Reply #17: My favorite characters in my writing are "evil" [View All]

[Der Blaue Engel]

But none are thoroughly evil, even when they are clearly the antagonist of the story. I think I'm most fascinated by the fact that those deemed "good" by society are often at best emotionless and dull, and at worst, fatuously self-serving and unable to empathize, to the point of committing evil in the name of good; but when someone generally regarded to be evil does something with empathy or justice, it becomes that much more powerful, and their downfall even more tragic.

So perhaps what I prefer is Evil redeemed, or Evil transcended. How virtuous is it to "behave" when you have no negative impulses to resist?

My favorite fictional characters in other writers' worlds are those like Spike in the Buffy-verse. My e-mail sig file is a quote from Spike, when asked by teenaged Dawn about evil: "Well, I'm not good, and I'm okay."