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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8228771" data-attributes="member: 6915329">I would say it's not reductive at all. Why does she hate the Vistani? Because her Vistani mother cursed her to never be able to have "a man, a babe, a home" (as per Black Box) because such things would only bring her tragedy.Villains are supposed to be interesting; they are often much more interesting than the heroes. A villain whose entire identity is "likes to screw others over because she can't have a man" is a high school villain.It's lazy because the male characters get intriguing backstories and goals while the female ones don't; because their characterization is centered entirely around the ideas that a Complete Woman needs a man and a child in order to be happy, and a Woman who doesn't have them is Incomplete and Evil.I would gladly take a female darklord who:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kills people in order to make their corpses into art or as the models for her art, and now her art style is unpopular or actively reviled throughout her domain; plus, artistic zombies and other such undead haunt the realm.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Does social experiments on children, and the mental horrors she inflicts on them turns them into literal monsters who now haunt her domain; worse, she can never get the results she wants to under lab conditions.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Claims to be a prophet or even reincarnation of Ezra and has amassed a devoted group of followers--but her view on who is saved by Ezra and who is secretly part of the Legion of the Night is highly skewed.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Became a ghost who possesses people in the hopes of helping them fulfill their life's goals, but whose own issues cause her to inevitably ruin her host's lives; she can't allow herself to not meddle, and therefore can never be free of her curse.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Arranged for her rivals to die or be ruined because she feels she would do a better job as the political leader of the country, and upon being made a Darklord, she's proven to be a terrible leader.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Got so fed up with her job as a lowly servant that she gladly took that strange person's offer to become a beautiful princess--but who turned her into a monster princess; now bereft of her humanity and the princess of a realm where everyone fears her greatly, she tries to fulfill her new role, but her human and monster sides constantly clash.</li> </ul>You know. Backstories that don't involve needing to have a man.No.Because the male Darklords have interesting backstories and goals and engage in interesting activities.The female Darklords do not. This isn't about how well the writing clashes with my worldview. The writers very clearly had the ability to make truly interesting villains. They exercised that ability frequently. But when it came to writing female Darklords, they stuck with the very standard and sexist trope of "women need men and babies, and those who don't have men and babies are evil."</blockquote>

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