Hey Tokay-Blog thank you for answering my last question about the wolves mannerisms and learning about the lore you’ve created for their origins. But there is still one thing that is still a mystery. Who raised Death, How did they find out he is one of many other entities, are they ever scared of him, and how do they feel when he enjoys the smell of fear and has blood on his hands when he makes a kill?
I don't think it matters much who raised it. (Though there were thoughts that it was farmers that lived on the outskirts of town). For some reason the parents of the sniper from tf2 come to mind “Not a "crazy gunman", I'm an assassin! The difference bein' one's a job and the other's mental sickness!” x)
But no, the custodians hardly knew who he was (and even Wolf himself didn't know. How?) Perhaps he just left them at some point, deciding it was more interesting in the town (more people-more people who would fall under his hot hand). You could call it his sort of adolescence. In the sense that he was bored, and the world around him had to dispel that boredom without much thought to how it would affect the others (But without crossing the line of “law”). Also maybe his instinct for population control kicked in, who knows x)
But I suspect there were other ways to blow off steam in the same taverns and bordellos besides legal work as an executioner or killing for money (which was hinted at in the festival sketch series)
I had a mind to show Wolf returning with the She-Wolf to his home where he grew up, but I didn't get around to it.
The thing that makes Death a GREAT villain/antagonist is that he's a force of nature that got upset and started behaving incorrectly.
His motivation is to kill Puss for being a cocky shit. Someone having 9 lives is ridiculous on its own but to have someone waste them like Puss does is just offensive, so Death stepped in to take his last life early for funsies. That's how pissed off Death was, and he explains it very clearly in the crystal caverns scene.
Death is a foil to Puss. Yeah, he's only there to kill Puss. That's the point. He's not a person, he's literally Death. He's the light at the end of the tunnel for Puss, but he's running at him. He's the one that forces Puss to change. He's the one that makes his journey harder. The single only reason why getting that wish even matters is because Death forced it to matter.
He's vindictive, cruel, and spiteful. That's different from just being plain evil. Him having rules he begrudgingly follows makes his "defeat" interesting. He can kill Puss at any time. Heck, he could slaughter everyone at the end. But he doesn't. He’s unpredictable.
Also, the main job of an antagonist is to show the protagonist's development. That's why it's called "antagonist" - they antagonize. Every one of Puss' encounters with Death are direct catalysts to his character growth.This movie doesn’t work without him.
He's a fantastic antagonist straight from a classic storybook.