User blog comment:FairyRaven/Fairy Tail Chapter 337: The Golden Plains, Review and Commentary/@comment-5840892-20130628190511/@comment-7418318-20130628221337

I like villains who don't waste time and torturing others out of sadism, when there no benefit to it is just wasting time.

Now if it's done specifically to demoralize the victims allies (or gain information or subjugate the victim to their will), it's another story, but torturing without a motive is just a lack of imagination on the authors part when it comes to show the readers how evil the villain is. There's nothing more boring that two-dimensional villains who are evil just for evil's sake. A really well written villain shouldn't see him/herself as evil, but rather think his deeds are either just or at least justifed because they serve a greater goal.

Something I liked about Gin and Aizen was that they didn't torment others for fun. Their cruelty was pure psychological warfare and a very effective one at that.

Whether the same can be said about Minerva's torture of Lucy and Milli I'm not sure. She might have intended both to break Fairy Tails and Erza's fighting spirit, but only ended up giving them additional motivation to take her and her guild down.