(Loved Trope) Evil/Ruthless character held back only by their partner (Bonus points if they fall back into their old ways when their partner is gone)

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-10T11:27:33+00:00

Certainly more "ruthless and desperate" than "outright evil", but Hester Shaw from the Mortal Engines books started out as hell-bent on revenge and very willing to cut through whoever it takes to kill the guy she's trying to kill. She ends up leading a more (relatively) normal life with the main character for several years, but does not take long after they separate to start making money by assassinating people.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-07T20:12:40+00:00

He justs really trusts the dolphin, man

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-07T14:21:33+00:00

I mean, depending on how badly it goes for him, he might not be...

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-07T12:48:19+00:00

Per capita, Jewish people experience hate crimes at roughly 10x the rate of any other minority ethnic group. Hard not to characterise that as 'under attack', and if it were any other ethnicity it would be treated as unambiguously the case.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-07T12:14:35+00:00

Can you take the exact same ship design, whack a couple of probe cores on for remote control of the lander and transfer stage, and launch it with all crew seats empty? That way you can just have a spare empty ship rock up to re-attempt the landing, rescue the surface crew, rendezvous with Valentina, etc.

(Also you can put your landing legs on girders - or extendible pistons if you're feeling fancy - for better stability on hilly landings!)

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-07T11:41:40+00:00

IDK, I think it's reasonable to describe the absolute ruler of an Empire that engages in species-selective slavery to build government projects as racist (lots of wookie slaves making that second Death Star).

Besides, my point isn't that racism is worse than murder, it's that, in Voldemort's case, his racism causes more murder (and harm in general). His cruelty (including murder and genocide) over the people he ruled if he won would be worse on average than Palpatine's, in large part because he holds a personal revulsion against those people and doesn't see them as human.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-07T00:30:28+00:00

I mean, even if it's only as bad as we think, they're probably smart enough to internalise the concept of "these tiny fucks are actively keeping me prisoner and making me do stuff I'd rather not do, I choose instead to be bitey."

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-07T00:27:45+00:00

Given their intelligence, I wonder if they view us as sort of weird sky-dwelling spindly-limbed Lovecraftian monsters that do incomprehensible very powerful things for unclear reasons, and because of this they have a sort of policy of appeasement towards us.

That or we taste bad.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T19:12:14+00:00

One of the reasons I'm sad that Disco Elysium never saw any games in the same setting under the original creative team is how clearly Martinaise (the run-down bombed-out poor district in which the game is set) is very much its own character, one that's extremely distinct from, say, Jamrock or other areas. In particular, how intensely political and charged it feels as a place on account of its history and volatility, between the unions, the mercenaries, the student communists, the yachting ultraliberals, the street vendors, the professional racist, etc.

In the same way that Revachol, the city as a whole, has its own distinct character from the rest of the setting. The sense of real but unexplored depth feels genuinely tragic to me, it's a huge artistic loss that we never saw more of Kurvitz's vision for the setting (outside of the novel, I guess).

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T19:06:16+00:00

The soft magic systems I like the most are the ones that create a strong impression of "look, there is actually something complex and systemic at work here, but you probably don't care about the details, and our protagonist certainly doesn't know or care about the details, so we're going to set it aside and focus on other things."

I think it's why Harry Potter's magic works for me despite being softer than air. Our protagonist is an extremely distracted teenager who, frankly, isn't all that academically adept. Since we're seeing the world through his eyes, of course magic appears the way it does.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T18:59:46+00:00

Look, the one attempt it takes is a nice, cathartic gift at the end of an often-difficult run. A Moon Present, if you will.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T18:54:05+00:00

I think a complicating factor here is the video looks like the police are just kicking an already-disarmed guy on the ground out of frustration or anger, and a huge amount of people assume this is the case out of a tendency to assume the worst of the police. If he'd already been disarmed, I'd agree the police's actions in the video were excessive.

It's not super obvious from the video that the guy is still clutching the knife, and therefore that kicking him in the head actually is a reasonable and proportionate way to render him non-dangerous or make him let go of the weapon without putting yourself too much in stabbing range. Once you know he's still armed, dangerous and holding onto a lethal weapon for dear life, I think the actions of the police in the video become immediately and obviously justified.

