Ben really was never a villain. That was Kaine. Kaine is now the scarlet spider, unless I'm much mistaken. But Ben was never a villain.
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Wasn't there a book about an assassin, a dark knight etc that was on a quest to save the world cause Good won the last battle and was sublimating it?
Wait, is that DOCTOR DIRE? The author posted a fairly long Worm crossover on Spacebattles a couple of years ago, involving things like her getting L33t to build a giant mecha for use against Leviathan, and teleporting some of the 9 to the L1 libration point. She got along great with Mouse Protector. Did it get all the way to published paper books, or is it e-book only?
This is a really specific thing you're looking for.
In particular, the idea of a "good" bad guy usually implies there's a certain level of "shades of grey" within the morality. This, in turns, means there usually isn't someone who appears as a clear-cut good guy and a clear-cut bad guy.
The requirement that it be from the "good" bad guy's point of view also narrows the list, otherwise there are a fair few stories with a surprise twist at the end that may fit.
All I can think of is Megamind, which is in many ways almost exactly what you're asking for. Though I doubt it's particularly helpful for your purposes.
Megamind also isn't a good guy. He is attempting to murder someone, thinks he succeeds and then runs around committing crimes before getting bored and creating a civilization threatening monster to entertain him. He's a bad person on about the level of most life in jail individuals, he just isn't Crimes against Humanity levels of bad.
The Cycle of Arawn.
By and large the main character is a sociopath who murders people whenever it would be more convenient than not killing them. He murders people, Robs people, and even at one point commits genocide, killing an entire city of innocent people to get to the people he's trying to actually fight.
Somehow, he usually ends up on the right side, killing people who, while less.... Killy than him are nonetheless objectively evil in their own ways. With one notable exception.
Like the first book has a running theme of questioning why people of his faith are persecuted in the country he starts in.
The remainder of the series does a very good job of showing you why.
Spoiler: More Better Call Saul spoilersHard disagree. Chuck epitomizes Lawful Evil to me. It doesn't matter, ultimately, that Jimmy is a con man at heart. What matters is why Chuck tried to undermine him, how Chuck went about undermining him, and the fact that he made that his responsibility in the first place.
Chuck gave Jimmy a job, which he didn't have to do, but it was an entry-level job and Jimmy has a hard work ethic and was trying to better himself. When Jimmy actually took steps to better himself, Chuck went out of his way to sabotage him while hiding behind Howard Hamlin's coattails. Rather than be honest with Jimmy about either the law or his prospects at HHM, he strung him along only to finally drop how much he reviles Jimmy when Kim told Jimmy the truth. Then, when Jimmy set out on his own, Chuck went out of his way to undermine him, even concocting an elaborate scheme to entrap him.
Chuck didn't sabotage Jimmy because Jimmy would make an unethical lawyer, even though that is true. Chuck sabotaged Jimmy because he couldn't stand the thought of himself and Jimmy being equals in any way, because he has long resented that, no matter how much he plays the good son, people just like Jimmy better. (That was the whole point of Chuck's meltdown in "Chicanery": "Ever since he was eight years old!" That's how long Chuck has resented Jimmy; that's how long Chuck has thought about making sure the whole world knows that Charles McGill is the good brother and James McGill is the screw-up.)
It's no coincidence Chuck only found the strength to overcome his illness and fight to retain a client when he heard Kim was sharing office space with Jimmy. He tried to punish Kim for associating with him-- which is something only an arrogant narcissist who thinks he can play God would do. Chuck decided his life's responsibility was to punish Jimmy and hold him in his place-- a place that, conveniently, is defined as being of a lower class than Chuck. Chuck doesn't care about the law. Chuck cares about deceiving and undermining his own brother. (And, aside, I think how Chuck went out at HHM confirms the "arrogant narcissist" aspect of his personality.)
He did this, mind you, even though Jimmy admired and looked up to him, took care of him and indulged him during his psychosomatic illness (caused, probably, when Jimmy got his law degree, because his cognitive dissonance couldn't handle the idea of Jimmy making something of himself), and loved him.
