The Eligibility Roast Post
Jan. 31st, 2020 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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villainous_big_bang This is the official Eligibility Roast Post! (I did not do that on purpose, but why change a good thing?)
This will open officially on February 15th, but there's definitely some folks already excited - so from now until Feb 15th, comments will be screened. This means you can post your roast, but rebuttals and confirmations of eligibility won't start happening until the 15th.
Comments are unscreened! You can still post new comments, but now you can respond as well - let the counter-roasting BEGIN!
This post closes for comments on the 29th.
Here's how this works. Comment below with your argument concerning a villain from any piece of media - anime, video game, concept album, group of advertisements, any fictional medium with something resembling a Story - and why they are, in fact, a villain. You can be as daring as you want, but here are the main things your argument needs to cover.
1) Does the story seem to think this character is a villain?
2) Is the character villainous from the perspective of other characters?
3) Is the character villainous from the perspective of readers?
The format is pretty loose, but here's an example for one of the villains already on the list.
TITLE: ENVY (FMA 2003) ROAST
"Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is a villain of the worst kind - he's cruel, sadistic and self-centered. He's most known for the murder of a beloved fan-favourite, but he also taunts the main characters with their own mistakes and uses his shape-shifting powers to get into people's heads. He never shows any remorse, and while he has a sympathetic backstory, it only shows up at the end and doesn't excuse any of his actions. He also beats the crap out of a ten-year-old, more than once, which just solidifies the case for him being a Grade-A Asshole."
Please include the specific franchise they're from (if you want to make a case for Envy from FMA; Brotherhood that's a new post!), list some of their misdeeds and in general keep in mind that the mods have not seen or read most of the franchises you'll likely be referencing.
If you would like to REBUT somebody's villain roast, just reply to their comment and explain why the character is - in your view - not a villain! Keep in mind that while Serious Meta is entertaining in its own right, this is largely just for fun. If you start getting really, truly personally invested in whether we do or don't see a character as a villain, take a moment to go catch your breath.
What villain is NOT code for:
'ethically wrong to like' character
pedophile
monster with no redeeming qualities (it's true for some of them, but not all!)
unredeemable
unlikeable
What eligibility roasts should NOT do:
'This is why [X] was justified'
'Sure, it was genocide, but it wasn't THAT bad.'
Otherwise downplay the villainous deeds - that's the exact opposite of what we want!
As villains are approved, they'll appear on the eligibility list.
Comments are unscreened! You can still post new comments, but now you can respond as well - let the counter-roasting BEGIN!
This post closes for comments on the 29th.
Here's how this works. Comment below with your argument concerning a villain from any piece of media - anime, video game, concept album, group of advertisements, any fictional medium with something resembling a Story - and why they are, in fact, a villain. You can be as daring as you want, but here are the main things your argument needs to cover.
1) Does the story seem to think this character is a villain?
2) Is the character villainous from the perspective of other characters?
3) Is the character villainous from the perspective of readers?
The format is pretty loose, but here's an example for one of the villains already on the list.
TITLE: ENVY (FMA 2003) ROAST
"Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is a villain of the worst kind - he's cruel, sadistic and self-centered. He's most known for the murder of a beloved fan-favourite, but he also taunts the main characters with their own mistakes and uses his shape-shifting powers to get into people's heads. He never shows any remorse, and while he has a sympathetic backstory, it only shows up at the end and doesn't excuse any of his actions. He also beats the crap out of a ten-year-old, more than once, which just solidifies the case for him being a Grade-A Asshole."
Please include the specific franchise they're from (if you want to make a case for Envy from FMA; Brotherhood that's a new post!), list some of their misdeeds and in general keep in mind that the mods have not seen or read most of the franchises you'll likely be referencing.
If you would like to REBUT somebody's villain roast, just reply to their comment and explain why the character is - in your view - not a villain! Keep in mind that while Serious Meta is entertaining in its own right, this is largely just for fun. If you start getting really, truly personally invested in whether we do or don't see a character as a villain, take a moment to go catch your breath.
What villain is NOT code for:
'ethically wrong to like' character
pedophile
monster with no redeeming qualities (it's true for some of them, but not all!)
unredeemable
unlikeable
What eligibility roasts should NOT do:
'This is why [X] was justified'
'Sure, it was genocide, but it wasn't THAT bad.'
Otherwise downplay the villainous deeds - that's the exact opposite of what we want!
As villains are approved, they'll appear on the eligibility list.
Re: additional Harry Potter villains
Date: 2020-02-17 04:09 pm (UTC)Re: Dio Brando and Enrico Pucci (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure)
Date: 2020-02-17 04:15 pm (UTC)Re: Yuugiou villains
Date: 2020-02-17 04:19 pm (UTC)Re: Homestuck villains
Date: 2020-02-17 04:23 pm (UTC)Re: Yuugiou villains
Date: 2020-02-17 04:29 pm (UTC)Re: Homestuck villains
Date: 2020-02-17 04:31 pm (UTC)Re: Homestuck villains
Date: 2020-02-17 05:01 pm (UTC)But I also believe very, very strongly that "I was just following orders" is no excuse.
