January Meme: My favourite villains who will/should not be redeemed, and why
First, I suppose I should specify what I mean with „redemption“, because fandom has a whole range of definitions going from „villain is written with sympathetic traits and tragic background explaing his/her actions“ via „villain confronts own misdeeds, does act in attempt to make up for them /acts to help others from this point onwards“ to „villain is proven to have been not a villain at all and accepted by other heroes as fellow hero after they apologize for ever having seen that person as a villain and/or are revealed as the true villains“ (this would be one favourite fanfic trope). Sometimes, in specific circumstances and for some people, it even seems to mean just „villain should have sex with hero(ine) and be declared their one true love to blast all other loves“. (At least some of the participants in the Spike Wars back in the day gave me the impression that this was what the meant when wanting redemption for Spike. Cough.)
As for the characters named below: my own definition of what I mean when I say that I don’t want this characters to be redeemed doesn’t include sympathetic writing, or the occasional non-hostile relationship with a heroic character. But what my definition of „redemption“ for the purpose of this list does include is for the villain in question to turn another leaf, realise their misdeeds and trying to atone for them, and it most definitely includes „villain revealed to have been right and misjudged all along“.
In no particular order, listed by fandom:
Babylon 5: Cartagia and Mr. Morden. Cartagia shows up just the right amount of sceentime, enough to come across as a dangerous menace which needs to defeated, not outstaying his welcome, and getting killed off in a satisfying manner. He’s space Caligula, and to be more specifiic Space Caligula in the „I, Claudius“ edition, which means that in addition to being crazy and sadistic he’s also far from stupid and occasionally witty. I don’t think anyone has ever written „Cartagia didn’t really mean it“ type of fanfiction, but that might simply have been because the heyday of B5 fandom was another era. (Today, I have no doubt there would be Cartagia/Reader stories galore.) And the licensed B5 fanfiction, aka the novels, certainly didn’t take up his cause either.
Mr. Morden, otoh, got a tragic background in one of the official novels (in the Anna Sheridan novel, which I’ve read) and, according to someone else told me, a sort of retcon of his actions during the show itself in the Technomages novel (which I haven’t read myself, so take this summary with a caveat): apparantly the Shadows had him on happy drugs during the show years in these novels? To which I say: hell, no. The only canon is screen canon. And on screen, Mr. Morden works for the Shadows because he believes 100% in their Darwinian survival of the strongest ideology (much as Lyta pre Kosh II is utterly convinced of the Vorlons‘ cause) and thoroughly enjoys manipulating people to boot. Which he’s excellent at. He’s definitely not blackmailed or drugged by the Shadows into doing anything he does on the show. Morden is the closest thing B5 have to a medieval morality play devil/tempter figure, and like them, he’s tremendously entertaining and hissable at the same time. I enjoyed each of his appearance, and I enjoyed his double come-uppance (via Londo removing the Shadows from Centauri Prime, and then Vir waving at his head). No redemption needed.
Blake's 7: Servalan. At different times Supreme Commander of an evil fascist Federation, ruler and then deposed but still actively evil comissioner, chief antagonist of our heroes. Extremely fashionable, and somehow never making that look ridiculous, even if she stalks in evening wear and high heels through a desert. Do not attempt to blackmail her with dirt you have on her; she will destroy you. There are no woman like her, and Jaime Lannister as well as G.R.R. Martin totally stole that line from Tanith Lee's script for Sand.
The damage we see Servalan do is given considerable screentime. It's not prettified, and while our heroes often foil her plans, she's also shown as outsmarting them. While obviously she has a strong sense of self preservation, the few times her life is seriously in danger (as when she's chained up by rebels and awaiting execution, for example) she's not presented as begging for said life. S3 and s4 give her a great foeyay relationship with Avon ("but I don't think of you as an enemy, Avon; I think of you as a future friend"), and the actors have terrific chemistry. While I regret that the show never followed up on the s2 cliffhanger where Andromedans invade the galaxy and our heroes have to fight in battle with Servalan's forces by showing that at work (s3 opens when the battle is already over), and I'm a sucker for stories in which Servalan due to plot McGuffin X has to temporarily team up with either Avon or anyone else in the Liberator, I did NOT want to see her redeemed. And canon never went there. All hail the Supreme Commander!