In a moral accounting of Chuck's life, It matters much less that Jimmy is a con man than it matters that Chuck made it his life's mission to hold his brother down, really and truly out of sheer resentment, when he simply could have washed his hands of him. Chuck wanted to be liked for being the dutiful son the way people liked Jimmy for his charm, and when he couldn't have that, he decided to destroy Jimmy.
Chuck is a liar, a coward, and a traitor to family.
This is very applicable to what I'm saying.
Spoiler: More BCS spoilersA Lawful Good Chuck would have been honest with Jimmy from the start. "I think you have a lot of skills and a good work ethic, but you don't have the professional ethics to do this. Do something else." Instead, Chuck arrogantly assumed Jimmy would stay in his low-level place forever, then when that didn't happen, decided to undermine him instead of guide him in a better direction. And all out of ego, and twisting the law into a tool to his own ends, just as immoral in my opinion as Jimmy's breaches of ethics were... uh, unethical. Lawful Evil.
Chuck's treatment of Jimmy is a textbook example of "the ends justify the means." I don't think that describes Good behavior in any moral universe.
SpoilerFun word there, "entrap." That means to coerce someone to do something illegal they would not otherwise have done. Jimmy would TOTALLY do illegal things, and Chuck's plan was to present Jimmy with a scenario and see what Jimmy would do, which turned out to also be an illegal thing. That's textbook not-actually-entrapment.
Is Chuck an asshoke? Absolutely. Does Jimmy totally break the law in attempts to further his career as a lawyer, exactly as Chuck thought he would? Absolutely. He attempts to defraud the Kettlemans in the very first episode. It's revealed he bribes his way into getting better dockets by slipping in beanie babies. When given a signing bonus, exorbitant salary, cocobolo desk, German car, and company housing with assistants up the wazoo, Jimmy decides to go straight for direct solicitation to sign more clients onto the class action. At the height of his professional career, he's still pulling the same old tricks, just like Chuck knew he would. Jimmy absolutely is a chimpanzee with a machine gun; his fraud scheme gets himself almost killed and gets two teens legs broken, just so he could sign the Kettlemans as clients. When he's on the year-long probation? He doesn't take the copier job, which he would kill at; he sells drop-phones to criminals. The only thing that could make him go straight is quite literally to save his life, and by that point it's too late and he's out of the game.
At no point am I saying Chuck wasn't an egomaniacal, vainglorious ******* of epic proportions. But he was an egomaniacal, vainglorious ******* who was right about Jimmy.
Spoiler: BCSI mean, stop and think about what you're saying, though. It still amounts to "Chuck decided to devote an absurd amount of time and effort into putting plans in place simply to screw over his younger brother." (And also, let's not forget, Chuck used this to screw Ernie over and fire him for being loyal to Jimmy! Chuck's a scumbag.) The law is a fig leaf of justification for Chuck's resentment.
Spoiler: BCSAnd I'm saying, that doesn't matter, because Chuck isn't just egomaniacal and vainglorious; he has his own severe character flaws that motivate his behavior-- he's a traitor and deceiver who is cold-hearted and can see no good in Jimmy despite everything Jimmy has done to help him through his fake illness. Chuck is in his own right a fraud motivated by resentment who believed the ends justify the means. And remember, the ends weren't "helping Jimmy stay on the straight and narrow," they were "hold Jimmy down and scorch the earth and punish anyone who associated with him." E-V-I-L.
Being correct doesn't make you right.
SpoilerChuck didn't really spend that much time and effort. Jimmy, however, spent considerably more time and effort screwing over HHM (and committing multiple felonies) because he didn't like how his girlfriend was treated. Did they treat her terribly? Hell yes. Did he have the right to steal confidential files and commit forgery to make up for it? HELL no!
