Cranky Buffyverse Villian Poll

[shadowkat]

In a crappy mood. The weather mocks me with its beauty. So a poll about villianous acts in the Buffyverse. The worst ones. The best villians. The lamest villians. And villianous or indefensible acts by favorite characters or what we think are indefensible acts, everyone's mileage varies on this, I'm certain. Actually the biggest flamewars online have been over the indefensible acts of popular characters and whether they are redeemed. I'm curious to see where the vast majority of the Buffy lj fandom that happens to read or occassionally read my journal falls on this point. Course the fear of doing polls is no one will respond, memes are easier in that regard. The other problem with polls is you can't edit after posting and there are just so many ticky boxes. So if not on the list, provide a comment. But remember to
be respectful of other's views, particular those that make you scratch your head and go, huh?

[Poll #1488559]

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

had it been skillfully done

I think that is the key - as to whether the fictional character has had a good redemptive arc or has been redeemed in a viewer's eyes.

Does the act that redeems the character have to relate directly to the specific wrong or can it be unrelated?

For example - Xander in my view redeemed himself for what he did to Anya in Entropy and Hell's Bells - in Selfless - when he stood up to Buffy and tried to save Anya's life, then in Him took Spike into his home. The acts were related.
But his stopping Willow from destroying the world did not redeem him for those acts. To be forgiven/achieve redemption, you have to acknowledge you did something wrong, take full responsibility, request forgiveness, and demonstrate a desire to not repeat the pattern, to push beyond it. At least that's how I define it.

Spike for example, in my view, redeemed himself for killing slayers and dissing Wood, when he stood and took at all the vampires with his soul, and then at the end of Damage, admitted to Angel that he was wrong for attacking slayers and Dana had been right to torture and hurt him for it. And Dana was a monster that he as much as Walter had created. He didn't see her as a victim, any more than he saw Wood, or others, he just saw the violence - in Damage he finally recognizes the victims. While search for a soul redeemed him for his attempted rape of Buffy - he took responsibility for it and sought a means to make sure it did not happen again and went out of his way not to do it again.

So linkage does help in a way. Could Warren have been redeemed?
I don't know. He didn't appear to see himself as doing anything wrong or rather, he didn't appear to mind that he was.

You're right there is a lot of criteria - it isn't an easy poll. Was harder to create than I expected. And I regret leaving out Andrew and Jonathan...but no room.