My own thoughts are roughly parallel, as you might guess from my occasional villain-centric posts, and the increasing meta-psychopathy of most of the Big Two's villains is a trend I find disturbing. 'Antagonist' does not generically mean 'Cannibal', except in certain cases (when said antagonist is, in fact, a cannibal).
Yes, bad men (and women) do bad things. But the scale of the bad is always uniquely adjusted to the individual's personality, and grafting a generic sort of moral malaise to a villain (i.e. Dr. Light revealing a heretofore unknown leering penchant for rape) in order to create Dramatic! Tension! is, at best, lazy. At worst, it relegates a once useful character to the discard bin.
There are, of course, villains for whom such taboo acts are well within their writ, but if every man is a monster, they become interchangeable, defined only by colour-coordination and gimmick.
Like I said, makes you think.
1 comment:
"'Antagonist' does not generically mean 'Cannibal', except in certain cases (when said antagonist is, in fact, a cannibal)."
I wish I'd said that. It would've saved me about three paragraphs.
And, of course, I agree with every word you've said.
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