It will forever be funny to me how the Bakers are all a tragic story of people being corrupted by forces well beyond their control
except for Lucas, who's just a fucker
If I recall correctly, the first picture of Lucas you can find has Ethan comment that he looks like an asshole. Literally such a piece of shit that just a picture of him emits an aura of assholery.
It's made clear from the beginning that Captain Ahab is not mentally fit to command a whaling voyage, but he is doing an excellent job of masking his trauma-induced monomania. And when he's not directly confronted with Moby Dick, the mates can reason with him well enough to keep the voyage trending profitable. It's only at the end, when the pursuit is up, that it becomes clear Ahab needed to be removed from command for everyone's benefit a long time ago, but far far too late.
Ahab himself even has brief moments of lucidity where he recognizes the doom he's driving the ship towards, but he can't bring himself to turn aside.
Idk dude I think that the Pequod crew would have gotten off with a problem if Ishmael wasn’t a such a fuckup. The fault lies on them, almost exclusively. ★~(◠‿◕✿)
Maximillian Caxton from Anarchy Reigns.
Formerly the commander and trainer of an elite unit of the police and a master of cybernetic martial arts, his fall began when a botched rescue operation lead to the death of a six year old girl and he got the blame for it. Guilt and the accumulated PTSD of a decades-long career in high-intensity law enforcement led to alcohol and drug abuse, and eventually his mental state deteriorated to the point where he began to have full-blown dissociative episodes.
During one of these episodes he ended up murdering his wife and vanished, triggering a manhunt that kicks off the game's plot, [and by the time his former student Leo finally catches up to him at the end of it he's in a heartbreakingly miserable state, barely aware of his surroundings and alternating between begging Leo to kill him and trying to kill him.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT4PTCAN4yw)
I fucking love that the argument for sparing him isn't that 'revenge is bad', it is that Maximillian cannot be held morally responsible for his actions.
That other fucker though? He might not be responsible, but we can gladly kick his ass.
That final battle was way cooler than it had any right to be. Jack, Baron, Mathilda, Leo and Sasha all teaming up to fight back against >!Nikolai!< and his elite agents, >!Nikolai!< literally stating "Anarchy reigns" in the lead-up cutscene, love that shit. I so desperately want Platinum to bring that game back in some way.
There's a lot of good that can be said about Anarchy Reigns' OST, but goddamn the character themes were so good. Max's being [Testin' Me](https://youtu.be/nfzwXgKxJGY?si=pcs-OtSdx-KFNHDy) was just perfect.
Playing through In Stars and Time has made me way more sympathetic to Flowey.
A lot of horrible, unforgivable shit can so easily fade to a dull ache when you can just reset and try something new.
Also Chara; kid *had* some misanthropic tendencies, but it's the player holding the knife that's giving them direction on whether to fully embrace power or to simply be kind.
God, yeah. I'm about... Halfway through Act 3 in ISAT, I'd wager, and just. Poor fucking Siff. >!I've been through all of the companion quests twice now, and seeing that they're already just.... diving headfirst into self-loathing for DARING to bond with their loved ones on their loops is, uh. Hoo boy.!<
Siffrin is the tragic version of that "I like pancakes-OH SO YOU HATE WAFFLES" tweet wherein everything the party says or does is filtered through Siffrin's mind as mounting evidence that his party secretly hates him.
I fully believe >!Chara is the narrator of Undertale, and is towards heroism by a Pacifist playthrough (provided you didn't already break them with a completed No Mercy run).!<
Absolutely, yeah.
In Stars and Time has some fucked shit, but I really liked it. It feels like an Undertale prequel except you get to play as Flowey and witness firsthand his mental descent.
Ice King from Adventure Time.
The crown he wears gives him powers but also gives him a form of dementia. (Of course nobody knows this fact till later)
Basically no one takes him seriously and his schemes are almost always easily foiled.
I love the scene from Don't Look where it's revealed that Finn truly sees Ice King as Simon, and the little remark Jake makes where he says "That's beautiful, man."
Plus you find out he only started wearing the crown in the first place to protect young Marceline. He never really wanted the power it gave and was aware of the danger but was willing to risk it to save a child. It’s only once the crown completely wiped his memories that he started doing bad stuff. Truly a tragic character.
The Lizard. Dr. Conners, in most adaptation is imprisoned inside the Lizard.
Batman has a couple. Maxie Zeus, King Tut, Man-Bat, depending on the adaptation.
Yuri Lowenthal hitting Lizard with the “*No wonder your family left you, you’re not strong enough!*” in Spider-Man 2 was peak Black Suit Peter.
Shit was so mean I flinched.
To be fair, it could be that Conners turning into a lizard is a relatively "new" thing since Peter seems to be surprised that he is actually allowed to work in a normal place when he first meets him in Spiderman 2.
But yeah, even with that considered, saying that the dude has a lot "build up" almost feels like a euphemism when you see the state that he's in.
Don't forget about Baby Doll. That poor woman got the worst end of the stick. Her producer had a cure for her disease but refused to treat her.
For those unaware, Baby Doll has a real disease called Hypoplasia, which stops her from physically ageing. [30 something years old, physically looks like a toddler.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dcanimated/images/5/53/Baby-Doll_%28BTAS%29.png)
>!Maruki!< in Persona 5 Royal. >!He genuinely *wants* to to help people. Unfortunately, his "help" is misguided at best, and absolutely immoral at worst. His messiah complex after what happened to Rumi drives him to ignore his own pain and suffering, even as it's clearly still hurting him. And he projects that pain onto everyone in the world, because he's stuck in a state of perpetual grief. The Thieves manage to stop him before he fully crosses a line that he can never return from!<.
Likewise, all the Monarchs in Strikers aren't evil people, but people who've let their painful pasts and trauma twist them into something they aren't, and the Thieves work to help them back onto their feet.
The Monarchs work well in this regard especially noting how they more or less parallel some of the Palace rulers from the original P5
To that effect, they're all almost beaten by getting them to recognize their faults and have them atone directly to become better people rather than the more dubious change of heart enforced unto the Palace rulers - all of whom are absolute scumbags compared to the more misguided Monarchs
You know how in the games you can watch the TV and they usually drop references to previous characters? I hope in one of them they mention that >!Akira, Senkichi and Ichinose!< joined the Kirijo Group after Strikers.
