The Daisy-Filled Monster

 

The Daisy-Filled Monster - Subversion and Execution

This article discusses and uses images from the following resources:

Limbus Company - by Project Moon

Vampire the Masquerade - by White Wolf RPG

Tokyo Ghoul - by Sui Ishida

The three-paragraph backstory that inspired this - Limbus Company

Gonna prove my version of justice; is more just than yours - Hero, by Mili

A bright sun blazes over the blistering black tarmac of an Arizona motel. I sit crouched by the window, knees locked, aching for the past four hours. The stench of unopened slimy takeout boxes, the white wallpaper, peeling back to make room for the flies and wasps nesting within my walls. I slit open the blinds and see you, face laid bare, as you step out of your car. I watch and wait as you walk, fingers laced around a revolver outlined in your pocket, rapping on the downstairs doors one by one. I hear you and catch my breath as your footsteps knock down the hallway, step by step by step, pausing outside my door. I taste the air and feel you, waiting outside in the hellish sun. The door splinters, a crack of searing light emerging, then another. The door breaks down. My skin flakes off in crusted ash. You did not wait. You did not speak. I should have known you would not knock.   

Vampires. Oh, I love vampires. A desperate affliction of the human being personified into the quintessential components of abuse, a person who is hunted by an obsessive creature that is ruthless, unchanging, a being who who cannot help but crave blood no matter how it tries to stem the urge, a creature who is hunted not out of ironic punishment for its wicked deeds but persecution for its mere existence. Vampires are staple literary devices; abuse, love, obsession, death, stagnation, all of it can be packaged into a single horror monster staple. Vampires can often be depicted as the ravenous ghoul that stalks the land, unchanging, indulgent in wrath and horror while still retaining the ability to be subverted to follow an inverse depiction; a human plagued by an unfortunate thirsting malady who is ruthlessly stalked by those who claim its mere condition is a threat that must be extinguished, in the name of God or otherwise.

In face of evolution, biological, narrative, and social, as all in the world, things will eventually change with the passage of time. This applies to the genre of villains known as monsters; beings characterized by either superhuman abilities, their callous disregard for human life, or both. Primarily, these monsters reflect some aspect of humanity or are used to examine societal issues from a metaphorical lens. 

The easiest example for this are vampires; undead beings who must slake themselves on blood. As previously mentioned, abuse, love, obsession, sexuality, persecution, oppressive hierarchies, and family are all themes covered frequently in vampire novels. There is also an interesting facet of vampirism often cited, that being the question if vampires are inherently evil for a condition they may not have even willingly consented to (no, they aren't, but it is interesting to see their changing viewpoint of the world when they grapple with the idea of drinking blood while also being tempted by the notion of immortality).

However, over time the inverse of this formula was introduced with characters who I like to refer to as the Inquisition; vampire hunters who ruthlessly persecute vampires for the simple fact that they exist - disregarding whether or not they have actually harmed a person, instead hunting and culling for the sake of it. In these stories, it is often vampires who are highlighted for their humanity, or as victims of a manageable condition, while the hunters are shown as prejudiced zealots bent on wiping them out.

From here we can derive two main narrative tropes, and two subtropes, centered around these character archetypes:

1. Vampires are ruthless monsters, and humanity is portrayed as the valiant hero

2. Humans are the real monsters, and vampires are reviled victims of humanities cruelties

3. Both vampires and humans are highlighted as being monsters, both sacrificing others for their own gain and needlessly brutalizing any who stand before them. Usually, the message is that all are capable of evil and exploitation; vampire or not. 

4. Both the vampires and hunters both have benevolent intentions despite their conflict. Neither wants to recklessly harm the other but due to misfortune, misunderstanding, or simple disagreement in personal philosophy, they end up in violent altercations. In these, characters are often morally gray or trying to do what they think is best in the moment. These are the rarest stories, as they require full understanding of the issues being discussed and deeply nuanced characters.

Now, these tropes all have their ups and downs. Some want a classic dichotic good versus evil, while others want to highlight characters where neither is technically in the wrong. The problem arises when someone tries to do both in a way that circumvents the narrative.

This is what I call the Daisy-filled Monster.

