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perturbation comments on Open Thread, December 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong
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I often find myself rooting for the villain in pop-culture stuff, especially if he's the sort of villain that has been putting together a massive plan that obviously took time, dedication, and quite a lot of hard work and ambition. The hero is often, by contrast, a slacking power-of-friendship layabout who has power/talent due to an intrinsic property: "the Chosen One".
Villains are sympathetic to me even when they really shouldn't be; in Avatar: The Last Airbender (spoilers follow) Sver Ybeq Bmnv'f tbny jnf yvgrenyyl gb ohea gur jbeyq, erohvyq sebz gur nfurf, naq ehyr jungrire jnf yrsg, ohg gur furre qrqvpngvba naq uvf cresrpgvba ng sveroraqvat guebhtu lrnef bs pbafgnag cenpgvpr znqr zr ernyyl srry onq ng frrvat uvz fb cbjreyrff ng gur raq. Ol pbagenfg, Nnat (juvyr hadhrfgvbanoyl zbenyyl 'orggre'), bayl fhpprrqrq qhr gb yhpx naq gur Qrhf Rk Znpuvan bs gur Ningne Fgngr xvpxvat va. Vs Bmnv unq orra fznegre, zber cngvrag, be whfg n yvggyr yhpxvre, gur svtug jbhyq unir tbar uvf jnl.
What is wrong with me? Does anyone else root for the villain or feel that they're generally more sympathetic of a character archetype? Maybe I'm just too heavily influenced by the book "Soon I Will Be Invincible" or the webseries Dr. Horrible such that I'm more familiar with the subversion of the superhero trope than just playing it straight.
I don't generally root for villains, but I do see a cultural problem of typically seeing virtue as passive. In a lot of fiction, virtuous people aren't doing much except for ordinary life and reacting to villains.
This goes back very far. In a world where there's little hope for improving the status quo, evil is the main thing which moves things. That's why for example the Ten Commandments have a lot more thou-shalt-nots than thou-shalls. This is probably connected to a general societal attitude of change being bad. Another example is how in Shakespeare a lot of the villains are more interesting than the heros. Iago and Othello would be the prototypical example. And in the two cases where Shakespeare made somewhat competent villains as protagonists (Richard III and arguably Lady Macbeth), there are scenes which almost feel inserted to remind the audience that these are bad people who will suffer for their actions.