This resonates with me a lot! I really like villains who are making their own choices, and -- I want to say "unsympathetic" villains, but it's not really what I mean at all, I love sympathizing with a well-written villain who is doing terrible things for their own reasons. And I especially love it when a villain and a hero with equally tough backstories are contrasted. If you wipe out all of a character's agency by trying to excuse them with circumstances, I think you wipe out a lot of their characterization, and what are you left with? I love, love, love it, though, when there's a horrible villain and then you learn something that gives you that moment of reluctant sympathy with them. I think it's a bit of what fiction is all about for me: getting to experience different perspectives and ideas and decisions and consequences.
Also, I love when characters do terrible things and then just have to live with it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-12-04 10:45 pm (UTC)Also, I love when characters do terrible things and then just have to live with it.