All posts by Obluda511

No thank you, I’m not particularly inclined to waste days of my life consuming George Lucas’s and Disney’s ploys to keep their pockets full just to validate my position, much like how you don’t plan on reading or watching No Country for Old Men. I saw the originals and prequels ages ago like anyone else who doesn’t live under a rock, and I don’t like Star Wars—but I know enough about it and Vader to be sure that his characterization doesn’t delve into or hinge upon concepts such as determinism, accountability, and the futility of crime. I think Vader is a generic “good guy turns bad but still with some good in him” arc told in a laughable manner by the prequels, which—if they had to be expanded upon or retconned to begin with by whatever TV series or comics you refer to—isn’t exactly a sign of top‐notch writing, is it?

Regardless, you’re heavily biased towards a more familiar character and I’m not interested in learning more about said character unless you have a concise, cogent argument for him. Agree to disagree.

You don’t need to because note what I said about details to begin with. The popular opinion also has zero bearing on objective statements such as “more well written”, but agree to disagree I suppose

Yeah, I mean, Ishmael from Moby‐Dick didn’t really need sequel novels or an entire spinoff series of his own to be a better character than Harry Potter… don’t really get this “quantity > quality” logic for writing, especially seeing as Star Wars is a franchise endlessly milked for cash. Allegorical characters needn’t be laden with a life story’s worth of irrelevant (and frankly time‐wasting) detail to serve their purpose or come out on top. Anton made me think and question my beliefs more than Vader ever could.

Now imagine if the former received a spinoff movie revolving around his backstory. That wouldn’t be interesting; that’d flat‐out ruin his character and make audiences laugh, regardless of what you come up with for him. Why? Because it has nothing to do with what Anton is all about, and ultimately doesn’t matter.

P.S. Darth Vader’s name is literally a shortening of “Darkdeath Invader”, so uh, points off for that.

Damn, that’s a good one. Finally someone compares Johan to another character from his series rather than acting as if he’s its sole point of interest.

Regardless… I might still have to go with Johan by some narrow margin. Since I haven’t delved into this as much, the significance of symbolism in storytelling cannot be overstated, and one of the main reasons Johan works so well as a character is simply how beautifully executed his symbolism was—of which there are numerous examples. My favorite thing about him isn’t how depraved he is or whatever (although even his depiction of pure evil is exceptional and unique), but perhaps the image of him that the conclusion of the story paints and bookends with: the monster of seven heads inscribed with the name of blasphemy and ten horns adorned with crowns which rises from the sea, as excerpted from the Book of Revelation on the very first page of the story—only this time, it’s clear that each of those heads represents all the people who, intentionally or otherwise, helped sculpt him into what he is now: Franz Bonaparta, Petr Čapek, Anna, Helmut Wolf, Hartmann (or whoever was primarily responsible for 511 Kinderheim), Tenma, and as revealed at the end, his own mother.

All of these heads bear Johan’s name, now a name of blasphemy for inverting the saintly into the Satanic (seeing as Johan is almost certainly named after John the Apostle); at the same time, all of these heads are in a sense what make up Johan, otherwise a nonperson with no real identity or humanity of his own nor a singular, knowable cause therefor—no “head” of his own, if you will. The monster rising from the sea that is 511 Kinderheim, in this case a sea of fire. (This is not to say that these people are solely responsible for what Johan has become since the onus is clearly still on him for everything he did and he was probably born evil anyway, but they did have the largest impact and influence on his life and decisions.) Even more interestingly is that in Revelation, John is a heroic and saintly figure, he is the one who witnesses the Beast rising from the sea, and his vision of the final days of Earth when exiled to Patmos is similar in that Earth had been destroyed, yet Jerusalem is coming down upon a new Earth; however, there is no “new Earth” in Johan’s vision, and Johan is the Beast—meaning his far bleaker vision is his own doing, and that he had seen himself rise from the sea to bring forth the end of days. This could suggest that Johan is somewhat like a blend between John and the Beast, connoting Satan with purity and divinity.

I could go on and I could also very well be overthinking it, but to put it succinctly: Johan is most likely the best character in Monster, and in comparison, Bonaparta—while himself a brilliant character—seems more like a clever retelling of Frankenstein; in this case, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster is the one with greater depth and is all the more terrifying for it.

