Alevh-

„I like John Watson’s taste. It is slightly proper, an echo of the twin professions of doctoring and soldiering. Which are both old and quite pukka professions, so why wouldn’t he be a man who knows what he wears? Men either notice, or they don’t. And John notices. He’s very understated, never showy, never branded. He is just a very self-confident man.”

I’ve been seeing people say that Venomous can’t be Shadowy Figure because Venomous is too empathetic after TKO’s House. I’m here to explain why that line of thought is flawed.

1. Venomous is a villain. He’s done enough that he’s earned a -8 pow level, so he’s had to have done some terrible things before. Even with Boxman, his business partner, he’s very aloof and impersonable until he realizes Boxman shares a passion of his, and even after that he’s still aloof at times. We see him friendly with Billiam, but considering Billiam’s kind to Cosma and Vormulax, we can see villains are generally welcoming to each other (so long as they’re seen as equal).

2. Venomous loves crushing heroes. Oh does he love crushing them. We’ve not seen examples of him doing so yet, but his love of destroying heroes is enough that he keeps his partnership with Boxman, who’s very bad at supplying his clients with their orders.

3. Fink. I’ve seen people say his relationship with Fink is proof he’s too empathetic, but there’s two issues with that alone. One, he made Fink. He intentionally made Fink to serve him, and she seems to do a pretty good job of it. And she’s evil like he is. Those’d both give him good reason to actually like her and treat her like more of a child than Boxman.

3.a When Fink is all burnt up at the end of Villain’s Night In, Venomous isn’t concerned. He assumes she had fun crushing heroes.

4. Shadowy Figure hasn’t actually hurt KO all that much. Even if Venomous would be empathetic towards KO, well, think about it, have we actually seen SF attempt to really hurt KO? In his first meeting with KO, he’s actually very friendly. In his second meeting, he kicks KO and throws the kid back, but KO’s fine afterwards, and the rest of the time he’s just dodging and blocking. And in this last meeting with KO, the one time he does hurt KO, this is his face.

He’s not happy about the fact he just hurt KO. He didn’t want to hurt KO. That’s not his goal.

It's not empathetic, rather reserved ../?

but it is more than clear (and most likely js) that venomous is shadowy figure)