#teenage villainy

[echoes-lighthouse]

Okay, this is a silly thing but my new slasher ships have gotten me thinking about the ways that I selfshipped with villains as a teen and just kind of being a bit sad I didn't get to explore those more, because I was pretty harsh on myself for selfshipping at the time.

Sooooo I was like 'fuck it, I'm going to spend time on them now'. I don't really feel like the same person at the age of 13, so these self-inserts are a little bit different, but I assure you that my preteen/teen self would have loved them.

Without further ado... my nostalgia selfships. They'll share the tag #teenage villainy so that you can block them easily if you don't want to share a dash with them, since I was significantly more of a freak as a kid. Affectionately speaking, of course.

Nostalgia F/O #1: Alex (Clockwork Orange)

This selfship was mostly based on the book, which I read at 12 and immediately taught my whole class nadsat. The teachers were not impressed.

Alex is my big brother (age 15 to my 13), and our relationship is just about too complicated for words. He's an unpredictable mix of protective, aggressive, and proprietary: often self-contradictory but always keeping me closer than comfortable.

Tag: #clockwork siblings

Nostalgia F/O #2: The Joker (Nolanverse)

There is no way to summarize how important The Joker was to me at one point in my life. As a deeply out-of-depth teen, he was everything to me for a few years.

My s/i is the daughter of a wealthy Gotham businessman, and gets captured as a hostage at the dinner party where The Joker tosses Rachel out the window. After killing one of The Joker's henchmen, she accidentally captures the attention of the man himself and gets herself a whole lot deeper than intended.

Tag: #the lover who laughs

[nardos-primetime]

Could Kendra be considered a domestic terrorist I'm being so serious that fucking robot might be an act of terrorism

[docgold13]

Profiles in Villainy

Shredder

Oroku Saki was born the son of the leader of a powerful and ancient order of ninja known as The Foot Clan.   The Foot Clan were destroyed by their rivals in the Hamato Clan when Oroku Saki was an infant. The orphaned Oroku was taken in and raised by the Hamato leader. 

Oroku Saki grew up to be a fierce ninja warrior and, though he was treated well by the Hamatos, he bore a deep resentment toward them and a desire to reestablish The Foot and destroy the Hamatos.  This resentment was further compounded by a feud over a woman Oroku Saki loved.  He orchestrated a sneak attack that burned the Hamato monastery to the ground and slew nearly the entire clan.  Oroku Saki’s face was badly injured in the attack and he took to always wearing a mask that covered his burned face.  

From there on out, Oroku Saki came to be known as ‘The Shredder’ and he rebuilt the Foot Clan into a powerful and renown order of mercenary ninja.  Years later, The Shredder brought his soldiers to New York City in search of a surviving member of the Hamatos, the sensei known as Master Splinter.  The sensei had taken in a group of young, mutated turtles whom he had trained into an elite force of ninja.

Allying himself with the villainous Krang and the hapless minions Bebop and Rocksteady, The Shredder made it his mission to take down Master Splinter and destroy his group of fun-loving, pizza-eating mutant ninja turtles.  Fortunately, Splinter’s guided his ninja turtles well and they have managed to stay a step ahead of The Shredder, regularly thwarting his diabolical plans.  

Actors James Avery, Scott Rayow, Kiyoyuki Yanada and others have provided the voice for Shedder in his various appearances in animated series.  The villain first appeared in the 1984 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book; his first appearance in animation was in the debut episode of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, airing on December 14th, 1987.

[irlwakko]

i wanted to say "mal also calls him toots." but then i remembered that i think mal calls everyone toots platonically in a sarcastic/ironic way especially when he messes with them. zoey is the biggest receiver because of how much they piss each other off

*mal voice* sorry toots i cant hear you over the sound of me hitting the pentagon

~ 🌙

Vito calls Zoey toots as a genuine romantic term of affection but Mal calls Zoey toots exclusively to annoy her. Neither Vito nor Mal know the other does this or else one of them would probably, maybe, stop*

*Vito would stop if Zoey asked. If Zoey was genuinely uncomfortable Mal would probably begrudgingly stop**, but if Zoey was only annoyed by it then Mal would keep going. In fact he’d do it MORE once he found out it was one of Vito’s nicknames for her because Mal loves making fun of how atrociously smitten the others are for Zoey.

