How am I contradicting my own argument?
And I am sorry if you felt offended by my post, but I don't see how I was being rude or hostile?
If I were to be more blunt, I could say that it is rude, condescending and a straw man argument to imply that I am naive or should "study history" (which I am oblivious to, right?) just because I find a certain storyline or a specific crime out of character for Dukat, or that I don't understand how wrong sexual enslavement is. Frankly I find that implication very offensive.
Look, we have different views on whether this storyline is in character for Dukat or not. I concede that, in your last post, you are certainly making a very good case for your interpretation and I can see why some people might see this as a convincing character development, rather than just a Kick the Dog moment. But I happen to still find it unconvincing, and the "Iliana is just a copy, like a holosuite program" premise far-fetched (not to mention that, under the assumption that if she was supposed to be a "holosuite program" stand-in for Kira, holosuite programs are usually used to fulfill people's fantasies - and I was always under the impression that Dukat's fantasy of Kira Nerys involved her falling for him and forgiving/justifying his actions, rather than being a drugged up prisoner getting punished through repeated rape). You think it is in character based on what we've seen on the show, I disagree. So let's just leave it at that. But in any case, I think you have to agree that it is a big departure from the type of behavior we've seen from the character on the show. And when one introduces something like that, some might feel that is a further exploration of the character, but others will feel that it is very out of character. Especially when something like that is introduced for a canon character in a non-canon novel released a few years after the end of the TV show, do you really think that there won't be many people questioning it and feeling that it is far-fetched and out of character? You don't think that is only to be expected?
I hope you don't feel offended by this, because I am now not speaking about you at all, but, generally, the idea that professional writers would not reduce characterizations to stupid simplifications like good and evil is not really something that can be taken for granted. I can think of many professional writers who do exactly that. I can actually think of a bunch of times when professional screenwriters - good writers, to booth - broke that rule on DS9, other Trek series, or, for instance, Ron Moore's BSG, and had characters do certain things primarily as a plot device, in order to pit them as antagonists or protagonists in the show, to convey a certain message, or to elicit certain response from the audience and make the character more or less sympathetic, even when it required a certain tweaking of logic and character motivations. (For instance, Archer refusing to help in ENT "Dear Doctor" felt OOC to me and it seemed like it only happened because the writers wanted to convey their - IMO misguided - message, and this is just one of the cases of Archer, or Janeway, acting inconsistently because the writers were using them as vehicles to convey the message that this or that was the right thing to do under the circumstances; Dukat blaming Sisko for Ziyal's death didn't make any sense - they could have at least make him blame Kira or someone who had actually been there on the station or had been close to Ziyal - and seemed to be only a plot device to pit Dukat the Anti-Emissary against Sisko the Emissary; BSG had lots of examples like that, especially concerning the behavior of Boomer and Caprica Six and other Cylon characters in season 3 and 4). They even pretty much admitted it at times that this is what they were doing - e.g. Ira Steven Behr's interview where he basically said that he regreted making Dukat a complex villain, because - gasp! - some people ended up liking him, and that the entire Pah-wraiths storyline was really an attempt to hammer it home that Dukat and Winn were evil. Or, another example can be found in Ron Moore's podcasts for BSG, where it was mentioned that they (RDM, Thompson and Weddle, who were also talking in the podcast) changed a certain line from Revelations because they were afraid it would make Tory a bit more sympathetic, and they wanted to "preserve her as a villain". Or that the baby killing scene in the BSG pilot was written just to make the Cylons look threatening, without any explanation why Six did it (it was the actress and the director, Helfer and Rymer, who actually gave some thought to the character's motives).
I guess it is not really that surprising that this happens more often on Star Trek series or on a show like BSG (which is really not all that fundamentally different in tone from Trek as some people say), where didacticism and Good triumphing over Evil is more of a concern than on, say, The Shield, The Sopranos or Man Men. And I don't even find it bad in itself - as long as it is more subtle than a sledgehammer. Or as long as it doesn't include a considerable deal of hypocrisy. (Like, for instance, focusing on the evils of fictional alien imperialism and colonialism, while having the protagonists - Federation, presented as a humanitarian exploration force - fly ships that bear the names of people like Christopher Columbus or Hernan Cortez. Or completely glossing over the fact that the Prophets, the godlike aliens that are definitely presented as a force of Good, possessed a human woman and used her body for their own purposes, making her have sex, marry a man, conceive and bear a child against her own will... But I'm getting a bit off topic here, and I've already had a few rants about this in other threads.)
Character A is fucking nuts, so people (or at least some of them) will believe him doing anything. Just make your villains go insane, and voila. Very convenient, and removes the need for serious thinking about characterization, motives, logic, etc.
