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Does Anyone Else Hate Sympathetic Villains?

Mindfire

Istar
Let me explain. Anyone here read Order of the Stick? Anyone? Anyone? Well it's a fantasy webcomic. Fairly popular. Google for more information. Anyway, one of the villains is a goblin named Redcloak. He's a complex character with a sympathetic backstory
(long story short, his family and friends were slaughtered by paladins because, you know, smiting evil and all that, which gave him an undying hatred for the forces of good in general and paladins in particular)
and an odd sense of nobility and honor. And I hate him. I absolutely hate this character. He's very popular among fans apparently. But I just can't stop hating him. And the more and more the author tries to make this character sympathetic and likable, the more I keep wanting him to die a horrible, painful death.

Am I missing something here? Because a lot of the fan discourse is all like "oh, how sad his family got killed by paladins" and "sure he's done bad things, but the good guys started it" and "is he really evil? what is evil anyway?" And meanwhile here I am slamming my head into the desk and shouting "Yes! Yes he really is evil!" You have to understand, the webcomic is based (loosely) on D&D rules. I haven't actually played D&D, but I know enough to know that the morality system is more or less black and white. (See: the alignment system.) If your alignment is (one of the varying flavors of) evil, then you're evil. No philosophical discussion to be had. That's simply the nature of the setting. Morality is simplified for gaming purposes.

Why is this relevant? Because goblins are aligned evil. (Neutral evil I think?) And Redcloak is also evil aligned, a fact in which he revels. So when you tell me that his family was killed by paladins, I don't care. Because by definition, they are evil. It's like asking me to feel sorry for the orcs in Lord of the Rings. It's not gonna happen. Ever. Racial morality as a concept is problematic in the real world, but this is a fictional creature in a fictional setting with rules designed for gaming purposes (and sometimes fudged by the webcomic for the sake of humor). So real-world moral quandaries don't enter into it. When you tell me that a group of paladins killed an entire goblin village, my reaction is not going to be "Oh, poor goblins," but rather "Go team Paladins! On to the next goblin village!"

Does anyone else see where I'm coming from here? Or am I just a heartless bastard?

To clarify, I'm not saying I hate sympathetic villains in general. (Misleading titles for shock value! Huzzah!) This is actually the first time I've had a reaction this strong against a "sympathetic" antagonist. Maybe there's just something about this character in particular that annoys me. Or maybe I'm just grumpy because the bad guys have been winning for so many comics lately. (From where I stand anyway. I'm only up to #546 out of 895.)
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
I remember watching He-Man when I was a kid and liking the Merman character. I don't know why I liked him. It had something to do with him sometimes helping Skeletor and sometimes helping He-Man. I don't know why that appealed to me. I guess I liked that Merman did what was best for Merman. He was manipulated by both sides really.

In the case of this Redcloak character, perhaps it's an instance of the readers and writer suggesting that it's a matter of perspective if a character is good or evil. If a character is getting any sort of positive reaction, then I think the writer is doing their job. And from what I gathered Order of the Stick is a comedic parody so it's not really intended to be serious.

In this case I'd say, yeah, feel free to hate him. But if other readers like him, then more power to them.

I don't so much mind sympathetic villains as long as they are not cast as the main villain. I usually like to have a villain I can love to hate.
 
Why is this relevant? Because goblins are aligned evil. (Neutral evil I think?) And Redcloak is also evil aligned, a fact in which he revels. So when you tell me that his family was killed by paladins, I don't care. Because by definition, they are evil. It's like asking me to feel sorry for the orcs in Lord of the Rings. It's not gonna happen. Ever. Racial morality as a concept is problematic in the real world, but this is a fictional creature in a fictional setting with rules designed for gaming purposes (and sometimes fudged by the webcomic for the sake of humor). So real-world moral quandaries don't enter into it. When you tell me that a group of paladins killed an entire goblin village, my reaction is not going to be "Oh, poor goblins," but rather "Go team Paladins! On to the next goblin village!"

Does anyone else see where I'm coming from here? Or am I just a heartless bastard?

There are three ways to respond to this.

