The Skull merchant lore
Her story is unrealistic and illogical
First of all, how did she manage to kill two men without any difficulty or obstacles?
And why did the victims not think, even for a second, of sabotaging the drone by throwing a pebble? They are also two against one, and not even at the Entity realm, it was easy to overthrow her
And secondly, She became a self-made millionaire just by going to the library and reading books? I imagine she found a book called "How to Get Rich in Five Steps" at a cheap price
Finally, she was able to kill important employees of the company and take their company, and not just once. She repeated it more than once without attracting suspicions or attention? What a lousy company that couldn't protect its employees and forgot about them too
In short, her story is a Disney dream, but the evil version
Extra: Edit the animation, make her run, not walk like she has a broken spine and walk to avoid pain.
Comments
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You could apply this hyper-critical, bad faith lens to about half of the killers in the game, especially some of the earlier ones. It's kinda tiresome that SM's is constantly brought up literally only because people already hate her, not because it's actually all that much worse than a majority of the base lore snippets we get.
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I am not saying this because I hate her, I am saying this because it is literally illogical and it is not mentioned how she got that knowledge to invent the Drone
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My point still stands. It's not really much worse than most of the stories, all of which operate on a suspension of disbelief regarding "how did they get away with this" and most of which have some holes in them too.
I could defend it, and point out that it's pretty clearly stated how she became a millionaire from my recollection (even if the realism of it is a separate discussion), but I still think it's more relevant to point out that it's not actually all that much worse than the norm.
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wanna go over how illogical it is that anna can't care for a kid or how caleb doesn't literally kill every single person that he ever hits with his gun?
or just wanna continue having a hate boner for adriana?
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Companies don't monitor their employees in ways that would prevent them from getting murdered and considering she also had a stake in the company she wasn't going to be instantly suspected of murder.
The drones she uses seem to have pretty beefy construction so yeeting a small rock at it isn't going to probably do anything. Also under a life and death stressful situation you aren't necessarily using your full brainpower.
People greatly underestimate how easy it is for people to kill each other. This is especially true when you put people outside of their established safety zones where they potentially have the advantage.
She became a self made millionaire by learning how to invest and then getting lucky with investments. This isn't unrealistic at all as that is how we've ended with the myriad of 18-22 year old crypto millionaires and billionaires. These folks weren't geniuses that made anything new they just learned the basics of investment strategy and then tried their luck. The currency and stock markets are just high stakes/high yield casinos at the end of the day.
People get murdered all the time and even though she was killing people in the same company, without evidence they would have no reason to just de facto assume she did it. The most you could infer is that either the company itself or these specific employees were the target of a serial killer or murdered due to possible criminal connections. Again companies aren't usually equipped to play the role of homicide detective and in either scenario the look worse if it were to come out their folks were targeted by a serial killer or some sort of organized crime hitman.
Also, she isn't real and this game isn't meant to realistic. It's fine, it's a straight up B movie grindhouse horror plot.
Post edited by ReikoMori on4 -
Most unrealistic thing is her killing and taking over companies... thats not how that would work in a million years.
you could say "she spent years rising to the top in multi-billion dollar companies" then killing them? but even then those business would go to next of kin?
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Well consider what she's doing here.
She's a large venture capitalist who is buying into already established businesses and then turning an gutting them for a short major profit.
She only needs to remove the people who impede a company's board of directors from selling the company to her. Now she could go through the process of blackmailing them out of the company, but it is just faster to kill them. She's already rich and crazy so she can afford to literally just kidnap her problems and hunt them down for sport.
This pattern probably wouldn't even be super noticeable for a quite a while because doesn't always need to go those lengths to acquire a company. Some will just sell to her with minimal difficulty.
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Well, killing a high-ranking and important employee in a company and then taking his company without consequences is unrealistic
It is certain that they will search for the criminal, they will bring investigators, and it may be published in the media, whether the case of his disappearance or the case of his death with a distinctive weapon.
otherwise what? People will lose confidence in the company and it will lose out to its competitors
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Well, you're comparing two people in two very different eras
The first invents weapons and offers them for sale, while the other invents a weapon with a distinctive design that might expose them
The first fights for revenge, but faces the consequences of it, and the other in dreams kills without any consequences whatsoever
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1 . Killing people is super easy, consequences though almost impossible to avoid. That's normal in stories that they do.
2 . I think idd be more worried about the claw blade on her hand than the toys above her.
3 . Dont underestimate reading books, but no also went to private school too. Adriana is obviously an intelligent psychopath.
4 . Most companies dont have private guards around each board member.
Your critique makes so little sense, Are you just mad about Chess Merchant and needs to find outlet in her writing to feel justified?
I will agree tho that her Running animation is too relaxed for the speed she can do. bHVR please reconsider it.
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Well, first of all, your second example is an "gameplay mechanic", nothing to do with "lore". Obviously, game mechanics don't need to have "realistic standards", or you should be dead the moment the killer cut you with his machete.
The other one about The Huntress is not illogical at all, and if you read her story, you would see it gives you plenty of reasoning for that to happen:
- She has being living alone in the forest since she was a child. For this reason, she is more an animal than a human and knows little more about life than hunt and survive. Much less, the needs of a child.
- She herself and her mother lived through extreme conditions, being the only reason of her death that they were trying to hunt an elk so they didn't starve to death. In fact, "Living in such an extremely remote and dangerous area required skill and resilience".
The girls she kidnapped "wasted away and die of cold or starvation or sickness", so we can deduce that they died mainly because of the extreme conditions The Huntress is used to live in, but not the girls, and as she doesn't know another way to live she is not capable to realize that a child needs to stay warm, stay fed, and not exposed to the winter. So, this is not illogical at all.
Yet again, without it being a masterpiece, The Huntress story is good and well written and presents you with a well thought argument and a good representation of the flawed character The Huntress is. The Skull Merchant, in the other hand, is a bad written story whose author dedicated to write a bunch of over the top things that thought sounded cool without ever asking itself "How", "Why" or "Would it makes sense".
