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View Full Version : [Exalted] Deconstructing Villains Through Infernals



Leliel
2010-12-22, 10:39 AM
Well, I was reading the "Solars vs GSPs" thread on White Wolf, and I came to a realization: A lot of the "thematic" reasons for hating the latter come from the belief, neither good nor bad, that Infernals are inherently villains.

This makes perfect sense, although I don't believe it myself. Everything an Infernal can do strikes human instincts as wrong-they mold their bodies like clay, they alter the way they think, they toy with emotions. And yet...it's almost stated outright that these things have explicitly good uses, and that Infernals, being embodiments of rebellion, can fundamentally choose what they want to do with their lives, and the powers they have gained.

So, that led into thinking about the Yozis, and how each ties in a different thematic of "supervillain"...and then runs it into the ground, pointing out the sick, warped, and yes, sad persons who would actually act like this, "alien psyche" be damned.

So, that brings me to my point: That the GSPs, thematically, can be a literary critique of the very concept of "villain" as defined by contemporary society-not by any true concept of "evil", as bizarre a concept as that actually is, but of society's inherent tendency to lash out at anything it doesn't understand.

So, for a more introspective, RP heavy game, would you use Green Sun Princes to cast a critical eye at the very concept of "supervillain" as imagined by most fiction?