And I feel bad for Ernie, but like Jimmy, he made his own bed. Chick told him to not tell anyone, and he told Kim. Ernie knew what he was doing was wrong, and he did it anyway. I liked the guy, but he knew what he was doing when he did it.
SpoilerHe didn't want Jimmy at his own firm. He didn't stop Jimmy from being a public defender, didn't stop Jimmy from going out on his own (so long as he didn't go back to Slippin' Jimmy schemes), didn't say a word to Davis & Main or try to sabotage Jimmy's prospects there in any way, despite Chuck being a prominent fixture in the New Mexico legal community and his word likely carrying a huge deal of weight. Jimmy messed those things up all by himself. Chuck insulated his own firm, but other than that, he wasn't keeping any boots on Jimmy's face. Hell, he even helped on Sandpiper crossing in every way he could until it translated into Jimmy potentially getting back in at HHM. That was the one place forbidden to Jimmy, all other doors were open, and Jimmy shut them all himself.
Honestly, at this point the argument just reads to me like "I agree with Chuck that the ends justify the means," particularly the parts about tossing other people aside as collateral damage.
To this, though:
SpoilerAnd he lied and hid behind Howard instead of being honest with Jimmy. Not even that Lawful, really; he only holds up those principles when it's convenient, and Jimmy was so inconvenient to his self-image that he discarded them all-- because the ends justify the means.
Not really; he offered opportunities for them to do bad, and they took them. If a cop offers someone the chance to steal money and the person takes it, the cop didn't do anything wrong; the proper response is to not steal the money. That's not the ends justifying the means. He did it to likeable people, but likeable doesn't make them good people.
Spoileragain, I totally agree he should have been honest with Jimmy, but he predicted (correctly, I should note), that Jimmy knowing that would unhinge him even further.
Kubrick might have some films you'd be interested in:
-The Shining
-Full Metal Jacket
-A Clockwork Orange
-Barry Lyndon (maybe)
There's also Frankenstein. The original novel, not necessarily any of the adaptations as Victor Frankenstein disowns his own creation based solely on its appearance.
Basically, it's the difference between ethics and morals.
Morally, all humans need to eat.
Ethically, let's make Soylent Green.
Almost all well-written bad guys are almost always morally right. Here is a thing that needs to happen, and I'm the one who's going to make it happen.
However, what makes a bad guy, a Bad Guy, is always their ethics.
The 'You and I are not so different, we both want the same thing.' is the ur-example. The Protagonist wants exactly the same thing as the Antagonist. What makes one the Hero, and the other, the Villain, is ethics.
Hmm there are the standard supervillain MC books where they tend to be not particularly evil like https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...ing-hephaestus
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...erature/Daemon forcefully changes the world and some people die on the way but the world it forms has advantages. Not done by the MC though, the programmer dies before it gets triggered.
I don't follow, basically morals are your own rules, ethics externally imposed rules right? Your distinction seems different?
Side note: If it is just about portability I recommend getting calibre and the anti drm plugin.
Personally I'd phrase the distinction differently: their goals can be moral, but their methods for achieving it are often the bad part. its one thing to talk about achieving good, entirely another to come up a method for how that will manifest in actual reality which is what really matters.
I mean imagine if someone did a bunch of selfless kindhearted things then admitted to you that they did it all to selfishly feel better about themselves and make everyone think better of them- it wouldn't really matter, they still did those good things. motivation doesn't really change the fact that good was done.
meanwhile it doesn't really matter how many justifications someone spouts if they're causing suffering and messing things up because of it. actions outweigh words, because if the person is truly moral, they'll actually do moral actions, rather than actions that don't match up to their stated goal.
and thats assuming a villain or bad guy is being honest about their motivation. sometimes all those claims of being selflessness or doing it for the greater good....are just lies. to hide it from others and themselves. anyone can make a pretty speech, and you can't be sure those "well-intentioned" extremists are actually well-intentioned.....or just saying they are while actually just using it as an excuse to do this or that atrocity because they hate somebody or because they're an egomaniac and think only they can solve a problem. again, actions outweigh words, and you can't be sure how genuine those people are if they causing suffering like that, and it doesn't really matter if they are genuine or not, they need to be stopped and punished either way.
