FA+
Shop
Unredeemable Evil: I don’t care if Chrysalis is your wa...
4 years ago
Scribbling nonsense all across the board like jaguars leaping from trees of leather bodices encasing aged withered corpses whose eyes dazzle with the light of one million and three silver satellites flying over Los Angeles hiding illegal immigrants from Irish potato farms built atop the golden ruins of El Dorado filled with demonic Ewoks hurling tremendous tankards of tons of Tylenol at the panda bear ninjas that hide around every corner of the magic square building trying desperately to pull up its skirt and set roots on another cubic square inch of the board upon which I am scribbling nonsense.
A while ago I wrote a ramble which discussed topics related to villain characters. Shortly after posting it though I came to the realization that it had actually drifted a lot from what the original intention was. It was supposed to be about how redeeming villains or antagonists falls flat when there’s conveniently some other villain who can take the fall in their place, but somewhere along the way I seemed to forget about that and instead started talking about villain motivations and being sympathetic and blahblah like that. Obviously having villains with complex and sympathetic motivations is important if you want to redeem them, but the main idea was that there isn’t much point in redeeming a character if you’re just going to dump their role and traits on some other character that functionally acts the same way but eviler.
But what do you do when you have to deal with the character who is the most evilest of them all? What will you do when you are face to face with the most unrepentant of villains?
The answer is you tell them to fuck off.
Courting with the notion of redeeming villain characters is something a lot of fandoms invariably end up doing. Perhaps unavoidable, given that evil is cool or sexy or what-have-you. There are some instances where this is very clearly set up by the creators of a story, when a villain is established to have a sad or tragic backstory with elements suggesting that this is a role that has been forced upon them by the circumstances of their life. When this happens, the audience not only gets to have a badass antagonist character but also someone kind of like an underdog they can root for. One of the most prominent instances of this in recent years was Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender, the scarred prettyboy who got shamed into a life of villainy by his evil family, and a lot of villain characters in YA stories have drawn from the archetype he presented.
But then there are the villains that fans gravitate toward no matter how villainous they are, no matter how heinous their crimes may be. Again, evil is cool, so it doesn’t take much to check off a few boxes for someone to be taken with a character. A particularly notable example of this, and possibly one of the earliest to blow up in the early years of the internet, was Draco Malfoy of the Harry Potter series, the origin of the trope “Draco in Leather Pants.” Draco is very explicitly a character the reader is not supposed to like. He’s a bully, he’s a racist snob, he’s a snide little shit with no backbone, no one likes him, not even Wizard Hitler 2.0 himself, Voldemort. And yet that didn’t stop anyone from wanting to see him as just a bad boy who at worst needed a stern talking to so he could be set on the right path and at best was merely misunderstood.
And, you know, that’s fine. People are free to do what they want in transformative works to mold a story to better fit what they would prefer it to be, even if it’s going to be pretty hard to sell audiences on your Thanos/Ego redemption shipfic.
I can’t help but feel though that this attitude that it’s possible to redeem anyone, regardless of how they are in canon, presents a form of danger. It’s like there’s this slippery slope of going through one villain redemption arc and then you have to start wondering why the characters don’t try to go that route for every character in the story. Surely, if they don’t turn every villain over to their side, that’s some failing on the part of their supposed morals. And, well, it’s frankly not the best kind of attitude to bring into real life, where there are plenty of people who have no desire for redemption and any attempts to urge them toward that would just be falling on deaf ears.
And that brings us back to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the show all about winning the day through the powers of love and tolerance. Ever since the very start of the series, it showed that turning evil over to the side of good was going to be a part of its shtick with Nightmare Moon getting turned back into Luna. And, you know, that’s fine. It’s good to teach kids that they should try to be friendly and courteous and to extend an olive branch when the opportunity presents itself. It’s good to show that even after trying to take over Equestria twice, Chrysalis can still be presented with the opportunity to convert to a rainbow skittle bug like the rest of her hive.
