Villainous Love Interests – Possible?

[lemuel]

I wonder whether the following 2 romance options are a bit too dark to be sympathized with. Please provide feedback. Not that both characters are modelled after figures of fame. I just wonder whether I am using the right models, or whether I should entirely reimagine them to be more sympathetic.

Snow White Bitterness: Contrary to her name, she is not unduly bitter; rather, she is named after Miriam, Moses’s sister, whose skin was turned white as a punishment by God (Numbers 12:1-10) since she also has white skin. She is an alchemist who, in order to frighten off those who would exploit her (a heretic’s life is often short without a congregation) has taken up the job of assassinating people for legal and illegal clients. Her victims’ finger bones she flenses and strings on a necklace. She prefers to kill using a knife, sneaking up and stabbing victims (who tend to be people who lack security). She feels little remorse, reasoning that she would be assassinated were she not assassinating. Her only scruple is that she will not kill alchemists such as herself. She hopes to raise enough money to become the leader of her own lineage, as her master was before his sons kicked her out upon his death.

My question is: can an amoral assassin be a good character for romances? Please keep in mind the story of Angulimala, a disciple of the Buddha Shakyamuni who was a serial killer who collected human fingers before he converted to Buddhism and became enlightened, bursting the fetters so that he would not be reborn. I hope to make Snow White Bitterness an Angulimala figure, redeemed through the boundless mercy of Buddhism. But would this be too unsympathetic?

My second unsympathetic character is The Merciful’s Slave. While Snow White Bitterness is patterned by me off Angulimala, The Merciful’s Slave patterns herself quite consciously after Jesus Christ as he is presented in the Gospel of Mark and the Book of Revelations. She is, by nature, sadistic, masochistic, and given to lying, yet she has determined that she should turn her traits to the better by becoming a torturer and detective for the Ministry of Truth. Disgusted by the sin that she witnesses around her and convinced that all people deserve what happens to them because God is just, she has taken upon herself the role of being God’s new agent on Earth, punishing the wicked with torture and death and rewarding the virtuous with whatever money she can spare for charitable causes. She takes sexual pleasure of sort in torturing her victims, justifying the euphoria as divine reward for carrying out God’s work. However, she is consistent; believing that Jesus was crucified to atone for his own sins as well as the sins of others, she tortures herself quite thoroughly in order to ensure that whatever sins she has committed, she suffers for accordingly. She is, in short, meant to be a thoroughly screwed up individual who leads Farmind into similarly screwed up beliefs and practices. But is she too twisted for your tastes? Please let me know.

[inhalance]

The characters and their aspects are very well described and thought out. However, in terms of love interests, if I were to play a game with characters like these I would most likely be scared away and not want to play it at all.. Even though romance is romance in every game, I feel like a kind of twisted romance may be a bit disturbing and creepy. I'm not exactly a fan of gore or violence either ;__; I feel like if the characters continue to develop as being psychologically corrupt then it might turn off some people and make them stop halfway through the game before it gets any more intense... but that's just my opinion.

[lemuel]

There will be no explicit gore or violence or sexual content in my story.

With regard to the creepiness of these characters, that is intentional. All too often we have abusive and violent and twisted male romantic heroes whom people adore (Draco Malfoy, Edward Cullen, the Sheik, Heathcliff, etc.). If my aggregates work well, I hope to create similar female characters about whom men will think "This is one evil woman, yet I love her" or even "This woman is not really negative at all! How romantic for her to do these morally questionable acts.".

[LateWhiteRabbit]

With regard to the creepiness of these characters, that is intentional. All too often we have abusive and violent and twisted male romantic heroes whom people adore (Draco Malfoy, Edward Cullen, the Sheik, Heathcliff, etc.). If my aggregates work well, I hope to create similar female characters about whom men will think "This is one evil woman, yet I love her" or even "This woman is not really negative at all! How romantic for her to do these morally questionable acts.".

Well, I think the key is that the love interests, no matter how villainous, must still be sympathetic in some aspect. They must still have some redeeming qualities, or a glimmer of goodness for a reader to latch on to and hope gets dragged into the light. If you are in love with a character because they are sadistic and evil, that means your reader or main character is similarly screwed up. If they are in love with a character because they see goodness in them and hope to redeem them, that is something else.

[cuttlefish]

I think Snow White Bitterness isn't too dark (and can be sympathized with), but The Merciful's Slave's character might need to be reworked? The Merciful's Slave just comes off as insane, to me. Even though she punishes the wicked and rewards the virtuous, it sounds like what she does is more for her pleasure than for the sake of doing God's work in the end. Unless she doesn't understand that she's a sadist or masochist at all and just believes the pleasure she feels from torturing herself or others is a reward from God... I still think she's too insane.

Gasai Yuno is a female character that plays on this border of being twisted but lovable. I think Yuno's case is a closer match to your characters. I don't remember Draco Malfoy, Edward Cullen, and Heathcliff being as extreme.

[lemuel]

One of the points that my narrative makes is that religious fanaticism and insanity are very similar in their fruits.

The Merciful's Slave is both insane and a religious Fanatic, but she is, it is suggested, no different from the fully insane and the fully fanatical in terms of her fruits.

For one for whom all good and all evil are products of God (CF. the Book of Amos, her favourite book), it is inconceivable that the pleasure that she feels is not a reward from God for her goodness, just as pain is a punishment from God for Evil.

A strange mindset, truly, yet much more interesting than generic tsunderes or fawning girlfriends or childhood friends whom I so often encounter in this medium.