The Daisy-Filled Monster

The term Daisy-filled Monster is when a characters heinous actions are justified (or attempt to be justified) in light of another character, whose actions are usually much more extreme in comparison. It could also be extended to when a character finds out something that changes their perception of another character in the story (seen with twist villains, twist heroes, and so on). Monster in this case refers to the idea of a person committing atrocities most would consider horrendous, explicitly terrible, and morally reprehensible; monster as the person, not the idea of monster as a supernatural being. Daisy-filled just refers to the flippant dismissal of the characters prior or current behavior.

This crops up from time to time in vampire media, spurred on by the idea of how humanity and the morality of an action is subjective based on who is performing it.  Unfortunately, this is not always in a "here's how terrible people try to justify terrible actions", and "cognitive bias impacts our perceptions of ourselves and others". Instead I have seen it been used in an unironic "you thought this person was a villain, but they were actually doing it to stop something worse so they're justified". To be blunt, this falls flat. And I will be giving a few examples that fall into this trap, some which don't, and why it does and doesn't work in the context they are giving.

Keep in mind, I am referring to this trope not when the antagonist is trying to justify themselves to the protagonist/another character in the story, I am referring to when the antagonist, and by extension the author, is trying to justify their actions to the reader - and fails because the reasoning given to the audience is insufficient, a fallacy, or the action itself is irredeemable. 

For context, all of these media usually have different names for vampires and vampire hunters (because every iteration of vampire media uses a new name to refer to vampires to stand out). To keep things concise from here on out I will be referring to any vampires as Vampires, Ghouls,  or Family (an organization of vampires) and any vampire hunters as Hunters or the Inquisition (organization of hunters).

Example 1: Limbus Company: Or The One That Inspired This Article

A good example would be a backstory for an alternate character in Limbus Company, whose story actually inspired me to make this article after realizing how common it was. The story is only a few paragraphs long and follows a hunter named Hong-Lu and an unnamed vampire . In it we see the hunter break down the front door of the vampire, before assaulting it and insinuating that they got the vampires address by torturing their Family. The vampire claims that it only feasts on dead humans and never hurt a live one, a fact that we are told by the narrator is true, and that it has done no wrong. The vampire says it only wants to live a regular life as a human does with the rest of its Family and asks the hunter why they are being hunted, upon which the hunter proclaims it is simply because they are a vampire before torturing and killing them. 

At the end of all this, it is revealed that person who contracted the hunter was a relative of a human who was turned into vampire by the unnamed vampire in the story. It is unclear if the person who was turned was willing or not.

Oh look, Death approaches! - Limbus Company

Now, this isn't a complete depiction of the Daisy-filled Monster. This is actually an example of trope number 2 I made above, where humans are the real monsters and vampires are hunted needlessly. The hunter is not justified in their actions by the end of the story, thus preventing it from being a tale about a Daisy-filled Monster. They hunt out of hatred, a statement they repeatedly make, and are contracted by a family member who wishes for the vampire to be hunted out of the perception of losing a relative (through the method of them becoming a vampire), regardless if that relative actually wished to become a vampire. So why mention this at all? If this story has no relation to the idea of the Daisy-filled Monster, why go over it?

Because there are alternate versions of this story I've witnessed and heard that follow a near-identical format with one major difference. Specifically, the portion of the story I want to extrapolate on is the final part where the hunter reveals he got the contract from a human family member of the vampire turned.

Example 1a: The Hypothetical, and Daisy-Filled Monsters Done Wrong

Imagine for a moment the exact same scene played out; the door being kicked in, the hunters monologue, the death at the vampire, but at the end the hunter reveals that the reason the vampire was being hunted was for the murder of several dozen innocents. This reveal, that the hunter was actually hunting a vampire responsible for the death of dozens of regular passerby, is often used to justify the prior extreme actions they have taken in the story while subverting the audiences expectations of what the story is about. 

It... doesn't exactly sit right, you could say. The audience themselves has no idea about the vampires actions until the very end of the story, and the reveal that all of the sympathy gathered towards the vampire (and the lack of it for the hunter) throughout the story was leading up to a singular rug pull. You have here a story of a person harassing and killing a person in a frankly brutal fashion, only for them to turn around and say "no, here's why I did it. It's okay I did all of that because they were a worse person", without a hint of irony, expecting us to applaud their clever subversion as we laugh and bellow "OH, you GOT ME! I thought the fellow you were hunting was innocent, but you showed my folly for certain."  