But there is still a line. There is a line where you can only do so much to appeal to someone’s sense of good before it becomes apparent that they don’t have one. And this is the line the show comes up to in the series finale, when it is decided not to give any further chances of redemption to Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow, but instead to turn them to stone. We could quibble over details about whether or not this is the same as literally executing them, whether there is the possibility for them to still be unpetrified and given trials in the years to come as I have seen fanfics do, but given that Rockhoof treated turning himself to stone as effectively a form of suicide, we can act on the assumption that these three are dead. How is the audience supposed to rationalize this in the context of the rest of the show, where villains are given opportunity time and time again to prove that they have learned better, and then these characters (and Sombra) just get the door slammed in their faces?
Because the fact of the matter is that sometimes that’s all you can do.
Fandom intrinsically trends toward being an insular space. Engaging in fandom is a social and recreational activity that people do so they can unwind. The primary hope is for a place where you can feel comfortable, not for a place that will challenge your beliefs. You are predisposed to dislike conflict, and that’s all the more so when you’re focusing on a show that is ostensibly all about the intrinsic value of friendship; you would rather be accepting of people’s faults than denigrate them. And, you know, that’s fine. But it was kind of cute when the brony fandom was just starting to blow up and it was something that could bring so many different people together. Nowadays, as the fandom is cooling down and people are moving on to other things, it really seems like a lot of those still clinging on are the ones who would rather not be questioned on their extremely questionable interests. Like the people who are really into a character who is literally just a walking hate symbol, because it’s fine guys she’s totally just a joke, she just really likes being dominating and always wears a military uniform and constantly talks about how earth ponies are inferior and has a German accent and she’s definitely not defined by the hate symbol plastered on her ass.
[violent coughing fit]
A while ago I read an MLP fanfic called Myths and Birthrights, which included among its plot developments that gryphons are, like, bad. They are a violent, warring race, they are introduced tearing each other apart before looking to set their sights on the rest of the world, they own slaves and put them through gladiatorial combat for the entertainment of the nobility, you know, all that bad stuff. And then by the end of the story their capital is destroyed and it is implied that the entire race will go extinct before long. But…there are still good gryphons out there. Like Gilda, who learns the importance of humility and self-sacrifice over the course of the story, or her cousin whose name I can’t remember who dies early on. Are we really going to condemn the entire race just because the nobility was corrupt (and also give no repercussions to the god who caused the destruction of the capital and other war crimes because he was being a whiny pissbaby)? It struck me as a really un-MLP thing to do. People aren’t evil, corrupt institutions and figureheads and belief systems are evil. The changelings kicked out Chrysalis and rebuilt themselves and sought reparations with the other races of Equestria, they didn’t just get wiped out of existence.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic teaches that it’s important to offer the chance for redemption, but it also teaches that it’s just important to know when not to. You should be open, but you should be firm. That’s what it comes down to in the season 9 finale when we slam the door on the villains, those who have had the chance to turn to the side of good only to turn it down. Granted, I’m not saying it’s perfect; out of these characters, only Chrysalis ever actually had an olive branch extended to her, Tirek and Cozy Glow got sent to Tartarus without a second thought, and the main characters went straight for the throat with their rainbow laser on Sombra, twice. And Chrysalis was arguably the nastiest of the lot of them. Nevertheless, it still demonstrates an important message about knowing when and when not to offer those peaceful terms. I’m not condemning you for liking cheese legs with your bug tits, you’re still free to do what you want in your porn, you can rewrite the changelings to just being a race that has to act out of desperation and write out the abuse to Cadence and Shining Armor, but understand that there’s a reason in canon that Chrysalis became a rock instead of a skittle. If they’re not going to play nice, then they can fuck off.
Once again, it bears repeating: being tolerant requires not being tolerant of intolerance.
I probably also ought to have comments about Steven Universe, but I still haven’t watched any of it.
And, you know, that’s fine.
But what do you do when you have to deal with the character who is the most evilest of them all? What will you do when you are face to face with the most unrepentant of villains?
The answer is you tell them to fuck off.
