Thread:Mesektet/@comment-3581997-20160615160106/@comment-3581997-20180204184514

Mediawatcher wrote: I dont know if it’s just me but a lot of times I tend to find dissonient serenity villains a bit silly, I mean it can make them more terrifying but at the same time when overused it can come off as ridiculous, like when everyone is caught with a hate plague and everyone is laughing and screaming like crazy while the one major bad guy is all calm every second of the way, I mean just because a guy is calm while they are doing awful things doesn’t necessarily make them more terrifying or more heinous.

The hate-plague combined with Dissonant Serenity can work creatively, if you give the impression the villain has always been like that, it becomes that "I'm always angry" moment. Hannibal Lecter never loses his cool because he is constantly homicidal so nothing phases him. Albert Simon sees the entire world as broken so he is at a state where everything around him is already a mess so why should he get anymore upset. But I stress those are cases of it can work, you are quite right, if that trope is used multiple times in the same story it breaks the illusion because that universe starts to have a certain logic to it and largely the universe isn't supposed to have any inherent logic to it. You should never be able to predict everything a villain can do, any over-used trope will produce those results.

That is why Fisk worked so well for Daredevil, his Dissonace has cracks in it that can come undon if triggered and the audiance didn't know right-away what those triggers were so he became an engaging wild-card. This is trope subversion at one of it's better moments and in general that is one of the better ways to over-come the over-used trope.