Spartacus: Lucretia and Batiatus (meaning Quintus, of course, not his father Titus). Canon at no point during their two seasons (the show’s first season, Blood and Sand, and the prequel season, Gods in the Arena as well as Lucretia’s third season (the show’s official second) makes any attempt to disguise these are two people for whom slaves are moveable furniture, whether or not they’re sexually or non-sexually interested in individual ones. They’re also shown to be capable of murder when it comes to non-slaves when it comes to getting what they want. Consent? Is only of interest to them when it comes to themselves and Lucretia’s bff Gaia. Everyone else getting raped (by them or other people) is fine. And good lord, do not make enemies of them in any way, because they’re also great at turning a grudge into a mortal feud while being spectacularly blind to the fact other people might feel that way about them.
And yet Batiatus and Lucretia, played by John Hannah and Lucy Lawless, are probably my favourite characters in both Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena. This is because canon also equipped them with great and undestroyable loyalty and love to and for each other. Because their ambition is rooted in desperate social climbing in a society that relentlessly looks down on them as noveau riche at best. Because the actors play them as vibrant and intense. (Also because in the first season, the other Romans are even more loathsome, and while the Gladiators and female slaves are in varying degrees likeable, even admirable, they didn’t yet capture me the same way. Later seasons were different in that regard.)
Spartacus is undoubtedly a trashy show, but among its virtues, to me, was that it was truly excellent in giving us three dimensional villains whom the audience can understand without ever excusing them or their actions. (Whether or not the audience then did so is another matter. Every now and then Fandomsecrets still has a secret pop up denying that what Lucretia did to Crixus was rape. This is not the show’s fault, though. Yes, there was the one time she didn’t have sex with him when he didn’t want to. Against all the other times when she did. And Crixus, this the show makes equally clear, would not have had sex with Lucretia at all if he’d ever had a choice about it.)
So, what I did not want to see: Lucretia and/or Batiatus seeing the light, freeing all their slaves and spending the rest of their money in Spartacus‘ cause, to put it flippantly. What I did want: an ending fitting the characters. Which I got. No redemption necessary.
I, Claudius: Livia. Still one of the best female villains ever, in any genre. Oh, strike the „female“, just say „villain“. A great many successors very hard tried to be her, and often fell short. Now, one of the great things about Livia is that she kills off and/or ruins a great many sympathetic characters during her screen time, that our narrator fears and abhorrs her for most of his life not solely for this but because she openly ridicules and humiliates him when he’s a handicapped child… and that he and the audience still pity her when she dies without a) Livia ever repenting her actions, or b) the show presenting her as justified in said actions. Partly this is due to Caligula taking over as the story’s main villain in Livia’s last but one scene, but part is also due to how she’s acted (by the great Sian Phillips) and written (by both novel and show). Basically, when Claudius promises her he’ll make her a goddess (which according to their belief system would allow her to escape any consequences for her actions in the afterlife), this reader/viewer was glad. Despite the above named deeds, during which I certainly sympathized with whoever Livia was currently destroying more than with Livia. (Well, except for Augustus. He had it coming.)
Livia being consistently smart, ruthless and incredibly competent at whatever she chooses to do is part of that emotional reaction. Then there’s also the way the show often gives her the best lines. (Tiberius: Mother, did it ever occur to you that it might be you they hate, more than me? Livia: Nothing occurs to you that hasn’t occured to me first. That is the affliction with which I life.) And yet you never have the impression that I, Claudius treats Livia’s murders and life ruining action flippantly. Kind hearts and coronets, this is not. Her victims are more often than not sympathetic characters whose suffering happens on screen and is awful to watch. And whether or not you buy Livia’s statement to the dying Augustus that what she did, she did for Rome, not for herself, the show’s narrative certainly presents the consequences of her actions greatly contributing to Rome getting worse, and worse, and worse. In the show’s tale of one Emperor being worse than the next (until Claudius ascends, and even that ends with Nero), Livia manipulating the succession by every means she has is largely to blame for this. If she'd seen the error of her ways before she died, the narrative would have let her off the hook for this, at least that is whath it would have felt like to me, but it didn't.
