Disassembled: Heroes and Villains

Everyone Thinks They're The Hero

• Tom Bedford of Handsome Comics • Season 1 • Episode 30

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How to Become the Villain of Your Own Story


Villains aren’t born.

They’re built—choice by choice.


In this opening episode of Disassembled: Heroes and Villains, we examine how good intentions can curdle into something destructive, and why the line between hero and villain is thinner than most stories admit.


Using pop culture characters and narrative psychology, we explore how the pursuit of power, certainty, or success can slowly strip away purpose—until the goal matters more than the cost. This isn’t a show about evil for evil’s sake. It’s about how people convince themselves they’re right… even as everything around them breaks.


This episode asks:


• When does conviction become obsession?

• Why does winning sometimes feel emptier than losing?

• How do people justify harm in the name of progress?

• And what warning signs appear before someone becomes the villain?


Because the most dangerous villains don’t see themselves as monsters.

They see themselves as necessary.


🎙 Disassembled: Heroes and Villains

Written & hosted by Tom Bedford | Handsome Comics

📩 Business inquiries: handsomecomics@gmail.com

We call them heroes, but every hero is one moment away from crossing the line. Superman holds back Optimus. Prime lowers his weapon. Captain America chooses a restraint when ending the fight would be easier. And then there are the others Anakin Skywalker who decides he's right. Walter White, who decides the end justifies the means. The difference isn't strength or pain or destiny It's the moment someone decides they're absolutely right and restraint starts to look like failure. We think monsters are born in the dark, but they're not. They're born in the light of their own self-righteousness, and that light is blinding. This is disassembled heroes and villains, and today we're asking a dangerous question. What makes good men fall? And heroes rise. Everyone thinks the difference between heroes and monsters is obvious. We tell ourselves it's about morality or cruelty or how far someone is willing to go but the line doesn't break there. The most dangerous belief a person can hold isn't that they're powerful. It's that they're right and that everyone else just hasn't caught up yet. Because being right feels responsible, it feels necessary. It gives you permission to stop listening. That's what this episode is really about. Not good versus evil, not heroes versus villains. It's about the moment restraint becomes negotiable. We'd like to imagine monsters as obvious, loud, unhinged, fueled by rage, but most of the time they're not. They don't see themselves as villains at all. They see themselves as people who ran out of options. I'm right. I have to do this. Someone has to. It's a sort of seduction, and it works because it feels grown up. It feels serious. It feels like leadership. That's why Thanos doesn't smile when he snaps his fingers. There's no celebration in it. He's burdened by the choice. He believes he's the only one strong enough to make it. What drives him isn't cruelty. It's purpose. Untethered from restraint. Certainty is comforting, especially when you're exhausted, especially when you're afraid, especially when responsibility feels like it's pressing straight through your chest. Certainty removes doubt and doubt slows you down. So restraint becomes the first thing that go. That's how people lose the thread without realizing it. Then there's the excuse that feels even cleaner than pain: logic. Look at shockwave. He doesn't act out of rage. He doesn't lash out. He just calculates. He runs the numbers and decides morality is inefficient. When certainty turns, mathematical restraint stops factoring into the equation. Pain works differently. Pain tells you you're owed something. Pain convinces you that holding back is a luxury reserve. For people who haven't suffered pain whispers that restraint is unfair. That's where the story of Megatron truly takes place, not as a tyrant, not as a conqueror. But is someone hurt? Someone crushed beneath a system that didn't care whether he lived or died. Someone who watched Power Protect itself while others paid the price, and for a long time he was right. The injustice was real. The suffering was real. The anger made sense, but something subtle changed. Pain stopped being a reason and started becoming permission. The question shifted from how do we fix this to Why should I hold back? It's when oppression turns into authority. That's when restraint starts to feel naive. It's the same trap Light Yagami falls into. He starts with a notebook and a desire to clean up the world, but once he decides he's the only one qualified to judge it, he stops being a student. He starts being a God and Gods don't hesitate. From the inside. None of this feels like corruption. It feels like clarity, like finally seeing the world as it truly is. That's how people cross the line without noticing it's behind them. This isn't a fictional problem. I've lived a smaller version of it. There was a time when I was certain I was doing the right thing, working constantly, sacrificing everything, convincing myself it was necessary. I believe the weight of the world was on my shoulders, that if