I love hell I am hell

[I think it’s stupid how people act like Dukat is responsible for the occupation, like it didn’t start before he was born.]

Nah, just the fact that he actively became a Prefect and slaughtered milions :)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was not a perfect show but its treatment of imperialism, war crimes, and genocide was light-years ahead of some of the stuff coming out today (looking at you, Star Wars).

In DS9:

I love a good villain, I love to love a good villain, and Dukat fucked me up so bad. I was so on board with the charismatic asshole, even though he’s the bad guy, because he’s so well written and acted it was fun to see him be villainous, but then I got to the episode where his relationship to Kira’s family was revealed. Something about how well he lies, even to himself, was so fucking real it absolutely destroyed me. The rest of the show was so difficult to get through, but I mean that as the highest compliment- Dukat is possibly the best villain ever written. He’s absolutely vile and I like nothing about him except how insanely hateable he is. It’s SO GOOD how unbelievably bad he is

EDIT: unsympathetic is the word I’m looking for! I liked him for a long time because he exhibited empathy and regret, and then you get to that episode where you realize it’s all bullshit, and worse, he believes his own bullshit. It’s mind blowing how hard they bait and switched me with him.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was not a perfect show but its treatment of imperialism, war crimes, and genocide was light-years ahead of some of the stuff coming out today (looking at you, Star Wars).

In DS9:

Bajorans are fucking boring and stupid in there stubbornness, Dukat is the boss who the last season ruined

Wow how dare they be so stubborn as to survive against all odds... so inconsiderate of them not to die off... Also sure Dukat was the boss--as in, the boss monster that Sisko defeated lmao.

Types of villains that CAN potentially have redemption arcs in stories

There are more of course, but those are a few.

Now for villains that CANNOT, and SHOULD NOT be redeemed.

There are more, of course, but that’s all I can think of right now.

So you might be wondering why these kinds of characters shouldn’t be redeemed. Surely even the worst people have feelings too? Surely people can change? And yeah, you’re right. Even the evil people of the real world, even our world’s dictators who commit genocide and other acts of evil do have feelings… But here’s the thing.

I don’t give a fuck.

If you commit fucking GENOCIDE, then you should just be killed??? I’m not sure how to explain it outside of it just being INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS. If someone has done something so so so awfully horrific as that, then no matter what they do, no matter how they feel, they HAVE to be taken down. It is the morally right, even the morally necessary thing to do.

But surely, its just fiction, right? So it doesnt matter, right? WRONG. To say that fiction does not affect reality just says to me that you’ve been living under a rock for your entire life. Showing the message that such genuinely evil people deserve a second chance is INCREDIBLY dangerous and is the kind of bullshit centrist rhetoric that has landed us in the political climate we have today; where nobody ever actually DOES anything about the awful things happening around the world because ‘uwu they have feelings too’. Teaching this to young children is especially damaging. Everyone needs to know that such atrocious acts of evil are 100% NOT FORGIVABLE. AT ALL. EVER. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. I don’t care if they have feelings or even if they feel bad for what they’ve done. They did it. That’s what matters. Even in a story of fantasy where atrocities can be undone (IE: Avengers Endgame or whatever), they still DID the thing and that’s why they should face justice.

The reason that the former list of villains CAN be redeemed, while also having feelings and feeling bad for what they’ve done, is because the things they have done are comparatively not that bad. Even a character who has commited murder could face a redemption arc in a story depending on the context and how such an act is handled within the context of the narrative (IE: Scar from FMA, or Loki). But such atrocities as genocide, slavery, and everything else I listed are not forgivable. They are not repayable debts. A villain who has killed just one, or even a few people can be redeemed by having them dedicate their lives to repaying for those crimes, because they know that what they’ve done is wrong and awful, and while the ACT may be unforgivable, its on a relatively small scale so it can be worked around for the story. But when things go from murder to GENOCIDE, there’s no going back. Killing hundreds, thousands, or millions of people is never ever ever a repayable debt. Not under any circumstance at all.

TL;DR: Stop teaching children that we should forgive our oppressors, that we should forgive fascists and dictators, or that we should forgive any other equally evil people. It is an incredibly harmful message and it will, and has had consequences in the real world.

There’s an overlap between “the brainwashed” and the “desperate/lied to” when it comes to child soldier type backgrounds, such as the SW First Order stormtroopers* and Ashi from Samurai Jack. They were not manipulated by technology to have no control over their perceptions and actions, but it comes damned close when they were indoctrinated from a very young age by people who had absolute power over them. Villains in more privileged situations with more normal (if often abusive) upbringings tend to be misguided rivals, see also Iden Versio from the Battlefront 2 single-player campaign.

* I am excluding Finn, who has never been a villain and quite seriously did nothing wrong in his life uwu

And the argument that anyone can change, while correct in the general sense, is disingenuous when it comes to the second set of abusive villains because it ignores issues of prioritization and story integrity. Abusiveness is a matter of belief, and discarding these beliefs is a painful, involved process with a low success rate. A believable redemption of this sort means the story would have to focus significantly on the abuser’s inner life, often at the expense of the heroes and victims that the audience have become invested in.

It becomes, in other words, a question of the kind of story you want, and more specifically about changing the story itself. Let’s take Gul Dukat from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, who hits all four signposts of bigot, warlord, rapist, and abuser (and more besides, such as cult leader). He does in fact get a significant exploration of his inner life in the show, mostly involving his narcissistic attempts to rehabilitate himself in his own eyes and those of others--but if his redemption were played straight instead of brutally subverted, would it really have served the story? Would DS9 have been a better story if it became about the poor genocidal warlord having his hand held through realizing that everything he ever believed was wrong and he has done irreparable, unforgiveable harm, while the story lost a major source of tension in a powerful antagonist who was built up over multiple seasons? 