In conclusion: Livia’s one hell of an unredeemed villain. And I would never have wished her otherwise.
The Other Days
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1265937.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
As for the characters named below: my own definition of what I mean when I say that I don’t want this characters to be redeemed doesn’t include sympathetic writing, or the occasional non-hostile relationship with a heroic character. But what my definition of „redemption“ for the purpose of this list does include is for the villain in question to turn another leaf, realise their misdeeds and trying to atone for them, and it most definitely includes „villain revealed to have been right and misjudged all along“.
In no particular order, listed by fandom:
Babylon 5: Cartagia and Mr. Morden. Cartagia shows up just the right amount of sceentime, enough to come across as a dangerous menace which needs to defeated, not outstaying his welcome, and getting killed off in a satisfying manner. He’s space Caligula, and to be more specifiic Space Caligula in the „I, Claudius“ edition, which means that in addition to being crazy and sadistic he’s also far from stupid and occasionally witty. I don’t think anyone has ever written „Cartagia didn’t really mean it“ type of fanfiction, but that might simply have been because the heyday of B5 fandom was another era. (Today, I have no doubt there would be Cartagia/Reader stories galore.) And the licensed B5 fanfiction, aka the novels, certainly didn’t take up his cause either.
Mr. Morden, otoh, got a tragic background in one of the official novels (in the Anna Sheridan novel, which I’ve read) and, according to someone else told me, a sort of retcon of his actions during the show itself in the Technomages novel (which I haven’t read myself, so take this summary with a caveat): apparantly the Shadows had him on happy drugs during the show years in these novels? To which I say: hell, no. The only canon is screen canon. And on screen, Mr. Morden works for the Shadows because he believes 100% in their Darwinian survival of the strongest ideology (much as Lyta pre Kosh II is utterly convinced of the Vorlons‘ cause) and thoroughly enjoys manipulating people to boot. Which he’s excellent at. He’s definitely not blackmailed or drugged by the Shadows into doing anything he does on the show. Morden is the closest thing B5 have to a medieval morality play devil/tempter figure, and like them, he’s tremendously entertaining and hissable at the same time. I enjoyed each of his appearance, and I enjoyed his double come-uppance (via Londo removing the Shadows from Centauri Prime, and then Vir waving at his head). No redemption needed.
Blake's 7: Servalan. At different times Supreme Commander of an evil fascist Federation, ruler and then deposed but still actively evil comissioner, chief antagonist of our heroes. Extremely fashionable, and somehow never making that look ridiculous, even if she stalks in evening wear and high heels through a desert. Do not attempt to blackmail her with dirt you have on her; she will destroy you. There are no woman like her, and Jaime Lannister as well as G.R.R. Martin totally stole that line from Tanith Lee's script for Sand.
The damage we see Servalan do is given considerable screentime. It's not prettified, and while our heroes often foil her plans, she's also shown as outsmarting them. While obviously she has a strong sense of self preservation, the few times her life is seriously in danger (as when she's chained up by rebels and awaiting execution, for example) she's not presented as begging for said life. S3 and s4 give her a great foeyay relationship with Avon ("but I don't think of you as an enemy, Avon; I think of you as a future friend"), and the actors have terrific chemistry. While I regret that the show never followed up on the s2 cliffhanger where Andromedans invade the galaxy and our heroes have to fight in battle with Servalan's forces by showing that at work (s3 opens when the battle is already over), and I'm a sucker for stories in which Servalan due to plot McGuffin X has to temporarily team up with either Avon or anyone else in the Liberator, I did NOT want to see her redeemed. And canon never went there. All hail the Supreme Commander!