All her story and character can be summed up to "She is perfect and good at everything, that's why she got rich by making a web about "Brazilian manga" and was able to kill a lot of people to steal their companies without problems or consequences, because she is cool and flawless and everything she does is pure perfection. Oh, and his father was a mangaka that disappeared so that's why she is a Predator wanna-be". That's it. That's her whole story and character there. It's boring, it's over the top, and doesn't makes any sense.
And no, this has nothing to do with just hating her for in-game reasons as this was a fact since the moment her story was announced.
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no I'm not.
I'm picking 2 extra things and putting them into this box labelled "illogical" you put adriana's lore in. and questioning why you wanna talk about just your thing instead of the entire box. or even aknowledge that the box has more than one thing.
lots of things in dbd lore are illogical and make no sense if you think too hard about it. like victor being dead but his body staying perfectly fine for years.
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it's in the lore. he changed the gun to not kill people. and it makes no sense how anyone survives it regardless. specially for the time the story takes place.
The other one about The Huntress is not illogical at all, and if you read her story, you would see it gives you plenty of reasoning for that to happen:
She has being living alone in the forest since she was a child. For this reason, she is more an animal than a human and knows little more about life than hunt and survive. Much less, the needs of a child.
She herself and her mother lived through extreme conditions, being the only reason of her death that they were trying to hunt an elk so they didn't starve to death. In fact, "Living in such an extremely remote and dangerous area required skill and resilience".
The girls she kidnapped "wasted away and die of cold or starvation or sickness", so we can deduce that they died mainly because of the extreme conditions The Huntress is used to live in, but not the girls, and as she doesn't know another way to live she is not capable to realize that a child needs to stay warm, stay fed, and not exposed to the winter. So, this is not illogical at all.
anna is a master survivalist. she understand how to survive and what is required to do so. she was also a kid in the jungle (maybe jungle isn't the correct word... but the place she grew up in).
it makes no sense that she would not know that she needs to feed or keep her girls warm. them dieing of some sickness is the only justified thing, but even then, anna would have to know how to fight diseases on some level. cause again, she survived while, in theory, also dealing with those for years.
people aren't stupid just cause they grow up in the woods.
wanna dislike adriana's lore? do it. but pretending it's the only one that doesn't make sense or is illogical is silly
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Couple things-
Caleb's harpoon gun is very much a part of his lore, as is the fact that he supposedly wasn't killing people with it despite what it actually does. That is absolutely on the same level as some of the things people like to harp on about (pun fully intended) with Skull Merchant's lore, but that doesn't mean it's a flaw; it's fine, it's a schlocky horror plot with a clear tonal intent so you can accept some unrealistic elements.
(This is, spoiler alert, true of the Skull Merchant too.)
Won't argue on the Huntress points, that was a weak example imo.
Moving on to the Skull Merchant sections here, we're seeing a lot of reductive minimalising and also wilful misunderstanding of what the Skull Merchant's lore is conveying to the reader. Now, I'm not about to sit here and say it's perfect, because it isn't; it has some issues with putting too much emphasis on her father and not enough on her when describing her early years, and I do consider it wasted potential that the lore doesn't touch on where the drones came from-- not because that last part is a gigantic flaw, mind you, but just because it would've been interesting.
The hows and whys of Skull Merchant's lore make perfect sense, because her tonal intent is immediately obvious to anyone reading the story in good faith: It's an intentionally exaggerated story about vulture capitalism with a bit of stylistic flair in the ways that emphasise its location, IE, picking manga to be her in-universe visual inspiration because she's from Brazil, and Brazil has a big manga scene.
Her concept as a character is straightforward and easy to understand. She's the rich person who gets away with literal murder because she's rich, and she's doing it partially to benefit herself and partially because she's an obsessive, sadistic psychopath who enjoys doing it. This, at least, is conveyed in her lore very clearly. I'm surprised that DBD players have such a hard time with this considering she's the second killer to have this concept, the other being Trickster, who beggars belief far harder as to how he wasn't caught-- not that it's a problem for him, either, because a certain level of "and somehow they weren't caught" is just the barrier for entry for stories like this.
I'll restate my firm belief that people tear apart Skull Merchant's lore because they don't like her. It comes up far more than literally any other killer's lore and almost always from people who hated her visual design from the moment her trailer dropped.
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I don't know what you understand for "survival", but she being able to survive living extreme temperatures and low food conditions doesn't means that anybody could survive in them, even less a child. Also, again, she is more an animal than anything and the only thing she knows about is living in the wild and hunt, so as she lived that way when she was a child she thinks that any child would be able to survive in those conditions like her did.
So, again, it makes sense.
And about The Deathslinger, obviously you didn't read his story well:
Use ingenuity to bring outlaws in alive.
Caleb returned to his workshop, and with a few modifications emerged with something new — the speargun. The first trial occurred when a thief robbed a Chinese laundry. Seizing on the opportunity, Caleb unleashed his prototype. Metal joints screeched as the spike shot forward, gouging into the target's abdomen. But as the spear tugged, it caught the thief's intestines, and, with an ungodly sound, yanked them onto the dusty road. After several iterations, the disembowelments dwindled, but Caleb had already earned his new nickname: The Deathslinger.
In other words, he needed multiple tries to make it non-lethal. And yes, it can be a non-lethal weapon depending on where you shot people with it. You won't kill somebody if you shoot them in an arm or a leg, or even in the abdomen if it just go through as there isn't any vital organs or arteries in the area, so just like a bullet or a knife there you have more probabilities to die from an infection than the wound or the blood loss. So again, it makes sense and it's not illogical at all.
In conclusion: I'm not saying The Skull Merchant lore is the only that doesn't makes sense (even tho, what I'm really saying is that not only it doesn't makes sense, but also is just over the top bad writing). But the two examples that you gave makes perfect sense and are well argued in their respective lores.
That, and if you're going to get shoot or stabbed, try to get it in the abdomen.
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At the very least, it can be assumed that the entity preserved Victor's body until the appropriate time, or that his sister did not accept his decomposing form and assumed his body was intact.
And I chose Skull Merchant because her story is about dreams and her father's manga
And somehow she gets away with her crimes quite easily, and no one suspects that woman who always takes these companies after losing important employees.
