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wisteria-lodge · 1 year ago

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SORTING DISNEY VILLAINS (1937-1989)

For *spooky season.* I suspect this will be easier than sorting the heroes, who tend to be reactive while villains are very clear about what they want and what exactly they’re going to do to get it. Let’s see if this ends up being the case.

I go into a lot more detail about this character analysis system here, and talk about the move away from the HP terminology here. But here are the basics:

PRIMARY (ie MOTIVE)

BADGER ~ Loyal to the group.

SNAKE ~ Loyal to yourself and your Important People.

LION ~ Subconscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to feelings and instincts.

BIRD ~ Conscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to built systems and external facts.

SECONDARY (ie METHOD)

BADGER ~ Connect with the group. Make allies, work steadily and well. Be whatever the situation calls for. If you find a locked door, knock.

SNAKE ~ Connect with the environment. Notice things. Tell people what they want to hear. If you find a locked door, get in through the window.

BIRD ~ Collect skills, knowledge, tools, personas, useful friends. If you find a locked door, track down the key or learn to pick the lock.

LION ~ Be honest, be direct, speak your truth. Either the obstacle is going down or you are. If you find a locked door, kick it in.

THE EVIL QUEEN (1937) - BURNT BADGER / BIRD

So. I know that in Snow White the Queen's Thing is Vanity, but. The ‘Vain Villainess’ trope is about the fear of becoming less powerful in a world that only values you for your looks.... which doesn’t actually seem to be her issue? The Queen seems pretty darn unchallenged in her universe. That’s almost part of the problem - there’s an addiction/obsession/paranoia flavor to the way she’s constantly checking in with the Mirror.

I don’t think the Queen is actually obsessed with Snow White’s beauty. I think she’s obsessed with her innocence, her “heart” (that’s literally what she asks the Huntsman to bring her, Snow’s heart in a box.) Snow White isn’t just the “fairest” as in the prettiest, but the fairest as in the most fair-minded, the most honorable. The presence of Snow, with her optimism, kindness, and trust is an existential threat, proof that the Queen is going about things all wrong. The power we see her wield definitely has an edge of sadism: She forces Snow to wear rags (none of the other princesses wear *rags.*) And I’ll be haunted by this image of the Queen’s dungeons forever.

So even though my first instinct was to go Hedonist Snake primary for the Evil Queen, that’s not right. She’s not focused on enjoying herself. She doesn’t seem conscious enough of her own desires to be a Bird, and Exploded Lion is possible… but I’m going with Burnt Badger. An obsession with being “Fairest of them all” seems to suggest a group-focused, External-facing primary, and I absolutely see how the extremely UnBurnt Badger Snow White would really get under a Burnt Badger’s skin.

Obviously a Bird secondary. The Evil Queen is Mad Scientist coded, even has a literal evil laboratory. The “Old Crone” plan features a transformation, a costume, and is very much an Actor Bird persona.

THE WICKED STEPMOTHER (1950) - SNAKE / BADGER

While she does seem to get some sort of sadistic pleasure out of controlling Cinderella, the Wicked Stepmother’s main motivation is her daughters. Her daughters kind of suck, but that doesn’t actually matter. The Stepmother is going to make sure they get that happy ending, with all the targeted loyalty of a Snake Primary. There’s a Badger secondary in there too, which you can see in the way she’s… subtle. The Stepmother takes away Cinderella‘s privilege bit by bit… but never actually goes after her directly. She manipulates her daughters into doing her dirty work (like the way they tear up Cinderella’s dress) so she can always maintain plausible deniability. She’s prim, she’s proper, she’s Lady Tremaine. Dark Courtier Badger, all the way.

THE QUEEN OF HEARTS (1951) - LION / LION

This Queen’s thing is that she’s childish. She wants what she wants NOW. Doesn’t matter if it makes sense, doesn’t matter if it’s impossible. The Queen of Hearts functions as both a lesson to Alice (authority figures don’t always know what they’re talking about) and as a warning (this could be you if you don’t navigate the transition to adulthood properly.) I see a very young Glory Hound Lion primary in the way she forces everyone else to cheat so she gets the emotional reward of winning the croquet game. I also want to attribute the Queen of Hearts’ extremely short fuse to her Lion primary - she acts on what she’s feeling the *second* she starts feeling it, and never questions this. Also she's a Lion secondary. There’s no plan. She lives in Wonderland. She’s living moment to moment.