Lmao, easily Anton

Johan’s absence of sadistic tendencies (for the most part) is exactly part of what makes him uniquely disturbing to begin with; for this reason I’d say he shares some parallels with the scorpion from The Scorpion and the Frog, except he doesn’t seem to be driven by any urge or impulse either, nor is he ever aggressive. He seems almost devoid of instinct, acting more as a human virus systematically carrying out the plans instructed to it by its DNA; instead, he merely breeds those malicious instincts in others, despite lacking them himself (this is beautifully summarized by that popular still of him offering whiskey with a childlike countenance). I think this grants him a whole new layer of inhumanity that even Myers lacked, even if he wasn’t as willing to kill his own sister.

It’s also been established that Johan most likely would’ve gone down the path he did in any case, for although the things that happened to him likely worsened his evil, they weren’t the cause of it; the fact that he was so quick to murder innocents at such a young age (like Myers, except without even Myers’s shocked expression at what he had done) suggests that he was essentially born without a soul—and who knows why.

I do still like the concept of the original Michael Myers myself, so my initial comment was meant to express surprise at the fact that this poll was so close given the prevalent opinion of him.

The greater the abstraction, disembodiment, and detachment, the wider the gaps to be filled. Since the mind is the source of all our experiences, leaving everything to the mind would seed the most immersion, fascination, fear, loathing, etc. towards the setting and its characters—and in addition to that, some things can’t really be translated visually. I’d say books prevail for this reason.

I thought most of this community didn’t even take Myers seriously

geological*

Shitty “no edits after a day” rule

Would Ungoliant have existed if not for Morgoth? I misremember my Tolkien lore.

Haven’t read enough Lovecraft but I think McCarthy does a better job at inducing visceral reactions with only as much language as needed; every word has its place, every sentence its own work of art—whereas I believe Lovecraft deliberately used archaic spellings of words to add an air of antiquity to his writing. McCarthy might also surpass Lovecraft in painting immersive, open‐spaced, bleak atmospheres with his prose (reinforced by intensive and accurate geographical and even botanical research), which adds to the horror—although, again, I should withhold my verdict until I read more Lovecraft.

Also, I could be wrong about this but apparently a majority of Lovecraft’s works were small‐scale horrors and ghost/alien stories; people seem to inflate the pervasiveness of explicit cosmic horror within his bibliography.

Didn’t Henry hold a flashlight up to his face in the dark and the movie tried to present this as menacing

Johan, the mass murderer, has no mortal sins? Care to elaborate?

Edit: I now realize you were referring to the seven deadly sins. I think the novel version of Anton Chigurh may count; he returns the stolen drug money to his employers as intended, rather than greedily taking it for himself like in the film. From what I can remember, he has even more conviction in the novel that he’s an agent of fate, delving further into his philosophy and never betraying his purpose (although it still comes crashing down for him in the end). Unsurprisingly, the Judge might also count, barring his… tendencies towards children (lust)—but it isn’t clear if he rapes children because he’s genuinely a lustful pedophile, or if he does so simply to inflict more harm upon them. He’s also obese, but I doubt that it’s because he’s a big eater or anything.

Patrick appears to suffer from several mental illnesses including psychosis and derealization, ending up seeing surreal hallucinations such as a Cheerio sat upon a tiny chair and interviewed on The Patty Winters Show, a walking park bench following him for several blocks, an ATM telling him to kill the president, etc. Anton’s psychopathy possibly outweighs his insanity (the latter of which, as far as we know, being limited to a single delusion that drives his actions—a delusion that he is forcibly snapped out of at the end), whereas Patrick maintains a (un)healthy balance of both that we get disturbing glimpses into.

Haven’t read any of the comics so correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the Joker’s “insanity” was ever delved into as much other than him laughing a lot and acting goofy. He doesn’t seem that out of touch with reality since he can rationalize his actions with nihilism; he seems to kill people because “Fuck you, I’m crazy / nothing matters”

The one in your avatar

Edit: I’m blind and glanced over “Morgoth”

That’d be giving him way too much credit lmao

Wow.

He’s literally one of the most notorious dictators of recent times… you should research more often

@КайСмит

Actually I said that for Lyric because DeviantArt is known to be… fond of snakes (and Sonic obviously). I wish I never knew why.

That, and I should clarify that I wasn’t trying to be racist with that Saddam Hussein comment; the joke is that both figures are evil and from a particular place lol

Memphis Tennessee, Linkin Park, Linkin Park II, MF DOOM, DeviantArt Bait, Ghost of Saddam Hussein

Ted Bundy