@arbutus
Thing is, this is a fundamental point about storytelling. Success must not only have a toll, but have a meaningful toll.
Many moons ago in the days before the Interwebz (in fact, on CompuServe), I had a rather furious argument with a second rate American SF writer (can’t recall which) about the destruction of the USS Grissom in Star Trek: The Search for Spock. Now that was an act of mass murder that was done for purely plot reasons. It told us nothing about the Klingons that we didn’t already know. But the Grissom had served this purpose and it was actually full-on bona fide lazy writing that used up 400 red shirts, every one of whom was deemed lesser than Kirk’s son. My correspondent might have been second rate, but I had Joan D Vinge on my side.
I’m not a fan of gratuitous slaughter, outside The Terminator franchise, but evil and/or insane characters have to be show to be evil and/or insane.
But the other reason is that I am vehemently opposed to the fetishisation of evil.
And here I am looking most strongly at the brainless shippers who think Darling Spikey-wikey was just wubbley. No, Spike was evil because it was in his very nature – no matter how he resisted, his understanding of love would be an evil, twisted and soulless understanding and would always end as it did on the on the bathroom floor of the Summers house. And it was only when he got his soul that he was even capable of redemption (although that didn’t mean he was an especially nice person, but that’s fine).
So you have a wonderful, charismatic actor like Michelle Gomez (or James Marsters) and you just know the moist 15-year-olds (of all ages and gender identities) will be squeeing over her and say how wonderful she is and how she’s misunderstood and just needs to be loved.
No.
She is insanely evil and this absolutely needs to be shown in a meaningful way that will leave the viewer in no doubt.