**In a lots-of-therapy future where Mal doesn’t want to genuinely hurt Zoey anymore and only wants to be a menace

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

My biggest issue with the Zombies franchise is that they had the queer coded mentally ill teenager who is later revealed to be part of the autistic coded minority group be the main antagonist instead of like, the principal or something.

[thankchaosforspellcheck]

I would love for there to be a tmnt villain who at first is just going after them like every other one does, but then after having a Realization that they are Actual Teenagers it's revealed that the dude's got a strict Don't Hurt Kids line to their moral code.

Thing is, they still keep trying to do whatever villainy they first aimed for it's just that, instead of directly fighting the gang, they keep creating increasingly elaborate non-lethal traps to keep the guys busy while the villain does their plot and just bails if the guys show up early.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Anti-Villain

An anti-villain - (unlike their evil counterparts) are not complete monsters.

This makes them particularly hard to hate, despite all their terrible deeds.

In the character’s minds, they have justifiable, noble goals—how they go about achieving those goals is what eventually becomes a problem for the hero.

Their means don’t justify their desired ends.

Every villain has their own morality.

A key principle to remember is that making a decision between good and evil is never really a choice: All humans will choose good as they see it.

Your villain chooses their own good, which to readers, and the hero, appears evil in opposition.

This creates a moral dilemma at the heart of the novel’s conflict.

Types of Anti-Villains

Villainy comes in shades of gray.

One that starts out good. This anti-villain is a good person who has been pushed to the brink of their personal limits.

The one you feel for. A sympathetic anti-villain may do bad things, but they are ultimately a product of their circumstances or environment. They may have had a terrible upbringing, where people acted evil towards them as children making them evil as adults. They deserve to seek different circumstances, and were their means not so terrible, you might root for them.

The one who means well. When good intentions go crooked, and heroic qualities like tenacity and cleverness are aimed at the wrong target, you get your “well-meaning” anti-villain, who often takes things a step too far in pursuit of a noble goal. These anti-villains typically have a plan to save the world, with many, many casualties along the way in the name of the “greater good.” Think of Marvel’s “Mad Titan” Thanos and his plan to clear half the universe in order for the remaining half to thrive.

The one in the wrong place at the wrong time. This designated “villain” in name only typically falls into this category as a result of the existence of the hero. Their acts might be totally justified—vengeance for a loved one, or carrying out the corruption required of them by their job—but the protagonist doesn’t give them a free pass.

Examples of Anti-Villains

Sometimes, the only difference between the “bad guys” and the “good guys” is a point of view.

Carrie from Stephen King’s book Carrie is a sympathetic anti-villain. As a teenager in a small town, she is an outcast because of her beliefs and the way she dresses. Bullies at school make fun of her incessantly, building to the point where she turns her rage into telekinesis (mind power) to kill everyone in her school, then goes on a killing rampage through the town.

While The Joker in Batman is fairly straightforward in his villainy, it’s his tragic backstories—at different points, either driven insane by grief after the death of his wife, or disfigured after a fall into a vat of poisonous chemicals—that makes him compelling to watch. The audience suspects that if they were pushed to the edge of their sanity, they might act in the same way—and that’s all it takes to create an anti-villain worth of the caped crusader.

Anti-Villain vs. Anti-Hero

While an anti-villain might be a villain with some redeeming features, an anti-hero is a heroic character without the conventional charms.

They might do the right thing, but mostly out of self-interest.

They are often portrayed as a principled, but somewhat isolated figure, and their heroism is usually a product of their surroundings and circumstances.

