please make Fount of Knowledge a cunt. please please please make him a right fucking cunt. make him angry and bitter and on the brink of snapping at any given time and only able to restrain himself because he has to otherwise he's completely failed his purpose. you can make him suffer, you can give him self-loathing, but please make it spawn from his repressed rage and self-destructive commitment to his position. let characters have "evil" traits while still being sympathetic. let him be angry, weirdly mean, a bit egotistical, and suffering because as far as he's been taught he's not supposed to feel that way.
like okay if you'll let me be pretentious for a moment. am i the only one who's genuinely gotten kind of sick of corrupted villains being depicted as totally innocent people who were pure and kind and perfect before becoming who they are as villains? am i the only one who's gotten sick of acting like every turn to villainy is a full-on 180 heel-turn done out of desperation and nothing else? am i genuinely just insane for thinking that maybe, just maybe, the negative traits a Villain Who Wasn't Always A Villain exhibits are traits that were there since before they became a villain and that just became horribly maladapted and out of control after either enough time or after the wrong set of events? that villains SHOULDN'T just be completely and utterly unrecognizable from who they used to be? or are you just gonna keep giving Shadow Milk issues he absolutely doesn't have so you can try to depict him as some poor little flawed victim who just needs love?
and, to be quite honest; am i insane for getting fucking sick of people acting like Fount's personality would have been "Pure Vanilla but miserable"? am i genuinely that fucking nuts for thinking maybe you shouldn't base his personality so fucking strongly off another character's, and that maybe that indicates a lack of creativity and confidence when it comes to character writing? Like, seriously, is THIS the best you can do? come on, people. Let him be bitter, let him be jaded, let him be horribly repressed, let him be interesting.