Where the wind seems to be blowing in her favor in her ship
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I don't know what you understand for "survival", but she being able to survive living extreme temperatures and low food conditions doesn't means that anybody could survive in them, even less a child.
I don't know what you understand for survival, but she survived. as a child herself. she isn't stupid and her tome shows she is actually quite smart.
it makes no sense for her to just leave the girls with no food or source of warmth. it never did, it never will.
In other words, he needed multiple tries to make it non-lethal. And yes, it can be a non-lethal weapon depending on where you shot people with it. You won't kill somebody if you shoot them in an arm or a leg, or even in the abdomen if it just go through as there isn't any vital organs or arteries in the area, so just like a bullet or a knife there you have more probabilities to die from an infection than the wound or the blood loss. So again, it makes sense and it's not illogical at all.
I never said the gun was always non-lethal. I am saying it still should be. cause bloodloss, infection and several other issues still apply. specially for the time the story happens. the harpoon is thick as ######### and hits very hard.
even ignoring it hitting anything but muscle or fat, you dead. also, caleb doesn't aim for arms or legs according to the fact that he kept killing people trying it out. and those are easily missable specially on a moving target. torso hits are what he goes for.
also "even in the abdomen if it just go through as there isn't any vital organs or arteries in the area"
wanna try that again? the harpoons literally exits on the other side of people and has goddamn hooks in it..
hit the spine? most likely dead on impact
intestines? if you don't die from the internal bleeding the infections will finish the job. or from the intestines being pulled out along with the harpoon.
In conclusion: I'm not saying The Skull Merchant lore is the only that doesn't makes sense (even tho, what I'm really saying is that not only it doesn't makes sense, but also is just over the top bad writing). But the two examples that you gave makes perfect sense and are well argued in their respective lores.
they only make sense if you suspend your disbelief.
the lores just say it is how it is.
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Well if with a gun it would be easy
But killing someone with a sharp blade is not that easy, even in the jungle, the victim would not allow the killer to kill him until his last breath
He may try to hit her, throw stones at her, or blow dirt on her eyes
But in her story, the victim did not even try to defend himself, he just ran
Charlotte can be seen defending herself against her pursuer and even killed him with just a tree branch and her teeth.
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I remember her lore being in third person and not from her pov. but she seeing victor as fine when he might have been rotting is a nice headcanon. I like it. more than the entity keeping him intact, that is just weird.
the wind just favours some people some time. like, how the actual hell was clown never caught? he was so bad at not leaving evidence behind, yet... he always escaped to do it again.
unlike ghostface, who was very meticulous so it makes sense.
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Sorry, but anything you said there would make sense if there were even a glimpse of any of it written in her lore. Seriously, where did you get all that? Because the only thing we know about why she gets away with murdering multiple companies's CEOs just to buy them and get more rich without anyone saying "Hey yo, did you notice that all of this people disappeared just before Ms. Imai bought their company?" is simply that they killed them because one day she was like "Ugh, another negotiation meeting just because this guys don't want to sell?... Screw it, i'm going to get my Collector's Edition Razor-Sharp Dual Blades and kill them" and she liked it. That's it. That's the only thing the lore says to us.
It would be cool that they added something like "She paid the authorities with all her Brazillian manga money so they never investigated them", but that isn't there. Sorry, but all what you said is just your interpretation of the story with your own bias filling the blankets.
About Trickster, you are right as he was even letting clues to police and one of his last victims was a fan of him that he met. The difference with him and why is more believable than Skull Merchant one is that as far as his lore implies he just had a handful of victims (about five accounted in the lore, without counting his band and the last one were he kills the executives), so it can be that he was captured in The Fog before the police could catch him, while the Skull Merchant lore implies that she did what she did many, many times.
And I'm not going to say that some people may have a problem with her and mix in-game hate with other things, but what I'm going to say is that other people thought the lore was stupid the moment it was announced. I also don't think her visual design has nothing to do with her lore really, I would even affirm that if her lore had being any good more people would like her more despise not liking her visually.
The problem is, it wasn't. So, people that didn't like the design disliked her even more.
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Again, what do you understand by "no food or source of warmth", as not everybody has the same levels of adaptability. Hell, there's people in their houses fighting over the air conditioner being too low or high by a couple of degrees difference and you are here questioning that one person could survive in extreme temperatures with a bonfire and a bowl of squirrel soup and another wouldn't.
So keep repeating the contrary to yourself if it makes you happy, but it makes perfect sense.
About the harpoons, an infection would kill someone in days, and there wouldn't be any blood loss as long as the harpoon is still stuck in the guy. It's just like arrows, in the sense that if the arrow doesn't hit a vital area it's not being hit by the arrow itself what kills you, but removing the arrow in a way that it would cause irremediable damage and of course, blood loss as now there is nothing in the wound preventing air for coming in and making the blood flood out. And people survived those even longer ago than the time The Deathslinger lived in, with even less medical knowledge and more rudimentary tools.
And you are saying it yourself, it is not a perfect strategy, the weapon could be lethal if used incorrectly and that's written in his lore. That's why the Deathslinger lore is believable and well written and Skull Merchant is not, because again, he wasn't a perfect man that came up with an idea for a weapon without having the knowledge to do it in the first place and it worked perfectly at the first try.
And yes, you are totally right, they make sense if you suspend your disbelief because that is how any fictional story works, and they makes you able to suspend your disbelief because the story is presented in a way that result logical in the setup it occurs. And again, this happens with any fictional story.
If you tell me that a guy can fly and shoot lasers through it's eyes because he is an alien that absorb radiation that give him powers, I believe it. If you tell me that in a world were demons exist there are people that is able to create fire from his sword and move at high speeds just by using a breathing technique, I believe it. If you tell me there is an Entity that traps killers and survivors in a pocket dimension called The Fog and makes them participate in trials for an unknown reason, I believe it.