1): The rule for goblins is "usually evil," and even "always" (for demons) isn't really always. According to The Book of Exalted Deeds, it's an alignment violation for good-aligned characters to kill children just because they're from a traditionally evil race--free will must be accounted for.

2): If your setting has magical principles that cause a hard lump of cheese to register identically to a piece of granite for casting purposes, that doesn't mean the cheese is actually granite, that means your magic is weird. The way "evil" is defined in Dungeons and Dragons is so bizarre (and so contradictory between editions) that you can't really compare it to "evil" in the real world--you might as well throw out the terminology, and say that D&D contains a never-ending conflict between "smeeb" and "fwump."

3): Why shouldn't good pity evil? If they both hate each other and want each other to die, there's no longer a distinction between the two.

Edit: I keep trying to think of a better way to phrase point 2. (It's very dear to my heart, since I wrote an entire story about its implications, but I've never found a good way to quickly sum it up.) Let's try this on for size:

Imagine a universe where, when you stack one rock on top of another rock, a third rock suddenly appears on top of both of them. In this case, one plus one equals three. But the appearance of the third rock doesn't change the underlying reality that one plus one equaled two before the third appeared. I think morality is the same way--your universe can only determine how it turns out, not what it really is.
 
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Chilari

Staff
Moderator
I don't really mind. Evil villains, sympathetic villains - if the writer has done a good job, I can go with it. I don't like seeing "evil for the sake of evil" characters, but I'm fine with it if there's a valid in-universe reason for the evil (infected with necromany or other evil magic, embodiment of evil in the form of a demon, doesn't have a soul etc). And I'm fine with human villains who value their own ambition above morality, or believe that the order they are creating is for the greater good, etc, and thus do evil. I don't like the cackling "ooh aren't I evil?" type though.

As for sympathetic villains, as long as the author knows what they're doing and doesn't try to use wangst in there, I'm fine with it. Different perspectives is fine. Conflicting goals between the protagonist and antagonist is fine. Different moral priorities is fine. "I'm bad because I was abused as a child/ the good guy everyone thinks is a hero killed my parents/ life is unfair wah wah wah" is lazy writing.

Actually I think Brandon Sanderson did really well with the villain of Mistborn: The Final Empire.
There are excerpts purportedly written by the Emperor before he saved the world and set the Empire up, and he's a really sympathetic character who questions his role and examines his moral position, whereas the emperor that the protagonists live under is controlling and demonstrably evil. One wonders how this man got from the man in the diary to the one the characters see; but actually, what happened was that the hero who was meant to save the world was usurped at the last minute by the guy who was guiding him - and this guy became emperor; the mentions the hero character makes in his diary of this individual show he is intolerant, hateful and unpleasant, and it is implied that the power really went to his head. The evil emperor isn't the sympathetic character hinted at at all, he was bad to begin with and became worse.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I like Redcloak. But I would hate those conversations. How do you find someone sympathetic when he's trying to kill everyone?

And, I mean, he was for a while killing all his own hobgoblin hordes out of racism, just because they were hobgoblins and not goblins. He realized this and stopped, but a bunch were already dead first. Doesn't that make him a hypocrite?

Also, his evil plan goes well beyond killing the paladins. He wants to move the gate and give his gobliny god absolute power. That sounds very . . . paladin-like fanatic, to me.

Tarquin, on the other hand, is an absolute bad-ass. No sympathy there, but he is very cool. He's the more recent OOTS villain, and anybody who doesn't know his deal needs to go read it and find out.
 
Sometimes sympathy's just badly written, or at least something that didn't click for you considering how D&D usually works. (I know, "D&D goblins butchered by paladins" implies "--after the goblins had wiped out three villages and were closing in on a fourth," because that's what those goblins do, and trying to raise real sympathy for that one moment is silly. But, OOTS...)

It's always a risk when writers stray from black and white rules; we like these subversions because they aren't easy to balance right. But for every vicious but relatable villain, someone comes up with an emo clown you wish would get back to his bloody business; for every flawed hero there's a whiner the universe keeps trying to enable.

