One piece of writing advice I hear a lot is, "Nobody thinks they're the bad guy. Everyone's the hero in their own story." Which is true, I guess. But I worry people understand this to mean "every character needs to have sympathetic, relatable motivations." Which is NOT true.
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There's no shortage of people in the world who enjoy being cruel to people who are more vulnerable than they are. There's plenty of people who think of the world purely in terms of dominance and power, or who pride themselves on being able to "do what has to be done."
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In my writing, I'm very interested in the problem of evil, and a lot of my stuff features well-meaning people who make horrible choices. But I'm not interested in excusing destructive behavior, or necessarily sympathizing with it. Not all villains have to be lovable/relatable.
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George RR Martin is very good at showing the internal monologue of people who do monstrous things, without softening them at all. Meanwhile, Shakespeare famously has one of his villains declare his undying hatred, "yet I know not why." Not everybody is equally introspective.
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Bottom line: evil is real. Cruelty is real. We have to grapple with them in our fiction, whether it's a lighthearted romp or a grimdark adventure. And I don't feel like sympathetic evil is always the right choice, depending on the story. /END
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Replying to @charliejane
Another thing I think people underestimate is that most humans don’t have any grasp on their own motivations at all. Or they rationalize or mislead themselves.
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Replying to @tomcoates @charliejane
They don’t spend time thinking through the life experiences they’ve had and connect that therapeutically with their self-destructive behavior. The characters that feel most real to me in fiction want something, but maybe aren’t sure why and maybe it’s the worst thing for them.
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Replying to @tomcoates @charliejane
I think this is why bad guys can be so good. Because they want something normally very human and normal, like love or respect or security, but can’t reach those things through normal ways because they’re damaged or confused or whatever, so do fucking appalling things.
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Replying to @tomcoates @charliejane
I feel like that’s much closer to my experience of the world than most heroic figures.
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If you turn out to be a supervillain that would be a MAJOR plot twist Tom
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Replying to @avantgame @charliejane
I mean to *you* maybe, but I feel like I’ve always been quite clear about my intent to rule the world :)
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