Batman’s the obvious one, billionaire with military grade toys endlessly playing out his revenge fantasy of beating up poor people, whilst doing nothing to combat the actual causes of poverty or petty crime which is the real reason for his parents death.
Similarly the scarlet pimpernel ( saving the French monarchist families to come back and fight for their estates another day ).
It makes a lot more sense if you start headcanoning that Batman is mentally unstable and racked with survivor’s guilt/obsession for revenge against the people he thinks caused his parents’ death.
Or that he’s straight up working for the bourgeois and his goal isn’t actually to stop crime or protect innocent people. Actually, this would explain why the Gotham City government (or the feds for that matter) isn’t shutting down his whole operation.
Ya I’m inclined towards the second one, mainly because he’s protected, and he can be held up and sold to the masses as a hero saving gotham, but actually not doing much. Great cop propaganda value.
If Batman was real, he’d end up on /c/acab every day.
The Tenth Doctor.
Talks a big game about pacifism and then hands out fates worse than death like they were candy.
I don’t know the classic series very well, but this goes for all the new doctors. To be fair, they don’t ever claim to be good, right, or even justfied. They just seem to think acting is better than standing by and watching.
Don’t know about Dr Who, examples? Which one plays the tenth doctor?
examples?
David Tenant is the Tenth Doctor.
The Family of Blood is probably the most egregious example. Trapping people in the event horizons of black holes, behind mirrors, whatever, for all time.
While in The Doctor’s Daughter was getting all huffy and offended that someone might think he’d /shoot people/. Just outright killing someone is way less evil than stuffing them into indefinite suffering.
Some niche ones:
In the book series Warriors by Erin Hunter (AKA Warrior Cats), there’s a cat named Brambleclaw/Bramblestar. He’s the leader of the clan of cats that most of the stories are written from the perspective of. He abuses his mate (poor Squirrelflight), is stubborn, manipulative, and has also trained in cat hell with his evil father. Here’s a video that breaks down his actions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAv-CTp2AoQ
From the same series as above, we also have the (dis)honourable mentions of Breezepelt, Spottedleaf, Tigerheart/Tigerstar the second, and Bluefur/Bluestar. If anyone is curious about any of these, feel free to ask me to elaborate.
Not a protagonist but still considered a good character in canon for some reason: in the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game, Red Rescue Team/Blue Rescue Team, a Ninetales curses a human for a thousand years for touching their tail. They also have no problem with cursing the human’s Pokemon companion instead when she offers to take his place. Also in the game, said Ninetales is generally really self absorbed and thinks there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what they did, even though it’s causing havoc within the Pokemon world which could all have been avoided if he didn’t react so extremely. They’re never called out for this by the other canonically good characters either.
Warriors is incredible. Can you elaborate on Bluestar?
dess mentioned batman but any anti-hero fits
Goku he cares more about fighting than any of his responsibilities
