Henchwomen Fight

Since I already made a post on how to make anti-moralistic story using evil, I think it's fair to also explain how is it possible to use evil values to write moralistic story for fun, and it will be a tragedy LOL.

First of all let's explain how the decadent movement used female villains in order to create emotional intensity and after that let's see how such emotional intensity can be used to create an emotional intensity towards a hero.

Decadent artists delved into subjects like eroticism, decay, perversity, and the occult to provoke intense emotional responses exploring sensuality, death, and forbidden desire, using vivid imagery to evoke both repulsion and fascination, intensifying emotional engagement.

Decadents prioritized sensory overload, often depicting opulent, exotic, or grotesque imagery to stimulate the senses.

Decadent works emphasized sensory richness, using opulent or grotesque imagery to overwhelm the audience’s senses. Villains were often depicted with exaggerated sensuality or grotesquery, making them magnetic yet disturbing figures. This heightened aesthetic amplified emotions like awe, dread, or forbidden desire, drawing readers or viewers into the character’s world.

Decadents also used imagery to depict villains in ways that heightened their emotional impact. The exaggerated traits of these characters—whether their beauty, cruelty, or decadence—created a larger-than-life presence that stirred intense emotional reactions.

These elements were used to immerse audiences in a heightened sensory experience, often through villains whose immoral actions or artificial personas amplified emotions like desire, dread, or fascination.

"Matei Calinescu, Literary Theorist: The Decadent villain’s sensory world awakens subconscious longings, a beauty and desire that moralists, in their blindness, dismiss as depravity."

So, that's basically it, using moral decay and charisma in order to create intense emotions, it's true that the concept was based on female villains, but it can also work on male villains too, for example Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal played by Mads Mikkelsen, or  Dr. Quentin Costa played by Bruno Campos, and of course Gus in Breaking Bad played by Giancarlo Esposito, Miguel Bain in Assassins played Antonio Banderas the whole idea is to make the right amount of contrast between the charisma of the character and its moral decay, and if the audience felt the intense emotion of longing, well, congratulations, you made a great villain.

Now let's see how to use that to create a hero..

Basically the reason people love female villains especially and charismatic male villains despite their actions is the contrast between monstrous actions and the appeal of the character, and such contrast create intense feeling that stronger than just beauty, as decadent artists see it, both characteristics are inseparable, like an inc and a white paper, let's say the white paper is the appeal of the character, and the immorality is dark lines that bring the character into life, if you want to reverse that, what you would need is a black paper with white lines, with female villains, you love the characters despite the immoral actions they commit, because how beautiful and charismatic they are, if you want to reverse it, you would have to create a character that look really unappealing, but they act like an angel..

Examples of such characters, Creature played by Robert De Niro in Frankenstein, Beauty and the Beast, I think the concept even apply on Deadpool, like the contrast of how he looks and how he acts is there.  

So, let's have fun, let's create a Chinese hero, who make such contrast and people love him despite how he looks, because of his moral.

Let's call the character Dashuan, since he's the last Chinese name I remember from a movie, Dashuan is a cute young man, who in love with a Chinese beauty and can't confess his love to her, he doesn't care about politics and try to stay away from trouble, but one night he goes back home late, for a drunk Japanese soldiers bully him, he try to defend himself, but they stab him with the blades of their guns, then to be taken as a prisoner, but instead of staying in prison he find himself taken in some lab, now, he will end up like a test subject of their experiments, while being injected, he's tormented, he's trying to release himself but can't do anything, his body changes, and deformed, they assume he's dead so they get rid of the body, then he somehow get back to life, people stay away from him fearing he's infected - what he face is similar to the creature in Frankenstein - he always get flashes of what happened in the lab, and while wandering aimlessly, another group of Japanese solders bully him, but now he act violently and kill them in his rage. The soldiers after him, and he only try to survive, then he sees the one he loves, and while looking at her without her noticing him, he look in the glass of a widow, see how he looked, and he feels as if he's dying inside, but suddenly the Japanese find him, knock him over, and take him in prison, and because how powerful he become, they offer to him to join them instead of killing him, he refuse, but then they bring the one he love, who doesn't even recognize him, they offer him that in return for working for them, they will turn her too to be like him, he agree, and they start to put her in the same place he was in, but it's like he remember what happen to him as if it's happening again, and thinking that the one he loves would face the same agony he had, so, he revolt, free her, and fight them for the last time, helping her to escape with the other fellow Chinese that were taken into captivity, and block the door the prevent the Japanese from going after them, but while he's blocking the door, they keep stabbing him with the rifles blades, and he sees her and cry, then they shoot him, but then the innocent prisoners already escaped, and then he either ends back on the lab or die to make sure they escape, depends on which degree of intensity is needed. This can be an ending, and you can build on such ending, like for example, the one he loves join the communist resistance and free him later.. I know, it's full of plot holes, I really don't care, it's just something I wrote in two minutes, and I wouldn't give a moralistic story more than that from my free time LOL. 

Anyway, in such story, we applied the decadent movement principles of using contrast to amplify feelings, we used The Myth of Sisyphus when he ended up in the lap closing the ring, also with the blades of the rifles from when they attacked him and ended up in prison, and then once again when he was protecting the door, also we used Albert Camus philosophy and finding a meaning in the face of the absurd, as he find a meaning of a meaningless suffering by helping other people, we also used The virtue of selfishness, in a way that him saving her also comes from his own experience and he's own suffering, so he's moral actions is justified, and he also turned into a selfless hero towards the end.

The whole point of all I wrote is to create intense emotions, using morality or immorality to achieve that is irrelevant.

Favorite Quote

"Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray: Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it, the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless." 

"Elaine Showalter, Literary Critic: Decadent literature used the figure of the villain—often a dandy or femme fatale—to explore the boundaries of desire and morality, creating a tension that was both seductive and disturbing. The artificiality of their world and the decay of their moral frameworks intensified the emotional experience for readers."  

"Richard Ellmann, Wilde Biographer: Wilde’s characters, like Dorian Gray and Salomé, are vehicles for exploring the paradox of beauty in decay. Their pursuit of forbidden pleasure, cloaked in artifice, creates a heightened emotional intensity that both attracts and repels, mirroring the Decadent fascination with the perverse."

"David Weir, Decadence Scholar: The Decadent villain’s sensory world—opulent, exotic, and often grotesque—was a deliberate assault on the senses, designed to evoke a feverish emotional state where desire and horror intertwined."  

"Oscar Wilde: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

"Oscar Wilde: An artist has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colours on his palette are to the painter."

"Aubrey Beardsley: Art must be its own justification, free from the chains of moral preaching."

"Salvador Dalí: To impose morality on art is to kill its soul; it must be free to shock and disturb."

"Oscar Wilde: Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope."