Alara.net/Crossroads X/Darkest Heart

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Archive
Name: Darkest Heart
Date(s): April 2000[1] - August 2000[2]
Archivist: Alara Rogers
Founder: Alara Rogers
Type: Archive
Fandom: Multifandom
URL: Darkest Heart @ Alara.net
via Wayback, Mar 25/23
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.
Welcome, all, to Darkest Heart, a page dedicated to the villains of fiction. On this page you'll find fanfic and links (though no pictures-- this is still part of the Happy Happy Text-Only Site) dealing with the darker characters-- villains who have personalities, villains with dark tormented pasts, and occasionally the just plain evil and villainous.

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The date this particular archive was created is difficult to pin down, as it is intertwined with the various other fandom sites on Alara.net. It may have been started as a separate archive possibly around April 2000, which is when the Gatchaman section was updated. The latest updates, in the comics section, were in August 2000 and they remain on the most recent views of the page. Darkest Heart was a submission-only archive, with Alara curating which fanfic she would actually host. The focus was on villains from a number of different fandoms, with a focus on the villains as characters, rather than shipping. From Alara's submission guidelines:

This is not a site for happy bunny romance. (I would also tend to frown on Villain Relationshipper stories, such as Rocketshipper Jessie/James romances from Pokemon-- unless the story is very good, I would rather not focus on lighthearted romance when I read about villains.) More serious or darker romance-- ie, stories that explore something more serious than "two people wanna boink" or "two people are in luuuv but can they admit it?", or stories that have a stronger emphasis on hurt/comfort or psychodrama-- will get more consideration.

 [4]

The stories are sorted first by fandom, and then by villain. As noted, there are also cross-links to other archives hosted at Alara.net.

The Fandoms

(Notes in italics are by Alara)

Gatchaman: Cross Karakoram: Galactor Headquarters

Dedicated to the villains of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, in particular Berg Katse, leader of Galactor in the first Gatchaman series. You'll also find Gel Sadra links, but not much on Egobossler because I don't like him.

April 2000 Feature Fanfic: The Enemy Among Us by Nancy Ford (BOTP, features Zoltar, Mala) This story was partially responsible for my deciding to update this page! A taut and suspenseful tale in which Zoltar is stranded on Earth; while Anderson and G-Force are closing in, Mala and Agent S-9 maneuver behind the scenes to try to help Zoltar escape. Also a good story for Anderson fans. In fact, it's a rarity for villain-oriented fics in that all the characters are sympathetically drawn; a Spectran fan who likes G-Force too isn't sure who to root for!

Star Trek

If you've been living in a cave for thirty years, you may not be familiar with this horrendously popular utopian SF program. Because there are literally thousands of Trek fan stories out there, I can afford to be pretty selective on this subpage; only stuff I consider really good will get on here. Because of my background as a major Q fan, there'll be a pretty heavy Q presence on this page, but I'll try to balance it with other villains as well.

August 2000 Feature Fanfic: Wormwood by Marlissa Campbell. A Federation psychologist is assigned to Gul Dukat to make him fit for trial, and is sucked into Dukat's worldview. A dark and intense exploration of insanity, evil, and self-justifications, and the path to hell being paved with good intentions. ST:DS9.

Q

My favorite Star Trek villain of all time, Q is fascinating in part because he isn't a typical villain. Rather than being opposed to the Federation ideologically and seeking military power over it like most Trek villains, Q is an advanced omnipotent being and no one is ever really sure what his ideology is. He's a trickster, a teacher, someone who mocks humanity and yet for all that seems to have a great deal of respect for humans. And he likes to wear silly hats. This is important, too. :-)

The Borg

The Borg fascinate me both for what they are-- the emotionless, unified, devouring entity that assimilates all that cross their path-- and for what they're not-- the people, such as Seven from Voyager and Hugh from TNG, who come free of the Collective and need to learn what it is to be an individual. I've included stories about Seven of Nine in here, as well as stories about the Borg Collective, Hugh and his people, and other Borg characters. Because Seven is a main character on Voyager and mostly seems to appear in stories about her romantic relationships with other crew members, I limit Seven stories to either those that deal fundamentally with her Borgness, those that focus on her transition to humanity, or those that are really, really good.

Lore

Data's tormented, psychotic twin brother has inspired a small handful of writers to do really interesting things. There must be a number of people out there who can sympathize with a creation who not only disappointed his creator but could never compare to his brother, either.

The Cardassians

A species capable of honor and nobility, who consider accusing a criminal to be proof that he's guilty and who commit atrocities in the name of helping their victims, the Cardassians are one of the most complexly realized villain races in Star Trek.

The Romulans

The Romulans were my favorite villains for a while, back when all we knew about them came from Diane Duane's novels. Since then the Powers that Be have contradicted Duane's lovely and well-delineated Rihannsu in favor of Yet Another Ordinary Trek Villain Race with names like Pardek and Tomalok and no linguistic distinction whatsoever between them and anyone else. Still, there's good Romulan fanfic out there, and I aim to find some.