If you tell me that there is a person who only characteristic are being cool and perfect in everything and that's why she is able to do anything she wants without any consequence or drawback, including getting rich by making a web about Brazilian manga and teaching herself economics in a library to triple the apparently sheer amount of money she got from the Google Adsense of the page... I don't believe it. Because it doesn't sound real by any world standard, even less so if you slap in there all the over the top things like "Predator wanna-be because his father was a mangaka". It doesn't makes any sense and is not realistic in any way, in addition of making her character one dimensional and not relatable as she is "perfect and good at everything" and that's about it.
So, again, bad writing, over the top setup, nonsensical development of events, unbelievable one dimensional "perfect and cool" character. That's her lore.
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the lore implies huntress doesn't understand how to take care of the girls so they always die.
by her lore, she should know it very well. Anna is both smart and capable, and should be fully capable of caring for a child.
not gonna repeat myself again on this. it's like expecting a writer to not recognize the letter a.
caleb has 1 harpoon. he needs it back after it's used. people are now dead from the 2 inch sized hole through them. if they somehow survived the impact.
arrows are way smaller in comparison. imagine someone passed a spear through you, do you think it compares to an arrow that stopped maybe an inch or 2 deep? which is enough to still kill you btw.
let me put it this way. if the redeemer existed, it would have a nearly 100%kill rate on a hit. it not killing someone, is just the plot bending reality a bit for the character to exist in the game as he does. specially as often as the story implies it happened.
also the kickback on that thing would be ridiculous. like firing a mini cannon by hand. you are not putting that thing against your shoulder to properly aim.
but we suspend our disbelief on that, because that is what we do with stories.
I don't believe it because it doesn't sound real by any world standard.
but the eye laser shooting guy sounds real? this is just bad logic. sorry.
you are choosing to accept the character you like and not the one you dislike.
her story is saying she is that smart and capable, and showing that she is because she did what she did and got away with murder. but you say she isn't allowed those characteristics because it's not realistic.... but I guess the guy breathing in a way that his sword catches on fire is realistic?
that's just double standards. "it's fine for this thing to work in ways that aren't realistic for me, but not this one."
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Oh my god... really trying to have the reason here, I see.
A rapid fire to lose as minimal time as possible with this:
That's not what her lore says. Anna is not smart and capable to care a child because all her knows is to live in those extreme conditions. She lived in those conditions, she survived in those conditions, she believes that those girl would be able to live in those conditions and they don't, something that torment her as she doesn't understand why they keep dying.
An spear is way bigger than 2 inches and what kills of an arrow, again, is removing it in a way that causes irreparable internal damage, with the head were 1.5 inches width in average. And believe or not, a 2 inches hole in the abdomen is not something irreparable because again, no vital organs or arteries go through there. Search in Google "man survives steel bar through chest". And there is in the chest, ergo, where many vital organs are.
Yes, we suspend or disbelief because the story is presented in a beliable way. But here you are, arguing against a beliavable story by making the point it is not 100% realistic. Funny.
Yes, the eye laser shooting and flying guy sounds real because it's presented in a world and in a way where it sounds real. So, unless The Skull Merchant is in a world where they pay 5000 Brazilian reales per click, the libraries have enough high level economics literature to make you a self taught Wall Street broker and police forces are so stupid they can't link a lot of CEOs disappearances with the lady that bought their company soon after then no, I don't believe a single word. It's not bad logic, is suspension of disbelief, remember? And I'm not choosing anything, it's just that a well written character would be liked and one that isn't would not. Simple as that.
What her story is saying is, again, that she is flawless to the point she can do web designing and programming, investing, run multiple companies and apparently build and use drones and double bladed wristbands to kill a lot of people and she does all that so well that she get rich and never is caught killing. Again, without any consequence, drawback and with everything going dandy. She is not just "capable", she can do all things perfectly simply because she is perfect, cool and good at everything. And again, that limits her character to just simply being "Perfect and cool", which makes her boring on top of being unrealistic.
Even the guy that is capable of lighting his sword with fire just by breathing had to train a total of 2 years to be able to dominate the breathing technique, you know? And even then, he still isn't able to fully use it in combat. That's why he is an interesting and well written character (among other things), and Skull Merchant isn't.
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Well, there is a difference between feeding a baby and taking care of a baby
The first is that you only feed him and put some dolls for him and do not care about their psychological condition, hygiene or diseases.
Secondly, it is that you change their clothes, teach them to hunt and skin, cook for them, take care of them, listen to their problems, protect them, and so on
Raising and caring is a skill, not intelligence
And if according to your logic, mammals, including cats, would not have been able to take care of kittens and teach them life
The Huntress has never tried to be a mother and does not know the basics of education. She only kidnaps children because they remind her of herself when she was young.
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So, I went and re-read the Skull Merchant's lore just to make sure I was refreshed, after seeing this and a few other of your posts in this thread.
Nothing about my take has changed, of course. Her lore has its issues but, within a reasonable margin of suspension of disbelief, it conveys who she is perfectly serviceably.
I think part of the issue here, at least insofar as what you've said to me, is that you're expecting the Skull Merchant's lore page to bend over backwards explaining everything in minute detail, which of course wouldn't be expected of any lore for a killer people don't already hate. There are exactly two points where belief must be suspended, and neither of them are particularly devastating for a story's tone:
The first is that her website made her "significant advertising dollars"; while that's somewhat unrealistic, it's not exactly a giant break from reality. It's not too hard to believe that a popular website with original content (that she duped other kids into writing, explaining where it came from neatly) would be popular for advertising space, and the story even makes sure we know that it's the site being bought that gives Adriana enough money that she wants to show it off.
The second, as you alluded to in your responses to me, is that she gets away with murdering multiple businessmen, some CEOs, without being caught. I have very little patience for this as a serious criticism, if I'm honest. It's a horror story, of course the villain isn't caught straight away. It's allowed to be exaggerated and schlocky, and that hasn't been a problem for literally any killer up until now, and there are killers even 'worse' than her for it. I wonder what the difference is? Perhaps we'll never know. /s
Everything else, while hardly a masterpiece of prose, flows well enough. I've seen you criticise her reading up at the library, as if that's magically enough for her to become a business extraordinaire, which somewhat conveniently misses that her story establishes her - very reasonably - as already very intelligent and well educated. She already attended and graduated a prestigious school, if you recall- the stuff she read at the library, presumably, was just to get a better sense for that industry specifically and fill the gaps in her already robust education.
