I had someone tell me that dislike of Umbridge is usually from ingrained sexism toward female villains. I kind of stared in shock — I mean I love my lady villains. I love nasty female villains. I love sneaky and clever female villains. I love female villains that wrap themselves up in what the patriarchy expects of them and uses those expectations to smash someone upside the head.
I tried to explain my hatred of Umbridge isn’t that she’s full of traditionally feminine attributes.
It’s that she’s lawful evil.
If you did an alignment chart, no one would represent lawful evil more than Umbridge. I don’t think there’s ever been a character that better sums up lawful evil.
And, to me, lawful evil is the most terrifying and disturbing evil there is.
To me, lawful evil is the shit that gets thousands of people killed while the person responsible walks away feeling like they did their duty.
Evil forces like Bellatrix and Voldemort are fairy tales. They’re the bad guys a good guy can chase away with a sword or wand.
Umbridge is that evil that really does lurk in the hearts of men (and women). The realness, the plausibility of it, makes her amazingly uncomfortable.
So, yeah, I can’t get as excited about her as a fantasy book creation as easily as some other female villains. Not because she’s a woman, or because of her gender presentation, but because she represents a sort of evil that’s far, far too close to home.
Voldemort is stereotypically scary, but he’s a very unreal kind of scary. Umbridge is different. Everyone’s had an umbridge.
yes because lawful evil wraps itself in righteousness and oppresses you through approved systems and hierarchies that nobody is supposed to question
Umbridge is basically “I Was Just Following Orders” as a person
the solar system is probably most purely, simply fun exploratory experience humans will ever get to have, because there’s nobody there! there’s no colonialism and we don’t have to worry about aliens yet, so its just. fun!
we just land a robot on an empty planet and make it do wheelies and every few days we find like a cool rock and scientists yell about it on twitter
squirrel girl is canonically more powerful than thanos
if anyone is wondering “how the fuck?”: this was a pretty complicated thing that marvel set up, where they evaluated each hero and villain’s capabilities based on who they defeated, how they defeated them, who they were defeated by, and so on.
except, as it turns out, squirrel girl has defeated a LOT of powerful villains. case in point, her very first appearance has her solo-defeating doctor doom, without the help of iron man (who was nearby). this was also one of the few occasions where doom was defeated and it WASN’T a doombot. this turned squirrel girl into kind of a meme once the story hit the internet for obvious reasons, even though this story was just a one-shot. so then marvel brings her back, and has her defeat three villains in one comic, INCLUDING THANOS. (they even had other characters confirm that it wasn’t a trick, it wasn’t a fake thanos, that was actually thanos and he lost to squirrel girl because she set squirrels on him.)
the result? squirrel girl always wins. if there is an argument about “who would win?”, and squirrel girl is one of the options, then she wins by default because she’s squirrel girl. and this means that squirrel girl has to be the most powerful character in marvel by raw stats, because she always wins. you genuinely can’t beat squirrel girl.
by the by: she’s coming to the mcu soon in the new warriors tv show. that should be entertaining.
thisacelovesheadcanons 