The Klingons

Okay, I'm about to speak sacrilege here, but I never liked the Klingons. Never ever. The barbarian "today is a good day to die!" archetype just does nothing for me. However, I won't deny the presence of some really nifty Klingon fanfic out there. And as soon as I find some it'll be put up here.

Authors:

Comic Books

Primarily this subpage will feature Marvel's X-Men, who have long been a source of consternation for me. No matter how badly the suits screw over my favorite characters, something still draws me back. God only knows why. This page will be the largest and likely most frequently updated of the Darkest Heart subpages, at least for a while. I also plan to feature villains from any other comic books that catch my fancy.

Lifetime Feature Fanfic: Luthor's Gift by Elliott S! Maggin - This one is a major coup, folks, and I'm fanatically grateful to Mr. Maggin for giving me permission to link to his story. Elliott S! Maggin's portrayal of Lex Luthor in his novels Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday was single-handedly responsible for my Luthor obsession in childhood. Since the standardization of canon has forced out Mr. Maggin's vision of a complex, tormented Luthor in favor of John Byrne's vision of a guy who might as well be Marvel's Kingpin and seems to have the complexity of a donut, I've pretty much lost all interest in Superman canon. But this story is an unpublished (anywhere but the web) original tale featuring Mr. Maggin's version of Luthor, the version I loved as a 12-year-old and who contributed strongly to my lifelong villains obsession, and his complex relationship with Superman. The hyperlink on Mr. Maggin's name goes to his home page. If you enjoy this story, write to DC and ask them to allow Mr. Maggin to bring his Superman novels back into print or post them on his web page.

August 2000 Feature Fanfic: Vertigo: No Way Up by Kielle - A classic. One of the first Marauder stories and one of the best, dealing with Vertigo's attempts to free herself from Sinister.

X-Men Villains

Magneto

Magneto is my current favorite character, let alone favorite villain, and I host a site dedicated to him, so it only makes sense that I'd be able to come up with a ton of high-quality stories featuring him. In fact my major difficulty was pruning the list! This is by no means a complete collection of Magneto fanfic, or even necessarily all the stuff I think is really good; this is more a collection of Magneto fanfic that I consider particularly good, leaning more toward stories where he is portrayed as a complex mixture of good and evil and less stories that whitewash him or treat him as wholly villainous.

Mystique

It's hard to find good stories for Mystique. Most of the tales about her revolve around her relationship to others-- her daughter Rogue, her sons Kurt Wagner and Graydon Creed, the men she's slept with... very few tales seem to deal with Mystique herself. The site I host dedicated to Mystique covers any story featuring Mystique, but here, I will only archive stories that are about Mystique, and don't just feature her as a secondary character for the sake of someone else's tale.

Sinister

Nathaniel Essex, aka Mr. Sinister, is one of the few characters who I think was vastly improved when his creator, Chris Claremont, left the X-Books. The majority of Claremont's characterizations were superior to what came after them, but Claremont's vision of Sinister was rather uninspired, and didn't really distinguish him from any other megalomaniac. It was Peter Milligan's take on the character, which transformed him into a modern-day Faust, that sparked my interest in this character. Sinister appears in fanfic a great deal, but rather rarely as anything approaching a sympathetic character... and a lot of the ones that portray him sympathetically also whitewash him. Stories I list here are ones that are well-written and also walk the narrow line between whitewashing Sinister and treating him as a mere evil cipher.

The Marauders

One of the most popular villain teams in fandom. There's a wide variety of really good stories featuring the Marauders.

Apocalypse

There's actually relatively little fanfic that's sympathetic to Apocalypse. I'll be expanding this list as I find more stuff.

Stryfe

There's also not a whole lot of fic that's sympathetic to Stryfe, although the list is growing.

Authors

Fanfic written by:

Other X-Men Villains

Other Sites To Visit

Alara's Now Rather Spiffy Magneto Site: This is my Magneto site, and not to be an egomaniac or anything, but it's sort of the largest and most complete Magneto site on the web. The biggest site I've built, currently.

Alara's Mystique Page: Not nearly as spiffy as the Magneto site, but I try to be pretty complete. Like all my Happy-Happy Text-Only Sites, it hasn't much in the way of graphics.

Blood In The Gutter: Kielle's excellent site featuring the Marauders.

Wildways: Another of Kielle's sites, this one dedicated to Spiral.

Marvel Universe (non-X) Villains

DC Superheroes Villains

Other Sites To Visit

Joker: In The Mouth Of MaDnEsS!: A Joker fanfic site.

Other Comics' Villains:

Ozymandias (Watchmen)

Pokemon

Pokemon? Don't laugh; it may be a light-hearted kids' show, but it's Japanese animation, and pretty much any Japanese animation has something in it that can lend itself to serious fic. The stories I've chosen for this page deal with Pokemon villains or antagonists in a serious way. Since the majority of Pokemon fanfic is written by teenagers, and, well, it shows, I've taken care to select the best stuff... a lot of which is still written by teenagers, but these ones are good writers.

