FK rumination

[annavere]

I'm about halfway through season one and I find LaCroix creepy to an unusually visceral degree. This is a bit surprising to me, because I normally have a weakness for villains - but I like them with enough human qualities to relate to, to explore their moral choices and failings, and LaCroix is on another level entirely. Nigel Bennett does a great job portraying him, but if I was going to compare him to another vampire, it would be the older archetypes, the plague carriers.

I've been lurking in the HL discord, and there's a lot of discussion of the Horsemen going on, so it's on my mind, and the thing is, the Horsemen never felt very apocalyptic to me. They felt like four louts raising hell. LaCroix feels like true pestilence made flesh, a malignancy creeping at Nick's heels, a shadow filling the space where a man once lived and died (yes, I'm reading A Wizard of Earthsea right now, so pursuant shadows are on my mind). Genuinely, completely unsettling. More of a vampire than most vampires.

Comments

[butterflykiki]

You get it. Why for some of us, Lacroix is the gold standard of Bad Guys. I won't say anything more for fear of spoilers. But this is a sane reaction to him, first season.

[annavere]

I am interested in where they go with him, but also a bit relieved by the small doses they serve! He sports minimal monster makeup, but I'm still reminded of Max Schreck's barely mobile creepitude as Nosferatu (the most nightmarish rendition of a vampire I have ever seen) more than any of the modern interpretations, which is an impressive feat of acting.

[teratornis]

As hard as I bounced off this show the first time I tried it out, your posts have been making me much more curious about aspects of it, and now I'm particularly curious about LaCroix. I'm often interested to see how an actor portrays a character that is fundamentally inhuman, and very few roles truly hit that note for me. I'd be curious to see how this one is played.

Agreed about the Horsemen, at any rate. I always thought their mystique must have come more from the fact that they lasted so long than anything else. They were probably just normal if prolific and brutal raiders, but you slap a specific mask on a group of guys and they hang around in that form for generations, it's gonna eventually make an impression. Also why I tend to think of them as more a source of inspiration for the biblical Four Horsemen, rather than directly, actually them.

[annavere]

I remember you saying you weren't too taken with Nick's self-loathing qualities? Which is fair! Buyer's remorse is very baked into his character, and if that's not a resonant trope, I can see why he'd be a bit much to take.

Agreed on the Horsemen being less than literal. They always struck me as a tiny bit lame, the way they extolled their glory days and then the flashbacks show a handful of tents. They didn't exactly have the court at Xanadu and armies following their command - they were just street thugs who couldn't die. Which gives a good indication for why they were wiped out in a single episode. No ability to truly evolve. But in the Bronze Age, all they really needed to become legends was that eternal quality, like you said.

[argentum_ls]

This is a brilliant analysis of the Horsemen.

It brings to mind the city of Akrotiri on Santorini, which is often touted as the basis for the Atlantis myth. Atlantis was well-known for having advanced technology. In the modern world, we imagine Atlantis as having laser guns and flying cars -- because that's our idea of advanced technology. It turns out that what Akrotiri had was indoor plumbing with s-bends in the pipes.

Edited to finish the thought: The idea of the "advanced technology" got immortalized divorced from the reference point of what "advanced" meant. Likewise, the Horseman could have had a reputation of wealth, armies, and kingdoms from the perspective of people 5000 years ago. How the concepts were understood changed over the millennia, while the original reference points got completely lost.

[annavere]

Delightful information, thank you! And an excellent point, that the awed descriptions of the Horsemen may have drifted a bit off base as empires and civilizations rose and fell. Wonderful concept.

[brightknightie]

Yep.

I usually don't like villains. I'm glad Lacroix is in the story to serve his several very important story functions of balance and distance and motivation and contrast, none of which require or even request or suggest that I should like him.

I love first season; it's my favorite. If you continue through later seasons, you may want to return to musing on this subject.

[annavere]

I expect I will have to revisit the subject later on. He works very well as an emblem of the corruption Nick is trying to leave behind, such that even having killed him, the flashbacks and ramifications continue. It's also rare to see a flashback-only villain, so I'm enjoying that structure quite a bit.

[havocthecat]

Because he's a creepy fucker! There was once a longing for "camels to tap-dance upon LaCroix at high noon in the desert" (no, I'm not kidding) for a reason. He's fulfilling his narrative purpose!

He's an amazing villain. I love him as a villain. Even when they do some later episodes that humanize him a bit more, for me, they only highlight the depths of his villainy. He is possessive and stalkery to me, which is part of the malignancy creeping at Nick's heels that you're talking about.

I enjoy the Horsemen, but the series didn't do much to sell them as modern villains. Local-ish, kind of regional Bronze Age warlords who couldn't update? Yeah, totally.

God, I gotta get back to talking more about the women on that discord. It has turned into kind of an all-Horsemen, all-the-time kind of place. But I've been watching tv shows that don't involve regular beheadings.

[annavere]

I may join that chorus. I can get behind tap-dancing camels. I didn't have much reaction when Nick staked him in the opening two-parter, but the more I see of LaCroix, the more I'm thinking "Rock on, buddy! Stake him again! Cut off his head, bury his ashes and garlic salt the ground so he can never rise again!"

The Horsemen had a lot of good narrative elements, but when I think of Duncan MacLeod's greatest foes, I'm going with Kalas and Xavier every time.

I would love to get back into the discord as well, but likewise, I'm not watching or writing for HL at the moment, so it's hard to chime in with much. Only so many fandoms can occupy my brain at a given time!