[cuttlefish]

For one for whom all good and all evil are products of God (CF. the Book of Amos, her favourite book), it is inconceivable that the pleasure that she feels is not a reward from God for her goodness, just as pain is a punishment from God for Evil.

So she only sees things as either a reward or punishment from God? In that case, I think I could sympathize with her.

If she was aware of her S&M nature and working for God was a pretense to satisfy herself, then I couldn't sympathize.

A strange mindset, truly, yet much more interesting than generic tsunderes or fawning girlfriends or childhood friends whom I so often encounter in this medium.

It's nice to have non-generic love interests to pursue. But I think I would only pursue The Merciful's Slave for the sake of game/story completion. She is still "too twisted for [my] tastes."

[dramspringfeald]

Well see that's where you are coming off wrong OP, "Bad Guys" are hardly ever bad. Seriously like 10% of the truly bad are but the rest are heroes in their own story. It's all how you look at them.

Darth Vader: Hero, Soldier, all around good guy. Betrayed by his friends, his superiors and watched his mother die in his arms he vowed vengeance and would become stronger so that no others mother would have to die that way. He studied the dark arts and waged war against the Jedi so that others would not be sacrificed. He joined the Empire so that he could crush the rebellion that was causing strife and attacking civilians. By crushing them and ending the war he would bring peace the the galaxy.

After killing Padamai he went into a depression and just stopped caring about his ideals until he found out his son was alive, and finally looked and saw what he had become. He took the Sith Lord and chucked him down a hole causing his own life support to fail in the process.

Yes he did horrible things he had to. He did them so that others would not have to suffer from the pointless war. Tell me where in there do you see a bad guy?

Had Luke learned about the force before loosing his family there is a really good chance he too would have gone to the dark side as well. Had the Jedi sent a few more Knights with Vader maybe they could have stopped him, calmed him and even gotten his mother to the medics before it was too late. It all depends on perspective and chance.

Just write your bad guys as heroes who took the "dark path" instead and you'll have better bad guys and even better stories.

[lemuel]

By the sutras that bind me, I am aware that ultimately there is no good, no evil, and no souls. Conventionally, however, there are acts and attitudes that we call evil due to their negative effects, lack of sufficient justification, and prevailing social/legal norms.

I sincerely hope, having kept this in mind, that not one of my characters should be seen to be afflicted with motiveless malignancy. Certainly, some of my characters engage in seriously twisted behaviour, but it is the result of a twisted life. Everything is causually conditioned. With out spoiling too much, both of these romantic options have been baned with twisted lives.

[Greeny]

Tell me where in there do you see a bad guy?

He waltzed into the Jedi council and slaughtered little children. Your argument, I'm afraid to say, is pretty invalid.

I think the characters described come across as pretty "evil" as defined by society, but not cookie-cutter evil like in too many work of fiction (i.e. he's evil because he's evil, see him kick a puppy) as I find them to have relatively believable motivations and reasonings. In reality, nobody ever considers themselves to be evil. Everyone on the planet, according to themselves, is doing the "right thing" in some way or another.

Now, romance, on the other hand, makes things more complex. The first character is the most viable. A kill-or-be-killed kind of character. However, you may need a good explanation for the whole collecting fingerbones thing. Is it an alchemy thing, or is she really just messed up in the head?

The second character is also viable, but it requires a certain moral viewpoint of the protagonist in order for it to be a likely romance. Technically speaking, she is a tool of the law; she is by no means doing anything illegal. Therefore, a more stoic, lawful character would not see qualms with it. After all, if you have no problems with your government, it would be hypocritical to have a proplem with the torturers that work under command of it.

[lemuel]

Yeah, I am afraid that killing children is evil, even though evil is not absolute. Nagarjuna wrote in detail about hell-realms for punishing wrongdoers even though he was the first to admit that evil is not absolute.

Well, the "good" characters do see many things wrong with the government, as does The Merciful's Slave. She, however, rather than openly protesting against its corruption and sectarian strife, tries to work within it and fulfill her own definition of justice.

With regards to the collection of finger bones, that serves no alchemical purpose (collecting feces does) but allows her to intimidate others; people think that a woman wearing a necklace of fingerbones is dangerous, usually correctly.

[Bryy]

The thing to remember is this: whether or not people can sympathize with your bad guy is pretty important, but at the end of the day, the player has to feel comfortable moving beyond simply feeling sympathy for them into the realm of an emotional and romantic connection. They need to feel like it is a "safe choice", and that they are not just doing it because it is a video game. Of course, you will always get the person that wants to "role play" (i.e.: try their best to break the game), but are you making the game for them, or for people that actually want to play it?

[lemuel]

I create the game and its story for my own interests, primarily, but am interested in seeing how congruent they are with others' views.

[SundownKid]

I hope to create similar female characters about whom men will think "This is one evil woman, yet I love her" or even "This woman is not really negative at all! How romantic for her to do these morally questionable acts.".

I think you might have the wrong idea about why people like the evil characters, perhaps due to their looks or based on fan re-interpretation of their personality. While immoral acts can be attractive, a truly evil character would be off-putting. I would never befriend someone who was potentially unbalanced or evil unless I had a death wish.

I think you could pull off a romance with an evil character by making it a humorous story where the character's immoral acts are framed in a comedic, cartoonish context, but making a realistically evil character a love interest would be rather off-putting if the reader could not sympathize or change them for the better in some way. It's certainly possible, but it would have to have the potential to make them *not* evil and therefore conform with a normal reader's moral views.

[lemuel]

Redemption/transformation will certainly play its part in these arcs, yes.