I didn't carry it, everything would fall apart. And slowly. Things started drifting, not through arguments, not through explosions, through absence, being there physically, but not really present. Choosing busyness over connection, letting urgency outrank what was right in front of me. I told myself I had no choice. That the sacrifice was noble, that the grind would justify the cost, but certainty has a way of lying to you. Restraint felt unbearable. Slowing down felt like failure. Admitting limits felt like weakness, and asking for help. Felt like losing control. And so I didn't. I hid behind work, behind progress, behind numbers that looked good on a screen. It felt like momentum. It felt like success, but it was a castle built on sand certainty, kept insisting it was worth it. A calendar. I couldn't escape a phone. I never put down a voice telling me this is how it had to be. And that's the trap. Certainty doesn't announce itself as danger. It shows up as the sky's a necessity. And once you're convinced, you're right. Once you believe there's no other option, you stop asking the only question that matters. Who pays the cost of certainty? That's where the line actually is. Not between the heroes and monsters, but between restraint and permission. Because monsters don't start by choosing evil, they start by deciding they're right. And once restraint no longer matters, everything else follows. People like to say power corrupts. It's a comforting belief. If power is the problem, the morality is just a matter of scale. Stay small, stay humble. Stay untested. But power doesn't change who someone is. It removes the friction Power shortens the distance between belief and action. It strips away the consequences that once forced restraint. And when someone is already certain they're right. Power doesn't corrupt them. It clears the path. Pain sharpens belief. Power accelerates it. Certainty removes the last thing standing in the way. Restraint in the moment, restraint starts to feel optional. That line is already gone. The pattern repeats across stories because it repeats in people, not because they're evil, but because their certainty feels earned. When pain becomes identity, belief hardens. That's where Megatron lives, not in conquest, not in tyranny, but in memory. He remembers the injustice, clearly, the silence of the Senate, the way power insulated itself, while others were crushed beneath it. And that matters because for a long time his anger makes sense. Pain clarifies injustice. It names the wound. It explains the rage and pain tells you what went wrong, but it also whispers something dangerous. You've suffered enough, you don't want restraint anymore. At first, belief is a response. Then it becomes a mandate. The goal shifts quietly from ending oppression to justifying force. The question stops being, how do we fix this and becomes. Why should I hold back? That's how someone who starts as a revolutionary, wakes up as a ruler without ever feeling like they changed. Because from the inside, it doesn't feel like corruption. It feels like resolve, but pain isn't the only excuse that removes restraint. Sometimes. Certainty arrives wearing something cleaner. Logic. Look at shockwave. He doesn't burn with rage. He doesn't grieve. He reduces lives to variables, suffering to inefficiency, morality to interference. The horror isn't that he's cruel. It's that cruelty never enters the equation at all. Logic creates distance. Distance dulls empathy and empathy. Once doled stop slowing you down, when certainty becomes mathematical, restraint feels irrational, why hesitate if the outcome is optimal? Why slow down if the numbers are clean? This is how a restraint gets reframed, not as mercy, not as wisdom, but as waste. And once restraint is labeled inefficient. It doesn't survive long. Certainty can also grow out of loss. Not logic, not ideology, just the raw fact of pain endured. That's from Mewtwo stands created, used. Discarded suffering doesn't just hurt him, it convinces him he's owed. Owed freedom. Owed justice, owed authority. The logic is simple and devastating. If the world hurt me first, why should I care what it costs? Now when you have no power, that belief is just bitterness. It stays contained, but when you gain the power to reshape the world, bitterness, becomes part of your inner philosophy. Entitlement turns into permission, and mercy starts to feel like betrayal, not of others, but of your own pain. Sometimes certainty doesn't argue. It declares necessity. It's the danger of absolutism. Look at the Doom Slayer. There's no confusion about evil here. No moral ambiguity about the enemy. Hell must be stopped, But Absolutism narrows the world where only one outcome exists. If annihilation is the only acceptable end, everything else becomes collateral. Certainty doesn't just remove restraint, it removes alternatives. And when there are no alternatives, restraint has nowhere to live. Different stories, different justifications, pain, logic, loss, necessity, but the mechanism never changes. Certainty convinces you that restraint is a delay you can't afford, and once restraint feels optional, the line is already gone. If this were only about villains, this would be easy. You could no along point to the extremes. Tell yourself that this is about monsters who conquer worlds or burn cities, but