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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MechaPilot" data-source="post: 6763227" data-attributes="member: 82779">To be fair, we are talking about a biased perspective in those next stories.  I mean, how many writers typically portray their own values, and those of their audience, as the values of the side that is going to come out of the story as the losers.  They say that "history is written by the victors,"  but when it comes to fiction the story is typically written so that the writer and the audience identify with the winner and not the loser, the hero and not the villain.It's also worth noting that Sauron and Palpatine are both rather flat villains in that they are basically the stereotypical moustache-twirling entirely evil with no redemptive character type of characters.  In reality, good and evil are both not so flat and shallow.  Heroes have faults that they must overcome that make them more engaging, and that let us imperfect people identify with them.  Villains have humanity that, typically, along with their faults acts as a reflection of the heroes.A well-played evil character should be the same: it should have humanity, it should have motivations and desires that are very human, even if those desires are twisted.Take, for example, one of my favorite D&D characters.  Her name is Cyllinth.  She is of fiendish blood, neutral evil, a cleric of her own divinity (in this case, profanity might be more appropriate), and she eventually amassed a cult of followers.  Her worship of herself, and the desire to be worshiped by others, relates to a very human motivation: the desire to be loved.  In her case, that desire was twisted into desiring worship and adoration (adoration is itself a synonym for love).  She did a lot of evil things, and she took pleasure in corrupting others to do evil things in her name, but always present was the funhouse reflection of human desires and motives, the jealous need to bask in the adoration/love of others.</blockquote>

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