CAPTAIN HOOK (1953) - BADGER / SNAKE

Unlike the Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook does not seem to be *of* the magical land he lives in. He is this outside force trying to impose order on Neverland, leading the only rigid organization there and constantly tying up/imprisoning the main characters. Hook is also the only one threatened by the concept of time (the ticking crocodile.) *Peter* will never grow old. But somehow Captain Hook will? Or feels like he will? Tradition also says that the actor playing Wendy’s controlling father should play Hook as well (the Disney film uses the same voice actor in both roles) so there's definitely something about toxic order going on. In the world of Peter Pan, Hook/Father becomes representative of adulthood/society/the Man. That makes him an Authoritarian Badger primary, defined by his organizations.

For his secondary - Hook’s not much of a planner. He’s most effective while he is talking an angry Tinker Bell into helping him, and in that scene he’s charming. He flatters her, pivots according to what he thinks she wants to hear, and while Courtier Badger secondary is possible, I think this feels more like Snake. (I also think you have to be some kind of Improvisational secondary in order to hold your own against Peter.) It makes sense - Hook has to be appealing and seductive as well as threatening, because that's kind of what adulthood is.

MALEFICENT (1959) - BIRD / LION

Maleficent feels socially slighted in a very *abstract* way. She doesn’t seem to have an emotional response to either the other fairies OR the King and Queen OR Aurora. Her curse doesn’t have anything to do with with her social standing, or her power, or her role in the kingdom. We actually don’t know what Maleficent’s deal is. Maybe by not inviting her to the christening the kingdom has broken some important Rule of hers. Or maybe she’s just torturing people because she’s bored, and this is a fun Project. (That is her plan with Phillip after all, and this image will ALSO always haunt me.)

But either way, she’s a Bird primary. The only question is if she’s more of a System-Building Bird, or a Project Bird.

Unusually for such a cold villain, I think I want to give her a Lion secondary. She’s patient, and her plans take place over long time-frames, but the plans themselves are direct - “When your daughter turns sixteen, I will kill her.” Done. Also, when Maleficent is threatened, she turns into a giant dragon who certainly does not plan, and her goons (while useless) are very loyal. So another point for Inspirational secondary.

CRUELLA DE VIL (1961) - LION / LION

Cruella wants a coat made out of Dalmatian puppies. That’s it. So I'm putting her in the same category as Hannibal Lecter, someone doing this for the *art,* the ~*~aesthetic~*~ of the thing. But unlike Hannibal, nothing about Cruella is cold or considered. I don’t think she’d be able to tell you why she wants that Dalmatian coat apart from “It’s fabulous, darling.” So instead of going Bird primary (the typical Weird Villain sorting) I’m saying she's a Lion. Cruella seems to have an aesthetic-based morality: "fabulous" and "non-fabulous," instead of "good" and "bad." She’s a Fay Lion primary, like Jack Sparrow.

Her secondary is harder. She definitely has goons, but they’re useless, and don’t seem to like her much. She doesn’t plot or face-change. She clearly likes Anita and doesn’t like Roger, and never bothers to mask this. Cruella first tries to buy the puppies - then sort of seems surprised when this doesn’t work? Honestly, the main impression I get from her is that she’s… not trying very hard. She only really starts to care right at the very end, when she’s driving with wild hair and crazy eyes, as her roadster falls apart around her. I’m going with Lion secondary to reflect that tendency she has to operate at either 1% or 100%.

MADAME MIM (1963) - LION / SNAKE

Madame Mim has a sort of a professional rivalry going on with Merlin, and dislikes when Wart calls him “the greatest wizard in the land.” So of course she challenges him to a wizard duel. She wants to be the best, she wants to win… and that’s all there is to it. So we have another Glory Hound Lion primary.