certainly doesn't announce itself at that scale. It shows up quietly. And the argument you needed to win in the shortcut you told yourself was temporary. And the relationship you justified neglecting because of this mattered more. But you're not megatron. And you're not shockwave, but how many bridges have you burned because you were sure you were right? The scale is different. The instinct is identical. This is where heroes diverge, not because they lack power, but because they choose to stop. Look at Optimus Prime. He has the strength, the justification, but he refuses to win at the cost of becoming what he fights. That choice is imp, passive. It exhausts him. Every active restraint, delays, victory. Every refusal prolonged suffering, and he carries that weight anyway. Dinobo makes the cost even clearer. Restraint doesn't just delay his victory, it ends him. Honor doesn't save him. Principle doesn't spare him. He chooses restraint. No, it cost him his life. Not because it guarantees success, but because it preserves meaning captain America makes the choice smaller but no less costly. He ends fights without becoming them. He stops when it would be easier to finish them, not because he doubts his strength, but because he understands what strength without restraint turns into. Because restraint isn't weakness. It's sacrifice. It costs time. It costs validation. It costs the relief of being certain heroes don't lack power. They absorb the cost of not using it. Power doesn't, corrupt pain doesn't doom certainty does. The only thing standing between a hero and a monster is whether restraint still matters, when no one is forcing you to keep it. Before we move on from this question, if you ever felt the tension between what you could do and what you should do, then you're exactly where you belong. This is Disassembled Heroes and Villains, a conversation about the figures we mythologize. Not to admire them, but to examine what they cost. Heroes shape our restraint. Villains hardened by certainty. Stories that reflect the choices we make when no one is forcing our hand. In the weeks ahead, we'll trace the line through figures like Optimus, primal and others who held back when power made stopping optional. So if this question matters to you, follow the show. We're just getting started. There's a truth you don't learn until you've lived long enough to regret something you've once defended. Certainly doesn't feel reckless in the moment. It feels responsible. It feels like carrying weight. No one else is willing to touch. I've learned how convincing certainty feels, especially when you're tired, especially when you're scared, especially when you're sure you're right, because certainty shows up when you're already stretched thin. When the pressure is constant, when the clock is loud, when slowing down feels like letting everything collapse. It's when restraint doesn't just feel difficult. It feels irresponsible. You start telling yourself stories that if you don't push harder, you're failing. If you don't sacrifice more, you don't care enough. If you don't carry the burden alone, you're weak. And the worst part, those stories sound noble. They sound like leadership. They sound like commitment. They sound like doing what has to be done, but certainty has a blind spot and never ask who's paying the price. I didn't cross a line in a moment of rage. There was no explosion, no argument, no dramatic turning point. It happened quietly through long nights that turned into habits through conversations shortened instead of deepened through presence, replaced by productivity. I told myself I was doing the right thing, working constantly, building something that mattered, sacrificing now, so everything could be better Later. I believe the weight of the world was on my shoulders that if I didn't carry it. Everything would fall apart and slowly things started drifting, not because of conflict, but because of absence. I was there but not really there, physically present, but mentally elsewhere. I chose urgency over connection, busyness over attention. Certainty over restraint. I told myself I had no choice, that the sacrifice was noble, that the grind would justify the cost, but certainty as a way of lying to you because restraint feels unbearable when you're afraid. Slowing down feels like failure. Admitting limits feels like weakness, and asking for help feels like losing control. And so I didn't. I hid behind work, behind progress, behind numbers that look good on a screen. It felt like momentum. It felt like success, but it was a castle built on sand certainty, kept whispering that it was worth it, a calendar. I couldn't escape a phone. I never put down a voice insisting this is just how it had to be. And that's the trap because certainly doesn't announce itself as danger. It shows up as necessity. And this is where the mirror turns out word, because this isn't just my story. Where have you justified the shortcut? Not the obvious one, the small one. The corner you cut because you were tired. The conversation you avoided because it was uncomfortable. The standard you lowered just this once. When your restraint start to feel unfair, when impatience feel like punishment, when did doing the right thing feel like falling behind? How many times have you said just this once. And how many times did that sentence repeat? Certainty thrives in repetition. The first time feels like an exception. The second time feels like precedent. The third time feels like identity. It's how these lines disappear, not in dramatic leaps and inches. And the hardest truth to accept is this. No one crosses that line with you. You cross it alone in the quiet moment when no one is watching. When you could pause, but you don't when you could ask, but choose not to. When the straighten is available and you decline it, that's where the line stops being visible, this is why heroes matter, not because they win, not because they're powerful, but because they stop. Look at Optimus Prime. He lives with certainty too. He knows Megatron must be stopped. He knows the war has gone on way too long. He knows Mercy has a cost. If anyone has earned that right to say enough. It's him. If anyone could justify ending it permanently, ending it brutally, ending it efficiently, it's Optimus. That's what makes his restraints so heavy, because it isn't born from doubt. It's born from choice. Every day he wakes up knowing he could end the war faster by abandoning the line every day he chooses not to. That choice doesn't make him stronger. It makes him tired. It makes him carry grief longer than he should have to. It makes him watch others suffer while he refuses the shortcut. A restraint cost him victory. It costs him certainty. It costs him peace, and he pays it anyway because he understands something that monsters forget , once you decide the ends justify the means, you don't just reach the end, you become it. Optimus doesn't refuse to cross the line because it's easy. He refuses because crossing it would destroy the very thing he's fighting. To protect, meaning? Trust the idea that power can exist without domination at the cost of never crossing the line. It's lonely. It's exhausting. It's misunderstood, and it's the only reason the line exists at all. So here's the truth. That doesn't feel good but matters. Restraint doesn't make life easier, it makes it heavier. You don't get applause for it. You don't get certainty. You don't get relief. You get responsibility. You get the quiet burden, you get the long road. You get the choice to stop over and over again when no one would blame you for going further. And that choice is always made alone because in the end, the line between heroes and monsters isn't crossed in rage. It's crossed in certainty, and the only thing that keeps you on the right side of it is the willingness to stop when you're absolutely sure you're right. Thank you for staying with this conversation about the fine line between heroes and villains. Not the spectacle of either, but the quieter thing between both, because the line we're talking about doesn't live in battles. It doesn't live in origin stories. It doesn't even live in intention. It lives in the stories you tell yourself, when restraint starts to feel unfair, it lives in. The moment you decide that slowing down would costs too much, that stopping would set you back. That asking for help would somehow make you smaller. That's where the line actually is, not in rage, not in cruelty. Uncertainty. We'd like to imagine monsters as something other, something louder, something more broken than us. But monsters don't start as monsters. They start as people who decide their reasons are enough, enough to cut the corner, enough to ignore the cost enough to stop asking who gets hurt. And heroes don't stay heroes because they're stronger or pure or immune to doubt. They stay heroes because they keep choosing retrain long after it stops being rewarded. They choose it when it costs them time, when it costs them clarity, when it costs them certainty. The choice doesn't feel noble in the moment. It feels lonely, it feels inefficient. It feels like standing still while the world keeps moving, which is why so many people cross the line without ever meaning to. So stay uncomfortable. Stay aware of the stories you tell yourself when you're tired, when you're scared, when you're absolutely sure you're right. Stay suspicious of the voice that says, just this once. This is different, or, I don't have a choice. Because you do, you always do. Restraint doesn't announce itself as wisdom. It doesn't come with applause. It doesn't feel like progress. Most of the time. It just feels like stopping when no one would blame you for going further. And that's the point. So stay present, stay honest about the cost you're passing on. Stay willing to pause before certainty makes the decision for you. And remember, the line between heroes and monsters and crossed in rage is crossed in certainty. And the only thing that keeps you on the right side of it is the courage to stop when you're convinced you're right. That's where the real work is. That's where the story actually happens. If this question stayed with you, if it made you pause or rethink a moment you once justified, I'd love to hear it. What part of this episode at closest to home and why drop a comment. Let's keep this conversation going. If you want more episodes like this where we break down heroes and villains, not to admire them, but to understand how the stories we grew up with, shape the people we become. Make sure you're following disassembled, heroes and villains on your favorite podcast platform. So stay sharp, stay grounded, and as always, stay handsome.