This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Ununnilium: Taking out:
- Draco Malfoy could possibly be considered an example. He's a racist, elitist, jerk, but he never actually accomplishes anything truly evil till the 6th book, yet the writer expects everyone to treat him like he's a evil mastermind. Even when he does manage to pull off something actually evil in the sixth book, he still manages to screw it up. He's a character with the effectiveness of Team Rocket in a world where the characters treat him like he's Hannibal Lecter.
- The witches in The Wizard of Oz never really did anything evil, apart from by one to avenge the killing of the other.
Draco... well, where do you get "treat him like he's Hannibal Lecter"? In none of the books, as far as I can see, is he treated like anything other than a teenage bully. And the witches had both obviously enslaved the people, not to mention that the Witch of the East's land was basically proto-Mordor. (And this is just the movie; in the book, you get a nice long accounting of their crimes.)
Noaqiyeum: Removing the Eragon reference. Galbatorix also hires Orc (yes, yes, Our Orcs Are Different) mercenaries who massacre his own people and makes contracts with Ringwraiths (there's no Our Ghost Riders Are Different, is there?) to lead his army. The results of both of these are in the 'first book'.
Seven Seals: Coming back to the Oz example, though, the wickedness of the witches wasn't half as obvious in the movie. The Wicked Witch of the East, we're told, enslaved the Munchkins, but other than them singing and dancing when she's dead we see no signs of the mistreatment they supposedly suffered. The Wicked Witch of the West is thoroughly unpleasant to Dorothy and company, but in the movie this is pure cartoon villainy, and the girl did pinch her dead sister's shoes and was explicitly sent to kill her. All this is what made a revisionist work like Wicked possible in the first place. It's not a clear case of Offstage Villainy, but it's still interesting.
Caswin: Even so, the opening claim — "We never see the Wicked Witch of the West actually do anything to harm anybody who wasn't trying to harm her" — is categorically wrong. I feel like it should be edited, not deleted (it is an interesting subject), but since everything else hinges on that beginning as it stands, I'm not confident enough to try it myself.
Caswin: I'm into the third season of X-Men - currently airing on Jetix - and apart from trying to blow everybody up with nukes in the third episode, and whatever plot he had in mind for the fourth (I missed that one; I only know that they're fighting him again), he also tries to assassinate Senator Kelly in the season finale, as well as nearly sparking a worldwide war in the series finale; before he was pulled away by the news that he could save Xavier's life, he was all set to send Earth straight to Doomsday. And even after his actions in the first season, they treat him just fine when they meet again in the second season finale, having spent the bulk of the season stuck in the Savage Land with Xavier. Is there some kind of unexplained shift back to antagonism later in the series? Because unless there is, all I can think of that the entry could be referring to is how he's depicted in the intro, and while that may be indicative of shaky intro-directing...