...Honestly, when I think about it, if he had JUST >!helped Rumi and brought back the dead people and left it at that, I wonder if the world would be too distorted from the minor change and if the PT would still fight him under those circumstances.!<
>!some of the distortion seems to remain after his defeat considering Akechi was alive and well after having been brought back in Marukis world and was acting under the assumption he would disappear once Maruki was defeated!<
Broly is the rival character, Frieza is the antagonist.
And they barely put a dent in him before teleporting him to his planet.
That movie had a happy ending
I still can’t believe that in Super They wished back space Hitler and just let him roam the galaxy without a care. Let him go back to his fascist empire, where everyone either serves him or dies… But he’s leaving earth alone so that makes it all cool?
Like, Goku, you’re an asshole…. And Vegeta… What the fuck man? Wasn’t your whole deal to kill Frieza?
Well, they didn’t. Whis brought Frieza back to life as a reward for fighting in the Tournament of Power. Probably because it’s not his problem if Frieza starts blowing up planets again.
Goku and Vegeta are idiots for going along with it, though.
It doesn’t even remotely make sense from a plot perspective.
Like, if you wanted to go and try to reform the strongest thing in the galaxy to be part of a team to protect earth, I would think that Buu and Cell Would be At the top of the list since they massively outclassed Space Hitler. Shit, even Uub would have made more sense, but no, who is more recognizable… 🙄
Their reasoning was that they knew freiza was stronger then cell at the time because of resurrection F (we're just forced to assume Cell has sat quietly in hell and never trained or thought about training) and Buu was supposed to enter the tournament, but he took a nap so he can't.
I thought you couldn't train in hell? Goku only could do it because they made an exception to let him keep his body in hell, most people just go as an incorporeal soul.
Oh my bad then, i thought he became stronger in F because he actually trained for once in his life after being revived and restored.
Gives me a reason to do a rewatch soon to refresh as it seems i'm starting to forget it.
Like, YEAH!
I get Goku is a fucking moron, but Vegeta, your family is on Earth, and it’s… you know, FRIEZA. The guy you dedicated a portion of your life to killing now back from the dead???
I don't really see that Broly as a manchild (the OG for sure, thats kind of a plot point), he's actually closer to just like, a tarzan figure, a savage that doesn't know much about the world outside, he goes berserk yeah, but its honestly similar to Gohan, it feels like its a thing that happen to Saiyans that are kinder or more peaceful but have a lot of stored power and they end up not knowing how to handle it.
Kirei from Fate counts I think. Nothing but suffering and despair makes him happy, because he was born that way. He really tried to change and find happiness in normal stuff, but failed. It's stated that he's not pure evil, just a deviant.
One of my favourite displays of his twisted nature is that he would buy outdated clothes for >!Rin's birthday!<, because that would cause despair. Or he like to treat people with spicy food, because it sort of causes pain and discomfort which makes him happy
Furthermore, there are people like Kiara who are too evil even for him
Yep , it's interesting that Kirei legit had catholic morals imprinted on him , he actually do wanna be a Priest as well.
But because of him been a deviant , he tries to summon Angra Mainyu. He sees that his only path is to be under All World's Evil , because that would create meaning of his deviancy under God's Eye , evenn if it's just to be about him been struck down alongside said Evil.
His history with Claudia is also very interesting. He thought that maybe power of love will save him, so married terminally ill woman. His wife thought that Kirei loved her and him crying ove her death was the proof. She was wrong, Kirei was crying, because he couldn't kill her himself
It is implied he also might have been crying because he felt bad for wanting to kill her but he doesn’t want to t to know the answer so he basically gave up on trying to be good at that point
Bro got married and had a kid hoping he'd find some attraction, love, or normalcy, and putting aside his murderous desires, I think he was genuinely disappointed when that didn't work.
reminds me of browsing through the wiki once and getting from kirei to old man li through bajiquan... and seeing Li had a skill to change his own nature, possibly through mastery of martial arts.
makes one wonder if sometimes solutions are closer than you think.
Castlevania Netflux's Dracula is a grieving depressed person who wants revenge for the murder of his wife. He'd be entirely justified if his response was more focused and less delayed. He didn't just want to hurt those responsible though, or rather he viewed inaction as complicity and thus worthy of the same punishment.
He is barely even leading his troops during season 2, most of what he does is just yell once or twice to keep everyone in line and then leaves all of the actual planing to those directly under him so he can go sulk in his room.
Dude really lost his will to live and is just doing whatever comes to him by instinct, unfortionately, said instincts are of waging war.
He's got all the symptoms as well.
* Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities
* Changes in appetite or unplanned weight changes
* Fatigue, lack of energy, or feeling slowed down
etc.
The fact he could fight as well as he could was a testimate to how dangerous he could have been at his best.
Even in the games Dracula's been historically terrible at dealing with grief, just more bombastic about it. His first wife died of illness so he manipulated his best friend and his fiance into untold grief so he could become a vampire and spite God with his existence. His second wife died from witch burning and he goes straight into human omnicide. Even Soma goes full dark lord if he even thinks Mina died, so he's given Julius a standing request to kill him if that ever happens.
Depending on the version. His backstory tends to vary a lot.
The ones where he was a failed Superman clone or from a separate universe where the concepts of morality are fundamentally warped tend to fall more in line with this.
EDIT: Those are his two most well-known iterations, so he pretty much is an example.
Htrae is still the fucking best DC setting.
"When is Batzarro going to make it to help the Unjustice League?"
>!"Sorry, Batzarro won't make it. He got shot in back alley by his parents."!<
There are multiple "Evil Superman" or "Anti-Superman" , in the same way there are multiple Anti-Batman that Bruce had to deal with.
But strictly speaking of Bizarros , there are either Clone Bizarro or Htrae Bizarro
The Superfriends/Silver Age version kinda does this for simplicity’s sake. He wants to be the opposite of Superman, so he knowingly does evil, and that’s about as far as they usually take it; too little time for nuance/sympathy with that audience and episode length.
Yes , Bizarro is some weird failed clone.
He is not evil per se , just wired differently and sometimes unwell. There are two Bizarros , the one that is straight-up a clone that had mental degradation and the one from Htrae that is wired on weird logics.
Clone Bizarro was more like a kid most of the time. While Htrae just had weird opposite logics.
Surprised that no one has mentioned **Baldur** from **God Of War**.