It’s very clear that Madame Mim loves transformation. She switches between her different faces as many times as she possibly can over the course of a single conversation. Notably, she has a sexy version of herself that she uses to charm people into doing what she wants… and there’s no reason she couldn’t wear that all the time. But she doesn’t want to. Mim gets a lot of joy out of her fluid Snake secondary, and when she’s not solving a problem she just wants to chill out in Neutral.

PRINCE JOHN (1973) - EXPLODED SNAKE / BIRD

Prince John’s motivation has a couple of layers. Obviously, he’s a *little* bit too excited about taxing on the citizens of Nottingham… but that’s because he’s overcompensating. His main visual design element is a crown that doesn’t fit. He’s not King John, he's Prince John, only in charge until his other (better) brother Richard comes home from the Crusades. That’s why he’s so easily flattered - he’s incredibly insecure. But his conflict isn't with Richard, exactly. It’s really... mommy issues. Everything John does is to please Mummy (an off screen-character.) Very Exploded Snake primary.

Secondary is hard because John is incompetent. He mostly solves problems by pointing the Sheriff of Nottingham at them. It’s a running joke that he doesn’t actually listen to his advisor Sir Hiss, who generally has the right idea but isn't a suck-up. I guess John does lay kind of sophisticated traps for Robin Hood? They don’t work, but the intent at least is Bird. So I guess I would have to go with that - a pretty incompetent Bird secondary.

PROFESSOR RATIGAN (1986) - BURNT SNAKE / BIRD

Unlike Madame Mim and Merlin, whatever Basil of Baker Street and Ratigan have going on does not feel like a professional rivalry. Technically Ratigan is plotting a coup… but he spends approximately 85% of his on-screen time entirely focused on Basil. They are at least ex-friends who now hate each other (and it’s really easy to read them as straight-up bitter exes.) Even his hatred of being called a “rat” seems to be linked to Basil - that's an insult Basil uses, implying that Ratigan is motivated by hedonism and ego, and not by the purity of the puzzle the way that Bird Primary Basil is. Really, he’s criticizing Ratigan for having a Snake primary motivation.

Ratigan is very obviously a very loud Bird secondary. He loves lists, he loves Rube-Goldberg devices. He’s based off Professor Moriarty, it's Snake Bird all the way down.

URSULA THE SEA WITCH (1989) - SNAKE / BIRD

So Ursula wants to take over, be the new monarch of the sea… which is usually a Glory Hound Lion motivation. But there's the implication the she's doing this to specifically screw over Triton... which would make her more of a Snake. Ursula also has a *very* hedonistic approach to life, something you often see in Snake primaries with small circles. It's just her and her “babies," the eels Flotsam and Jetsam. He eels also seem very emotionally important to her, as far as villain minions go. This could be another example of Snake primary loyalty.

I don't know, I just think a Lion primary Ursula would be angrier, more of a Scar. She’s doing her own thing, and makes use of an opportunity that falls into her lap. This is structurally a story about King Triton (who has the big emotional arc and the most character change) so it makes sense that she is specifically a Triton villain, and Ariel was just unlucky enough to get in the way.

I'm actually going to say Bird secondary for Ursula. I agree that she gives off Snake secondary *vibes,* and absolutely might model or perform it for fun. But the way she wins over Ariel is by spouting facts very fast and very confidently, then getting her to sign a bad contract - it’s a Corrupt Lawyer beat more than anything. Vanessa, Ursula's alternate form, is more an Actor Bird transformation (Wicked Queen style) and less a Snake secondary playing around (Madame Mim style.) Vanessa is Ursula's version of Ariel - she even speaks with Ariel's voice. That's a Bird secondary approach. When Ursula‘s plans start falling apart, she doesn't pivot. She starts looking very Lion secondary - exactly like Bird secondary Ariel does when she’s overwhelmed.

Tl;dr

Double Lion - Queen of Hearts, Cruella De Vil

Lion Snake - Madame Mim

Snake Bird - Prince John, Professor Ratigan, Ursula

Snake Badger - Wicked Stepmother

Badger Snake - Captain Hook

Badger Bird - Evil Queen

Bird Lion - Maleficent