In some narratives, the anti-hero may be subject to a shift of perspective—like the twist in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl that reveals the truth about Amy Dunne’s actions—that paints them as an antagonist.

Other examples of an anti-hero include:

Tom Ripley of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) by Patricia Highsmith

Huckleberry Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) by Mark Twain

Tony Soprano of The Sopranos (1999)

Walter White of Breaking Bad (2008)

Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2008) by Stieg Larsson

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[ready-to-read7]

Prompt #9

So I  read of prompt were Danny was mistaken for poison ivy son, so I had a thought what if Jazz and Danny were actually poison ivy and Harley Quinns children

Okay so when Harley Quinn and poison ivy were teenagers in their prime of villainy a group of scientists thought it would be a good idea to try and make super warriors or nature guardians or just super powered heroes or something with poison ivy’s powers and harlequins intelligence from when she was a  bit more sane

But it was deemed a failure when little Jazz did not inherit poison ivy’s powers and by testing  the DNA of jazz, poison ivy and Danny  they found out that Danny also did not have her powers. And for some reason instead of trying to continue they just gave up for one reason or another and put both jazz and Danny in a orphanage far away from Gotham.

Obviously Danny and Jazz grew up knowing that they were adopted and know that they were biological siblings Jack and Maddie didn’t really hide it from them but they still love them. And they weren’t really ever curious of who their real parents were so they never really looked for them. but obviously things went downhill when a bad Fenton parent reveal happened and jazz is on the run with her brother who she saved off  of the dissection table so he was very injured.

In the meantime in Gotham Harley and  ivy were sitting on a rooftop with a few of the bats as the bats explain what they found, they found a lab that was abandoned, with research on their DNA and files confirming that these people were trying to create superhumans from  there DNA a.k.a. made  two children for them, obviously they are both a bit disgusted by the practice since they were both technically teens  at the time or young adults, but they are not disgusted at the idea of the children just ate  the people who did this, and they would like to meet  their kids, but they are horrified when they learn that apparently their children was on the run from a illegal government facility who was trying to capture  their son (how they know about this I can’t tell you but they are the bats so of course they can figure it out) But one thing is for sure neither poison ivy or Harley is happy about the situation.

 alongside the bats they searched for their children who they now know were named Jazz and Danny.

[violet-moonstone]

sometimes i like to think that if RoB/DoB and RTTE Hiccup met each other, they would both be a little unsettled by each other - younger Hiccup would be like "geez, I get really reckless, huh?" and probably roast his older self about it. Older Hiccup would be like "why is younger me so mean? ;-;"

just imagining young Hiccup watching older Hiccup jump off a cliff wearing clearly too-heavy wings and making some sardonic comment and older Hiccup being like "now listen here, you little shit!"

Funnily enough I kind of feel like RoB/DoB Hiccup and RTTE are like two sides of HTTYD 1 Hiccup's personality divided in half.

Also, I think it would be very funny to see different HTTYD characters react to their younger selves. I feel like Astrid especially would see her younger self and be shocked. Like "I wasn't that angry all the time, was I?" Everyone else would be like...YES ASTRID

Dagur would see his younger self and probably be partially embarrassed/ashamed about the villainy and partially overwhelmed by how much of a gremlin he was. Like if he found Gustav tiring, imagine how he'd react to his teenage self.

[meloo-melon]

Gen Z Adam & Lute in uniform

I experimented with my style a lot in this one and tried to keep their colours and silhouette as similar to their og’s as possible, especially when it came to Adam.

I wanted to keep his triangular silhouette with his jacket and wanted to keep his pattern on his robe with subtlety of the red streaks at the end of his jacket. I also added a chain and two golden spikes coming out of between of his horns to give his iconic A symbol. Which led me to make his horns more angled to resemble an A in some angles. His sleeves also go from light to dark like his og sleeves and I added white cuffs to represent his white pattern at the end of his sleeves in the show.