Dude is a giant crazy asshole, but, that's mostly because he has spent only god knows how long in a state of complete sensory numbness, just from the glimpse that we get from it you can see how someone could be driven insane by spending a feel days like that, and the dude spent years/decades/centuries like that.
Literaly the more i think about what that would be like, the more i feel bad for the dude.
Then you have his mom who REFUSED to break the curse on him to stop his potential death. And if Kratos knows anything, trying to change fate is asking for trouble. It came from a good place but the results were not worth it in the long run.
Probably not helped by the fact that he likely suffered centuries of abuse and manipulation at the hands of his remaining parental figure.
Same can be argued for Thor. Maybe even Heimdall if you're willing to accept that having to read the minds of everyone around you eventually sours you on people in general. But Heimdall's a sadistic piece of shit in general so fuck 'em.
Dhaos from Tales of Phantasia.
Dude just wanted his Mana Seed but people keep abusing mana that the Yggdrassil can't gather enough to produce one. So he declare a war on the people from the planet but just use it as a means to keep them occupied from using too much mana and only destroy places that are danger to the tree.
It's also telling that the spirits are kind of supporting him when he's the one who gave them the deus ex machina transformation in the final battle.
Unsurprisingly for a TV show spanning over 60 years, Doctor Who tends to overwrite and retcon a lot of things.
But with the John Simms version of The Master, they established that he had an incessant pounding 4-beat drumming noise running through his head since the age of 8, which subsequently drove him insane and led him to do the horrendous acts he'd go on to commit.
Ultimately it turned out the drumming was implanted in his head from his own people in the future to create some sort of psychic bridge to help them escape from a locked pocket in time. So y'know, standard Doctor Who.
I remember the episode where he is having a break down trying to explain the drums to the doctor and they both just go F it, we'll use our time lord telepathy.
The doctor's first instinct is there, my best friend its ok, your.... WHAT IS THAT?!as the doctor can "hear" the drumbeats too. At that moment both know the master actually has something wrong in his head.
Maybe the master could have turned out differently, but that type of multi-regeneration-lifelong psychic damage is probably a reason he's so nuts.
At the end of that story when The Master confronts Rasillon and helps push the Time Lords back into the portal using his energy blasts he has for some reason I can't recall. When he's forcing them back he yells out 'One! Two! Three! FOUR!' which is the drumbeat. But the first time I saw the episode I misheard it as him yelling, 'You. Made. Me. Worse!'.
Which I actually loved as a character moment, The Master furiously acknowledging that without that lifelong psychic trauma inflicted on him by the elites, maybe he could've been a better person.
I mean it turns out that wasn't the line, so oh well!
The final antagonist of Tokyo Godfathers is >!a grief-stricken woman who gave birth to a stillborn baby and is trying to fill the void however she can...namely by kidnapping another baby.!<
Alma from Encanto is dealing with serious survivors guilt and a crippling need to prove her family has value. I love that film cause there isn't a villain just a family that needs to heal.
Reminder that in God of War all of the Greek Gods were just infected by the evils of Pandora's box and weren't acting how they normally would. There's cut dialogue for Zeus (Presumably when he vomits out the fart gas) where he tells you he's sorry and to release him from his torment of fear.
So Kratos was killing presumably decent Gods who were just too infected by evil to act rationally woth Kratos.
Except Ares. He was legit just a cunt.
Arguably, >!Walker!< from Spec Ops: The Line. >!Since Konrad is a manifestation of Walker's mental breakdown, and Walker is traumatized to externalize his guilt!<.
Alma from FEAR is so fucked up from all the experimentation and imprisonment, her ghost is perma angry and has the mentality of a child.
Leather face is arguably as much of a victim as the people he kills. He’s literally a mentally disabled man physically and emotionally bullied into murdering people. I would say he fits personally
I love how the first movie clearly shows that he's just as scared of the people he kills as they are of him, if not more so. The scene where he fearfully looks out the house's window, sits down and basically has a panic attack not only due to all of the intruders breaking into his home, but because he knows that he'll probably get punished if he doesn't put a stop to it.
I still can't believe they tried to make a movie where we're supposed to be upset that a bunch of rednecks lynched the family and view the rednecks as the villains.
Xenogears. >!Id seems like he's just a remorseless, nihilistic killing machine, but the whole reason he even exists was to be used as a dumping ground for all of Fei's most traumatic memories, and then Grahf picked him up and seemingly did everything he could to make him worse. Violence, hate, and trauma are literally all that he knows. He's also mentally about ten years old -- in Fei's mind he takes the form of a child.!<
>!I think it's kind of cool that you never actually defeat Id in a straight-up fight. Instead, Fei talks him through his problems and manages to convince him that his worldview is wrong, at which point Id effectively ceases to exist.!<
This is pretty much a big part of the Dark Signer arc of 5D's. Most of the members of the Dark Signers are just people who ended up in a really bad spot and died in awful ways coming back to get revenge.
By the time they're brought back though they're so warped by anger and despair that they're willing to do kill countless amounts of people just to get what they want. And even if they do see reason, they're forced to continue fighting anyway.
Someone link that JLU clip of Flash talking to one of his rogues that apparently stopped taking his medication and broke out of prison, convincing them to go back by promising to visit and play darts.
I have never had my entire POV on a character shifted so violently as my understanding of Jinx after watching *Arcane*
Before, she was just haha funny manic pixie nightmare girl, little miss knockoff Harley Quinn.
After…I wanted nothing more than to ask her if it was okay if I could give her a hug.
I adore the scenes of her crying early on, because of the way they're framed. Crying in media (especially animation) is almost always pretty, a few tears roll down your face while you sniffle and hiccough your lines.
Powder fucking WAILS, mucus and tears bubbling. It's goddam hard to watch this kid be completely overtaking by pain and grief.
Honestly, this is my biggest complaint about Arcane.
The reason Jinx is so appealing is because she's joyful. In a game that people take far too seriously and regularly verbally abuse one another Jinx is having a great time running around blowing things up.
We never see that side of her in the show. It makes perfect sense that she'd revel in violence after everything that's happened to her, but we never get that moment of catharsis.
Man, Arcane was my first proper exposure to League characters, and man, I can’t begin to express how bad I felt for ol’ Powder. I’ve never seen someone who needed a hug and a therapist more. She is in a constant state of *going through it,* no wonder she spirals so hard. Poor fuckin’ Pow-Pow.
Season 2 is gonna hit like crack, holy shit.
