“I did it for you” has gotta be my favorite form of betrayal. You gave me a gift I never asked for, and now I have to look around at the world you destroyed with the knowledge that it was gift wrapped and addressed to me.
I’ve been thinking some more about that analysis of human motivations I posted about a few months ago
the idea that pretty much everyone’s ethics, from the worst intentions to the best and noblest, is all just different degrees of the same goal
(“maximum well-being for those that you care about, at the expense of others who are expendable.”)
(With the only difference being just who you care about, and who you consider expendable.)
(for example, in an ideally good and noble worldview, you’d probably limit the “expendable” to… plants and animals, embryos and fetuses, and any humans so evil or so out-of-control that their happiness is mutually exclusive with everyone else’s)
(while “those you care about and seek well-being for” should be pretty much everyone whose happiness and well-being feasibly CAN be achieved…)
And villains in fiction are villains because there is something messed up with their categories of “those who deserve well-being” and “those who are expendable.”
And our sympathy, as an audience, for these villains will depend on just exactly how that is messed up.
we do not tend to have sympathy for the villains whose “worthy” category includes only themselves, and whose “expendable” category includes everyone else. They are just selfish assholes.
we also do not tend to have sympathy for the villains whose “worthy” category includes an entire race or ethnicity or nationality– and whose “expendable” category includes other groups, considered inferior. They are just racist assholes.
but
we do tend to feel the most sympathy for the villain in between those extremes
whose “worthy” category includes only a very small number of loved ones.
he’ll do anything to protect his family. he’ll do anything to find a cure for his dying wife.
Anything.
Even hard decisions, even questionable morality.
Which is how the slippery slope begins.
and we’re supposed to understand that. Because it’s normal to be willing to do absolutely anything for your loved ones, your closest friend, your family, your partner. Of course you would. You’d be evil not to.
Right up until “anything” includes something actually evil.
But we’re supposed to understand that this is a difficult line to draw, when you’re trying to reconcile it with saving your loved ones.
And it becomes a real tragedy only when the loved ones find out what’s being done in their name, and they don’t even want it.
because then, the loved ones are good.
and then, according to a “good” worldview, they should be saved, and should not be expendable. And yet, because of the circumstances orchestrated by this plot and this character– they cannot be saved, and must be sacrificed.
which allows us, for a moment, to experience the utter pain of the paradox, the inner conflict, that the villain is experiencing.