= = = = =Courting with the notion of redeeming villain characters is something a lot of fandoms invariably end up doing. Perhaps unavoidable, given that evil is cool or sexy or what-have-you. There are some instances where this is very clearly set up by the creators of a story, when a villain is established to have a sad or tragic backstory with elements suggesting that this is a role that has been forced upon them by the circumstances of their life. When this happens, the audience not only gets to have a badass antagonist character but also someone kind of like an underdog they can root for. One of the most prominent instances of this in recent years was Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender, the scarred prettyboy who got shamed into a life of villainy by his evil family, and a lot of villain characters in YA stories have drawn from the archetype he presented.
But then there are the villains that fans gravitate toward no matter how villainous they are, no matter how heinous their crimes may be. Again, evil is cool, so it doesn’t take much to check off a few boxes for someone to be taken with a character. A particularly notable example of this, and possibly one of the earliest to blow up in the early years of the internet, was Draco Malfoy of the Harry Potter series, the origin of the trope “Draco in Leather Pants.” Draco is very explicitly a character the reader is not supposed to like. He’s a bully, he’s a racist snob, he’s a snide little shit with no backbone, no one likes him, not even Wizard Hitler 2.0 himself, Voldemort. And yet that didn’t stop anyone from wanting to see him as just a bad boy who at worst needed a stern talking to so he could be set on the right path and at best was merely misunderstood.
And, you know, that’s fine. People are free to do what they want in transformative works to mold a story to better fit what they would prefer it to be, even if it’s going to be pretty hard to sell audiences on your Thanos/Ego redemption shipfic.
I can’t help but feel though that this attitude that it’s possible to redeem anyone, regardless of how they are in canon, presents a form of danger. It’s like there’s this slippery slope of going through one villain redemption arc and then you have to start wondering why the characters don’t try to go that route for every character in the story. Surely, if they don’t turn every villain over to their side, that’s some failing on the part of their supposed morals. And, well, it’s frankly not the best kind of attitude to bring into real life, where there are plenty of people who have no desire for redemption and any attempts to urge them toward that would just be falling on deaf ears.
And that brings us back to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the show all about winning the day through the powers of love and tolerance. Ever since the very start of the series, it showed that turning evil over to the side of good was going to be a part of its shtick with Nightmare Moon getting turned back into Luna. And, you know, that’s fine. It’s good to teach kids that they should try to be friendly and courteous and to extend an olive branch when the opportunity presents itself. It’s good to show that even after trying to take over Equestria twice, Chrysalis can still be presented with the opportunity to convert to a rainbow skittle bug like the rest of her hive.
But there is still a line. There is a line where you can only do so much to appeal to someone’s sense of good before it becomes apparent that they don’t have one. And this is the line the show comes up to in the series finale, when it is decided not to give any further chances of redemption to Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow, but instead to turn them to stone. We could quibble over details about whether or not this is the same as literally executing them, whether there is the possibility for them to still be unpetrified and given trials in the years to come as I have seen fanfics do, but given that Rockhoof treated turning himself to stone as effectively a form of suicide, we can act on the assumption that these three are dead. How is the audience supposed to rationalize this in the context of the rest of the show, where villains are given opportunity time and time again to prove that they have learned better, and then these characters (and Sombra) just get the door slammed in their faces?
Because the fact of the matter is that sometimes that’s all you can do.
Fandom intrinsically trends toward being an insular space. Engaging in fandom is a social and recreational activity that people do so they can unwind. The primary hope is for a place where you can feel comfortable, not for a place that will challenge your beliefs. You are predisposed to dislike conflict, and that’s all the more so when you’re focusing on a show that is ostensibly all about the intrinsic value of friendship; you would rather be accepting of people’s faults than denigrate them. And, you know, that’s fine. But it was kind of cute when the brony fandom was just starting to blow up and it was something that could bring so many different people together. Nowadays, as the fandom is cooling down and people are moving on to other things, it really seems like a lot of those still clinging on are the ones who would rather not be questioned on their extremely questionable interests. Like the people who are really into a character who is literally just a walking hate symbol, because it’s fine guys she’s totally just a joke, she just really likes being dominating and always wears a military uniform and constantly talks about how earth ponies are inferior and has a German accent and she’s definitely not defined by the hate symbol plastered on her ass.
