In fiction, villainous vigilantes are usually separated from the heroic counterparts by their willingness to kill the villains they fight against.
Typically there's a good argument to the vigilantes who simply off their rogue's galleries rather than entrusting them to a justice system that is so corrupt or incompetent that they let the bad guys out by the next issue/episode (it could also be that the villains they face are the type that their justice system isn't fit to deal with).
The audience usually sympathizes with such vigilante villains, as they are initially presented as being far more effective at cutting down on villainy than the heroes who restrain themselves, this is unavoidable as it would be beyond deniability that they would be more effective at solving the problems the heroes continually fail to manage.
Typically the vigilantes are then shown to get more and more extreme until they start harming innocents in their myopic crusades. Or they shift their attentions to changing the system itself which they see as being at the root of the problems creating the criminals they fight, using the same kind of force against society itself in the hopes of becoming the cure rather than just the treatment. Or they simply begin to apply the same treatment that they give to evildoers to those who try to stop them from their vigilantism. Or they do something else which causes the audience to shift to rooting against these extremists.
Eventually they end up joining the ranks of the villains fought against by the heroes, typically by then the extremist is primarily obsessed with taking down the hero and the entire system they protect rather than wasting their time with the other villains (of course they will still go after them, but they are no longer the main focus).
Perhaps they turn into tempters who try to convert the hero into seeing that while their methods and goals are brutal, they are the only means and ends which can actually make a long term difference. Perhaps they make the accusation that the hero is the one who is being unnecessarily cruel or harmful, as their means may seem gentler in the short term, but in the long term they are more cruel, as the extremist wants to bring the problems to a definite end, while the hero just prolongs the suffering of everybody by refusing to do what needs to be done, all because the hero is addicted to their lifestyle of continually fighting their forever war against the evils they could easily vanquish.
AntiPostmodernist 0 points 1.3 years ago
In fiction, villainous vigilantes are usually separated from the heroic counterparts by their willingness to kill the villains they fight against.
Typically there's a good argument to the vigilantes who simply off their rogue's galleries rather than entrusting them to a justice system that is so corrupt or incompetent that they let the bad guys out by the next issue/episode (it could also be that the villains they face are the type that their justice system isn't fit to deal with).
The audience usually sympathizes with such vigilante villains, as they are initially presented as being far more effective at cutting down on villainy than the heroes who restrain themselves, this is unavoidable as it would be beyond deniability that they would be more effective at solving the problems the heroes continually fail to manage.
Typically the vigilantes are then shown to get more and more extreme until they start harming innocents in their myopic crusades.
Or they shift their attentions to changing the system itself which they see as being at the root of the problems creating the criminals they fight, using the same kind of force against society itself in the hopes of becoming the cure rather than just the treatment.
Or they simply begin to apply the same treatment that they give to evildoers to those who try to stop them from their vigilantism.
Or they do something else which causes the audience to shift to rooting against these extremists.
Eventually they end up joining the ranks of the villains fought against by the heroes, typically by then the extremist is primarily obsessed with taking down the hero and the entire system they protect rather than wasting their time with the other villains (of course they will still go after them, but they are no longer the main focus).
Perhaps they turn into tempters who try to convert the hero into seeing that while their methods and goals are brutal, they are the only means and ends which can actually make a long term difference. Perhaps they make the accusation that the hero is the one who is being unnecessarily cruel or harmful, as their means may seem gentler in the short term, but in the long term they are more cruel, as the extremist wants to bring the problems to a definite end, while the hero just prolongs the suffering of everybody by refusing to do what needs to be done, all because the hero is addicted to their lifestyle of continually fighting their forever war against the evils they could easily vanquish.