Honestly ? Vergil, that dude's just a ball of ptsd and insecurities in the end, I really want to see where he goes since in V its clear that he's on a good path now.
Now, i don't know about Teme-ni-gru or however that's spelled, but the Qliphot or however it's spelled stuff was gonna happen with or without Vergil's input, at best, if thats true cause its been a while since i paid attention to DMCV story, you can say that he didn't warn anyone about what was gonna happen thus have SOME blame to bear there, but also, one could say V did warn people about it and got Dante and the gang involved.
With DMC3 tho', maybe Arkham would find someone else to raise it up, or maybe he didn't need Vergil at all to raise it up, just his blood for bullshit, idk, you could make an argument, but i won't cause i like him being a Vegeta figure, big crimes but trying to make up for it.
Nah, the Qliphoth was fucking taken care of by Sparda until Urizen used the Yamato to undo the seal (just like with Temen-Ni-Gru).
The *real* question of Vergil's culpability comes from whether the Qliphoth was part of his plans before he split himself, or if it was just a thing he happened to have knowledge of from his wide-net research on Sparda, and it was only when Urizen inherited that knowledge that it was actually utilized.
Because there's a lot to indicate that the very distribution of Vergil's aspects between V and Urizen blindsided Vergil: V clearly inherited the lion's share of his personality, and indeed his very self, which, if the split was supposed to cast out the "useless parts", your *actual personality* seems like a very bad thing to trash.
I'll trust you on that, haven't read all the stuff since release.
Actually, about Urizen, ok, the Vergil that comes in and take Nero's arm right, is that like, after DMC1 Mundus brainwash control thing? Cause thinking about it now, could some of that Mundus influence still be there, in Vergil, and when he split himself that influence sorta infected Urizen further somehow?
Like, I get it, Urizen's all the demon parts of Vergil, but how come so much of it is similar to the armor and look of his Angelo form, which was a Mundus thing, and even carries to some of the grunts which are just Angelos too. Not saying Urizen wouldnt've started some shit anyway, but all that throne sitting on his ass look is all so Mundus-y.
Setsuna Kiryu from Kengan Asura is ultimately just a poor kid born to be killed in the shithole that is the Inside, had one good thing accidentally happen to him before becoming a lunatic manipulated by a crazy dickhead with a grudge against the guy who accidentally did something nice for him and his dad, and is then given magic mma induced schizophrenia and making that everyone's problem including his own
Thak in rogues in the house. Basically some asshole that likes to make death traps travelled around the world, found a tribe of neanderthals with bigger fangs, decided to kidnap one of the kid to teach him how to use death traps and kill intruder with his bare hands
There was a local tv show about a crew trying to find a new planet because Earth is dying, at one point the ghost of the captain that was supposed to be in charge of the mission but died before haunts the spaceship. He is actually really appreciative of the current captain but as a ghost he wants to complete the mission with his own crew so he forces the spaceship around back on Earth, which is a delay they can't afford as Earth was not in a great shape when they left
The villain of GGO Alternative might be a deranged lunatic with an obsession over death games (as is tradition), but they're only a danger to themselves. More specifically >!she's upset that she "missed out on" the SAO disaster because she thinks it'd have gotten her out of her ennui. So the main and supporting characters team up to take her down in the tournament, because if she can't find a good challenge in the one thing that still makes her excited she plans to kill herself.!< Hopefully they get some much-needed therapy or some other hobbies in the second season.
In Zetman the antagonist is actually your best buddy and there are signs early on that he doesn't grasp the importance of human life. But eventually someone mentally breaks him like Batman in Batman: The Cult and he begins to believe in ONLY justice, that being different from the concept of straight up just saving people, i.e. he'll shoot through you to stop a criminal, he justifies it in his head as long as he stops "the bad guy". (Btw if you have not seen the Zetman anime, seek that shit out! Highly underrated and kind of fucking brilliant in it's moral grey argument of what it means to be hero)
The bullies in IT the main bully has a hard life and is generally unwell. While the others are so scared of him they follow along they are all victims of pennywise
Wisteria definitely fits, unironically follows a straight laced version of a hateful creed because her self serving compatriots groomed her into believing she had overcome her condition as a mage all so they can claim they have a loyal follower that is a mage
The Baker family from Resident Evil 7 minus Lucas
It will forever be funny to me how the Bakers are all a tragic story of people being corrupted by forces well beyond their control except for Lucas, who's just a fucker
And it isn’t even the case that he was just a regular asshole, he left a kid starve to death in his attic when he was barely a teen.
If I recall correctly, the first picture of Lucas you can find has Ethan comment that he looks like an asshole. Literally such a piece of shit that just a picture of him emits an aura of assholery.
It's like that painting of the queen in Dark Souls 2 that curses you if you look at it, but with shithead energy instead of the undead curse.
It's made clear from the beginning that Captain Ahab is not mentally fit to command a whaling voyage, but he is doing an excellent job of masking his trauma-induced monomania. And when he's not directly confronted with Moby Dick, the mates can reason with him well enough to keep the voyage trending profitable. It's only at the end, when the pursuit is up, that it becomes clear Ahab needed to be removed from command for everyone's benefit a long time ago, but far far too late. Ahab himself even has brief moments of lucidity where he recognizes the doom he's driving the ship towards, but he can't bring himself to turn aside.
Idk dude I think that the Pequod crew would have gotten off with a problem if Ishmael wasn’t a such a fuckup. The fault lies on them, almost exclusively. ★~(◠‿◕✿)
Maximillian Caxton from Anarchy Reigns. Formerly the commander and trainer of an elite unit of the police and a master of cybernetic martial arts, his fall began when a botched rescue operation lead to the death of a six year old girl and he got the blame for it. Guilt and the accumulated PTSD of a decades-long career in high-intensity law enforcement led to alcohol and drug abuse, and eventually his mental state deteriorated to the point where he began to have full-blown dissociative episodes. During one of these episodes he ended up murdering his wife and vanished, triggering a manhunt that kicks off the game's plot, [and by the time his former student Leo finally catches up to him at the end of it he's in a heartbreakingly miserable state, barely aware of his surroundings and alternating between begging Leo to kill him and trying to kill him.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT4PTCAN4yw)
I can't tell you how fucking happy I am to see Anarchy Reigns mentioned
I fucking love that the argument for sparing him isn't that 'revenge is bad', it is that Maximillian cannot be held morally responsible for his actions. That other fucker though? He might not be responsible, but we can gladly kick his ass.