It might involve putting yourself in danger, yes, but that's a choice you make between cowardice and compassion.
It's the difference between every Stormtrooper who follows orders vs Finn and the other Stormtroopers. Disobedience might put you in danger. That's not a reason to refuse to follow what you believe is right.
I'll agree that the Neophyte is less of a villain in an outstanding way, and more of just everyday compliance with an evil regime, but it's .... 4AM and I have lost my words, but pretend there's an important speech here about moral responsibility and how you always have a choice not to follow orders and how even if you kill a person on someone else's orders, the blood is still on your hands.
(I am fine with Neophyte Redglare not passing, for the record! I just think it's really, really important that 'I was just following orders' is never again allowed to be a valid excuse.
For context, I grew up in Austria. We get this drilled into our heads hard which is probably why I am so passionate about it.)
Re: Star Wars villains (non-exhaustive, includes Legends)
Date: 2020-02-17 05:04 pm (UTC)Kylo Ren: Slaughters a bunch of children/apprentice Jedi, helps lead a massive oppressive fleet for the First Order, violates people's minds, kills his own father, kills his own mentor before finally being redeemed.
Armitage Hux: One of the Generals of the First Order, a galaxy-spanning oppressive military order which kidnaps and indoctrinates kids into being Stormtroopers, betrays them and feeds intelligence to the Resistance solely out of the petty dislike for aforementioned Kylo Ren?
idk if their redemption parts mean they no longer count as villains but I am pretty sure all the people they killed would say they're villains!
Re: additional Harry Potter villains
Date: 2020-02-17 05:07 pm (UTC)Re: Homestuck villains
Date: 2020-02-17 06:46 pm (UTC)Following orders is *definitely* not an excuse, and I never intended it to be one. Redglare was definitely capable of doing more than she did, but she didn't Joyously and Viciously put things into motion, either - GHB and Condesce are the overarching villains of that scenario, and she's somebody who could have acted and didn't. "Apathy in the face of evil," etc.
I definitely don't want rejections of proposed villains to come off as 'everything they did is fine and good, actually' - just that they don't fit the scope of this event enough for me to say Yes, Absolutely, They Qualify. I understand and super appreciate your passion! Especially in a fandom like Homestuck, though, I could probably approve every single character as a villain. Ultimately, I'm one mod and my calls are subjective - and definitely never any sort of moral call on who is or isn't in the right.
Re: additional Harry Potter villains
Date: 2020-02-17 06:50 pm (UTC)Re: Star Wars villains (non-exhaustive, includes Legends)
Date: 2020-02-17 06:55 pm (UTC)Hux I will definitely approve.
Re: Kylo, not to open a can of worms, but I have heard that apparently novelization(s) support the idea that he was groomed by Snoke from childhood, is there any truth to that/has anybody here read the novelizations? I imagine one way or another he'll end up approved anyway, but if anybody has the context of further content, I'd like to know how much the 'victim of deliberate cult tactics' thing actually comes up.
[There's a whole other aside there about the sequel trilogy's dependence on non-film content but that's.... besides the point.]
Re: Homestuck villains
Date: 2020-02-18 03:30 am (UTC)Re: Star Wars villains (non-exhaustive, includes Legends)
Date: 2020-02-18 03:40 am (UTC)There's an except here where Hux is Not Happy about being fascinated by Kylo Ren (who is killing people):
https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-novelization-excerpt
In The Last Jedi novelization, we get a scene where we find out Ben's overhead conversations between his parents being worried about his powers and talking about him like he's some kind of monster. And he also thinks that they've sent him to Luke because they're scared of him.
In the Force Awakens, it DOES say that Snoke has been watching and influencing Ben for an unspecified length of time! Leia says 'our child' but I'm unsure if she means Ben was an actual child, or she means it in the sense of our son/our flesh and blood.
“He knew our child would be strong with the Force. That he was born with equal potential for good or evil.”
“You knew this from the beginning? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She sighed. “Many reasons. I was hoping that I was wrong, that it wasn’t true. I hoped I could sway him, turn him away from the dark side, without having to involve you.” A small smile appeared. “You had— you have— wonderful qualities, Han, but patience and understanding were never among them. I was afraid that your reactions would only drive him farther to the dark side. I thought I could shield him from Snoke’s influence and you from what was happening.”
Her voice dropped. “It’s clear now that I was wrong. Whether your involvement would have made a difference, we’ll never know.”
He had trouble believing what he was hearing. “So Snoke was watching our son.”
“Always,” she told him. “From the shadows, in the beginning, even before I realized what was happening, he was manipulating everything, pulling our son toward the dark side. But nothing’s impossible, Han. Not even now, at this late time. I have this feeling that if anyone can save him— it’s you.”
Final Fantasy XIV, one villain of many - Livia sas Junius
Date: 2020-02-21 05:20 pm (UTC)Re: Animorphs
Date: 2020-02-22 03:08 am (UTC)-Wants to enslave Earth by launching all-out war, which would have led to the death of millions.
