In Western culture it was somewhat class and income dependent. "I am a real character. You are eccentric. He is mad." In less scientific cultures, supernatural problems were ascribed.

Or course, in a fictional universe where there are evil spirits, demons, and sanity-shattering non-Euclidean elder gods, madness becmes a somewhat different range of conditions that may include some accurate traditional diagnoses. Faite, as you have pointed out, does not merely think she sees far off events, and so when she acts based upon thet enhanced perception she may seem mad but is not.




I think in fiction it rose to tropedom soon after the Industrial Revolution, based upon some of the iconoclastic pioneers, then found form in Frankenstein, Nemo, Moreau, Jekyll, etc, and eventually exemplified in the poison gas and death ray merchants who reflected the early 20th century's experience of science fingind new and horrible ways of mass slaughter. Mad scientists now somewhat occupy the same niche previously filled with mad sorcerers.







Much of horror is based upon one of two themes: We go out and encounter the unknown, or the unknown comes to our home. This isn't always a literal physical journey, and mental illness as a driver of abhorrent and unaccountable behavior is a fine vehicle for "the unknown".










That's an interesting thesis. I don't know enough about Asian literature to take a view.

Part of the movement of Western society from the 1960s and 70s (Watergate et al) has been a disillusionment with "great men" in authority and national organisations in "public service". This has led to questioning of the heroic ideal - every seeming icon must have a seedy secret that flaws them - and to an expectation in literature that there must always be another shoe waiting to drop.

Alongside that in horror fiction has been the rise of the romantic villain (e.g. the sexy vampire), who is more interesting than the bland hero and who eventually hijacks the story. From there it is a small step to the villain being the sympathetic hero outcast against a mundane world of lesser people who are not as special or deserving as he. So Bram Stoker's 1880s novel Dracula was largely about Jonathan Harker and his allies struggling to save his wife Mina from an evil foreign invader to their cozy Victorian domestic bliss who was trying to steal her away. Many modern versions of the story tell a sexually-charged love affair between Mina and the Count who is so much more interesting than her boring, unresponsive husband.

These two changes to public perception, the distrust of the great and the rise of the villain-in-the-right, have done much to shape how readers and viewers expect shades of grey now and find it hard to suspend disbelief for Manichean D&D-style alignment choices.




Lara is right. The Hood is a baddie. He has got it wrong, in a grand sort of way.




Indeed. Of course, like many manipulators, the Hood uses information and truth as tools or weapons.










Liu Xi can take some comfort in knowing that she is no less picked on than many others including many of her friends. Indeed, she is fortunate that much of the Hood's agenda for her is discernable.