My last post was moving away from posting solely about video games, and we did this by asking ourselves about fictional Heroes & Villains. Specifically, we delved into certain characters and whether we agreed that their labels were correct, or if there was some wiggle room. The issue with this though, as pointed out by a few of you, was that this potentially changed the characters respective stories; if their label was incorrect and they were in fact, the opposite, how did that affect the dynamic with their stories antagonists and protagonists?
In this weeks post, we’re going to look at a few of those characters, whilst also adding some more to our list.

We started with The Beast, so of course we’re going to start this week with Gaston. A quick back story for those who aren’t familiar with any iteration of Beauty and the Beast. Gaston is Beast’s rival throughout the film. He is portrayed as a jock type character; he’s all brawn, and in love with himself. At first glance, he’s the obvious villain because…well he isn’t Beast and Belle rejects him. Is that a correct summation of Gaston though? Both myself and my good friend and reader Joey don’t think so.
Firstly, yes, we need to address the main characteristic of Gaston – his narcissism. Honestly, it was a small wonder the tale of Narcissus wasn’t rewritten to be about Gaston because boy does he have some issues to work out. The guy gives himself more self love than a group of Masturbators anonymous could shake a stick at…wait. No! Guys, stop that! Does loving himself count as particularly villainous though? Sure Gaston is very up himself, but…I can’t quite find it in my heart to hate him for that. To begin with, he’s in incredible physical shape. He literally lifts a bench with 3 full grown women on it, one handed! If I could do that, you’re damn right I’d constantly be singing a musical number about how great I am. Then, there’s the musical number – every single thing Gaston seems to do is greeted by his whole damn town singing his praises, literally, and basically worshipping him as some God-made-Flesh. Of course he was going to love himself.

Another thing to consider is that I think Gaston might also be responsible for his entire village, nay likely his provinces economy. In the time period we think the film is set, the villagers should be struggling monumentally. Famine was rife in France, riots and skirmishes. A small village, even one with the Beast acting as some sort of forest sheriff, should not have been as idyllic and frankly well off as it was. I think the success and livelihood comes from Gaston. In his song, he mentioned that as a lad he would eat four dozen eggs for breakfast each morn, and now as a man he has five (dozen).

Does anyone realise how many eggs that is, a day, and how many hens would be required to keep up with that? He’s having 4 dozen every day. As a child, Gaston is having 48 eggs a day! (4 x 12 = 48) I’m not a chicken mathematician, so I spent a little time on google to figure this out, and what I got was this.

“A healthy, prime-laying hen typically lays about 4-6 eggs per week. It takes approx 24-26 hours for a hen to produce 1 egg. To meet a demand of 48 eggs, we’ll consider a conservative average to ensure consistent supply. Let’s assume an aver of 5 eggs per hen per week, which is roughly 5/7 roughly equals 0.71 eggs per day, per hen. To then calculate the Hens needed, we would need to work out the following equation – Number of chickens = (total eggs per day)/(average eggs per chicken per day.) We can then substitute our figures to give us – Number of chickens = 48 eggs per day/0.71. We are left with 67.6 chickens, but since we can’t have a fraction of a chicken we round up to 68.

This means that to keep up with Gastons breakfast order ALONE his village would need to be raising and tending 68 chickens. That’s only when he was a child, and that’s just for him. Factor in the rest of the villages egg related needs, and then that this number will jump when he grows up and I think we found why the village loves him; I think Gaston might have invented battery farming. Seriously though, other than the fact that Gaston appears to be some bottomless eldritch horror that can never be satisfied, he’s brought a hell of a lot of jobs and trade to his village. They either raise all those chickens themselves, which takes a lot or work and upkeep, thus creating jobs, or they outsource their eggs problem from other villages, thus improving trade relations. Gaston is a pompous trick that no doubt ran the village ragged for a while, but in doing so he’s put them on the map.

Is he a bit of a pompous arse? Sure, he is, but in my opinion, Gaston isn’t evil per se, nor is he a villain. If anything, the closest Villain we have in Beauty and the Beast is Belle!