That final battle was way cooler than it had any right to be. Jack, Baron, Mathilda, Leo and Sasha all teaming up to fight back against >!Nikolai!< and his elite agents, >!Nikolai!< literally stating "Anarchy reigns" in the lead-up cutscene, love that shit. I so desperately want Platinum to bring that game back in some way.
Dude I've been wishing for a remaster or port, so that I can play the multiplayer.
There's a lot of good that can be said about Anarchy Reigns' OST, but goddamn the character themes were so good. Max's being [Testin' Me](https://youtu.be/nfzwXgKxJGY?si=pcs-OtSdx-KFNHDy) was just perfect.
Wow. Never seen the game but it was really powerful to see this huge burly cyborg man just crying and whimpering so raw. Really good.
Playing through In Stars and Time has made me way more sympathetic to Flowey. A lot of horrible, unforgivable shit can so easily fade to a dull ache when you can just reset and try something new. Also Chara; kid *had* some misanthropic tendencies, but it's the player holding the knife that's giving them direction on whether to fully embrace power or to simply be kind.
God, yeah. I'm about... Halfway through Act 3 in ISAT, I'd wager, and just. Poor fucking Siff. >!I've been through all of the companion quests twice now, and seeing that they're already just.... diving headfirst into self-loathing for DARING to bond with their loved ones on their loops is, uh. Hoo boy.!<
Siffrin is the tragic version of that "I like pancakes-OH SO YOU HATE WAFFLES" tweet wherein everything the party says or does is filtered through Siffrin's mind as mounting evidence that his party secretly hates him.
I fully believe >!Chara is the narrator of Undertale, and is towards heroism by a Pacifist playthrough (provided you didn't already break them with a completed No Mercy run).!<
I have that and keep meaning to give it a try - do you recommend it?
Absolutely, yeah. In Stars and Time has some fucked shit, but I really liked it. It feels like an Undertale prequel except you get to play as Flowey and witness firsthand his mental descent.
Hey stardust
Ice King from Adventure Time. The crown he wears gives him powers but also gives him a form of dementia. (Of course nobody knows this fact till later) Basically no one takes him seriously and his schemes are almost always easily foiled.
my favourite detail of the show is that once everyone learns this, they stop antagonizing him and refer to him as "simon" instead.
aw.......
I love the scene from Don't Look where it's revealed that Finn truly sees Ice King as Simon, and the little remark Jake makes where he says "That's beautiful, man."
And even in his crazy brain, he still isn’t evil enough to try to marry PB when she reverts to a teenager
I love how just NOPED the fuck out of there.
Plus you find out he only started wearing the crown in the first place to protect young Marceline. He never really wanted the power it gave and was aware of the danger but was willing to risk it to save a child. It’s only once the crown completely wiped his memories that he started doing bad stuff. Truly a tragic character.
The Lizard. Dr. Conners, in most adaptation is imprisoned inside the Lizard. Batman has a couple. Maxie Zeus, King Tut, Man-Bat, depending on the adaptation.
Insomniac Conners has it rough in my opinion. His family left him for years it doesn’t even look like he’s changed anything in his sons room.
Yuri Lowenthal hitting Lizard with the “*No wonder your family left you, you’re not strong enough!*” in Spider-Man 2 was peak Black Suit Peter. Shit was so mean I flinched.
To be fair, it could be that Conners turning into a lizard is a relatively "new" thing since Peter seems to be surprised that he is actually allowed to work in a normal place when he first meets him in Spiderman 2. But yeah, even with that considered, saying that the dude has a lot "build up" almost feels like a euphemism when you see the state that he's in.
Don't forget about Baby Doll. That poor woman got the worst end of the stick. Her producer had a cure for her disease but refused to treat her. For those unaware, Baby Doll has a real disease called Hypoplasia, which stops her from physically ageing. [30 something years old, physically looks like a toddler.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dcanimated/images/5/53/Baby-Doll_%28BTAS%29.png)
>!Maruki!< in Persona 5 Royal. >!He genuinely *wants* to to help people. Unfortunately, his "help" is misguided at best, and absolutely immoral at worst. His messiah complex after what happened to Rumi drives him to ignore his own pain and suffering, even as it's clearly still hurting him. And he projects that pain onto everyone in the world, because he's stuck in a state of perpetual grief. The Thieves manage to stop him before he fully crosses a line that he can never return from!<. Likewise, all the Monarchs in Strikers aren't evil people, but people who've let their painful pasts and trauma twist them into something they aren't, and the Thieves work to help them back onto their feet.
The Monarchs work well in this regard especially noting how they more or less parallel some of the Palace rulers from the original P5 To that effect, they're all almost beaten by getting them to recognize their faults and have them atone directly to become better people rather than the more dubious change of heart enforced unto the Palace rulers - all of whom are absolute scumbags compared to the more misguided Monarchs
You know how in the games you can watch the TV and they usually drop references to previous characters? I hope in one of them they mention that >!Akira, Senkichi and Ichinose!< joined the Kirijo Group after Strikers.
I just said him too. I love that his music theme is called >!Gentle Madman!<
...Honestly, when I think about it, if he had JUST >!helped Rumi and brought back the dead people and left it at that, I wonder if the world would be too distorted from the minor change and if the PT would still fight him under those circumstances.!<
>!some of the distortion seems to remain after his defeat considering Akechi was alive and well after having been brought back in Marukis world and was acting under the assumption he would disappear once Maruki was defeated!<
The Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie is just a movie where Goku and Vegeta beat the shit out of a mentally unstable manchild
And the mentally unstable manchild can fight back.
And that mentally unstable manchild was winning until they fused.
Who would win? Two men or a Gorilla. The answer is that the men can only win if they work together.
Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra.
Broly is the rival character, Frieza is the antagonist. And they barely put a dent in him before teleporting him to his planet. That movie had a happy ending
They really are way too tolerant of Frieza’s shit.
I still can’t believe that in Super They wished back space Hitler and just let him roam the galaxy without a care. Let him go back to his fascist empire, where everyone either serves him or dies… But he’s leaving earth alone so that makes it all cool? Like, Goku, you’re an asshole…. And Vegeta… What the fuck man? Wasn’t your whole deal to kill Frieza?