(And for every Darth Vader, there's an Anakin Skywalker? :unsure:)
 

Mindfire

Istar
There are three ways to respond to this.

1): The rule for goblins is "usually evil," and even "always" (for demons) isn't really always. According to The Book of Exalted Deeds, it's an alignment violation for good-aligned characters to kill children just because they're from a traditionally evil race--free will must be accounted for.

2): If your setting has magical principles that cause a hard lump of cheese to register identically to a piece of granite for casting purposes, that doesn't mean the cheese is actually granite, that means your magic is weird. The way "evil" is defined in Dungeons and Dragons is so bizarre (and so contradictory between editions) that you can't really compare it to "evil" in the real world--you might as well throw out the terminology, and say that D&D contains a never-ending conflict between "smeeb" and "fwump."

3): Why shouldn't good pity evil? If they both hate each other and want each other to die, there's no longer a distinction between the two.

Edit: I keep trying to think of a better way to phrase point 2. (It's very dear to my heart, since I wrote an entire story about its implications, but I've never found a good way to quickly sum it up.) Let's try this on for size:

Imagine a universe where, when you stack one rock on top of another rock, a third rock suddenly appears on top of both of them. In this case, one plus one equals three. But the appearance of the third rock doesn't change the underlying reality that one plus one equaled two before the third appeared. I think morality is the same way--your universe can only determine how it turns out, not what it really is.

So what you're saying is that D&D actually operates on some flavor of Blue and Orange morality?

And in case it wasn't clear, it's not sympathetic villains in general I have a problem with (as I said the title is misleading). Just Redcloak in particular seems to irritate me and I don't quite know why. But I keep hoping that eventually he dies in agony and this Gobbotopia of his will be razed to the ground.
 
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Telcontar

Staff
Moderator
The alignment system has never made much sense and is possibly my most hated aspect of the D&D system.

It is especially problematic when you come to a story like Order of the Stick (massive OotS fan myself, by the way). Burlew (the creator) needs to present most of his characters as multi-dimensional, and the alignment system is not built to allow for such things. It is meant to decrease character complexity by classifying good and evil in a simple way.

Thus, Redcloak is only "evil" in that his D&D alignment is evil. If you classify his actions as actually morally evil, then you pretty much have to classify the actions of the Sapphire Guard in much the same way. This is perhaps a function of Burlew's goblins being much less "evil" in nature than I usually imagine orcs and goblins being (for instance, in Tolkien). They seem largely content to live and let live, save that adventuring parties keep coming by and slaughtering them en masse for XP. This subverts the idea of the alignment system and basically makes calling goblins "evil" in Burlew's world akin to bigotry (labeling them as something in order to justify their mistreatment), rather than an actual moral evaluation.

I love Redcloak (for oh-so-many reasons!), and by extension I definitely sympathize with the plight of goblins as a whole.
 

Guru Coyote

Archmage
Hmmm, well... isn't it the job of a villain that you hate them? So in that sense, Redcloak seems to have done his job well with Mindfire :)

Musing on what might cause the irritation - not having read any of the comic: Maybe it's the idea of a character gaining sympathy (understanding), while he is not actually trying to 'change his evil ways'?
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
I don't know, as I've never seen this particular work. However, I typically love sympathetic villains, especially those who may challenge concepts of good and evil by painting the picture from other points of view.
 
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Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Another thing to keep in mind is that OOTS serves in large part to satirize the rules of D&D. That's what makes it funny and effective with the target audience (e.g. mostly gamers). So I'm not sure that it makes sense to criticize it for ostensibly adopting a rule of D&D (alignment system, for example) and then to play havoc with it by having the character not comply.
 
Characters must be true to their story goals. If the story goal is to amass skulls of little girls, then they must do that. They can obsess about how they don't like killing little girls. But, they do kill little girls. So, from that perspective, they're not likable. But today's morality is changing. Bad people aren't bad because they do bad things. They're bad because society did bad things to them. Therefore, they must be treated just like anybody else. We, after all, can't be judgmental. That is what I despise.
 
