I kinda suspect that if the chapter had been from someone else’s perspective, Hookwolf wouldn’t seem so competent.

Hmm, possibly. He did seem like he knew what he was doing, and his actions seemed fairly reasonable for the most part, but POV bias is a thing and it can be quite powerful with characters like him.

I love the “hey maybe Hookwolf could have considered being a teacher” comment, as far as I know that’s the first time anyone has said that. And In my opinion it kinda highlight the fact that hey, all these horrible people maybe if they had different circumstances and their heads hadn’t been filled with hate and evil then maybe they could have been alright human beings instead. Except maybe Kaiser. Fuck you Max.

I know, right? I wonder what happened to some of these characters’ counterparts – assuming that’s a thing in this multiverse – in Earth-Aleph.

Maybe Lung runs an Asian restaurant (I actually really like the idea of Lung enjoying cooking), Coil is running for mayor legally, Max is getting punched in the face on national TV, Amy is living happily with her biological father, and Colin… Colin doesn’t have a Canadian girlfriend.

Kaiser was a manioulator, using an ideology of hate to control and motivate his troops. Purity has denied being a racist, though given her actions that’s up for debate, but in any case she’s more biased than motivated by it. Hookwolf though… Hookwolf is a true believer in the ideology: he’s lumping all aryans together because from his point of view they should all be sticking together. Just like the Nazis invaded nordic countries “to protect them”, to do otherwise would oppose their worldview.

Yeah… It’s good character writing, and the fact that it rubbed me the wrong way in such a personal way only serves to reinforce that.

One thing of note is that there were points (especially when Shatterbird questioned his motivations) where I questioned whether Hookwolf was actually a Nazi, even after that and the comments about Leah’s hair. The reason for that was that there was less of this sort of thing than one might expect, and in retrospect, that too is excellent writing. Most Nazis aren’t just going to be actively thinking shitty stuff constantly – it’s a part of their worldview, thoughts that are normalized to them, not something they have to keep reminding themselves of every two seconds.

Wildbow is skilled at writing shitty people as people, rather than caricatures, which is why the POV bias is so insidious and effective with characters like Hookwolf. This can cause the readers to find themselves involuntarily sympathizing with people who they intellectually know are shitty – or at least have shitty sides – which sets them thinking. Thinking about humanity, about flaws, backgrounds, how these worldviews and behaviors happen, etcetera.

It’s a good thing Interludes are becoming more common, because it lets Wildbow do things like this more often.