Next on the list is the self proclaimed (and very undeserving) Dark Lord himself, Lord Voldemort.
Voldemort is on the list because technically he is the antagonist to Snape because Snape is apparently a good guy. Let’s not get into that. What I will say is part of Voldemort’s label is correct; he is in fact a villain. However I am going to use this platform to say he is a really shit one. Honestly. He is laughable and every time I ever see him on a list of top 10 Pop culture villains I weep inwardly. He isn’t even the biggest bad in his own universe!
Since we’re here to laugh at him, let’s take a look at why he’s a bad villain.
Our obvious thing is his inability to kill Harry as a baby right? We’ve all thought how could he mess that up. Don’t get me wrong, I know all about the whole Love sacrifice nonsense that meant Magic couldn’t touch Harry, and neither could Riddle touch his bare skin but…He was a baby. As anyone who has a child, or has looked after one can attest, the hardest part is keeping them alive! There are about 500 easy ways he could have taken out Harry in the opening 5 minutes of the book/film, but no, he decided it needed to be magic. Honestly. You’d have thought someone who researched all these special extra forms of magic like Horcrux’s and the like would have at least once come across the idea of sacrifices causing mirror shields or even SOMETHING that alluded to it.

He then spent the rest of his life hiding until he finally decided to try confront the child who bested him, only to get beaten at every turn. He even waited out the god damn school year, as if he didn’t want to interfere with Harrys academic life. He had so many devout and loyal followers, the minute he realise Harry was alive and was entering the world of magic, he should have ordered a hit on him, or at least the people close to him. It was obvious after the first few encounters that his biggest weaknesses were his friends, just go after them. Even when his wand did some weird plot armour magic and revealed all the people he had killed, it was about 4 people? For a guy professing to be the Biggest bad of all time, he did absolutely nothing.

Want to know who was a far bigger Villain than Voldemort in the world of Harry potter…?

This guy. (yes they’re all the same person.) Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. For reals, this man was on some shit. I honestly have so many problems with this guy that He’s actually get his own god damn post, so please look forward to that. If you want to guess as to what messed up things Albus does, have at it in the comments!

We’re going to end on one that for me, is low hanging fruit – it’s too easy to bring up this character when discussing ethics and Goodness, and it’s too easy to argue either side.

Our final look is the wonderful, the magnificent, the master of magnetism himself, Magneto.

For anyone unfamiliar with Magneto and the X-men, Why? Change who you are. Do yourself and the world a favour, and learn. Trust me. Magneto lives in a world where Mutants exists; humans who have an extra gene, the X gene. In most cases, this gene gives them supernatural abilities, which sounds awesome right? Hang with me a second though, it isn’t so great. As in real life, being a mutant doesn’t come without it’s downside, and that takes the form of…well…us. Regular humans. I say regular, I mean that in the sense of Humans who aren’t mutants. Not as in You or I, because the humans that cause issues for the mutants are just…Pricks. That is it, pure and simple. They mostly don’t like the mutants because they are different from them. Sure there are one or two that have bad run ins without criminal mutants but they then tar them all with the same brush. ENTER MAGNETO.
Magneto in both the films and comics, TV shows and Novels, is a polarising character. He has done some baaaad shit when heading up the Brotherhood. Magneto believes in Mutant superiority when most incensed, and settles for at least equality at the best of times. He is no stranger to doing some pretty messed up things to make his point, but when it comes to the morality of Magneto, we need to look at two things. His past, and Scale.
By that I mean the fact that Magneto was a child of the holocaust. Yup. As a child he watched Humanity at one of its lowest points, witnessed first hand the atrocities committed, just because of so called differences. He then grew up to witness Humanity turn on mutants and started to ostracise his people, beginning to round them up and essentially repeat the events of Nazi Germany. (This is the second post whereby I’ve mentioned Hitler or Nazis. Maybe I should avoid villains for a while.) He took one look at what was happening and said “No more.” So his past puts him in the position to know exactly how far humanity will take their problems and their prejudice, unlike Xavier who has never experience discrimination until he publicly revealed himself as a mutant.

As for scale? Well when you’re trying to prevent the coming of another Holocaust, and in a few cases a literal Apocalypse, I think you can get away with some pretty messed up things in the name of justice. Sure that’s a utilitarian approach, and it’s a huge simplification of the complexities of Magneto, but on the whole, he isn’t a villain. He’s a hero.

As always, please do let me know if you agree, disagree, or have any comments about the other character mentioned. You can do so in the comments on this page, or catching me on any of my socials – just google BrightstarFox, you’re sure to find me!

BrightStarFOX
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