Scary Isn’t A Villain.

Scary isn’t a villain.

I had to say it somewhere.

<S2 EP25 SPOILERS AHEAD>

I’m writing a character analysis essay on this, so I’m not posting my full thoughts here just yet, but I have to get this off my chest.

Scary Marlowe is not a villain. She’s a tragic figure. Albeit, her tragedy is biblical in proportion, and it’s a bit hard to sympathize with her as a character, but she is still tragic in nature. By definition, a tragic hero is a character who faces difficulty and eventual downfall at the hands of some intrinsic fatal flaw within. While I don’t think Scary is going to face literal downfall - after all, she’s still one of four main characters in a long-running podcast - I do believe her flaws and weaknesses need to be seen in the greater context. Scary’s fatal flaw is her hostility and her wallowing, I think we can all agree on that; she’s a lonely figure who seeks out someone, anyone who will understand, and she lashes out to the ones that don’t get it. She hurts the people she loves because she projects her self-hatred onto others. Simply put, it’s hostility rooted in self-loathing, rationalized by the idea that anyone who thinks her worthy of love must themselves deserve repercussions for their poor judgement. She refuses to be empathized with because she refuses to let her guard down, knowing that she’s already so broken that the smallest chip in her armor will make her shatter like glass. She drives people away because deep down, she knows whoever actually will understand her must be “dark and twisted” like her.

And what do you know. William Stampler. Dark, twisted, morally bankrupt, the most detestable villain I’ve seen in a while. As if being abusive and hateful wasn’t enough, he exploits a young girl that he can see weakness and naïveté in. He knows she’s impressionable enough to get her on his side with enough emotional bribery (and magical bribery too). I think sometimes fans forget that Scary is a fourteen or fifteen year old girl. She’s a kid. Not only does she not know better, she finds comfort in shutting out the ones that do. Though she may be hostile and contemptuous, it is Willy that fueled the destructive flame. She’s a victim of manipulation, and her clear need for help is answered by the worst possible human to help a child. He uses her, and it was never the other way around.

Her relationship with violence is obviously harmful on a good day and massively destructive on a bad one, but it’s worth noting that she often is short-sighted when it comes to consequences. Whether she means to hurt or kill anyone she’s done so too is really up to interpretation of the nitty gritty, but it’s clear she doesn’t fully understand the repercussions of her actions. She thinks she’s in the right, and I’ll admit that anyone who commits violence thinks they’re in the right. Scary is really a matter of nature and nurture, being fed only the idea that violence can solve her problems and not that there’s a functional better way. The one person who actually did, to his credit, fully understand her, used it to take advantage of her. She’s correct in saying that no one understands, but this doesn’t discount the fact that she makes herself hard to understand. She fears being perceived in a way that won’t validate her hostility.

Scary is not just one thing. She’s not a hero, she’s not a villain, not a victim or a perpetrator or a redeemable figure. She’s all of it at once. Scary is complex and should be allowed to be such.

Stay tuned for my extremely nitty gritty and over-complicated character analysis essay about Scary, because when they say brain rot is a disease, they mean it’s debilitating.