This is performed in an attempt to appear like you are discovering deep facets of a character which you did not initially consider, and to consider your initial views of other people and situations before coming to a conclusion. Obviously, this is not a good lesson in this context. Its not a lesson, its a fallacy. Any rational person would not derive this moral of "don't judge a book by its cover", when we just saw that protagonist talk about blind hatred for 90% of the plot only for the book to turn around and say it was justifiable in this case because of a narrative fact the audience was deliberately obfuscated from.. Note, the critique is not surrounding a "good versus evil" or a "morally gray versus evil" story. Its criticizing a story where we are shown our protagonist as evil and the antagonist as good, and are then told at the end that actually the protagonist is better (or at least has a subjective moral high ground) because the antagonist was - SHOCK - secretly evil, in an attempt to lessen our negative viewpoints of the deeds of the protagonist.

In shorter terms, this is an attempt at subverting the expectations of the audience. A poor one. It isn't a good subversion, its only bad storytelling. You didn't set a moral where one could improve themselves as a person. You've just made a moral where a heinous action was introduced, justified, and brushed off without exploring inkling of the undertones you initially intended to explore. You shot yourself in the foot. Whatever subtext and metaphors you were trying to make are now likely void, because we are supposed to sympathize with the protagonist, one who justifies bigotry using hate, without irony, with a stone-faced one-note intention of calloused arrogance and the moral fallacy of comparing ones own actions to another. 

You blubbering fool.

But what about the inverse, I hear you ask? Does that fall under the same clause? And to that I say no, to my own surprise.

Lets go through a story in the complete opposite where:

The protagonist is shown as good

The antagonist is depicted as evil

The antagonist is revealed to actually be a good person after their death.

In this story, we have a narration that tells us that the antagonist is evil, however after their death it is revealed they are actually just a regular person trying to live their life. In this story, the moral is the consequence of bias. The protagonist, despite their protestations that they are performing a moral action, are revealed to have murdered an innocent being. This can be set with the undertone of the protagonist trying to justify their actions even leading up to the eventual murder, similar to the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. 

We have a moral from this story, a good one. We have a subtext, we have a metaphor for our fellow hunter and vampire, we have a reason why this twist of surprise morality is relevant to the lesson that is trying to be told, and the twist additionally highlights the prior plot so when we reread this story we can further identify what is actually happening.

Example 2: Vampire the Masquerade: The Monsters in the Mirrors

The Contextual and Ambivalent Daisy-Filled Monster

Weirdly, Vampire the Masquerade has a lot of well (depending on the module and story you are looking at) written groups with conflicting interests, in the sense that everyone is inherently out for their own invested interests instead of being solely evil or good (most of the time). It should be noted that Vampire the Masquerade is a roleplaying game, meaning that the roles vampires and hunters take will vary heavily in between different playbooks and campaigns, and the quality of these playbooks will differ depending on the author and the gamemaster running it.

In this setting, vampires are rigidly self-serving. They perform actions out of personal self-gain and while some are blatantly evil or anti-human, the vast majority are more concerned with internal politics and hierarchal standing instead of waging an endless war with humanity. From this we can see a good representation of vampires, one where the themes of family, hierarchy, obsession, abuse, and the lengths one is willing to hurt others for power are put on full display. The game features heavy tones of people using and manipulating other people for their own end, to the point that it is not only acceptable in vampire society to exploit those around you but also expected. There is additional punctuation in this topic by the contrasting views of rebellion and the status quo in this exploitative society.

The Inquisition, on the other hand, takes an approach reminiscent of a double-sided coin. Most of the Inquisition have the singular goal of studying or exterminating all supernatural beings they find (I may be wrong about this, but it does depend on the playbook). Here, many hunters hunt for the sake of it, or to further their own political power (mirroring the vampires). However, a decent chunk of the Inquisition are former victims of vampires as well, hunting other vampires out of a perceived vengeance, fear, or rebellion to what they view as an all-controlling force (also mirroring the vampires politics).

As a result, the vampires and hunters in Vampire the Masquerade are individuals with their own agendas; there is no homogenous group of singular identity. Everyone is part of a group for their own reasons and personal philosophy, only cooperating as a means to further their own ends. The personal identity and motivation is held before the group; the faction itself is only used as a tool to further an individuals own inner philosophy and beliefs.