For Lute, I switched her belt for a corset as gen z girl teenagers, especially the more alt and gothic ones tend to use corsets a lot in their outfits as an aesthetic choice. She is wearing an oversized jacket with a night gown, making it more alt and modern. I kept all of her colours the same unlike Adam. And I tried to make it as similar to the og as possible without it being unoriginal, but not different enough to make her unrecognisable. I kept her mask the same expect for the two dangerous looking side metals that resemble her grey sidetails. She looks like she can pierce someone’s throat with that. As you can see in her jacket and boots she still has the grey streak just like her og.

I tried to make this drawing as similar to my og gen z drawing of them to maintain the same aesthetic people liked. As you can immediately see I kept a very angular and sharp edges with them to portray to the audience their villainy and dangerous and their threat to the main characters in HH.

If you finished reading this thank you and I appreciate you and this is in any way not a realistic depiction of gen z. It is highly exaggerated and simply made to be fun.

[donutwatches]

MHA 3.8 - From Iida to Midoriya - part 2/2

I am never going to recover from this, lol. They are so stupid and I love them.

IS THAT AIZAWA?! THE SUIT! HIS HAIR!

I see the angle here. Shigaraki saw Bakugo announcing he was going to win no matter what on TV, and was like 'As a toxic gamer I get it'.

Bakugo is not amused. As much of an obnoxious gremlin as he is, I don't think Bakugo cares to be associated with villains. I remember back in episode 1 or 2 he didn't even want his middle school buddies to smoke cigarettes near him (or something like that).

Not Dabi making Twice untie Bakugo because he knows whoever goes near the kid is going to catch hands, lol.

Says the villain to a teenager they just kidnapped after setting a summer camp on fire. It's hard to take this reasoning seriously.

Is Shigaraki attempting empathy? Didn't know he had it in him. Weirdly proud of him for trying it. I would love to learn more about what the villains lives have been like, because no one ends up this messed up out of nowhere.

...and BOOM! Bakugo may have an aggressive personality, but there was no way he was going to get pulled into villainy that easy.

This episode has some of my favorite Bakugo lines. This is a great one. He had 0 patience for these villains tomfoolery from the get go.

The plan to convince him to switch sides was never going to work, because it misunderstands where Bakugo's unique brand of crazy comes from.

The hero always wins and saves the day. Villains are always losers. It's a simplistic view, but it works as Bakugo's saving grace here. For him, being a hero IS that simple. That is what he learned from watching All might, hero = winning.

Whaaaat? What does it mean? Why is he calling one of his disembodied hands dad? My head is spinning.

Episode 9!

Masterlist

TAGLIST

@setfiretotheshadows @blackaquokat @granny-griffin

@champion-prism @jessiedead @bicheetopuff

@call-me-copycat @sylv-e-on @hyperfixations-and-cringe

@noonthemoon

[docgold13]

Profiles in Villainy

Bebop & Rocksteady

The destructive and dimwitted duo known as Bebop and Rocksteady had previously been a pair of street gang enforcers who came under the employ of the nefarious Shredder.  The villain had hired the goons to silence the reporter, April O’Neil, who was doing a news exposé on crime in the city.  

The two chased April into the sewers where they encountered the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The Turtles soundly defeated the two goons and sent them running for their lives.  Humbled and enraged by their defeat, Bebop and Rocksteady foolishly volunteered themselves for a dangerous experiment where they were exposed to the similar mutagenic substance that had transformed the Ninja Turtles.  The process caused Bebop to be transformed into a vicious anthropomorphic warthog whereas Rocksteady was changed into a powerful anthropomorphic rhinoceros.        

Although the transformation did make them larger and stronger, they remained bungling, incompetent simpletons, and were completely inept at stopping the Turtles or carrying out Shredder's plans.  Nonetheless, The Shedder and Krang kept the pair on as muscle in their various (always ineffective) plans to take down the Ninja Turtles.  

