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I mean, that style of villain death is a Disney classic.
The classic Disney villain death is for the bad guy to fall off a cliff after getting into a final fight with the hero.
It's the best of both worlds; you get to see the hero defeat the villain in a climactic battle, the hero gets to show how good and noble he is by sparing the villain's life, then the villain dies anyway in a way that keeps the hero morally pure.
See Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, etc.
I was wondering if you were going to link to that Kulak piece as I read your comment. I haven’t been able to unsee that trope and ponder its meaning in each case I see it ever since reading it.
This is the first time I've seen it and it is a baffling article.
In particular it seems to build a case entirely from an imagined literary genre? He makes this appeal:
But the fact there is that if you do read those texts, they completely undermine his primary case, which is a plea for more retributive violence, even vigilante violence. If you read, say, Le Morte d'Arthur, you will notice regular and conspicuous displays of mercy to defeated enemies, and unnecessary bloodshed is portrayed as a major threat. Arthur and Pellinore become trusted friends and allies, for instance, and the fact that Pellinore killed King Lot, rather than spare him as he ought to, becomes one of the causes of his eventual death. Sir Gareth defeats several knights in a row, all of whom are acting as vicious bandits, and spares them (at a lady's request, no less) and they come to Arthur's court and are forgiven. When characters choose bloodshed, this is usually bad - the tragedy ends with Arthur's determination to kill Mordred, rather than allow him to flee, bringing his own doom upon him.
The trope of defeating someone and then forgiving them and becoming friends is extremely common in pre-modern literature. Half of Robin Hood's merry men are people that Robin defeated, and then extended a hand to in friendship, saying "you are a man after my own heart!"
Heck, this happens biblically: consider David's repeated and conspicuous refusal to harm his enemy Saul, even when Saul is in his power.
What about classical antiquity? Here I'd note something they have in common with the Viking sagas, which is deep concern about the possibility of blood feuds, and the demand that violence ought to be limited and proportional in order to avoid them. Destroying enemies in a temper is bad. The Aeneid ends with the defeated Turnus asking for mercy, or failing that, to have his body returned to his people for burial rites, and Aeneas' furious refusal to do this and act of retribution is presented as a bad thing, or as a moral failing. Likewise the way the Iliad treats Achilles' disrespect of Hector's body. Neither the Aeneid nor the Iliad are pacifist works that believe that violence is always bad, but they are written with an awareness of the dangers of vengeance. The same is true of the sagas.
What's the last one he cites? Elizabethan England? Suffice to say that I do not think the people who wrote this endorsed bloody-minded retribution.
Now, sure, in all of those cases there is a specific local context - David doesn't hurt Saul because he's God's anointed, and so on. All the examples are a bit more complicated. Everything always is.
Likewise there are acts of retribution, and those acts also have context - Odysseus kills all the suitors, not because they're his enemies in some general way, but because they have specifically violated the laws of hospitality, which are sacred, and even then the way Homer describes the slaughter does not seem to be one that we are intended to cheer for. In the Odyssey itself the act is presented as something somewhat transgressive. The slaughter itself is an extended sequence in which the suitors beg for mercy, try to rally a desperate defence, and so on; there is something terrible about it. And then in the poem the families of the suitors demand justice afterwards and Odysseus must reconcile with them, in book 24. Antinous' father gets up and makes a moving speech about his sorrow, and the suitors' families plan to attack. The Odyssey actually ends with Athena intervening and telling Odysseus to stop being violent lest he incur the gods' anger: "men of Ithaca, cease this dreadful war, and settle the matter at once without further bloodshed... Odysseus, noble son of Laertes, stop this warful strife, or Zeus will be angry with you."
Kulak is LARPing an imagined history, not reading the historical texts that he actually refers to. The ancients were extremely conscious of the perils of violence, and, though not always uncomplicatedly, prized mercy and reconciliation as well.
Kulak has made LARPing a revolutionary his financial income. Back in the Canadian trucker protests he made repeated calls to resistance and violence and called it a moral failing for any man not to risk death or hospitalization for the righteous cause... while begging exception since he was already in a hospital for a medical procedure. Gotta look out for you own health first, right?
Alas, any cause that warrants risking hospitalization to prove virtue is worth leaving a hospital that you might be returned to.
Kulak is a modern day version of the man with their rocking chair by the fire who valorizes the virtue of fighting and glory of dying young to defend hearth and home.
To be fair he almost lost an arm and it was touch and go re: whether he'd ever get full use of his hand again, or even sensation. I've seen the scars (and the arm while it was healing) and they're wild. Took several surgeries. FWIW he also accomplished this injury while doing something badass, but I've said enough.
Victory in violence always demands the sacrifice of your body. You might hope to get away without injury, but you never expect it. People of violence understand this and accept it, or lose. So I am going to need more than assurances he did something badass if you want to change my mind that that incident didn't cement his status as a risible caricature.
Why would I be interested in changing your mind about this? I have no idea who you are and it's a personal matter. Sticking up for a friend is all.
Welp, I thought you were going to say Dean is spinning it or doesn't have all the facts and maybe find a way to hint at the shape of this badass thing he did, not immediately back down.
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