Spoiler: Major spoilers for the Mazerunner book seriesIn the 'Mazerunner' series the actions of the evil government organization WICKED (yes, really) are responsible for gathering the heroes together with other immunes and creating a sanctuary from which they can eventually restore civilization. On the other hand WICKED created the disease that is wiping out humanity in the first place so..........
The way I understand it, morals are actually right and wrong, whereas ethics is a code to follow when you can't be trusted to discern what's right and wrong.
Think of it as a minefield; not making a moral mistake is akin to not stepping on a mine. However, ethics recognizes that you won't necessarily be able to see every mine, and so advises that you stay out of the minefield altogether.
If you consider one of the classic examples of a code of ethics - a doctor not getting romantically involved with a patient, for example - the distinction is quite clear. It is possible for a patient and doctor to genuinely fall in love, and for the doctor to continue to fulfill his job as a doctor well. In that case, there is no moral issue with the doctor getting involved with the patient.
However, because the doctor is in a position of power, and has a vested interest in seeing the situation only from his own perspective, the doctor cannot ethically get involved. There's too much of a risk that the patient feels pressured, or trapped, or that the doctor would cease to be objective. This may happen even without the doctor's knowledge, which is why the code of ethics is so important in this case. There are other reasons, of course, but that's one of the most fundamental.
My interpretation is different because I have it backwards. :smallwink:
Two people can have the same ethical goal (become a Pokémon Trainer).
- One does it by treating his 'mons like his family, and through general adventure, his Pokémon get stronger (relatively) naturally.
- Another does it by brutalising his 'mons and forcing them into the most dangerous situations possible in order to force them to get stronger and/or evolve.
Both people are trying to achieve the same ethical goal that their Universe has set up (e.g; Being a Pokémon Trainer is awesome, be the best at it). Morally, each is doing their own thing. Ash is the hero because he is almost always presented as morally superior. While people he meets have the exact same ethical goal he has, they just do it differently, and because they don't do it the way the Hero does it, they are wrong.
I don't think either of these qualify.
Jack Torrance in The Shining is a tragic character, but nothing he does in the film or the book can be qualified as "good". He isn't a secret hero, he's an out of control alcoholic driven mad by evil spirits. The most good thing he does is to stop his murderous rampage briefly.
Alex in a Clockwork Orange is also not any kind of hero. He's an absolute monster, and the implication at the end of the movie is that once the brainwashing is removed he'll go BACK to being an absolute monster. The story is showing that even for monstrous criminals you can go over the top with the punishment, and paying evil unto evil isn't morally justified.
This one is pretty close I'd say. Frankenstein's monster does most of what he does because he was called a monster and likely would have been a good man if treated well. However, I'm still not sure he fills the "actually the hero" requirement in the OP. He's not tormenting Frankenstein out of a desire to do good or save others. He's doing it purely for revenge, and goes as far as killing innocents in pursuit of that revenge.Quote:
There's also Frankenstein. The original novel, not necessarily any of the adaptations as Victor Frankenstein disowns his own creation based solely on its appearance.
Again ... Maleficent? Though she is more of an anti-hero, because cursing innocent little girls is never okay.
I remember reading a short story where the fairy who made the thorn hedge grow around the castle of sleeping beauty was the good one, and the princes who wanted to get access to the sleeping princess were all wannabe rapists. (It is probably based on the original fairytale, where the prince actually raped sleeping beauty. But totally got away with it, and his wife, who somewhat understandably wanted to get rid of the "rival", is framed as the villain. You will find that a lot of fairy tales, especially in their original versions, have morally questionable heroes, though the villains are usually not blameless, either)
The story I want to write (as soon as I can think of a plot) is one where the hero is framed, by the narrative, as villain, but the reader can easily see through this framing and realize that the alleged hero is the actual villain. (Think of a story where it is Snape versus Umbridge, only that the narrator likes Umbridge). Is that what you meant?