Actors Barry Gordon and Greg Berg provided the voice for Bebop whereas actor Cam Clarke voiced Rocksteady.  The pair of goons first appeared in the debut episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, airing on December 14th, 1987.

[theweeklydiscourse]

There's just something about enemies to lovers antis that is just so funny. Because they go on, shaming womans/girls over silly fantasies saying that they are doomed to be in toxic relationships while being like "this piece of boring white bread and (most of times) toxic masculinity and immaturity hero is actually an much better lover interest for the FMC because *check notes* he's... her friend and does nice-ish things to her sometimes ig" like gurl how arent you catching the irony? Especifically if it's an woman saying crap like that.

Yep this is about kataang and Malina (thought Malina stans cant even say he was nice-ish to her)

They’re blind to how simplistic their line of reasoning is. However, that simplistic worldview brings them a weird kind of satisfaction. Not only does it validate their feelings of moral and intellectual superiority, it also allows them to indulge in salacious and sensational claims and gain internet points as a result. This blindness and simplistic thinking creates a funny scenario where, in fiction, they rail against grandiose villainy, but ignore the more realistic and mundane toxicity of their fave wholesome love interest™.

In ATLA’s case, I think this is partially due to most people’s foggy memory of the show. It’s become apparent to me that many people don’t actually remember certain details and are willing to smooth over the gaps in their memory with personal headcanons. This is how we got to this bizarre reality where people have reframed Kataang as some kind of uniquely progressive and ahead-of-its-time relationship, when in the actual show, it checks nearly every box for your garden variety 2000s heterosexual relationship. Nostalgia compels people to make excuses for the fact that the Kataang relationship centres Aang at every turn and neglects Katara’s end of their romantic arc.

In Malina’s case, it’s even more ridiculous because Mal is overtly worse as a love interest and was largely disliked by the Shadow and Bone fandom for a long time. It’s only in recent years that his reputation has been rehabilitated (and even then…) Then you have the odd contrarian with a vague recollection of the series who tries to gaslight people into thinking that Mal was good actually and that we were just being dramatic. Sure, Mal doesn’t have a particularly sizeable body count, but he commits the arguably greater crime of being an emotionally abusive boyfriend to Alina. He’s not even toxic in an interesting way like the Darkling, he’s just toxic in a way that will remind the teenage readership of their real-life terrible boyfriends. It’s downright comical that Bardugo ever thought Mal could ever be likeable.

The irony is palpable. The toxic masculinity and mundane emotional abuse is something they sweep under the rug because they are so persuaded by the image of a wholesome love interest. They can’t understand why more realistic depictions of relationships in fiction would be more impactful and evocative than that which is fantastical.

[ckret2]

Would utonium tell aku about the other child he has (if he even remembers at all that he accidently made Jojo into Mojo Jojo, cause he forgot about that completely until Mr. Mojo's Rising and then that info is never brought up again, so utonium might really have forgotten it) or would aku discover it himself

Personally i think that—now that he's been so pointedly reminded—Prof Utonium remembers his history with Jojo. But like, he doesn't think about it in depth on a day to day basis. first and foremost Mojo Jojo is the evil villain who keeps trying to hurt his sweet little girls and take over the world... and also he used to be Utonium's awful lab assistant.

So I don't think he'd think to tell Aku about Mojo. Obviously since Aku's such a good guy (pause for the studio audience to laugh knowingly) he's primarily interested in hearing about the heroes made from his essence! And all of Utonium's research on Chemical X's properties—how it can be used, what causes it to bond or not bond with other ingredients/beings—why, it can do all sorts of strange things to a body if a bit of it is accidentally ingested, look at this! ("That explains a strange fever dream I had this one time I was sleeping off a terrible cold.") And THAT is what Aku gets told about Chemical X and how it's been used.