[violent coughing fit]
A while ago I read an MLP fanfic called Myths and Birthrights, which included among its plot developments that gryphons are, like, bad. They are a violent, warring race, they are introduced tearing each other apart before looking to set their sights on the rest of the world, they own slaves and put them through gladiatorial combat for the entertainment of the nobility, you know, all that bad stuff. And then by the end of the story their capital is destroyed and it is implied that the entire race will go extinct before long. But…there are still good gryphons out there. Like Gilda, who learns the importance of humility and self-sacrifice over the course of the story, or her cousin whose name I can’t remember who dies early on. Are we really going to condemn the entire race just because the nobility was corrupt (and also give no repercussions to the god who caused the destruction of the capital and other war crimes because he was being a whiny pissbaby)? It struck me as a really un-MLP thing to do. People aren’t evil, corrupt institutions and figureheads and belief systems are evil. The changelings kicked out Chrysalis and rebuilt themselves and sought reparations with the other races of Equestria, they didn’t just get wiped out of existence.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic teaches that it’s important to offer the chance for redemption, but it also teaches that it’s just important to know when not to. You should be open, but you should be firm. That’s what it comes down to in the season 9 finale when we slam the door on the villains, those who have had the chance to turn to the side of good only to turn it down. Granted, I’m not saying it’s perfect; out of these characters, only Chrysalis ever actually had an olive branch extended to her, Tirek and Cozy Glow got sent to Tartarus without a second thought, and the main characters went straight for the throat with their rainbow laser on Sombra, twice. And Chrysalis was arguably the nastiest of the lot of them. Nevertheless, it still demonstrates an important message about knowing when and when not to offer those peaceful terms. I’m not condemning you for liking cheese legs with your bug tits, you’re still free to do what you want in your porn, you can rewrite the changelings to just being a race that has to act out of desperation and write out the abuse to Cadence and Shining Armor, but understand that there’s a reason in canon that Chrysalis became a rock instead of a skittle. If they’re not going to play nice, then they can fuck off.
Once again, it bears repeating: being tolerant requires not being tolerant of intolerance.
I probably also ought to have comments about Steven Universe, but I still haven’t watched any of it.
And, you know, that’s fine.
I honestly think it's high time the irredeemable psycho with no redeeming qualities who loves how cartoonishly evil they are makes a comeback.
As a lesson from watching Discord, I learned that it's not enough if only one person is ever considerate to the bad guy. Redemption is not a one-way street, and people who you thought had changed for the better can fall back into their old habits if you deny them any path forward to being a 'good guy' beyond that first step. The quote for TvTropes' 'Reformed, but Not Tamed' page is from Spike stating that 'he's (Discord) not THAT reformed', which loops back into me finding him as a foil to the other villains who genuinely don't want to be redeemed.
Discord messed up. Very badly. And even after he realizes this, it's too late for him to be forgiven. It's only after Discord nearly kills himself in the hopes of fixing his mistake that the Mane 6 are inclined to stop feeling malice towards him. The other villains had crossed the line, the point of no return in chances of redemption, and Discord was the one who facilitated that happening, so it makes sense that the heroes view him as having crossed it, too. I like the idea of unredeemable villains because they can serve as examples to redeemable ones of what can and will happen to them if they keep going down that path.
Again, my take on what happened with Discord in Season 9 might not be anything new, or if it is, it's wrong, but I still feel that a comparison and contrast between those who are and aren't beyond redemption is an interesting discussion to be had.
I agree generally with Discord that it's important for these relationships to be a two-way street, if the main characters are going to be nasty to him then there's not much reason for him to be nice. But in pretty much all instances, Discord was the aggressor, pretty much going out of his way to make things difficult for the others and seemingly not wanting to understand friendship. It makes sense that it takes time for him to really settle into this position where he's more compassionate, he mostly understood it by the end of season 4 and after that there started being Discord episodes where the problem wasn't him demanding attention, but there were still instances where he relapsed and just went back to causing problems.