Because someone who really is a bad guy can obviously not really be the good guy at the same time.
A protagonist can be the bad guy and an antagonist can be the good guy, though. That is easily possible. At the moment I can't think of a villain protagonist story where there was a good antagonist, though.
Try Pratchett's "Witches Abroad", perhaps? Though the reader is under no illusions as to who is the good one, it is Esme Weatherwax (nasty, but heroic witch) against her sister who fancies herself a good fairy (but is actually a horrible villain).
The King of Qin, as seen in the manga Kingdom, then retaining that point of view to his depiction in the film Hero with Jet Li.
After 2.5 centuries of the incessant warfare of the Warring States period throughout the whole of China with all the suffering and hardship inflicted upon its people, the King decides "enough", and sets about unifying the whole of China.
After nearly 26 years of conquest, the King has finally unified the land, bringing peace to its people, except that assassins are attempting to kill him in retaliation for his conquest of their homelands.
Ah, this reminded me of another one. Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker, which is more or less a mashup of Lord of the Rings with the Silmarillion if Eru Iluvatar didn't really exist but was simply an idea that the Valar made up to justify their position as gods to be worshipped, and the Melkor of the piece was outcast for questioning it.
The premise to this series was good, sadly I found the whole thing...dull. The best part was the Sorceress, who just wanted to live forever surrounded by beauty but knew it couldn't last. I think that's the most clear area where someone objectively not evil is portrayed as evil because she simply refuses to bend the knee to the status quo and the powers that be. She also suffers the most for it. Trotted out by her accusers and forced to watch a world she longed for destroyed. The other people aligned with the Dark One at least get to simply die...or not. The whole exercise is a little tarnished because the Dark One does...start going south by the end.
The Dark One is also not outcast for questioning their place as Gods. He's outcast because his older brother asked him to take death away from Humanity because his older Brother loved his older Sister (and it's implied that the older brother was jealous because the older sister loved the Dark One as well) and he refused to do so. So the Elder Brother rose the rest of the Gods to strike him down for disobeying what they saw as a lawful order. Eru Iluvatar also did exist in their world, he just became the world they lived on. The Marrowfire is a testament that that part of the myth is accurate.
Perhaps not the good guy, but definitely a good guy:
Spoiler: Major spoilers for Princess Tutu
Fakir.
Look at everything he did to keep Mytho safe, then taking care of Ahiru at the end.
SpoilerChuck deciding he has the authority to play God with Jimmy's life in this fashion (and let's not forget with the people in it) is exactly the problem here.
SpoilerI think considering everything Jimmy did for him, Chuck's behavior is a severe betrayal. This is what I mean by "the ends justify the means": I don't understand the argument that says "Since Jimmy would be a unethical lawyer, anything Chuck does to destroy his law career is right and good." I mean, I guess I understand it, but it is at great odds with my own moral conviction.*
And again, I can't emphasize enough how much I don't actually believe he did it for the sanctity of the law. "Ever since he was eight years old!" Plus I just remembered the scene where their mother dies, and Chuck lies to Jimmy about her last words and even jabs at him for not being there.
He has always hated his brother and the law is an excuse. He's Cain and Jimmy is Abel, and Abel doesn't have to be a good guy to make it wrong for Cain to destroy him out of envy.
* - aside, this is really the best thing about Better Call Saul in my opinion (possibly a tie with Kim Wexler)-- that the Jimmy / Chuck relationship reaches deep and prods the viewer to ask questions about what our most fundamental convictions are, whether the law is more important than family or acting honestly, etc.
Aside, it's not exactly an example of what the thread is talking about, but since it's a good example of crossing up sympathies as far as good guys / bad guys, I'll use any excuse I can to plug The Shield, the best TV drama of all time, the finest Sophoclean tragedy ever put on the small screen.