There’s a movement within our society, mostly seen in storytelling, that I’ve come to despise. This movement is fine in real life, when warranted, but takes my enjoyment away from the books I like to read. That movement is about finding redeeming qualities in villains.
I’ve said in the past that villains should be complex, and
almost no realistic villain sees himself or herself as a villain…but that
villain should remain a villain. It saps
my enjoyment, especially if the story is told in a series, for a bad guy to
suddenly be a good guy.
Look, I get the shock value of it, along with the desire to
see good in everyone. However, I also
value consistency in my stories, and wondering who I should be rooting for
shouldn’t be shaky. Finding out later
that a villain is someone who can be good changes the way I read earlier
stories. Should that conflict really
have been handled in that way? Could the
bad guy have been useful earlier? It
messes with my mind to have to try and figure out such circumstances and jostle
my reading loyalties, and I get enough of that in real life.
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