Is it perfect? No. Is it noticeably worse than the average killer lore in DBD? Not even close. People only think it is because they approach it with a hyper-critical gaze, and they only do that for her because they already dislike it.
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Her story is not a horror story, and most of the killers' story is not a horror story, even if she was caught, the story could have continued
Also, just because you went to the library and got rich on a book that universities couldn't do even in a very few years, that's totally unrealistic.
And if that were the case, I would have left the universities, went to the library, and became a millionaire in one year, and all this because of a handful of books, and the university was oblivious to these expensive books in order to improve their teaching.
Her story also tells you that she is lucky and that everything should move as she wants
All her victims accepted to go to a secluded area, and he never complained about that, because she was naturally lucky
The funny thing is that none of her victims tried to resist and defend themselves, they are all brainless and just run aimlessly, and she just follows them and kills them.
It is not mentioned what to do with the corpses after killing them and enslaving them she burns them because the forest will burn with them
Well, someone may find the body while hiking or exploring the forest, and then they will report it, and then they will discover that the bodies were killed with a strange and distinctive weapon, and after knowing the identity of the bodies and the method of killing, they will know that it is a woman, and then they will know that Adriana is the criminal.
But will that happen? No, because she is the lucky lady and she can never make a mistake, and no one will doubt her because she is lucky
No one escapes from her, only the brother and sister survived, but they were taken by the entity because she is by nature the lucky lady
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All killers' stories are horror stories, I'm not sure why you'd think they aren't. DBD is the horror hall of fame, and there'd be no reason for them to not do horror stories for their killers anyway. It's... obviously how you'd design killers.
She had an expensive education and an aptitude for business before she started going to the library. That was just to cover the gaps in her knowledge.
I'm not sure where you're getting that all her victims "accepted to go to secluded areas". She stalks them, and they're going to be alone sometime. The only one she got lucky with, textually, was the guy who liked going on retreats to secluded areas, and even that just made it easier.
I'm not sure where you're getting that none of her victims tried to defend themselves, the lore doesn't really say either way (unless that's in the tome, which I haven't read yet). Either way, though, running from someone trying to kill you is... pretty realistic.
Even if someone did find the body, how would the police know it was her? They'd suspect someone involved in the business dealings, sure, but they wouldn't leap directly to her without investigating. (Also how would they know it's a woman?)
I don't really see the criticism that she's just lucky. The story goes out of its way to establish her as someone who'd put in the effort to do these things, she doesn't just decide to on a whim and it all works out.
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Like I said, running from someone trying to kill you is a pretty realistic response. I don't see why that's a criticism.
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It's like you're saying you're so afraid of a zombie and you let it bite you
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...Huh? No, you'd... run from it. Because putting distance between you and the thing trying to harm you is a natural response for all living things, let alone just humans.
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So it is logical that you resist and try to keep him away from you in order to gain a distance, not that I watch as she stabs the leg and I do nothing
Well, as I said in the zombie example, if it grabs you or knocks you down, you will try to keep that teeth away from you because one bite and your life is over.
But at the Skull Merchant, he didn't even try to kick it with his other unbending foot and push it away, he just pleaded.
In other words, he gave in to a small pain in order to receive a much bigger and worse pain
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Isn't that just how these animatics are drawn? Like, I've seen a few of them, they're not animated so much as they transition from one still image to another still image.
Also some people would freeze up in that scenario, if we must go there.
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Are you trying to say that resisting the killer is impossible and the only solution is to escape?
Well, we have rules for dealing with a killer:
1 If he see you, run
2 If the killer catches you, let him stab you wherever he wants, and don't do anything
Is resistance something forbidden? Is trying to turn the tables and knock the murderer to the ground and catch him forbidden? Is it possible for the police to arrest you because you don't want to die?
You mean to say that trying to stop a zombie from biting you is normal, but trying to stop a killer from killing you is not normal because you're just afraid?
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Please go look up how the fight, flight, or freeze response works.
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I think I have explained there is more to it than simply "it doesn't explain enough" in my others responses to other people here, so read them if you want my extended opinion apart from my answer to you.
But I don't expect the lore for the Skull Merchant to be "detailed to the minute". What I said to you is that all those details that you said were "obvious to anyone reading it in good faith" wasn't there. Not a single one of them. Nothing that you said the "lore is conveying to the reader" is true, specially the "She gets away with murder because she is rich" part. So, again, that I expect her lore to have Tolkien level of details is something that you said, not me.
And the problem with her lore is that there is not enough suspending of disbelief that can make you accept her story. Because fine, she made the Holy Grail of Brazilian manga news site and made a lot of money. Now, next step: She self taught so much knowledge in economics by reading books in a library, that she became an expert Wall Street broker and triple whatever the sheer amount of money from Adsense and the selling of the web she did and become a millionaire soon after when she wasn't even 18.
I repeat: By reading books of economics. In a library. Before 18. And that alone give her all she needed to know to be able to understand the markets, how and when invest, and make millions of it... totally believable.
By the way, we have to note here that she was in the last semester of middle school a little before she made the web page. Now, this is a problem, as if it is as in USA middle school that would mean that she created that web, tricked a bunch of other kids to work for free and studied those economics with only 13 - 14 years. But, if we take in count the Brazil middle school, she would had 17 years in her last semester, meaning she would have done all that in less than 1 year. Sincerely, I don't know what is more believable of those. Or what would be worst writing, either.
All right, fine, what's next? By 20 she was flipping companies. Plural. How many companies? Who knows, a lot! Just flipping them, one after another. Screw legality, screw paperwork, screw all those months of negotiations, lawyers, market rules or all the time that it would take to just rehire the whole company with non-union workers AND sell it for a profit, as somehow, after all she would have to invest just to be able to do all that she was still able to find someone wanting to buy it all just after she did all that for even more money that she has spent. Nah, screw all that, she was just flipping them, dude! Like they were cards in a deck. In two years. And all of that while she was reading comics. She is just that good!