There is no canon source so saccharine that it can't produce good fanfic about villains, if people are motivated enough. It may surprise people that Pokemon, unabashedly a kids' craze, has any good fanfic, let alone any good fanfic about villains. But there are certain significant themes that are underplayed in the show itself, but which clever fanfic writers can pick up on. Like the dilemma of being a sentient being with powers, whose species is defined as animals to be captured and enslaved. Like the potential problems lurking behind the scenes in a world that produces hosts of identical women to staff police forces and veterinary hospitals. Like the dark side of a sport that involves enslaving near-sentient beings and teaching them to fight each other.

Oh, yes, there is potential for explorations of the dark side in Pokemon as well. And I'll prove it. Read on...

April 2000 Feature Fanfic: Mewtwo, Escaped by Tiffany .This is not so much about the canon Mewtwo as about the second of a series of engineered Mewtwos, this one female... a powerful fighter who fears humanity as much as they fear her, but who has to learn to rely on them if she wants to be free.

Team Rocket

Meowth

Somehow I feel that there's a tragedy in Meowth that hardly anyone ever deals with. Here's an intelligent being who can talk, clever and ambitious, whose entire life is geared around pleasing a single human who has rejected him... who loves money and is probably legally not allowed to use it... who is disconnected from his own species by the gift that enables him to speak like a human, yet not granted the rights of a human either. A few people seem to have seen some of the potential in Meowth that I have.

  • A Fall From Grace by Kiki. One take on Meowth's origin. How a desperate street kitten with no mother and no future managed to learn to talk like a human, gain the grace of the powerful Giovanni, and lose it again.
  • Value by Leto. An Alakazam forms an anti-human movement of Pokemon, and Meowth joins as its spokesPokemon, dreaming of a world where he can be valued as an intelligent being... but what price might he have to pay?
Jessie and James

These two are usually portrayed as doofuses, for the simple reason that, as shown in the show, they are doofuses. But you have to wonder what drives people to keep trying, time and time again, in the face of repeated failure?

Giovanni

Giovanni is enough of a mystery man that any number of motivations can be ascribed to him. Is he evil? Is he totally ruthless? Or does he have a soft spot in his heart for some people?

  • My Mother: by Leto. Giovanni remembers his mother, the woman who made him who he is today.
Miscellaneous

I include new members of Team Rocket, other members, and other such here.

Villainous Pokemon

Mewtwo

The character pretty much responsible for my reading Pokemon fanfic, Mewtwo is one of the most complex characters in the Pokemon universe. A super-Pokemon created by genetic engineering, Mewtwo is tormented by the feeling that he is not a real being, and at the same time convinced of his own superiority to humanity and other Pokemon, and this conflict drives him to do any number of bizarre things, like try to destroy the world to punish those who created him. Very mature, Mewtwo. :-)

(Nothing here yet except the Feature, but more coming soon!)

Other Fandoms, Other Villains

A fandom needs at least five stories to get its own page; when I have stories from fandoms that haven't yet qualified, they go here. Ideally I'd like to collect stories about villains from fandoms I'm not familiar with or that I enjoy but am not "into" (can I have some Darth Vader stories? Please? Or maybe Cancer Man?)

Star Wars

After the release of "The Phantom Menace", I kind of expected to see a glut of Anakin Skywalker stories. Instead everyone seems to be writing about Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Guess I gotta wait for Episode 2 for the Anakin stuff. :-) However, I will be actively hunting down material about Anakin/Darth and any other Star Wars villain (yes, Maul, Palpatine and Boba Fett all count. So does Jabba the Hutt, though I'm having a hard time imagining a story sympathetic to him.)

  • A Dark and Angry God Arises by Mercutio. What if Anakin were not the innocent boy he seemed, but already permanently scarred by darkness? Frank discussion of sexual situations, but no actual sex.

Highlander

Highlander was a reasonably cool movie, and I've seen a few episodes of the TV show I liked, but it really is not something I'm into. However, this submission by Dannell Lites impressed me considerably. I'll consider making a Highlander subpage if I get enough stories of this quality.

Villainy Tips and Tricks

General Links Of Villainy

Here you'll find links to other multi-fandom villainous pages. Single-fandom pages of villainy will go on their own fandom page or in Other Villains; this links section is just for things that are general to villainy or that show multiple fandoms.

About This Page

  • Submissions: Here's the details on how to get on the site.

References

  1. ^ update for the Gatchaman section
  2. ^ Described as a new archive for the Crossroads X update archived by the Wayback in September 2000, the latest update is also listed as August 2000, so it's possible the first comics section update was also the last.
  3. ^ Darkest Heart - Main Page
  4. ^ Submit to Darkest Heart
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