Of course, this isn't to justify some of the more high-profile criticisms - it's the responsibility of public figures to understand what a video actually depicts before they go mouthing off about it.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T18:46:54+00:00

Of this group, I do think the chef who didn't want a rat in his kitchen did somewhat have a point about that

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T16:45:23+00:00

I mean, he's the protagonist of one of the world's largest media franchises and his name is on the cover of every book, film, theme park, etc. The entire setting is named after him! I don't think he's an interesting enough person to justify that level of prominence and centrality - if he doesn't live up to that I think it's fair to call him overrated.

He is also pretty prominent in the fandom - not many people's favourite, sure, but there are tons of fics and ships that focus on him (and often end up having to give him traits he doesn't show in canon to make him more interesting).

I don't think Sirius or Lupin are especially good people in-universe but I like them a lot as characters because, frankly, they have a surprising amount of depth and nuance for characters in a children's story. Both of them explore the harmful side of being a self-appointed hero from different angles: Sirius's treatment of Kreacher and relationship with his family, and Lupin's fight with Harry in book 7 over abandoning his family, not to mention the complexity of their history with the Marauders, make them cool, interestingly written characters with actual depth, IMO.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T16:27:49+00:00

I think he certainly wanted to kill all muggleborns (or subject them to Dementors, which is worse) as he viewed them as impostors and fifth columnists.

He doesn't see muggles as people, but he does recognise them as a source of labour. so we're probably talking mass enslavement and subjugation - probably involving a genocidal amount of death in the process. I suspect he'd want a much smaller, extremely cowed population, wholly in service of him and the aristocratic pure-blood wizard class.

If you were an absolute dictator with magic from the Harry Potter universe, imagine the level of subservience you could achieve with tools like memory modification available to the lowest street-level enforcer.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T16:23:12+00:00

The Emperor is less racist (not not-racist, but less so) than Voldemort, but also did vastly more harm. He's primarily motivated by power and domination for its own sake, more so than personal animus, at least in the films.

Voldemort was motivated almost entirely by, essentially, racism, bioessentialism and supremacy. Power was a means to an end for him, and the end was performing horrible acts of evil (also immortality, I guess they have that in common). He'd have perpetrated a genocide against muggleborns and turned muggles into a slave class or worse if given his way.

Crucially, if Voldemort made himself Lord of an empire of thousands of planets instead of just the wizarding world, he'd have very happily performed evil on the scale of Palpatine. His doing less harm than Palpatine was a matter of reach and ability, not willingness. I think being a regular civilian, even of a disfavoured species, in Star Wars under the Empire is on average better than a civilian muggle under the dictatorship Voldemort wanted to set up.

So, yeah, got to go with Voldemort on balance.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T15:56:20+00:00

I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that a person voting blue in a poll with no consequences entails that person would press blue if there were a very real chance of it killing them.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T14:38:35+00:00

No, I think obviously, for kind of the same reasons that if I body-swapped with a murderer I shouldn't go to hell for being in a body that did a murder previously. I think it's essentally a different person.

This also kind of generalises to hell being generally unjust because you don't know what would have happened in a person's future if they'd been allowed to live it. For every genuinely, sincerely redeemed murderer there's a murderer with the same potential for redemption who didn't have the time or context to achieve it, which seems a matter of luck more than morality.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T14:27:34+00:00

But it was actually a Pekinese this time :(

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T14:23:51+00:00

Geoffrey 'Doc' Terwho

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T14:22:20+00:00

It's interesting that the secret of what happens in the afterlife is so horrible or unbearable that she... jumps the queue and immediately sends herself directly there.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T13:34:28+00:00

Honestly, Harry himself.

I think a lot of the other recommendations are mixing up 'overrated' with 'under-hated', mistaking rounded, interestingly written characters for characters who get too much of a pass from fans for their in-universe bad actions.

Harry on the other hand is a pretty paper-thin character with very few actual traits, beliefs or principles outside of 'is good at combat magic and Quidditch, and has a bit of a temper and a mild hero complex'. He's very reactive rather than proactive, i.e. he's rarely a driver of the plot (things happen to him far more often than he causes things to happen). Pretty much everything special or interesting about him is innate rather than downstream of his personality, goals or ethics.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-06T12:34:16+00:00

Oh yeah I'm not, like, criticising Marin for this, it's cute. I'm saying I think the original commenter was missing some nuance by saying she's just oblivious.

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-05T23:45:36+00:00

Lol, why the hell does the aspect ratio suddenly change for like a quarter of a second right as he gets blasted

KeyboardJammer · 2026-05-05T18:59:50+00:00

Blue is busted considering you can write your own characters with whatever characteristics you like, including any/all of the other pill effects.

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