my Dead By Daylight hot take is that The Trickster is goddamn disturbing and nobody talks about it enough.
Ji-Woon at least to me, one of the most terrifying and sadistic out of DBD’s original Killers, (lorewise) at least out of those who fit into the category of “started out as/still is a normal human who just so happened to go a little crazy”
Sure, Anna is built like a damn truck to where she could probably throw one. Tarhos is equally tanky, rocking full plate armor and three whole broskis who are just as ruthlessly violent as he is. Porsha has plenty of experience as a murderous pirate countess driven by revenge and ofc with good boy Snug at her side who will happily monch your fingers like Milk Bones. But Ji-Woon?
THAT IS JUST A GUY. He was a renowned K-POP STAR, I repeat, A K-POP STAR by day, serial torturer and murderer by night.
He didn’t kill to fulfill, defend, or avenge, heck not even for money like Adriana he already had plenty of that. he did it all 👏FOR👏 THE 👏LOVE 👏OF 👏THE 👏GAME.
He managed to pull off shit that would make Ghostface blush with ten times the eyes on him, without even needing a mask!!!!
At least most other Killers are rooted in some level of fantastical, have brushes with the supernatural/some kind of legendary, tall-tale elements within their backstories. Stuff you’d only find in horror short stories or long-beheld small town rumors. Things that still tell the viewer, “yeah, this is indeed a fictional character we’re talking about.” The horror that makes them Killers is expected.
Ji-Woon Hak, The Trickster, feels terrifyingly, unequivocally… real. Plausible. He is not some miserable monster, tormented victim, not some tale passed down from a bygone time long entrenched within and explained by history.
He was once, and by all definition still is, a normal person just like the rest of us. He is a horror rife within modern times and media, he was able to cause carnage virtually undetected under the gaze of millions, their ears unknowingly ringing with the very screams of his slaughter. The Entity didn’t even grant him any kind of magic or superpower once it found him, he already had it down. Ji-Woon does not kill for revenge, to send a message, or out of necessity. To him, killing is an art, his greatest preformance.