Trixie also had pretty much the same problem. The end of the episode Magic Duel gave the impression that she genuinely regretted her actions and was going to work to improve, then the next time we see her three seasons later she seemingly went straight back to being nasty and Twilight doesn't remotely want to give her a chance. Status quo is a big problem in general.
The best redemption and character arc by far was Sunset Shimmer, whose growth we see gradually over the course of the first three EqG movies, from villain to redeemed to new protagonist, with struggles to be accepted by the public at large even after her efforts to make reparations for her actions.
One was in the beginning of season 3 he knew about those plant things he made but didn't say anything about it being him and just told Twilight to find out on her own. Then at the end when the six had to gave up the elements and he had this look on his face that he could go back to causing chaos but Fluttershy reminded him that even if they don't have the elements they will still stop him. And then we get to the final when he joins with Tirek, all I saw was Discord wanting to cause chaos like he use to and when he had enough of his fun he would then stop Tirek but that didn't go well when Tirek becomes more powerful. I do give Discord some doubt but I just felt like the creators were trying a Vegeta(from Dragonball Z) and with most of the two season finally episode feeling like watching DBZ, it just felt off to me. Though two of my fics, Discord is not a villain really just place in a bad position.
Sorry in this seen confusing but just know that I don't hate discord as much as I did back then just dislike him feeling as through he acting like Vegeta too much. The creators also made him too much like Genie from Aladdin.
Vegeta is an odd comparison. Is that comparing Discord's betrayal in S4 to the whole Majin Vegeta thing during the Buu arc? I guess I can see some of that, but the main shtick with Discord at that point was that he did have some ponies he cared about (well, a pony) but he couldn't bring himself to view those relationships as being more important than his petty need for chaos and mischief. The irony is that Discord probably wouldn't have cared about Tirek's offer to rule by his side if he hadn't already been mollified by Fluttershy into accepting the friendship of others. Discord thought that Tirek would be receptive toward his mischief, Discord genuinely thought that Tirek was going to be his friend, only for him to get stabbed in the back in turn as well.
MLP is a mixed bag in general, as can be said of most products that are spread over a broad swathe of time and made by multiple writers who aren't always communicating with each other. I'm of the opinion that, within reason, you're better off taking the things you like and synthesizing them into something new that you'd like to see. Exercise creative motivation into creating transformative works. I'm a big fan of the concept of Princess Amore introduced in the comics, despite her actual canon presentation being pretty awful and all of her appearances being fairly decidedly non-canon to the show at this point. That doesn't mean though that there can't be any value in these things.
MLP is a malleable enough property that I don't think there's anything wrong with making up new ideas for what you want to see with characters, I just think it's important to have some degree of awareness of the full scope of a situation. Even just in canon, Chrysalis has a lot to own up to with her two attempted takeovers of Equestria and any amount of abuse that was done to ponies in the process, but that can get even worse if you bring in fanon interpretations, like the very possible sexual abuse that was done to Shining Armor while he was hypnotized and Chrysalis was disguised as Cadence. Redeeming Chrysalis would take a lot more than giving her friendship speeches until she says "I'm sorry, it won't happen again, nyoro~n", it would require an intense amount of reformative effort and making reparations to the people she wronged, if not just completely diverging from canon so she can exist under different circumstances. I myself had two separate ideas for a sympathetic Sombra backstory which involve alternative motivations for his rule, mostly inspired by material that was shown in the IDW comics, which was before he got to have a reappearance in the show that doubled down on how evulz he was.
The intent with this ultimately wasn't "Redeeming villains is bad" as much as it was "It's fine if villains aren't redeemed" because I feel like there have been a lot of snide comments about how the heroes opted to slam the door on the final three villains instead of giving them a chance at reformation. Fans are still free to interpret how things go on after that, but I think that it's valuable that even in a show all about the magic of friendship it can still be demonstrated that there are some instances in which you're better off not wasting your time on people who just want to hurt you.
I went into Myths and Birthrights really hopeful because it seemed like it was doing a lot of cool things but as it went on it just got more and more bloated, I feared that it would fall into the trap of prioritizing worldbuilding over character development and my fears proved to be entirely correct, and the more I think about it the more I dislike it. But that would take way too long to go into.