Quote Originally Posted by Hyoi View Post
I get that, and I like that theme, it's just that it's been so long since any of the monsters actually acted monstrous for more than five minutes that it is getting hard to take newly-introduced monsters seriously.
Critically, there has been a relative lack of collateral damage for some time. The big combat set pieces in England: the dome, the island; and the most recent battle with the Polar Lords have been broadly devoid of innocent bystanders. Sure there have been casualties, but these are mostly people, epitomized by Wooster, who have made their own choices. We're getting sparky armies fighting each other, not sparky armies wreaking devastation.

There are in-universe justifications for this. The Baron spent the better part of a generation enforcing a code of behavior upon the sparks of Europa that basically boiled down to 'don't make a mess,' and while his ability to restrain such persons in his absence doesn't seem to have taken, the Pax Transylvania seems to have made a rather distinct impression on the younger generation. Forced to at least defer dreams of conquest and pillage, even otherwise irredeemable characters like Martellus developed other interests.

Additionally a not-insignificant fraction of the old guard of madboys was killed and/or imprisoned at Mechanicsburg and has now been off the board for several years. Others have been subsumed beneath Zola/the Other's nefarious influence. The lead up to the current clash of superpowers seems to have had a temporary effect on reducing ongoing chaos by forcing the various disparate factions into alignment with greater entities.