And so on, and on, and on. And we have to just believe and accept that she is so cool and perfect that she can do all that like it is nothing, and still have the time and ability to get her Predator blades and kill a lot of people between readings of her father's manga, or we are all haters... sure, why not.
About your next point, not much to say: You are wrong. The problem isn't she wasn't caught with murder, the problem there is that she wasn't caught with murdering CEOs of companies she is directly related to. Again, just like the "company flipping", the way it is
badlywritten implies that there was multiple CEOs killed. A lot of them. So incompetent is Brasil police that they wasn't able to deduce that the woman that bought all those companies maybe has something to do with their CEO mysteriously disappearing? It's absurd.Like I said in other posts, the lore of this character is just over the top bad writing and defines her simple as a "Good at everything" character as her only characteristic, and whoever wrote it just slapped in a lot of things that sounded cool in their heads without any thought. Simple as that.
Post edited by Batusalen on3 -
Skull Merchant probably has the worst killer lore in the game. Everything important about her gets little more than a sentence or two of explanation, it borders on meager lip service. How does a Brazilian kid become a millionaire? How does a website about manga become so successful? Why did she start killing people and why does she enjoy it? How did she get so good at it? Where does she get all her technology from in the first place? Why is she called the Skull Merchant at all? And most of all, what the hell is her father's manga and why is she so fixated on it? Seriously, it's arguably the most important part of her character but I don't know a damn thing about it other than vague allusions that it was dark and violent. Skull Merchant's default design doesn't even look like a manga character either but apparently it's supposed to be! Gotta pay money for cosmetics to actually look like what the character purports to be.
All of this is really important information, but it's barely elaborated on. Instead all the detail went into unimportant and irrelevant things, like her unremarkable family history and how she stalked a classmate for getting higher scores than her, but never actually did anything. Even in her lore, she is the Dull Merchant.
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Speaking as someone who has been in several IRL situations where my life was seemingly in danger.
Each time my brain shut down and I froze. Not everyone fights back and especially when they have a weapon pulled on them fighting back is likely going to be the last things on their mind. You might know you should try and fight back or run away, but you lose control of your body. You mentally do everything you can to get your body to move and it just doesn't because you're overwhelmed.
Your heart races, your body tenses, and those first few seconds can feel like hours. You think a million things all at once and you stop being driven by rational calculation and turn into a scared animal. You have to train to overcome that state, you have to train in order to be able to maintain self control and rational thought, you have to train in order to be fight off an armed attacker on a moment's notice. If you aren't part of the small percentage of people who are just wired to respond to threats with violent resistance then you're either going to run or freeze.
Proximity to danger also dictates your response. When you can't actually see what is threatening you, your mind will tell you to run as best you can to make distance or find help. When you're staring someone no matter how their dressed with weapon our minds recognize as lethal you're more likely to freeze.
Fear is overwhelming, complex, and deeply rooted in every living being. It's primal in a way that humans often aren't prepared for when in the context of life and death. It doesn't matter if it is a woman in a jumpsuit and bedazzled mask or a spooked security guard drawing his service weapon right in your face because your cd walkman started clicking when you we changing the cd while walking behind him.
You're expecting pampered, rich, and untrained businessmen to fight back against someone who while having a similar background is them has spent her free time crafting and training to hunt and kill people for sport. Most victims of violent crime don't defend themselves and even when they do studies have shown that it often escalates the situation even further out of their favor more than it saves their life.
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Well, when the adrenaline goes up, the person's concentration increases
And not everyone is afraid like the other. Some scream and others become silent
Let's think about it. You're up against a woman with a rather heavy weapon, but a long one
With this in mind, places with dense trees or vegetation can be used, where her weapon may get stuck in, and here she becomes weak because she relies only on one weapon or exploits that to escape
Especially since you are in a forest, and it is common for you to stumble
But as usual, Adriana did not enter a gym, and yet she managed to carry a heavy weapon and also carry a man who was stabbed in the head and raised him as well.
All this makes me believe that her story is about evil dreams
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what baby? she kidnaps kids.
and you think she lacks that skill because? she fully understands what is required for survival. and she isn't stupid, so she should understand that tieing a kid somewhere without food would kill them.
according to what logic exactly? when did I say you need to be smart to raise a kid? hell, what you said is a point against her not being able to do it.
she kidnaps children... but she isn't trying to be a mother? wanna try this again? cause I'm pretty sure she's trying to protect the girls like her mother did to her.
what do you mean by education exactly? like seriously, what education?
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Well, you said it, she only feeds and protects them and nothing more
She may be smart in hunting, but her intelligence disappears when it comes to kids
If she wanted to be a mother, she would have taught them the basics of life, not tied them up and fed them like animals
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I really wish this character never happened. There is no way, that the same Designers that worked on the Dredge or the Singularity also worked on the Skull Merchant.
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and you pointed out why this part is her lore is ilogical. congrats
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Well, a reason was given for doing so
The opposite of Adriana in her dreams, and nothing stands in her way
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Let's go through a couple of these steps that you're calling out as unrealistic and requiring too much suspension of disbelief.
So, first, the website. I'm not sure why this is a sticking point for anyone, frankly. It was a popular website that had original content and revolved around something that a lot of people in the area enjoy, the idea that she'd make some money off the advertising space on that website makes perfect sense. It's exaggerated, of course, advertising space doesn't usually translate to all that much money irl as far as I'm aware, but that's obviously fine. It's a story and it's going for a specific tone, so exaggeration of real life elements is 100% acceptable and even better in a lot of cases.
Then, the library. People really hate this element, huh? Despite that, it's still not that unbelievable in the context of a work of fiction. There are people irl who have made millions off investment before they're eighteen. They're rare, of course, but it's happened. The idea that an academically minded and intelligent girl with an expensive education would be able to learn economics through textbooks and become good at trading is exaggerated, again, but plays on real things. This is not an unbelievable element of her story.
Then we get to the flipping companies, and here it really does just sound like you want more details. Or maybe you just think it should've taken place over a couple years instead of just one? To be fair, I think you might misremember a small detail here, because it actually says she's flipping companies by her mid 20s, implying she's at the process for a couple years. We don't need the specific granular details on how, because that kind of thing happens irl all the time. Vulture capitalism is a real thing.