Another thing that bothers me about redemption in fiction is their association with happy endings. The thing is, for the class of villains who have knowingly and deliberately done widespread and/or irreparable harm, redemption is incompatible with a happy ending. If you are truly redeemed, that is, discarded your abusive and entitled beliefs and came to sincerely believe that you have committed unforgivable crimes, how can you ever be happy? How can you blithely take your love interest’s hand and ride off into the sunset? If anything, to the extent the former villain seems genuinely happy I’d have to conclude their redemption is disingenuous. How am I supposed to feel any satisfaction at the happiness of someone who has deliberately and unjustifiably stripped away the possibility for others to ever be happy?

Redemption stories have other issues as well, such as the heroes often being treated as bad people if they don’t instantly forgive the repentent villain, but these are examples of bad writing so I will confine myself to problems inherent to redemption stories, even well-written ones.

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[I don’t think Dukat was really evil until after his daughter was killed. And even then, he had had a mental breakdown and was hallucinating, so I don’t think he was fully responsible for his actions.]

Oh my God what the FUCK anon Dukat was responsible for the deaths of millions of Bajorans during the occupation, and he wanted Bajorans to thank him for it. In fact Ziyal was his daughter from a Bajoran woman during the occupation. Like what the hell. The man is a known mass murderer and rapist long before his daughter was even born, and he wasn’t evil? What does someone have to do to even count as evil in your eyes?

Gul Dukat from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Artist: https://twitter.com/larry_draws

@kyberfox The salt of Dukat stans in response to his story is a major reason to love DS9 as a show, if not the fandom. But eeewwww in addition to presiding over genocide (like that’s not enough) Dukat is a sexual predator and a serial rapist and he has stans, wow. I don’t think his history of rape was as blatant in the earlier seasons though it was certainly implied, but even then he was creepy as hell pursuing Kira. Terrible as Winn is, I’d be hard-pressed to say she’s worse than Dukat and felt awful at how she was tricked by him. And that’s another long rant on how misogynistic the show was toward women who dared to enjoy sex.

@seguun Well, maybe. He certainly had flashier material, more expected material for a bad guy/protagonist’s rival. On the other hand, Winn’s brand of evil is more understated and also more... prosaic? I’d call her more corrupt than Dukat’s brand of out-and-out evil. Hers was a more nuanced look at corruption, not like Dukat’s which comes about more rarely through a perfect storm of power, policy, and personality--the sort of evil that doesn’t happen unless there is a severe power disparity, unless there is a decision to use that disparity for destructive exploitation, and unless there are (and there always are) abusive personalities to carry out that exploitation.

Winn’s brand of evil, or corruption, on the other hand, can happen in a broader range of situations. In fact, Dukat was at his most Winn-like when he turned internally toward Cardassia, as a self-serving politician, than when he was dealing externally with Bajor as a past colonial overlord. Like Winn, Dukat resisted foreign occupation, then supported/led a civilian government. These are positives as far as they go, but we also know that both Winn and Dukat were ultimately serving themselves. I can think of a lot of politicians who would be Dukats if given the chance, but in most situations they have to settle for being Winns. Dukat himself was more like Winn in Cardassia between withdrawal from Bajor and the Dominion takeover.

I think the banality of corruption is one reason some don’t see Winn as a villain and thought Dukat was being redeemed--because these characters were in the normal work of politics, whether in operating government domestically or fighting against foreign threats. The thing is, of course, they were using the workings of government to lift themselves up and serve their own ends at the expense of their peoples. Dukat again does the more obviously evil thing by giving Cardassia to the Dominion, but Winn, too, chose her advancement over the good of others and of Bajor throughout the show.

Their parallels are shown in their relationships with Sisko, too. Dukat may have hated and opposed Sisko openly while Winn was in a position where she had to give lip service to and be friendly with Sisko as the Emissary, but it’s clear from early on that she hates Sisko and thinks she deserves the love and reverence he gets.

It’s deeply fitting and satisfying then, that despite their differences, and indeed their enmity, Dukat and Winn end up at the same place at the end of Season 7--serving the pah-wraiths and destroying Bajor. One is an open racist and unrepentent genocidaire while the other is the spiritual leader of Bajor sworn to defend the world and its faith, yet they reach the same conclusion: Bajor, and the Prophets, deserve to be destroyed for not exalting and appreciating them enough. Dukat’s evil and Winn’s corruption may have taken different forms, but they were both equally destructive in the end and, indeed, Winn’s role was more crucial than Dukat’s.

Winn’s real final arc begins not when she is cruelly deceived and violated by the pah-wraiths and Dukat, but when she learns of the deception and responds to it. Rather than look back on her life and her faith and withdraw to make some much-needed changes in her life and heal from the spiritual and emotional trauma of what she was put through, she yet again decided power was more important and made the ultimate, fatal choice.

Winn’s story was different than Dukat’s, certainly, but in many ways I thought it was a more universal story with greater subtlety and nuance. I think together they made for a more rounded look at the nature of evil in politics.

@kyberfox The salt of Dukat stans in response to his story is a major reason to love DS9 as a show, if not the fandom. But eeewwww in addition to presiding over genocide (like that’s not enough) Dukat is a sexual predator and a serial rapist and he has stans, wow. I don’t think his history of rape was as blatant in the earlier seasons though it was certainly implied, but even then he was creepy as hell pursuing Kira. Terrible as Winn is, I’d be hard-pressed to say she’s worse than Dukat and felt awful at how she was tricked by him. And that’s another long rant on how misogynistic the show was toward women who dared to enjoy sex.