The girls probably tell him about some of their villains—he knows about the gang of green teenagers, the weird pink bear, the evil genius monkey, the LITERAL EVILEST WORST GUY EVER (Aku's like oh sometimes i had tea with HIM in my other timeline, nice to have a familiar face around), this suuuper annoying rich girl that wants to join their team... and that's kinda as much detail as he gets. They are tiny children, it does not occur to them that Aku might, like, want to KNOW that Mojo got his genius from Chemical X, like it simply doesn't cross their minds that that might be relevant to his interests.

So he's not finding out until they have an actual fight with Mojo somewhere he can see it. idk how this get finagled. maybe mojo attacks their house. maybe the girls were dragging aku out on the town because they want to play at the park and prof utonium was busy and aku ran out of excuses and that's where mojo attacks. maybe mojo takes the girls captive and aku's like oh hell no i was teaching them eye laser tricks this afternoon and i am NOT letting that get pushed back to next weekend again. or maybe mojo overhears the girls mention that they've got a "new dad" and he waits until everyone else is out of the house to break in like "you are now my hostage, for I am taking you as a prisoner back to my place of residence which is not this dwelling but another location that is not here, and you will be coming even though you do not want to due to the threat of force which I am willing to levy against you should you not cooperate with my—" and aku's like "well, i suppose i could stand to go out more."

but however it happens, he's pretty quickly like, so, this chimp that looks like me and sounds like me and is evil like me and craves to rule the world like me... why does he smell like me.

once somebody explains oh yeah he got chemical x'ed too it's thirty seconds maximum before they're going "SON?! 🥹" "FATHER?! 🥹"

whether or not he immediately starts loudly praising mojo's villainy is dependent upon whether the girls are around when aku makes this discovery. If they ARE around and shouting YOU CAN'T HUG HIM HE'S THE BAD GUY he's just going "a father's love is unconditional." He'll slink out at 3 a.m. to find mojo and tell him the truth. but however it happens, aku's making sure mojo knows he's SO PROUD of his son and his life choices

which is probably the first time anybody's ever said anything like that to mojo. He might start crying.

I think I'll go with "the girls are there during the first meeting so aku has to sneak out to tell him the truth later" just because the setting of that conversation makes such a big difference.

If you've just met the being responsible for making you who you are today and he tells you how proud he is of you? Sure, that's pretty flattering, especially if he's just seen your mountaintop property volcano lab with all the big cool weapons and machines you designed and built yourself and you got to tell him about your big ambitious evil plans. Like hell yeah your brand new demon daddy's proud of you, there's clearly a lot to be proud of.

on the other hand, if he comes to you after he's just watched you get beaten, defeated, and humiliated, if he looks at you with your clothes torn and your face bruised sitting on a cot in a cold jail cell... and THEN he tells you he's so proud of you?

devastating.

[kazz-brekker]

love that maria on castlevania nocturne is a delicate-looking blonde teenage girl who dresses all in pink and whose dabbling with dark eldritch magic is leading to her descent into murder and villainy. good for her!

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

A few people have defended Chloe and Lila's writing by saying that teenagers being just as capable of heroism as adults means that they need to be just as capable of villainy as adults. I know that's not good logic, but I can't put my finger on WHY it's not good logic, can you weigh in on this?

I actually don't think it's bad logic at all. They're right. Teenagers are absolutely capable of being monsters. A teenage bully may not have the wide reaching impacts of a terrorist, but teenage bullies still do real and lasting harm that can shape victims for the rest of their lives.

This is why you have to be really careful when it comes to redeeming either of these characters (and also Sabrina since she's almost as bad as Chloe in my eyes). You cannot minimize the harm that they've caused by saying "well, they're just kids" or even by pointing out that Chloe and Sabrina were victims of abuse.