Finally we have the murders, and I've expressed already that I find this critique contrived. Killers aren't caught in horror stories like this, even ones whose crimes are more exaggerated and their standing in society less protected than someone like Adriana. But, to take it seriously and answer, I don't think the lore needs to show us that she's a suspect in these investigations for us to assume that's the case. I think it's reasonable to fill in that she just doesn't leave enough evidence tying her specifically to these men. Maybe if she hadn't been swallowed by the Fog, that would've changed, but as it stands it's not a particularly flawed element of the story. It's not as though those CEOs only existed in the world to do a business dealing with Adriana, there'd be other suspects too and even if there weren't, there'd need to be some kind of proof before Adriana would be caught.
Her lore does not define has as "good at everything". It defines her as good at specifically two things: Business and murder. Since the latter should be expected of most killer lore, it really just defines her as being good at business, which it gives us some reasonable backstory to justify - she's intelligent and had an expensive education.
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If it is exaggerated, then is not believable for the simple reason that is not realistic. If I wrote an story where someone that is a simple human living in the real world makes a 10 meters high jump, would you believe it? Would you accept it if I just said "Well, it was an exaggerated concept around real life things as people can jump a couple of meters into the air! You just need to high up your suspension of disbelief!", or would you still think that it is dumb?
Well, have you seen how much money do you get from a web page advertisement space? 0,008 to 0,020 dollars per add view. And this can be higher or lower depending on the location of the person that view the add, content of the page, and many many more factors. But on average, 1.000 views could pay from 0,2 to 2,5 dollars. Now, you can say "As she is so good at everything and everything she does comes being perfect, she would always get 2,5 dollars so with 100.000 she would be making 250.000!". Yeah, alright champ... but what about costs? Because even if her lore specifies that she tricked a bunch of kids to work for free in the page somehow, running a web is not free. And more visits means more bandwidth and more bandwidth means more money you have to pay!
To end it short: She getting a sheer amount of advertisement money and the web being so profitable that anybody would just pay her a good sum for it is ridiculous. But, as she is super smart, and super good, and super cool she does it with a self created web page about Brazilian manga, non of the less!
And yes, there is people that have made money in investment at 18. How many of them have being able to do that just by reading a couple of books in economics available at the local library? And the thing here is that even people with a degree in economics wouldn't be able to invest their money as a Wall Street expert, as making investments require more things and knowledge than just "Library Investments and Economics".
Oh yes, 6 months more of "company flipping" instead of just 2 years would make it have more sense and make it being better written in her lore, without doubt. And we don't need the "granulated details as of how", but as it is written in her lore, it implies that she is not "in the process", but have done it multiple times already. But again, she is so smart and cool that doesn't have to worry about legality, paperwork or cost of buying companies, rehiring all the workforce and looking for someone interested in pay for that company more of what she has spent "flipping it". Months of negotiations, meetings, permits and lawyers interchanging papers and accounting books? Nah! For her is just like eating candy.
And again, the problem is not that she isn't caught, the problem is that she isn't caught when is so obvious she has something to do with all those murders. Even The Trapper lore, who bodycount reach the 3 digits, have the decency to specify that the authorities never had enough proof to demonstrate that he killed all those people. In contrast, Skull Merchant lore implies that she killed multiple CEOs just before buying their companies and nobody sees a connection apparently. Again, it would be great that they specified "She paid the cops to never look at her with all that advertisement money she got", but it doesn't, because whoever wrote it never even thought of it. And things like that is why her lore is just pure, unadulterated, 101 bad writing.
And yes, her lore says she is so cool that she is good at everything. Both implicitly and literally:
Adriana excelled in all facets of education. A house full of art and music honed a brilliant mind, and her intelligence was only exceeded by her obsessive drive to be the best.
She was good at everything at school. She is super intelligent. She was so cool and good that was the private academy who get to her. She somehow learned web developing and created her own web. She is so cool and good at everything that she was able to convince people to work for her for free. In fact, so cool that those kids she tricked was the brazilian version of Stephen King, as the articles they wrote were so good they made her web page gain a lot of money. She is so good that learned economics by reading books in a library and transformed in the Wolf of Wall Street. So good that she controls every aspect of trade and business to the point of being able to buy and flip companies for a profit in no time. So good at everything that she decided to kill two people for the first time because she felt like it and did it perfectly and without leaving trace. So cool that he kept doing it with another bunch of people and nobody ever suspected anything when there was a clear connection to her. So good and cool that she created her own drones and Predator blades, as if her just bought them or asked a company to made them that would be another link to her and another plothole, but not even the authors of her lore even thought about it, either.
She is good at everything she does. Without having the required background to it, without having to work it out and gain it, and without having any kind of problem or consequence for anything she does. She is perfect.
She is just that cool. Or at least that is whoever wrote her lore thought. In reality, this only makes her a bad written boring character. And if you like it... hey, you do you. I also have my guilty pleasures. But nothing would change the fact that her lore is badly written and makes no sense besides being over the top with all the Brazilian manga thing.
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So, couple things here.
First, that hypothetical example. If the character being able to jump 10 metres was important or central in some way, and had a grounded (if exaggerated and unrealistic) explanation, sure, I'd buy it. It all depends on how it's done, why it's done, and what kind of tone it's done with. That's basically the basis for any superhero story that comes out without an attached shared universe; someone living in the real world can do things no other person can do. It isn't inherently a flaw.
Second, I've already acknowledged that part of the exaggeration is how much money she gets from certain sources. You do actually have to demonstrate that this is a flaw, though, rather than just point at it as existing. Yes, she is implied to get more money from advertising space than is strictly realistic. Does that actually harm the story? It's working on real mechanisms, it's playing on real concepts, and it's just giving them the occasional nudge. This is true of most stories in general, let alone most of DBD's stories.
For your next point, I still don't see why this is such a sticking point. Considering she already had a robust and expensive education and has been portrayed as having a keen mind in general, the idea that she'd do well with investments isn't that unbelievable. Seriously, would you rather it just didn't say she went to the library specifically? Would it improve the story for you for her to have gotten that information from somewhere else...? This is such a weird issue to take with the story, and once again is a case of something with grounded, real mechanisms behind it, this one isn't even all that exaggerated.
