On villains and their comeuppance

Today I dreamed about saving Lindsey McDonald again.
Just pulling him out of hell again and back into life.
Sure he'd need supervision of some sort to double check this wasn't a cunning plan by team evil, but dream me was entirely willing to follow him around for life.

... the character died in 2004 and I still get these dreams.

I dont get how stories treat 'bad guys'. Like there's such a thing. Like we're supposed to celebrate the killing.

I mean I just read a summary of Lindsey in season 5 and as far as I can see it's one giant Citation Required. I can spin what I saw to be verrrrrry different to what they just wrote.

But I dont just mean 'maybe this bad guy secretly didnt do bad things', though I... do that a lot.

I mean, they give characters motives, set them up in dilemmas, have them work through them to the tiny chance of survival and freedom... and then act like there was some more perfect version they 'should' have figured out, so it's just time to kill them now.

Why is that the story? Like, I get that tv does the cathartic violence so we don't have to, but it seems like most stories get the cat up the tree, decide it was a bad cat all along, then set the tree on fire. Instead of actually saving the cat. Ever. At all.

And the characters that do manage to 'change sides' and impress the 'good' guys?

Dead. Just a lot. They get the redemptive sacrifice story arc, which is not something I can agree with at all.


And then there's Spike, who was kind of an accident, but a very excellent one. He rewrote himself.

Everyone should get that chance. Enlightenment.

You can never say someone will never be a good guy, because there are no good guys and bad guys, just people, doing their best.



So here I am, nineteen years on, dreaming about second chances for someone the story had real clear opinions on.