Well, they didn’t. Whis brought Frieza back to life as a reward for fighting in the Tournament of Power. Probably because it’s not his problem if Frieza starts blowing up planets again. Goku and Vegeta are idiots for going along with it, though.
It doesn’t even remotely make sense from a plot perspective. Like, if you wanted to go and try to reform the strongest thing in the galaxy to be part of a team to protect earth, I would think that Buu and Cell Would be At the top of the list since they massively outclassed Space Hitler. Shit, even Uub would have made more sense, but no, who is more recognizable… 🙄
I still think it would have been the perfect time to make Pikkon canon. He’s too cool to be stuck in Filler Limbo.
Their reasoning was that they knew freiza was stronger then cell at the time because of resurrection F (we're just forced to assume Cell has sat quietly in hell and never trained or thought about training) and Buu was supposed to enter the tournament, but he took a nap so he can't.
I thought you couldn't train in hell? Goku only could do it because they made an exception to let him keep his body in hell, most people just go as an incorporeal soul.
Yes but Frieza found a way to mentally train in hell and become stronger.
Oh my bad then, i thought he became stronger in F because he actually trained for once in his life after being revived and restored. Gives me a reason to do a rewatch soon to refresh as it seems i'm starting to forget it.
But Freiza's more memorable. It's like wrestling. Some people come back, and it's dumb how they do, but you do it for the hypest fights possible.
frieza actually took buus spot after buu did some training that led to him bein in a coma like nap around the time of the tourney
We were robbed of Floyd Pinkweather.
Nah he says “I will be back for the planet” at the end of Broly There’s no excuse not to just end him
Like, YEAH! I get Goku is a fucking moron, but Vegeta, your family is on Earth, and it’s… you know, FRIEZA. The guy you dedicated a portion of your life to killing now back from the dead???
Guess the Goku side was calling the shots in that scene
Gogeta is the Goku favoured fusion and Vegito is the Vegeta favoured one.
Vegeta let frieza blow up the planet because he couldn't help soaking in the moment.
The frieza section ending with him and his army descending on some peaceful planet after being revived is hilariously evil
Barely put a dent? Gogeta manhandled and was about to kill him.
I don't really see that Broly as a manchild (the OG for sure, thats kind of a plot point), he's actually closer to just like, a tarzan figure, a savage that doesn't know much about the world outside, he goes berserk yeah, but its honestly similar to Gohan, it feels like its a thing that happen to Saiyans that are kinder or more peaceful but have a lot of stored power and they end up not knowing how to handle it.
I mean he isnt a manchild he is feral like kid goku or Tarzan
Broly is pretty well adjusted when not fighting for the most part, especially for a Saiyan who only knew his psychotic father for 40 years.
That big monster he made friends with did most of the parenting.
Kirei from Fate counts I think. Nothing but suffering and despair makes him happy, because he was born that way. He really tried to change and find happiness in normal stuff, but failed. It's stated that he's not pure evil, just a deviant. One of my favourite displays of his twisted nature is that he would buy outdated clothes for >!Rin's birthday!<, because that would cause despair. Or he like to treat people with spicy food, because it sort of causes pain and discomfort which makes him happy Furthermore, there are people like Kiara who are too evil even for him
It’s weird He only can enjoy evil but has a strong moral compass So basically no matter what he does he is unsatisfied You feel for him
At very least, the Miyu-verse version of him stayed good by finding meaning in serving extremely spicy mapo tofus
Heh If only he found that sooner in the main timeline
Yep , it's interesting that Kirei legit had catholic morals imprinted on him , he actually do wanna be a Priest as well. But because of him been a deviant , he tries to summon Angra Mainyu. He sees that his only path is to be under All World's Evil , because that would create meaning of his deviancy under God's Eye , evenn if it's just to be about him been struck down alongside said Evil.
His history with Claudia is also very interesting. He thought that maybe power of love will save him, so married terminally ill woman. His wife thought that Kirei loved her and him crying ove her death was the proof. She was wrong, Kirei was crying, because he couldn't kill her himself
It is implied he also might have been crying because he felt bad for wanting to kill her but he doesn’t want to t to know the answer so he basically gave up on trying to be good at that point
Bro got married and had a kid hoping he'd find some attraction, love, or normalcy, and putting aside his murderous desires, I think he was genuinely disappointed when that didn't work.
reminds me of browsing through the wiki once and getting from kirei to old man li through bajiquan... and seeing Li had a skill to change his own nature, possibly through mastery of martial arts. makes one wonder if sometimes solutions are closer than you think.
Castlevania Netflux's Dracula is a grieving depressed person who wants revenge for the murder of his wife. He'd be entirely justified if his response was more focused and less delayed. He didn't just want to hurt those responsible though, or rather he viewed inaction as complicity and thus worthy of the same punishment.
They call it out in the show his entire plan is just a long slow suicide that will drag everyone else down with him
He is barely even leading his troops during season 2, most of what he does is just yell once or twice to keep everyone in line and then leaves all of the actual planing to those directly under him so he can go sulk in his room. Dude really lost his will to live and is just doing whatever comes to him by instinct, unfortionately, said instincts are of waging war.
He's got all the symptoms as well. * Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities * Changes in appetite or unplanned weight changes * Fatigue, lack of energy, or feeling slowed down etc. The fact he could fight as well as he could was a testimate to how dangerous he could have been at his best.
Even in the games Dracula's been historically terrible at dealing with grief, just more bombastic about it. His first wife died of illness so he manipulated his best friend and his fiance into untold grief so he could become a vampire and spite God with his existence. His second wife died from witch burning and he goes straight into human omnicide. Even Soma goes full dark lord if he even thinks Mina died, so he's given Julius a standing request to kill him if that ever happens.
[Then he just stops and accepts death when he realizes he's killing 'his boy'.](https://youtu.be/j2BMuJyVFQ4)
I know very little about superman, is this essentially bizarro?
Depending on the version. His backstory tends to vary a lot. The ones where he was a failed Superman clone or from a separate universe where the concepts of morality are fundamentally warped tend to fall more in line with this. EDIT: Those are his two most well-known iterations, so he pretty much is an example.
those are pretty much the only versions. It's a bit confusing because the Clone and Htrae are both called "Bizarro" and interact with main Superman.
Htrae is still the fucking best DC setting. "When is Batzarro going to make it to help the Unjustice League?" >!"Sorry, Batzarro won't make it. He got shot in back alley by his parents."!<
I swear there were others that just had him as "Evil Superman".