If six more months of company flipping would've fixed it, then the five years the lore actually says she spent (bare minimum) should render this particular complaint solved.
So, then, when we come to the idea of her not being caught, it seems like we've shifted the complaint to being that the story should've put in a line about how there wasn't enough proof to actually charge her. I'm not saying that wouldn't be better, but if it would really be fixed with such a simple addition, I feel like that addition is kind of a fair assumption to make and its absence is at worst a bit of an oversight. It's hardly a monumental failure that ruins the whole thing and it definitely isn't "bad writing 101".
Her lore says she excels at school and then very clearly states that she isn't perfect. It's not that she's so cool and perfect at everything, it's that she's good academically which translated to being good at business. I'm not even going to entertain the notion that her being good academically is itself a flaw, so what's the issue here?
She is good at the things she is shown doing, which are the things that are relevant to her character and that she should be expected to be good at. They do a perfectly adequate job setting her up as bright and educated enough to take advantage of the system around her, so the idea that she doesn't have "the required background" is a non-starter. As for not having any consequence... what consequence would actually improve this story? What consequence do most of the other killers get? Most of the early ones vanish immediately following their big crime and pretty much none of the others are caught to my recollection.
There is nothing that actually sets the Skull Merchant's lore apart from the others in terms of quality. If you don't like it, that's perfectly fine, there's plenty out there that just isn't for me either, but that doesn't change the fact that her lore is pretty par for the course when it comes to this game and isn't so heinously flawed that it deserves being torn apart over the others we've gotten.
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Hidden Lore - Skull Merchat is actually a manga character, not a real one, who pretends being manga character.
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Look, I'm not going to repeat myself, even less when you are obviously just cherry picking what I said instead to make mental gymnastic with it instead to counter argument what I'm really saying.
One example of this, is that I already specified the setup of my "hypothetical example": The real world. No superhero, no another universe with less gravity, nothing that justify for a normal, average human being able to jump that high. But, because you can't argue that point, you just picked part of it and used it to argument something that I already explained posts ago about suspension of disbelief and how the Skull Merchant lore fails to make you suspend your disbelief, including all the "Brazilian manga web page making sheer amount of money" and "Library Investment and Economics degree" part.
And no, the lore doesn't specify she was 5 years doing it:
By the age of 18, barely with a high school degree, she had already become a self-made millionaire. [...] Before long, she had the kind of money that allowed her to buy small companies—companies that she would gut, replace with non-union workers, and sell at a profit. [...] By her mid 20’s, she was regularly flipping companies.
So, less than two years, and she was doing it regularly.
Another thing you are doing, and that is the main difference between you and me, is that I'm sticking to the info the lore gives us. You, in the other hand, are adding your own bias and assumptions to it. The perfect example is that you are assuming that her "robust and expensive education" has something to do with her being able to be an expert investor, but the reality is that her lore doesn't say such thing anywhere. In fact, answering your question, it would be a much better explanation that she had learned "Finances and Economics" in that expensive academy that recruited her instead of just reading a bunch of books in a library. But they didn't write that. And it's work of the lore to give you that kind of information if it is relevant or important. So, as it says nothing about it, I'm going to assume that her education had nothing to do with her being able to learn that much of investment and economics in a library to triple her money like it was nothing, because as far as the lore told us, the closest thing she could have learned in that academy about Economics is math.
And the same goes for the "don't caught" thing. If the writers didn't thought about it or didn't saw relevant to justify why she wasn't caught, I'm not going to do their job for them. I would stick to the info they decided to give me, and that is that the only reason she wasn't caught is because she is so cool that can get away with murder without anyone noticing the obvious link between her and all those companies who CEOs disappeared.
Also, having a "keen mind in general" doesn't means that you are able to even get all the knowledge needed to do investments, much less from a bunch of books. I'm pretty sure that even Stephen Hawking had a bunch of brokers hired to invest his money for him.
And you are right, she is good at things she is shown doing, and she did everything that has being shown to us perfectly. So, you are agreeing with me that they show her as a perfect, flawless character that does everything right. Because again, in a story you should give all the relevant info about the characters that you want the reader to have, so they can have an image of them based on it. If you only show me her doing nothing but gaining net profits in everything she does, then you are painting her as the flawless character that is good at everything. And it is not only in terms of business and investments, again, it's in web designing, manipulating people, stalking them, killing them, and every other thing she does. Maybe she is bad doing crosswords or cooking, who knows... as far as the lore conveys, everything she proposed to do, does it at perfection and everything always goes her way.
You also keep pointing to her being "bright and educated" as justification for her to be able to do whatever she wants perfectly. But again, being bright and educated is just a bad generic excuse for that. There is no background to justify she being able to do all of what she does, besides her "Library Investment and Economics degree", which is able to achieve thanks to the same generic excuse. And this, again, is why her lore is bad writing, because obviously the authors never asked themselves "How", "Why", and "Would it make sense", she is simply "super cool and smart" and that's about it.
And I would continue to answer your other points, but I have already invest a lot of time in it and I think I already prove my point beyond doubt, so if someone doesn't see why the Skull Merchant is bad writing is because just don't want to see it, and that won't change whatever I say.
I will only say that I never said that the other killers lore was masterpieces or something, but this doesn't change the fact that the Skull Merchant one is just bad. But like I said, if someone likes it I don't have any problem with it.
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I generally agree with You.
But i also want to put my two cents here.
We SHOULD be placing our "headcanon" in some loopholes (of course where is it possible), becaouse some lore facts are hidden and have to be found.
hidden lore of Matrix trilogy (not comfirmed) - the chosen one is Smith, not Neo.
hidden lore of Original Star wars Trillogy (comfirmed but discarded by Disney) - Luke never became a Jedi.
There is lot of other examples, and we always should look for those, not just strictly bound to written lore.
Hidden lore of Skull Merchant (not comfirmed) - Adriana is not from realworld, but from manga.
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