Fourteen-year-olds are more than old enough to know right from wrong. Yes, they're not full adults yet, but they're in the stage of life where they're learning how to be adults. That's why we call them young adults! People in this stage of life are very capable of understanding that their words and actions can hurt people. Heck, three-year-olds are capable of that! If you don't think that these teenage characters understood that bullying Marinette was hurting Marinette, then you're arguing that these characters have some sort of developmental disability or psychological disorder or something of that nature that is effecting their development in an extreme manner. If so, then that requires immediate serious intervention by professionals, but I don't think that anyone is making that argument for anyone save, maybe, Lila.

On the abuse side of things: being a victim is not a free pass to hurt innocents. Victims don't get a magic ticket that says, "you may now do one free abuse" every time that they're abused. By that logic, giving Audrey an abusive past would absolve her of everything that she did to Chloe. The same goes for Gabriel and Adrien, which is why this is such shitty logic. Nothing justifies Gabriel and Audrey's actions. What they did to their children was wrong.

The same logic applies to all characters and all types of abuse. Victim status doesn't prevent you from becoming an abuser. It's actually quite common for abuse to lead to more abuse which is part of why you can't grant exceptions on the basis of victim status. If you do that, then you eventually reach a point where no one is accountable because everyone has been abused and is therefore a blameless victim who can do no wrong. No one wants to live in a world like that.

There is of course, a lot of nuance to this topic and a lot of it is heavily situational. For example, I totally believe that certain exceptions have to made for extreme cases that I'm not going to give examples of to avoid triggering content, but you can probably think of some. However, we're not talking about extreme cases here. The characters that we're talking about are reasonably normal fourteen-year-olds. Young adults who have been allowed to be part of society and who know that what they're doing is wrong. And if they don't know that bullying and terrorism are wrong? Then we're back to the concern that something is deeply wrong with these characters and they need immediate serious intervention from trained professionals.

To be fair, Lila may end up being that kind of character, but Chloe and Sabrina certainly aren't. Since Chloe was the character mentioned in the original ask, we'll focus on her for the rest of this. While Chloe has absolutely been abused, she's not some isolated victim who has no idea how the world works. She's been allowed a reasonably normal childhood. This scene from Malediktator is actually pretty solid writing for a character like Chloe:

Ladybug: I'm fine with helping you, Chloé, but first… I need you to tell me what happened. Why is your father— I mean, Malediktator, so mad? Chloé: It's because of this super lame loser named Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She's this horrible girl in my class and she hates me. (Ladybug looks angry, but then contains her feelings) She's ganged everyone up against me and she— Ladybug: Maybe this Marinette girl isn't entirely to blame? Chloé: Uh! Ugh. Okay, it wasn't totally Marinette's fault. She is really mean to me sometimes, but actually, this time, Daddy got angry all by himself. Ladybug:(not buying it) All by himself? Chloé: Yeah, because… there was something he couldn't do… Ladybug:(puts a hand on Chloé's shoulder) Chloé, it's me, Ladybug. You can trust me. You can tell me the truth. Chloé: I— I— Ladybug: Mm-hmm. Chloé: It— it was me. I hurt my daddy's feelings. Because I want to leave Paris, forever.

She knows right from wrong and she knows when she's hurting people. She just doesn't care most of the time because she's never had to face consequences for causing harm so why should she care? It's not like it effects her! This is why she only cares about the damage she causes when it effects her or the people she loves.

That's not a deeply messed up world view. A lot of people only have strong feelings about things effecting those they love. Chloe just needs to work on being more neutral to people outside her circle because that's how we make a happy functioning society. (This is a hint of that nuance I mentioned before. I'll give a few more hints as we go on, but we won't really be digging into it due to word count. Just know that I'm aware of it.)

Giving Chloe an abusive past didn't absolve her of her actions. It just gave us a potential reason for why she does what she does. This actually does make Chloe's abuse important! Once we know the reasons why her character is doing something, we can then understand her character and better guide her story. Understanding that she's a victim means that she can be helped because this isn't some inherent part of her. It's learned behavior and that means that she can unlearn it.