Describing these factions, you should reach the conclusion that the Daisy-Filled Monster is not only used often in this game, but it is actively expected. Betrayal is often a core theme of the game, and usually both protagonists and antagonists perform actions which would be seen as manipulative or coercive throughout the story. Characters use others for their own ends and justify their actions either for furthering political change, interpersonal conflict, or out of a perceived moral necessity. These cases are a good example of the Daisy-Filled Monster. Everyone is trying to downplay their actions while remaining ignorant of those they harm. Often both protagonist and antagonist characters in these scenarios could both be reasonably considered being victims of and being Daisy-Filled Monsters.

The justification of ones terrible actions is prevalent when comparing morality in immortality versus mortality. The notion that power corrupts is a common one, and misuse of power can harm even if intended others. Unfortunately, sometimes this notion is combined with the Daisy-Filled Monster in a way that causes a lackluster narrative.

Example 3: Tokyo Ghoul - Two Lightbulbs in a Dark Room

I have not finished Tokyo Ghoul, so let it be said that I am biased in this section of the article.

I finished at about 30 chapters in and I found the side characters of the book to be one-note, extreme in a single personality trait, or dumb. I don't watch a lot of anime so I may have a harsher critique as I am not as accustomed to its tropes or more common themes. That being said, there is some stuff I should unpack in relevance to Daisy-Filled Monsters, particularly the protagonist and a hunter.

For context: Ghouls are people who have to consume human flesh to survive; a vampire but with meat substituting blood. They can go out in sunlight. Ghouls are also public knowledge. Hunters are part of an government organization to exterminate the Ghouls, as they are viewed as a threat to humanity, and hunt using the organs of dead Ghouls. The protagonist, a student named Ken Kaneki, who after a terrible accident and organ transplant finds himself slowly turning into a Ghoul. Residing in a sector of Ghouls who believe in eating corpses instead of the living and maintaining a life of normalcy (a sector that is frequently referenced as the most peaceful sector, with others having devolved into open turf wars between sects of Ghouls and the occasional Inquisition hunting party).

The book is also proclaimed as a tragedy and covers the internal conflict of the self and external conflict of the outside world.

Now, most of the story does not follow into the Daisy-Filled Monster. When a monstrous person is trying to typically justify their actions in Tokyo Ghoul we are distinctively not meant to sympathize with them. They are meant to be portrayed as extremists, illogical, or unforgivable. 

Most of the Inquisition is depicted as being morally okay with killing Ghouls, regardless of who the Ghoul is. When they justify their actions to others, these characters (and the author) are not trying to convince you that they are justified or a good person. Instead it is meant to highlight their hypocrisy and the depths of their idolatry and extremism. You are not meant to sympathize with them, and you are not meant to believe their reasoning for hunting Ghouls. This can make many of the hunters fairly one-note. We don't see (at least up to 30ish chapters) why some of them have chosen this profession (minus one particular character). Some of the hunters just like killing for the sake of it. This doesn't make them very efficient Daisy-Filled Monsters because the reasoning behind their actions are insufficiently told outside of a staple "evil as a personality". Narratively they are not expected to have a reasoning behind their actions besides being antagonists, meaning there is no intention for them to be Daisy-Filled Monsters because the audience and characters around them are not meant to find their explanation justifiable.

Average Inquisition/Ghoul Side Character

 The same can be said for some of the Ghouls, who reject the notion of eating corpses and believe they should be free to kill who they please, when they please, regardless if they are Ghoul, human, child, or elsewise. Feeding should be indulged out of pleasure, not starved out of necessity for helping humans.

But if both the Inquisition, and most of the Ghouls, are not good samples of Daisy-Filled Monsters, who is?

Two characters. The best written characters. The protagonist, Ken Kaneki, and a hunter named Amon. 

Kaneki is an unique protagonist who initially starts off the story distrusting of Ghouls, seeing the act of eating flesh abhorrent, before gradually shifting towards the perception that the Ghouls are being needlessly hunted down and persecuted by members of the Inquisition regardless of their involvement in actually killing people. 

Kaneki, Not Wanting to Kill

Amon is dedicated to the systematic tracking and hunting of Ghouls, who he see's as a threat to humanity (much like the other hunters). Amon thinks that innocent people are being hurt by the Ghoul's existence and believes he is committing the lesser evil by hunting them, as the Ghouls retaliation against the Inquisition often leads to casualties with anyone even related to it; an action he believes to be unjust and unfair.