Spartacus: Lucretia and Batiatus (meaning Quintus, of course, not his father Titus). Canon at no point during their two seasons (the show’s first season, Blood and Sand, and the prequel season, Gods in the Arena as well as Lucretia’s third season (the show’s official second) makes any attempt to disguise these are two people for whom slaves are moveable furniture, whether or not they’re sexually or non-sexually interested in individual ones. They’re also shown to be capable of murder when it comes to non-slaves when it comes to getting what they want. Consent? Is only of interest to them when it comes to themselves and Lucretia’s bff Gaia. Everyone else getting raped (by them or other people) is fine. And good lord, do not make enemies of them in any way, because they’re also great at turning a grudge into a mortal feud while being spectacularly blind to the fact other people might feel that way about them.
And yet Batiatus and Lucretia, played by John Hannah and Lucy Lawless, are probably my favourite characters in both Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena. This is because canon also equipped them with great and undestroyable loyalty and love to and for each other. Because their ambition is rooted in desperate social climbing in a society that relentlessly looks down on them as noveau riche at best. Because the actors play them as vibrant and intense. (Also because in the first season, the other Romans are even more loathsome, and while the Gladiators and female slaves are in varying degrees likeable, even admirable, they didn’t yet capture me the same way. Later seasons were different in that regard.)
Spartacus is undoubtedly a trashy show, but among its virtues, to me, was that it was truly excellent in giving us three dimensional villains whom the audience can understand without ever excusing them or their actions. (Whether or not the audience then did so is another matter. Every now and then Fandomsecrets still has a secret pop up denying that what Lucretia did to Crixus was rape. This is not the show’s fault, though. Yes, there was the one time she didn’t have sex with him when he didn’t want to. Against all the other times when she did. And Crixus, this the show makes equally clear, would not have had sex with Lucretia at all if he’d ever had a choice about it.)
So, what I did not want to see: Lucretia and/or Batiatus seeing the light, freeing all their slaves and spending the rest of their money in Spartacus‘ cause, to put it flippantly. What I did want: an ending fitting the characters. Which I got. No redemption necessary.
I, Claudius: Livia. Still one of the best female villains ever, in any genre. Oh, strike the „female“, just say „villain“. A great many successors very hard tried to be her, and often fell short. Now, one of the great things about Livia is that she kills off and/or ruins a great many sympathetic characters during her screen time, that our narrator fears and abhorrs her for most of his life not solely for this but because she openly ridicules and humiliates him when he’s a handicapped child… and that he and the audience still pity her when she dies without a) Livia ever repenting her actions, or b) the show presenting her as justified in said actions. Partly this is due to Caligula taking over as the story’s main villain in Livia’s last but one scene, but part is also due to how she’s acted (by the great Sian Phillips) and written (by both novel and show). Basically, when Claudius promises her he’ll make her a goddess (which according to their belief system would allow her to escape any consequences for her actions in the afterlife), this reader/viewer was glad. Despite the above named deeds, during which I certainly sympathized with whoever Livia was currently destroying more than with Livia. (Well, except for Augustus. He had it coming.)
Livia being consistently smart, ruthless and incredibly competent at whatever she chooses to do is part of that emotional reaction. Then there’s also the way the show often gives her the best lines. (Tiberius: Mother, did it ever occur to you that it might be you they hate, more than me? Livia: Nothing occurs to you that hasn’t occured to me first. That is the affliction with which I life.) And yet you never have the impression that I, Claudius treats Livia’s murders and life ruining action flippantly. Kind hearts and coronets, this is not. Her victims are more often than not sympathetic characters whose suffering happens on screen and is awful to watch. And whether or not you buy Livia’s statement to the dying Augustus that what she did, she did for Rome, not for herself, the show’s narrative certainly presents the consequences of her actions greatly contributing to Rome getting worse, and worse, and worse. In the show’s tale of one Emperor being worse than the next (until Claudius ascends, and even that ends with Nero), Livia manipulating the succession by every means she has is largely to blame for this. If she'd seen the error of her ways before she died, the narrative would have let her off the hook for this, at least that is whath it would have felt like to me, but it didn't.
In conclusion: Livia’s one hell of an unredeemed villain. And I would never have wished her otherwise.
The Other Days
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1265937.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.