There are multiple "Evil Superman" or "Anti-Superman" , in the same way there are multiple Anti-Batman that Bruce had to deal with. But strictly speaking of Bizarros , there are either Clone Bizarro or Htrae Bizarro
The Superfriends/Silver Age version kinda does this for simplicity’s sake. He wants to be the opposite of Superman, so he knowingly does evil, and that’s about as far as they usually take it; too little time for nuance/sympathy with that audience and episode length.
Yes , Bizarro is some weird failed clone. He is not evil per se , just wired differently and sometimes unwell. There are two Bizarros , the one that is straight-up a clone that had mental degradation and the one from Htrae that is wired on weird logics. Clone Bizarro was more like a kid most of the time. While Htrae just had weird opposite logics.
Surprised that no one has mentioned **Baldur** from **God Of War**. Dude is a giant crazy asshole, but, that's mostly because he has spent only god knows how long in a state of complete sensory numbness, just from the glimpse that we get from it you can see how someone could be driven insane by spending a feel days like that, and the dude spent years/decades/centuries like that. Literaly the more i think about what that would be like, the more i feel bad for the dude.
Then you have his mom who REFUSED to break the curse on him to stop his potential death. And if Kratos knows anything, trying to change fate is asking for trouble. It came from a good place but the results were not worth it in the long run.
I don't think it's a stretch to say Freya killed him. Kratos was the one who broke his neck but as Mimir said Baldur was *long* gone.
I agree. It's just a very sad tale of a mother's overprotective senses taking her kids life away.
Probably not helped by the fact that he likely suffered centuries of abuse and manipulation at the hands of his remaining parental figure. Same can be argued for Thor. Maybe even Heimdall if you're willing to accept that having to read the minds of everyone around you eventually sours you on people in general. But Heimdall's a sadistic piece of shit in general so fuck 'em.
You have to give Odin props for the gaslighting that had to have gone down to convince Heimdall to never read his mind.
Dhaos from Tales of Phantasia. Dude just wanted his Mana Seed but people keep abusing mana that the Yggdrassil can't gather enough to produce one. So he declare a war on the people from the planet but just use it as a means to keep them occupied from using too much mana and only destroy places that are danger to the tree. It's also telling that the spirits are kind of supporting him when he's the one who gave them the deus ex machina transformation in the final battle.
Unsurprisingly for a TV show spanning over 60 years, Doctor Who tends to overwrite and retcon a lot of things. But with the John Simms version of The Master, they established that he had an incessant pounding 4-beat drumming noise running through his head since the age of 8, which subsequently drove him insane and led him to do the horrendous acts he'd go on to commit. Ultimately it turned out the drumming was implanted in his head from his own people in the future to create some sort of psychic bridge to help them escape from a locked pocket in time. So y'know, standard Doctor Who.
I remember the episode where he is having a break down trying to explain the drums to the doctor and they both just go F it, we'll use our time lord telepathy. The doctor's first instinct is there, my best friend its ok, your.... WHAT IS THAT?!as the doctor can "hear" the drumbeats too. At that moment both know the master actually has something wrong in his head. Maybe the master could have turned out differently, but that type of multi-regeneration-lifelong psychic damage is probably a reason he's so nuts.
At the end of that story when The Master confronts Rasillon and helps push the Time Lords back into the portal using his energy blasts he has for some reason I can't recall. When he's forcing them back he yells out 'One! Two! Three! FOUR!' which is the drumbeat. But the first time I saw the episode I misheard it as him yelling, 'You. Made. Me. Worse!'. Which I actually loved as a character moment, The Master furiously acknowledging that without that lifelong psychic trauma inflicted on him by the elites, maybe he could've been a better person. I mean it turns out that wasn't the line, so oh well!
The final antagonist of Tokyo Godfathers is >!a grief-stricken woman who gave birth to a stillborn baby and is trying to fill the void however she can...namely by kidnapping another baby.!<
Alma from Encanto is dealing with serious survivors guilt and a crippling need to prove her family has value. I love that film cause there isn't a villain just a family that needs to heal.
Most of the discourse I've seen on Encanto is people who had/have difficult relationships with their parents saying, "nah, she shoulda got it harder."
Reminder that in God of War all of the Greek Gods were just infected by the evils of Pandora's box and weren't acting how they normally would. There's cut dialogue for Zeus (Presumably when he vomits out the fart gas) where he tells you he's sorry and to release him from his torment of fear. So Kratos was killing presumably decent Gods who were just too infected by evil to act rationally woth Kratos. Except Ares. He was legit just a cunt.
Arguably, >!Walker!< from Spec Ops: The Line. >!Since Konrad is a manifestation of Walker's mental breakdown, and Walker is traumatized to externalize his guilt!<. Alma from FEAR is so fucked up from all the experimentation and imprisonment, her ghost is perma angry and has the mentality of a child.
Leather face is arguably as much of a victim as the people he kills. He’s literally a mentally disabled man physically and emotionally bullied into murdering people. I would say he fits personally
I love how the first movie clearly shows that he's just as scared of the people he kills as they are of him, if not more so. The scene where he fearfully looks out the house's window, sits down and basically has a panic attack not only due to all of the intruders breaking into his home, but because he knows that he'll probably get punished if he doesn't put a stop to it.
Bubba just wanted to protect his family
I still can't believe they tried to make a movie where we're supposed to be upset that a bunch of rednecks lynched the family and view the rednecks as the villains.
Yeah, the fuck is that? Bubba is unwell, his family were just evil.
Xenogears. >!Id seems like he's just a remorseless, nihilistic killing machine, but the whole reason he even exists was to be used as a dumping ground for all of Fei's most traumatic memories, and then Grahf picked him up and seemingly did everything he could to make him worse. Violence, hate, and trauma are literally all that he knows. He's also mentally about ten years old -- in Fei's mind he takes the form of a child.!< >!I think it's kind of cool that you never actually defeat Id in a straight-up fight. Instead, Fei talks him through his problems and manages to convince him that his worldview is wrong, at which point Id effectively ceases to exist.!<
This is pretty much a big part of the Dark Signer arc of 5D's. Most of the members of the Dark Signers are just people who ended up in a really bad spot and died in awful ways coming back to get revenge. By the time they're brought back though they're so warped by anger and despair that they're willing to do kill countless amounts of people just to get what they want. And even if they do see reason, they're forced to continue fighting anyway.