Dead Coworker Blues

Both echo the statement, "This world is wrong", and present an ideological drive to change it for what they believe to be the correct one.

However, both of these characters viewpoints have open flaws and biases in their viewpoints.

For Kaneki, we have seen Ghouls kill people; several. It appears to actually be the norm to all Ghouls outside the sector Kaneki lives in, often being cited as having open hunting territories to the point that they are openly fighting the Inquisition in the streets or actively hunting victims. Secondly, while Kaneki may wish for the ideal of Ghouls living amongst humans in a life of normalcy (a vision shared by the rest of the Ghouls in his sector), we see why this is inherently a difficult idea to achieve. In vampire media its common for a vampire to enter a "feeding frenzy" if sufficiently hungry, blindly attacking people to feed itself. This is also true in Tokyo Ghoul. Kaneki, a recent Ghoul who despises the notion of killing or eating flesh from a previously living human, almost succumbs to this appetite numerous times in the first 30 chapters. Additionally while the idea of vampires living with humans is appealing (likely by sustaining themselves off of blood donations, the feasibility of which is another worthy article in of itself), its harder when the "blood" presented here is "human flesh and organs" - typically needed for transplants or desired to be buried. Finally, not all Ghouls follow the dream of living peacefully among humans. Some view humans as "lesser", or merely as food.

As for Amon, he is part of an organization dedicated to exterminating Ghouls, plain and simple. He is dedicated to exterminating them just like any other hunter, however the reason why he does them sets him apart (don't worry, I'll get to judging him just like Kaneki in a bit). Amon has personally witnessed the impact of Ghouls, seeing his coworkers and friend die at their hands, and catching Ghouls who have been conducting serial killings. Amon bears a strong resentment towards them for what he views as innocent lives; children, family members, colleagues, Amon cites all of these as victims of Ghoul attacks in recent years, and thus tries to justify his actions as reducing casualties for a world stricken by serial cannibalism. 

Amon Monologuing about Dead Friends

However this is also a crutch Amon uses to justify his hunting, hunting Ghouls that have never harmed a living person, or Ghouls that are children. It can also be repeated that many, many of the hunters are extreme in their points of view. Amon is not as extreme in his viewpoints and measures of his co-workers, but does view the hunting of Ghouls as a necessity.

Amon Crying Over A Dead Friend, Who Was Considered Extreme Even by Inquisition Standards. Like, his hobby was collecting Ghoul corpses. I can't stress enough how terrible he was. He ends up in hell and his reaction is that he can now kill more Ghouls.

The topic of gray morality is a central message between these two characters; holding near opposite opinions about the world yet being driven by the same ambitions - keeping loved ones safe, living a normal life, fixing what they see as a flawed unjust system. These two are foundational examples of Daisy-Filled Monsters because they try to justify their worldviews to themselves, other characters, and by extension the audience in a way that neither or is completely in the "wrong". Both demonstrate valid concerns or motivations and both value life to such an extent that these motivations end up overlapping.

As such, these core contrasts and similarities are juxtaposed in such a way that both sides can be at least partially sympathized with. Its hard not to feel bad for either one; the story is labelled as a tragedy after all.

Conclusions and Wrapping Up

In conclusion the trope of the Daisy-Filled Monster is not limited to vampire media. Any media incorporating a character who tries to justify themselves through comparison of another person, or who is viewed differently in light of new information, could be classified as a Daisy-Filled Monster. The trope can be done well, with the point of recognizing unconscious biases, showing how people are drawn or unwillingly forced into committing these actions, or introducing gray moral dilemmas. Or they can be poorly done where a character is arbitrarily changed or expected to be viewed differently due to an insufficient reason. Just because a character isn't a serial killer mean that I, the reader, should forgive them for kicking a puppy down a flight of stairs - and neither should the rest of the cast and characters who are seemingly okay with it.

All in all, how a trope is done is dependent on the writer, the characters, the context they find themselves in, and what message is trying to be portrayed. If the Daisy-Filled Monster nullifies that messaging, then its presence is making the story weaker and defeating what could have been a prevalent theme. If the Daisy-Filled Monster highlights these themes, or makes sense in the context of the story, then go for it.