And now we get to circle back to the original ask and discuss why it's still valid to be mad about Chloe and Lila's treatment and why it IS bad even though it's not wrong to have "evil" teenagers.

The reason why Chloe and Lila's lack of redemption is concerning is because full grown adults who have done far worse things are being redeemed based on nothing while these two teenage girls are being treated as beyond hope. If Gabriel Agreste and André Bourgeois are allowed to have happy endings without doing anything to earn those happy endings, then why are Chloe and Lila being treated as devils? What message is this show trying to send to kids? That it's okay to be a terrorist as long as your reasons are good, but be a bully at 14 and you're doomed for life? That's total BS!

It's especially concerning because Chloe's bad treatment of her adult father is being used to justify his redemption while Audrey and Andre's terrible parenting is not being used to give Chloe a similar free pass. Writers, wtf are you doing? No one should be getting a free pass in this situation. They all need to take action to right their wrongs if they want to be redeemed. Andre shipping Chloe off to live with her mother is an adult man saying, "oops, raised that one wrong! We'll let's just pretend that never happened."

Don't get me wrong, Chloe's actions are still fully her own and she needs to own that, but crying, "Daddy" only held power because Andre did whatever Chloe told him to do. He held all the power and was happy to misuse it in order to make his daughter happy. That means that he holds blame here, too. He allowed his daughter to become a total brat by encouraging bratty behavior.

This was not a situation where Chloe was a danger to others for some reason. A situation where Andre was truly doing the best anyone could hope to do in order to keep his daughter placated so that she didn't physically hurt anyone. It was also not a situation where forces beyond Andre's control were effecting his daughter and shaping her personality while he was desperately trying to guide her down the right path. It was just plain old terrible parenting. He spoiled Chloe rotten, got the completely predictable end result, and then threw her out for a better version that someone else raised. What an uplifting message! (That was sarcasm.)

Chloe and Lila would have worked reasonably well in a story where all of the important characters were teens. A story where Lila was always the big bad, Gabriel was a minor character, and Chloe's parents never got any screen time.

That's not the story that the writers wrote, though, so the "teenagers can be evil" defense falls flat because if domestic terrorists aren't evil and child abusers aren't evil, but bratty teenage girls are, then what are we even doing here? This is extra true because the people this show is aimed at are not adult men. They're little girls who may very well relate to Chloe and Lila.

There's also the issue of Chloe being dammed while other teen characters were given a free pass for no real reason. Felix, Sabrina, and Kim have all done equally bad or even worse things. Felix is especially uncomfortable because he's basically a male Chloe who did all of the same actions - and often did them better - yet he doesn't have to give so much as a simple apology for what he's done. He's just good now because Kagami needs a boyfriend.

Chloe outed herself in public while emotionally compromised? So did Felix and he had weeks to plan before hand, too! Chloe did it in a totally reactive manner without any real plan.

Chloe used the miraculous that Gabriel stole? Felix stole the miraculous himself and gave them to Gabriel!

Chloe bulled Marinette? Felix bullied Adrien!

Felix even did some of the same things as Lila! He tried to ruin Adrien's friendships via manipulation and deceit in his first appearance. He knew Gabriel's secret and used it to his own advantage instead of telling the heroes. He used a major terrorist attack as an excuse to further his own goals. The list goes on! So why is he being welcomed onto the team with open arms? And why is no one telling Kagami just how dangerous her new boyfriend is? She wasn't there for most of this so she has no idea who she's dating.

And this isn't even touching the mess that was Derision's terribly delivered message about owning your actions and not blaming others for your bad behavior. That episode makes everything about Chloe's treatment look even more hypocritical.

In summary, the issue is not that teenagers can't be bad guys, they absolutely can! The issue is how all of the other bad guys and bullies are being treated compared to these two and how inconsistent the rules are. Of course, we haven't seen all of Lila's story, so who knows what the end game is for her. Maybe she'll also be trying to restore a dead wife and so she'll get a free pass, too.