-Kills his own people (other Yeerks) in fits of rage and is technically sentenced to death for it, only avoiding the sentence because they had no one to replace him with.
-Is willing to sacrifice hundreds of his own people when the Animorphs threaten to poison the Yeerk pool with a substance (oatmeal) that drives Yeerks mad.
-Attempts to surgically modify Hork-Bajir in order for them to breathe under water. This fails, and they all die painfully.
-Cuts his own brother off from Kandrona, the Yeerk food source.
-And he doesn't just prefer involuntary hosts; he enjoys it.
He cares for nothing except power and doesn't care how many have to die for it. Oh and here's a fun tidbit. When he briefly enslaves Aldrea (an Andalite on the Hork-Bajir home world), he says, "You are mine! My host! My slave!" He is undeniably awful.
Corypheus (Dragon Age: Inquisition) ROAST
Date: 2020-02-24 09:46 am (UTC)friendsco-conspiritors kicked off the cycle of Blights that have destroyed wide swathes of lands throughout the continent. It's been so notorious, the whole affair is only referred to as the "Second Sin" since.So, as you can see, he is a grade one asshat.
Meredith (Dragon Age II) ROAST
Date: 2020-02-24 09:50 am (UTC)Arl Rendon Howe (Dragon Age: Origins) ROAST
Date: 2020-02-24 09:53 am (UTC)Sarazanmai (anime, 2019) - Niiboshi Reo
Date: 2020-02-26 06:26 am (UTC)Pros: Reo does a lot of reprehensible stuff in canon and is firmly positioned as an antagonist for the first half of the anime. He's a cop that serial murders civilians, almost always for pretty bogus reasons, and the timeline of Sarazanmai implies that he does this for over a decade. These civilians turn into Kappa Zombies, which then cause problems for (at the very least) all of Asakusa, up to and including mind controlling women to be sacrificed. He is also shown to mind control people who witness him committing crimes, which allows him to get away with it. The fate of the people he kills is worse than death - after the protagonists fight the Kappa Zombies, the Zombies are entirely erased from existence, with nobody able to remember them at all. Reo shows no restraint when it comes to who he is willing to target for murder - he kidnaps a prepubescent child with the intent to murder him, and also shoots a teenager to further his own needs, and proceeds to laugh in the teenager's face more than once. ("Oh, you're the kid I shot? Sucks to be you!") The narrative does not show these actions as good or justified, and his love interest/partner in crime calls him out on using children as going overboard. He also emotionally and verbally abuses his resurrected love interest, which is also shown as not justified. He is so focused on his own goal that he doesn't see anything else, and is willing to stoop to any level to make sure it becomes a reality. A smaller thing: he kicks children and animals.
Cons: While I would argue that the show didn't agree with what he was doing (word of God more or less said that he was being stupid and thoughtless), and that he went above and beyond in terms of cruelty, he was more or less a prisoner of war to Otter (the Big Bad) and was emotionally compromised due to the death of his love interest. Also, the "erasing people from existence" thing isn't necessarily his fault and more the rules of the universe, even if he could have prevented it by not killing people. The light novels are more sympathetic to him than the anime, as they show flashback scenes that show his emotional point of view a little bit better and explore backstory that make it more obvious that his love interest is the only person who has consistently humanized him, so he's kind of a hot mess without him - and his goal in the anime is to bring his love interest back to his pre-death state. I could go into the details of that if you need more info but their whole relationship is pretty complex. Another con is that there is a brief text scroll that says something like "I don't know why Reo and Mabu are doing the things they're doing, but I can't believe they're actually bad people" around the halfway point in the anime, which comes from the point of view of the "Greek Chorus" character (although this character is also their in-canon daughter, so keep that into consideration too).
In terms of fandom, he's an extremely polarizing character - people usually either love him and think he did nothing wrong since it was all for love, or people hate him. I think it's hard to not be sympathetic to him by the end of the anime due to a combination of an emotional redemption arc and being shown how much he went through to become the person he was in the anime, but at the same time... the show was pretty adamant on saying "Wow this asshole tried to kill kids, and abusing your authority to kill people/isolate people isn't great" in my opinion. That said, this show is pretty abstract/symbolic so YMMV.
Alice (Batwoman TV) ROAST
Date: 2020-02-28 05:23 pm (UTC)Sure, there are a lot of good reasons for why she is why she is, but that just makes her a complicated, intriguing villain, but still a villain nonetheless (which all of Gotham would agree with, seeing as she's public enemy number 1 and everyone is out to bring her down!).
Re: League of Legends villains
Date: 2020-02-28 05:32 pm (UTC)Re: Kuroko no Basuke
Date: 2020-02-28 05:37 pm (UTC)Seijuuro sounds a little more like an anti-hero, complicated by the split personality - I read up on him a bit and I know I don't have full context, but I don't think he qualifies. (Although it's kind of hard to gauge on a sports anime.)
Re: ROASTING DABI (MHA)
Date: 2020-02-28 05:39 pm (UTC)Re: Lotor (Voltron Legendary Defender) Roast
Date: 2020-02-28 05:42 pm (UTC)