it and was only just realizing it so don’t you pity her don’t you feel sad for her and now she’s trying to do the right thing so pls pls pls pity her 🥺~ So it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are annoyed by these eNLiGhtEnEd changes that have led to a complete deviation from the source material.

To summarize: Cersei is an excellent fucking character who’s by no means easy to stomach, and because she’s not easy to stomach she’s often reduced to annoying ass tropes by dumbasses who are reading above their comprehension level. But when you actually try to understand her, you can easily see why she turned out the way she did and you can feel sympathy for her while understanding that she’s both victim and perpetrator! On the other hand, Show Alicent is a mess and HOTD is trying to make her serve a different narrative role than she did in the books so ofc people are going to be unhappy with the changes as book readers are once again faced with the annoying reality that the writers don’t give a fuck about the source material.

[darkonekrisrewrite]

With all the child images I think it's important to point out how young, Touya's varies probably because he's the only one that knew his 'saviour' but Tenko is 5 Himiko is 3. That's how young the series thinks they needed to be to be saved, Eri is only 6, and as I've said before she is insanely convenient.

These posts aren't made in they shouldn't have been abused to begin with, this is about saving and redeeming them. And they are all from before they were even capable of fighting back.

They don't even show them actually being saved, just a kid (similarly aged down) that is their age being friendly. And guess what we know Himiko and Tenko had friends, they had people their age around them and playing them, and that didn't save them. Touya at least for a short bit had Natsuo.

None of that mattered because the actual problems were never addressed!

It's all about avoiding dealing with the actual problem and accountability by saying it was too late.

I've started to sour on the whole child symbolism thing too, if this is all it amounted to in the end.

Because it really is the biggest cop-out ever.

"Just be considerate and see that the oppressed and abused who fall through the cracks and become "villains" are human beings too!"

Yeah, no shit.

That's the START of attempting to save someone (especially a villain) and change things for the better.

It's not supposed to be the final answer.

If you're trying to tell a hopeful story about "saving everyone with a smile" (Deku) or enforcing the sentiment of "I want to save people" (ochako), then you really can't have their stories end with the people they're trying to save dying.

(Which is a failure to save, everything in the narrative pointed to Gran Torino supposed to be proven wrong, that was literally read like a challenge to the hero kids that they were supposed to overcome.)

Unless the added pages in the final volume change or reveal something.

Something that would leave the series open ended at least with the possibility of what may come next.

Instead of what we were left with:

Weak, nondescript activism (shoji) and systemic "expansion" (ochako) that doesn't make sense in the setting.

(Repost:

What did shoji do to improve the heteromorph's lives exactly??

And

Expanding access to Quirk Counseling...not REFORMING and then expanding access to Quirk Counseling.)

Deku... inspired one singular old lady (who had personal guilt about abandoning kids anyway) and apparently nothing else for all we know.

This is not a heroic or hopeful ending.

[trappedinchemicalplantzone]

long time no see (it’s been a week but work has been kicking my butt)

here’s a scourge design i did for an au that I don’t even remember most of the details of

[rjnonymous]

If Bruce hadn't taken in his kids every single one of them except Jason would've turned out as murderous maniacs

[jadeluz-official]

Why are u so confident the wedding will be concluded? You know Delores is going to crash the ceremony. Do u still think they'll get married?

I'm confident they'll go through with the wedding because Lydia owes Beej, big time. He saved the Maitlands, he (presumably) saves Astrid, he gets Lydia away from her abusive fiancé, and there's a scene hinted where he saves her and Astrid from the Sandworms. She owes him so much and the only thing he wants is to get married and "get out." She's essentially taking advantage of him with no payoff, which in turn, will turn Lydia into a dick by the end if nothing is done. Ya feel me?

Even if the bitter ex crashes the wedding, and she will, Beej still needs to be repaid. It doesn't make sense for Lydia to side with Delores when BJ has been loyal to a fault. He isn't the antagonist this time, so it'll be hard for him to not get something out of this.

[mattiebluebird]

Case fic AU of Duke's training year centered around his identity as Signal (big hero, works for/with Batman, above everyone else) vs. Lark (friendly neighborhood hero, fights for the little guy, does things his own way) told as he & the WAR crew investigate a strange new drug that gives people meta abilities, with several B-plots of the other Robins becoming heroes in their own right. Is that anything.

[helpmeimblorboing]

Terrifying terror cult ? Well, yes, but also immensely awkward found family. Also everyone is sure that the leaders are fucking, but no one’s quite sure which pairing it is, or if it’s all three of them. At once

The sheer amount of possessiveness between the three of them is enough to offset the Earth’s rotation, which certainly doesn’t help matters

Their adorably murderous daughter - and also technically lieutenant - has walked in on them fucking at least three times. She refuses to specify who was fucking who

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

for more info, atla had 61 episodes. s2 of SU (which contained the entirety of peridot's redemption arc) had 26 episodes. s3 of infinity train, like i mentioned above, only had 10 episodes.

spop had 52 episodes in total, which is only around 10 episodes less than atla. you're telling me that wasn't enough time to redeem catra?

[adelinamoteru]

anyways I don’t really care if jason is written as an anti hero or villians bc

well written villains are ones who the audience can still empathize and agree with (to whatever extent)

I don’t need characters to be the symbol of unrelenting good for me to like them, its not at all a necessary criteria. in fact, in most cases I would argue that it makes them less interesting