Talk:Villain Decay

It is questionable if one can call something like a virus or bacterium a 'villain', but assuming one can do this, there are several real-life examples of this trope among them.

It is a frequent (though not a universal) observation that a pathogen that has newly crossed the species barrier into a new host (say, humans) and is now capable of spreading in that new host for the first time will cause rather severe disease. (That's the initial 'scary villain'.) However, after a couple of epidemics the pathogen adapts more and more to its new host and often becomes less pathogenic in that process, 'decaying' into a comparitively harmless phenomenon. (To be precise, increasing immunity of hosts plays a role here as well, as does the selection pressure the pathogen exerts on its host.)

A good example of this is the measles virus which is rarely fatal (like ~0.1% death rate) in western civilizations where it has been circulating for centuries, but which proved devastating to indigenous people elsewhere who got in contact with it for the first time (death rates 10 to >50%). Today, indigenous people whose ancestors have been dealing with it since two or more centuries also aren't affected as severely any more.

There is also a theory that the flu pandemic of 1890 was actually caused by the coronavirus HCoV-O43 and not an influenza virus, while today HCoV-O43 rarely causes more than a cold. It was an outsider theory initially but got more known during the current Coronavirus pandemic, and if there is something to that theory it gives hope that Sars-CoV-2 will undergo a similar 'villain decay' in the future.

HIV/AIDS is also expected to become less deadly over time, but that is expected to take a little more time...

Not to say, there are some exceptions or "aversions". For example, the Variola Major strain of smallpox virus apparently has been deadly all the time from ancient times until its erradication in the 1970s.

As said, if one can call microbes 'villains'...

In terms of the measles example, 'civilization barrier' is more appropriate than 'species barrier' since there is no species barrier. But with some Fridge Logic you can assume that also the western civilization got it once from somewhere - most likely as a mutant rinderpest virus from cattle.

"As said, if one can call microbes 'villains'..."

Which is a big "if". Merriam-Webster's definitions of "Villain" ("a character in a story or play who opposes the hero", "a deliberate scoundrel or criminal") are pretty clear in requiring the villain to make a choice to be villainous, and viruses simply don't have the intelligence to be able to make that choice.

We can attribute villainy to viruses, certainly, but IMHO that's the same as attributing villainy to a tornado or a fire.

EDIT: That said, please continue - I'm finding these posts fascinating.

@Robkelk In fairness, viruses are not truly intelligent, though malevolent in their means (hijacking other cells and compromising them to serve themselves) and ends (it can and will kill the host if it cannot fend off enough cells being compromised to fight off the viral invader.

While not capable of true sentience, a virus does have a crude and entirely negative set of pre-programmed innate instructions that make it an invader to be fought off, ergo, I'd say it counts as a villain if we go simply by the fact it's an aggressive being that seeks the corruption and destruction of what it attacks.

As is, indeed silly, though as an analogy can be good. In that diseases often reduce their own spread after a while, as the vulnerable hosts either become less vulnerable or die out — unless they change as well and/or don't put too much pressure in the first place. Likewise, in sentient environment "exploiting weakness" and "one-trick pony" is rarely a strong combination in the long run, as it's limited due to selection and adaptation on the victims' side.

Well, as the Obliviously Evil page says about diseases and viruses: "[Diseases and viruses] have no intelligence to know what they are doing (they're not even multicellular, or, in the case of viruses, possibly not even living), they are simply doing what their DNA or RNA tells them to do. In fact, with most diseases, it is not the microorganisms that cause the disease, it is the toxins they produce that cause harm."

So I guess it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to call them "villains."

Oops, didn't mean to send my previous message a second time.

I think I'm outvoted here, four to one... :)

I'm actually neutral here. So I think it's actually three to one.

Probably irrelevant for the discussion, but the correct name of that possibly-past-pandemic coronavirus is HCoV-OC43. For anyone who wants to do research on it.

By the way, the (real) influenza would also be an aversion. Its virulence varies from year to year and from one pandemic to the next, but as it's constantly escaping host immunity thanks to its high mutation rate, it's never really becoming harmless.

The plague seems to be gone through this, but there is a chance that it may come back at old "vileness" at some point in the future. If that happens, we'll hopefully have much more efficient ways to combat it than in the middle ages. (Hygienic standards surely play a big role here.)

And if we are at bacteria now, they have suffered kind-of a villain decay in general when antibiotics were discovered in the early 20th century. However, some of them avert this trope today by having become multiresistant...

Excuse me for spamming talk pages for months without changing anything in the article itself - I just want to collect information first, wait for one or more responses and not simply go and write some potentially inappropriate stuff into the article. This is somehow a habit I have developed while making edits to Wikipedia. If I'm not sure that my idea is good, I rather state it on the talk page first, in order to avoid disrupting the article in case my planned edit is inappropriate. It's also faster to write something down on the talk page, as the quality and understandability standard is a bit lower (if others don't understand my point they tend to ask and not just delete it, as they will most likely do in the article).

That's fine, strikes me as a good idea to get your ideas organized before writing them.