August 4, 2022

Commentary for August 4, 2022:

At this point, maybe it’s evident that what I wanted from this chapter was to tell a story from the perspective of the villains in order to show how the bad guys don’t tend to see themselves, their actions, or their goals as bad. I’m not suggesting that all evil people in history have genuinely believed their actions were right or just; it is evident that there are people who simply don’t care that their actions hurt others, and there are villains in Eon’s World who I’ve written that way. Doctor Eggman, for instance. But a great deal of evil throughout history, I think, has been made possible through good people being convinced to do bad things, or at the very least to stand by and do nothing while bad things are done in their name.

But I’m getting off track. Whether or not the Echidna Empire genuinely wants to make the world a better place for all Mobians, Iago believes they do, and he believes that it is only through force, through tearing down the current world order and replacing it with something new that this will be possible. Now Austin, the host of of the D&D podcast Dice Funk, has occasionally said he likes to put things he genuinely believes in the mouths of villains, I guess as a way of testing those ideas, maybe? Or perhaps to challenge his players’ ideas? There’s even an entry on TV Tropes called ‘Villain Has a Point’, and a common criticism of modern superhero films is that they often present villains who are responding to a genuine injustice, which ultimately goes unanswered by the heroes, who just end up enforcing the status quo. This is the risk you run when you try to make your villains more sympathetic; you risk making your villains the heroes. Look at Magneto.

Iago is in this position right now. He is the villain who has a point. He is responding to a genuine injustice in this setting. So the real question is, will the actual heroes of Eon’s World recognise the injustice Iago stands against and do something about it? Well, that would be spoilers, but either way, the answer for the moment is not yet.

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