Unredeemable Evil: I don’t care if Chrysalis is your waifu

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.

Comments

[Courage Fire]

Once again, it bears repeating: being tolerant requires not being tolerant of intolerance.

Gotta agree with you there.

It's nice and cartoony to have something turn out "for the best" from everyone, but if stories hop into the nitty-gritty and take themselves seriously, then an equally serious redemption (if that ever even happens!) arc needs to legitimately happen.

Take the Chrysalis thing for example. If we go, say, strictly from the show itself, there's a lot for her to overcome internally. (Pride, superiority complex, trust issues, etc etc.) And there's the 'public at large' as well as compensation that's absolutely required. Proper Jail time (ie petrification), proper community service (if they even lean that route, it's gotta be something major, that also ties in with the internal issues for her to do it, otherwise it's ... what, a shortened sentence?).

Just having a "And then she learned a valuable lesson and nothing ever happened with her ever again," is a copout and leaves ... so much to go wrong. I mean, Starlight Glimmer had a relapse with her "Imma use magic for all my problems again," in a few episodes because of it too,.