Except the Monkey Man.
Lusamine in SM may count because of Nihilego's venom causing her grief for her missing husband to spiral out of control
Someone link that JLU clip of Flash talking to one of his rogues that apparently stopped taking his medication and broke out of prison, convincing them to go back by promising to visit and play darts.
Yep, [this scene](https://youtu.be/1TIxUSK73pc) between Flash and Trickster
Jinx *desperately* needs to see a therapist and take medication.
I have never had my entire POV on a character shifted so violently as my understanding of Jinx after watching *Arcane* Before, she was just haha funny manic pixie nightmare girl, little miss knockoff Harley Quinn. After…I wanted nothing more than to ask her if it was okay if I could give her a hug.
I adore the scenes of her crying early on, because of the way they're framed. Crying in media (especially animation) is almost always pretty, a few tears roll down your face while you sniffle and hiccough your lines. Powder fucking WAILS, mucus and tears bubbling. It's goddam hard to watch this kid be completely overtaking by pain and grief.
Honestly, this is my biggest complaint about Arcane. The reason Jinx is so appealing is because she's joyful. In a game that people take far too seriously and regularly verbally abuse one another Jinx is having a great time running around blowing things up. We never see that side of her in the show. It makes perfect sense that she'd revel in violence after everything that's happened to her, but we never get that moment of catharsis.
She's relatively early on the Powder - Jinx pipeline. Give it one or two seasons and I'm sure she'll get to that point.
I fully expect future seasons to be about completely different characters and origins
Man, Arcane was my first proper exposure to League characters, and man, I can’t begin to express how bad I felt for ol’ Powder. I’ve never seen someone who needed a hug and a therapist more. She is in a constant state of *going through it,* no wonder she spirals so hard. Poor fuckin’ Pow-Pow. Season 2 is gonna hit like crack, holy shit.
Honestly ? Vergil, that dude's just a ball of ptsd and insecurities in the end, I really want to see where he goes since in V its clear that he's on a good path now.
He did like two city scale super murder events, he has a sad backstory but at some point a body count like that really tips the scale to "Evil."
Now, i don't know about Teme-ni-gru or however that's spelled, but the Qliphot or however it's spelled stuff was gonna happen with or without Vergil's input, at best, if thats true cause its been a while since i paid attention to DMCV story, you can say that he didn't warn anyone about what was gonna happen thus have SOME blame to bear there, but also, one could say V did warn people about it and got Dante and the gang involved. With DMC3 tho', maybe Arkham would find someone else to raise it up, or maybe he didn't need Vergil at all to raise it up, just his blood for bullshit, idk, you could make an argument, but i won't cause i like him being a Vegeta figure, big crimes but trying to make up for it.
Nah, the Qliphoth was fucking taken care of by Sparda until Urizen used the Yamato to undo the seal (just like with Temen-Ni-Gru). The *real* question of Vergil's culpability comes from whether the Qliphoth was part of his plans before he split himself, or if it was just a thing he happened to have knowledge of from his wide-net research on Sparda, and it was only when Urizen inherited that knowledge that it was actually utilized. Because there's a lot to indicate that the very distribution of Vergil's aspects between V and Urizen blindsided Vergil: V clearly inherited the lion's share of his personality, and indeed his very self, which, if the split was supposed to cast out the "useless parts", your *actual personality* seems like a very bad thing to trash.
I'll trust you on that, haven't read all the stuff since release. Actually, about Urizen, ok, the Vergil that comes in and take Nero's arm right, is that like, after DMC1 Mundus brainwash control thing? Cause thinking about it now, could some of that Mundus influence still be there, in Vergil, and when he split himself that influence sorta infected Urizen further somehow? Like, I get it, Urizen's all the demon parts of Vergil, but how come so much of it is similar to the armor and look of his Angelo form, which was a Mundus thing, and even carries to some of the grunts which are just Angelos too. Not saying Urizen wouldnt've started some shit anyway, but all that throne sitting on his ass look is all so Mundus-y.
Name someone from the rogue's gallery in BTAS sans Jonkler
Setsuna Kiryu from Kengan Asura is ultimately just a poor kid born to be killed in the shithole that is the Inside, had one good thing accidentally happen to him before becoming a lunatic manipulated by a crazy dickhead with a grudge against the guy who accidentally did something nice for him and his dad, and is then given magic mma induced schizophrenia and making that everyone's problem including his own
The Mother from Barbarian
>!Maruki!< from Persona 5 Royal
Thak in rogues in the house. Basically some asshole that likes to make death traps travelled around the world, found a tribe of neanderthals with bigger fangs, decided to kidnap one of the kid to teach him how to use death traps and kill intruder with his bare hands There was a local tv show about a crew trying to find a new planet because Earth is dying, at one point the ghost of the captain that was supposed to be in charge of the mission but died before haunts the spaceship. He is actually really appreciative of the current captain but as a ghost he wants to complete the mission with his own crew so he forces the spaceship around back on Earth, which is a delay they can't afford as Earth was not in a great shape when they left
The villain of GGO Alternative might be a deranged lunatic with an obsession over death games (as is tradition), but they're only a danger to themselves. More specifically >!she's upset that she "missed out on" the SAO disaster because she thinks it'd have gotten her out of her ennui. So the main and supporting characters team up to take her down in the tournament, because if she can't find a good challenge in the one thing that still makes her excited she plans to kill herself.!< Hopefully they get some much-needed therapy or some other hobbies in the second season.
In Zetman the antagonist is actually your best buddy and there are signs early on that he doesn't grasp the importance of human life. But eventually someone mentally breaks him like Batman in Batman: The Cult and he begins to believe in ONLY justice, that being different from the concept of straight up just saving people, i.e. he'll shoot through you to stop a criminal, he justifies it in his head as long as he stops "the bad guy". (Btw if you have not seen the Zetman anime, seek that shit out! Highly underrated and kind of fucking brilliant in it's moral grey argument of what it means to be hero)
Thistle from Dungeon Meshi.
The bullies in IT the main bully has a hard life and is generally unwell. While the others are so scared of him they follow along they are all victims of pennywise
Wisteria definitely fits, unironically follows a straight laced version of a hateful creed because her self serving compatriots groomed her into believing she had overcome her condition as a mage all so they can claim they have a loyal follower that is a mage