Skullman

nathandouglasdavis Mar 8, 2019

2

The Skullman's personality is portrayed at least three different way during the course of these ninety pages. When fe's first introduced, fe's portrayed as somebody who's very flippant about killing others. Fe has the power to hypnotize people and supposedly fe could use this power to prevent people from fighting back or being threats, but fe chooses to kill them instead. At this point in the story, even the murders are drawn in an almost slapstick comedy style, reinforcing the idea that killing means nothing much to fem. This first portrayal of feir personality also matches how the police perceive fem: bloodthirsty and enjoying killing. As the story reaches its climax, the murders become less slapstick and have more gravitas to them. I see this as preparing the reader for the second portrayal of the Skullman's personality. Instead of shooting people willy-nilly, feir killings are portrayed as having a motivation behind them. Of course, this motivation is retroactively applied to all of feir previous murders as well. Fe sees feir parents' killer as influencing society and culture from the shadows and causing people to live corrupted lives. Fe sees femself as the arbiter of justice and seems to judge everyone else as being unrighteous. Of course, this is nothing more than a hypocritical, self-serving justification fe tells femself so fe doesn't have to feel bad for killing people...and enjoying it. At this point in the story, we find fem stroking feir own ego, condemning others for the minutia of their sins, and caught up in feir own self-righteousness saying that fe'd even be willing to kill everybody in Japan. But then the story shifts and fe learns some people fe had trusted seemingly had wanted the extinction of humanity itself. As soon as fe heard that, fe called them monsters and was devastated to the point of weeping. I consider this the third portrayal of feir personality because it's the first time we see fem being capable of caring for others. The author chose to portray fem as being empathetic and capable of recognizing the evil of genocide, though of course fe only recognizes the evil when it's somebody else desiring mass murder--when fe femself desires it, it's justified. I think the author was trying to have the character gain depth and become more relatable by having fem change from a brutal monster to a homesick teenager. The problem is that making a sociopath a relatable character takes time and nuance and this story had neither of those. So whenever it got to the point in the story when the audience is supposed to feel conflicted about whether to empathize with the Skullman or not, I was just asking myself "Why does fe now have a completely different personality?"