[Villainous]

Black Widow

🪪 Identity 👤

Full Name: Black Widow ^{(can use English, Spanish, or French pronunciation)}

Name Meaning: Like every other Black Web member, her name was changed to fit into the cult; she was named after the highly venomous spider species. Her original name is completely unknown.

Nicknames:

• Lady Widow (her close followers' nickname for her)

Gender [Pronouns]: Female [she/her]

Orientation: Irrelevant; she took a strict oath of chastity

Species: Human

Ethnicity: French

Age: 30

Birthdate: October 24, 1989

Residence: The Black Cobweb

Height: 5'10"

🕙 Origin & Story 📚

Birth Parents: Unknown

Backstory: Black Widow was just an awkward, outcast schoolgirl until she turned 12. Feeling even worse in her new school, Widow started looking into Black Hat's history out of curiosity and quickly developed her obsession with him. She dressed as him for Halloween and was confronted by several Black Web members on the street. They convinced her that she could finally be in a community of people like her as long as she joined them. So that November, she packed her things and ran away from home to begin her assimilation into the Black Web.

Because of her young age and eagerness, Black Widow was seen as a prodigy within the Black Web. Her dedication was so high that she ascended the organization's ranks while still being younger than most of the common members. This caught the eye of their aging leader Black Arachne. When Widow turned 15, Arachne reappointed her to be her own personal apprentice. In only a year, Widow started to be seen as a junior leader just below Arachne. It was no wonder that when Arachne died, the position of leader was passed onto Black Widow.

Present: Widow still strongly retains her status as the Black Web leader. She is as dedicated to her organization's goals as ever to the point where she continues Arachne's cruel legacy of fear and punishment within the organization. Fueled by 18 years of brainwashing, pandering, and an echo chamber of cruel ideas, Widow has become a manifestation of the Black Web's core values and sees herself as the ultimate authority, only second to Black Hat himself...or at least, her idea of Black Hat.

🧠 Personality 💭

Traits: Charismatic, loves spiders, egotistical, delusional, stubborn, controlling, manipulative, envious, megalomaniac, cruel, evil

Alignment: Lawful evil

Affiliations: The Black Web

Aesthetic: Cultcore, spiders, spider webs, gothic bridal, Black Hat imagery, blacks, and reds

Likes: Black Hat, being in power, asserting her power, spiders, Victorian goth fashion, black coffee, bitter food, the macabre, imagining a future where everyone outside of her organization is dead

Dislikes: Black Hat's subordinates, other Black Hat cults, romance, sex, affection, peace, fairies, young children, most of the outside world

🌠 Dreams and Dread 💀

Life Goal: To assist Black Hat in taking over and ruling the world

Fears:

🪞 Appearance 🪞

Hair Color: Jet black

Hair Style: Mid black length with four gelled up hair spikes pointing upwards to resemble a spider's legs

Skin Color: Ghastly pale

Eye Color: Bright, soul-staring blue

Body Modifications: Has many Black Hat tattoos scattered throughout her body under her uniform

Scars: None

Color Scheme: Blacks, grays, and reds

🗨️ Relationships 💬 

🤝 Allies 🤝

Black Hat (sort of)

Even before she joined the Black Web, Widow worshiped the ground that Black Hat walked on. The Black Web as a whole sees him as the destined leader of the entire world and worship him like their own God and savior. She insists that she would do anything he commanded, even at the cost of her own values or life.

The problem is that Black Hat can't stand Arachne, Widow, or the Black Web. The organization was founded after he turned Arachne into a spider monster out of spite, so he hated them from the very start. Their goals don't exactly align with his and they're seen as a pest to his organization that he worked so hard to build the way he wanted. He wishes they would be more original, stop invading his spaces to recruit members, and actually focus on taking over the outside world instead of torturing their own members.

They clash so much that when Widow meets Black Hat face-to-face for the first time, she assumes he's an imposter and nearly executes him! Needless to say, she could never redeem herself to him after that incident.

Black Scorpion ^[follower]

Scorpion is Widow's closest and most loyal follower, going as far as to live with her in her quarters. Scorpion is the same age as Widow, but joined much later during her college years. She quickly picked up how much authority the junior leader had and decided to get a head start by swearing loyalty to her specifically. Scorpion remained a common member for years to come, but was appointed to head guard the minute Widow came into power. She's lowkey despised among older cult members due to Widow giving her so much favoritism, but Widow embraces her as her favorite and most dedicated member.

Black Spider ^[follower]

Spider acts as Widow's own Flug, carrying out each and every order of business when she doesn't want to. Despite his young age and short height, he's very capable in battle and can quickly subdue his opponents by giving them a false sense of security. His prowess in manipulation and willingness to do any amount of work for Widow makes him favored over most other members.

Black Arachne ^{[former leader]}

Arachne won dedication from Widow by showering her in affirmations at a young age and continuing to feed her ego until her deathbed. Widow swears loyalty to Arachne even post mortem and does everything she can to honor her.

😈 Enemies 👿

Flug, Demencia, 505, Greaser, and Admin

Black Widow despises Black Hat's subordinates, each for their own unique reason: Flug is too weak, Demencia doesn't understand what Black Hat likes, 505 is too soft, Greaser is poser who's too emotionally attached to others, and Admin is a god damn pacifist fairy who doesn't belong in five feet of Black Hat. Her hatred for all of them boils down to them not fitting Black Widow's image of Black Hat's followers and her own rooted jealousy that she can never admit to having. She wants to either assimilate them into the cult or execute them with no other options.

✏️ Development 📓

Earliest Art:

Inspirations:

• A lot of research about various IRL cults, their psychology, and their leaders
• Black Widow spiders
• The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here by Alive In Chains
• The Tumblr Sexyman template
• Black Hat himself (Villainous)
• Shadow Weaver (She-Ra and the Princess of Power)
• Alastor (Hazbin Hotel)

Behind-the-Scenes History: Black Widow was created to be the main villain of my Villainous fanfiction Lullaby of the Black Web. That fanfiction focuses on Black Hat as one of the main protagonists, so I needed a villain that somehow came off as worse than him to be the antagonist. So I thought hey, what's more evil than Black Hat himself? Probably a cult leader. So Black Widow and the Black Web were created. They were originally called "The Black Top," but I decided to go all in on the spider theming as I planned out the story.

Widow herself was originally thought of as a love rival to Demencia, but I immediately realized making her yet another woman defined by her romantic attraction to Black Hat would water down her character. So I made her a strict chaste woman to make her more of a foil to Demencia and show how deeply rooted her obsession with Black Hat's ideals are.

🎈 Fun Facts 🎉

• I didn't originally intend on Widow being French. That part of her came from one of my friends mishearing me on a Discord call and it immediately stuck.
• Black Widow was a bit of a y2k goth girl before joining the Black Web and donning their uniform
• If she never joined the Black Web, Widow would be a traditional melodrama villain and a passionate member of the BHO with none of the hostility towards Black Hat's subordinates