Interesting you mention perspective. I'm certain that if you interviewed history's great killers they'd have a sympathetic perspective on their actions. It would be the rare man who said, "Yep, I killed, I tortured and I liked it. I did it because I liked it." They'd say, "well, they had it coming. They laughed at me. They made me feel bad." It would be interesting to interview Hitler and Stalin, two of history's real-baddies. Hitler: I did what I did for the German people. Stalin: People don't ask me these questions. Do you understand what I'm saying? (Menacing eyebrow raise.)
 

Mythopoet

Auror
I hate the tendency of people in general to try to find ways to justify the evil actions of characters. I like a really well done sympathetic villain, but for me that involves never excusing evil actions.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
Those are examples on the extremes. Yes, in some ways, even those sociopaths probably felt their actions were justified. There is a decent amount of historical evidence which supports that assumption. However, it's an over-simplification to look at the extremes of any case and argue a point.

In real, everyday life, I've rarely met people that don't feel their beliefs & actions are justified. Often those beliefs and actions DO have sources and valid reasons. This doesn't mean anyone has to condone someone's actions because underlying circumstances are present. Far from it! Though, that doesn't mean you can't understand those circumstances either.This is where perspective comes into play.

Like it or not, good/evil, criminal/just, terrorist/freedom fighter... Our personal understandings evolve from perspective. Characters and their motivations, written with this in mind, can be powerful.
 
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Mindfire

Istar
The alignment system has never made much sense and is possibly my most hated aspect of the D&D system.

It is especially problematic when you come to a story like Order of the Stick (massive OotS fan myself, by the way). Burlew (the creator) needs to present most of his characters as multi-dimensional, and the alignment system is not built to allow for such things. It is meant to decrease character complexity by classifying good and evil in a simple way.

Thus, Redcloak is only "evil" in that his D&D alignment is evil. If you classify his actions as actually morally evil, then you pretty much have to classify the actions of the Sapphire Guard in much the same way. This is perhaps a function of Burlew's goblins being much less "evil" in nature than I usually imagine orcs and goblins being (for instance, in Tolkien). They seem largely content to live and let live, save that adventuring parties keep coming by and slaughtering them en masse for XP. This subverts the idea of the alignment system and basically makes calling goblins "evil" in Burlew's world akin to bigotry (labeling them as something in order to justify their mistreatment), rather than an actual moral evaluation.

I love Redcloak (for oh-so-many reasons!), and by extension I definitely sympathize with the plight of goblins as a whole.

Ahhh. It all makes a bit more sense now. Though I still feel sorry for all the Azurites who lost their homes and loved ones.

Seems like a bizarre level of emotional reaction to have to the character, to be honest.

Tell me about it. I never knew a webcomic could provoke such a reaction from me of all people. I'm usually a pretty stoic fellow.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
Hmmm...

Not really familiar with this 'Order of the Stick'...but this thread did bring up past memories of books read and game based discussions.

Things like 'Lord Toade', a minor character in the first 'Dragonlance' series way back when. Toede was a cowardly, bullying, incompetent hobgoblin chieftan who managed to get himseld killed in short order. Then (in a sequel of sorts) a couple of infernal characters brought Toede back to life on a bet and told him to 'be noble'. Three or four resurrections later, he'd become...almost decent.

Another item was some of the events and discussions of the last AD&D campaigns I participated in. Specifically, how the behaviour of the player characters after a while became much the same as the evil monsters we battled. A couple of times the never ending quest for treasure, experience points, and levels resulted in the party members calculating the benefits from 'killing our own.' (This from supposedly good aligned characters, no less!)

Then there was my ... personal quest to create a race that could justifiably be considered 'evil' - and not just through some arbitrary declaration, either (which appears to be the case with the gobliniods in AD&D.) That resulted in the creation of the goblins and hobgoblins of my world, and to an extent, the Rachasa. The goblins and hobgoblins are ...almost biologically trapped... into an aggresive society where murder is acceptable behaviour, thus making them 'evil'. On this board, the best example of my hobgoblins is Hock-Nar: he see's nothing wrong with killing, yet is bound by the honor code and ethics of his people.
 
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