TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Sliding Scale of Sympathy For This Character?

Go To

Swordofknowledge Spreading literacy with book and blade from I like it here... Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Spreading literacy with book and blade
#1: Sep 1st 2018 at 8:54:01 AM

Note that I'm not trying to garner sympathetic feelings for this character, but I am curious about what people think about him.

The premise is that The Heart of a team of heroes is the victim of a villain who can possess people's bodies and then transform them into replicas of her own body if the victim ingests her bodily fluids (blood in this case.) One of the heroes shoots her in the face after she finally crosses a line, resulting in the team member in question being splattered with her blood, some of it leaking into his mouth and eyes.

Rather than become possessed, his Heroic Willpower allows him to oust her invading soul. However, even though her consciousness didn't take him over, her personality did. This creates a psychopath with her intelligence, hunger for knowledge and sadistic personality while still in control of his driving passion to complete a mission and his understanding of how people "tick".

While "mere" possession could be dealt with, albeit with great difficulty and risk, this fusion is far more permanent and he cannot be turned back to the man he once was.

The crimes committed by his new persona include but are not limited to:

1. Tricking and then gunning down two of his childhood friends because he knew they would become aware that he was not himself before he had figured out a way to plan around any methods his former teammates would use against him.

2. Kidnapping and murdering a number of people to study their abilities and powers.

3. Triggering another character's Superpowered Evil Side against their will, resulting in the death of their wife.

4. Joining a Quirky Miniboss Squad that serves four Sealed Evil In A Cans.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Sep 1st 2018 at 11:56:52 AM

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
Millership from Kazakhstan Since: Jan, 2014
#2: Sep 1st 2018 at 9:28:46 AM

Personally, next to none. This is a Complete Monster material (depends on how vile the rest of the villain cast is).

Preventively killing your friends before they can figure out what kind of person you are (read: essentially murdering innocents) is already pretty rich, but the second one is is where he crosses into the Serial Killer territory. Third one is probably the worst: committing atrocities yourself is vile enough, but corruption of another person is definitely where the Moral Event Horizon is crossed.

He gets a couple of sympathy points for being The Heart before the infection, but That Man Is Dead, as far as I can tell. Could get a couple of more if the transformation was gradual and he was resisting it.

Edited by Millership on Sep 1st 2018 at 10:34:20 PM

Spiral out, keep going.
Kazeto Elementalist from somewhere in Europe. Since: Feb, 2011 Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
Elementalist
#3: Sep 2nd 2018 at 10:45:57 AM

I'll add to what Millership wrote and point out that replacing someone's personality is a far more insidious form of mind control than merely controlling them. I mean, you wrote that he “fought off the possession” (maybe not verbatim, but you did), but at the same time you change his behaviour so completely and so permanently, to one that is characteristic of the villain in question, that I can't help but ask: how is this not possession?

Yes, I can understand that sometimes things have consequences and such and maybe you're trying to pull a Wildbow there and go for grimness. But, but, but, you'll have to be strongly-vision-impaired, wilfully or otherwise, whatever the circumstances behind it, to not notice that you've basically killed one of your characters and replaced him with a zombie and are not asking how to stop the zombie from being seen as the zombie for all the zombie things that it is going to do. You need to recognise this fact, before you end up doing something ... inappropriate, to the story, in an effort to ... save a character who's already dead, I suppose.

You could still write the other characters trying to justify what they are seeing and wilfully being blind to the change the character in question has gone through, I suppose. I've seen that done, and sometimes even done well enough to have a place. But you won't be able to make your readers do the same, at least not the majority of them, if your story makes the fact that this is basically yet another form of possession and a worse one at that recognisable to the readers.

Wolf1066 Crazy Kiwi from New Zealand (Veteran) Relationship Status: Dancing with myself
Crazy Kiwi
#4: Sep 3rd 2018 at 3:52:08 AM

I feel sympathy that the character died a rather unpleasant form of death, I feel sympathy for the other characters who knew him and have to contend with what his mortal remains have become, but I really don't feel any sympathy for such a monster.

Given he now has the personality of the villain but that villain now has access to skills he once possessed that make it easier to manipulate people, I frankly see this as a worse villain than the previous one (and taking over people and turning them into something else is a pretty nasty villain in its own right).

Swordofknowledge Spreading literacy with book and blade from I like it here... Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Spreading literacy with book and blade
#5: Sep 7th 2018 at 9:22:23 AM

Thanks for all the responses. So I guess the sympathy idea gets a resounded no then [lol]. I guess I can answer some questions though:

@ Millership: Yes the takeover of the villain's personality was a slow one that took months to fully manifest and at first only in small ways (he coldly dismissed a friend grieving over children he couldn't save rather than comfort him, a reaction that surprised them both). He figured out what was happening to him and desperately tried to stop it, using meditation and all sorts of other mental techniques to avoid the inevitable. However he didn't tell anyone about what was happening until it was too late, and by that time it was only his two friends as part of the trap to kill them.

@ Kazeto: It differs from possession in two ways. When the original villainess took over the bodies of her hosts, she would destroy their soul and mind entirely and then transform their bodies into replicas of her own. In other words, the person they were would no longer be around in any shape or form. She didn't gain their memories, just transferred her existing mind. In this case, her consciousness is the one that is gone. The former hero still remembers who he is. He knows his own name, remembers his childhood, etc. However his personality has just transformed into one that is like hers, except that he still retains a few of his traits such as being The Determinator and empathy for the way others think.

For everyone: For what is worth, part of the problem (in universe) is that the character views his former self as an Idiot Hero and revels in the intelligence that the villain's personality has given him. He often compares himself to the mouse in Flowers for Algernon, stating that he was just a rodent running around in a maze before being given a way out. He doesn't view his former friends and allies as enemies as much as he thinks of them as problems to be "solved" with all the knowledge he has of their weaknesses and personalities. Added to this is a sadistic enjoyment of seeing other suffer and a desire to obtain more knowledge and you have a huge problem.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Sep 7th 2018 at 12:23:35 PM

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
Novis from To the Moon's song. Since: Mar, 2011 Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
#6: Sep 18th 2018 at 2:31:07 AM

He was turned this way against his will, so I'm not sure you can necessarily blame him, but at the same time you can easily say this being is completely different from the person he once was. He seems more like a walking natural disaster than a moral agent, sympathy or a lack therof are simply concepts that don't apply to this situation.

You say I am loved, when I don’t feel a thing. You say I am strong, when I think I am weak. You say I am held, when I am falling short.
Swordofknowledge Spreading literacy with book and blade from I like it here... Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Spreading literacy with book and blade
#7: Sep 21st 2018 at 7:02:52 AM

[up] That's certainly an interesting way to think about it. What I'm assuming you mean is that he's like a person who has been turned into a zombie, they are no longer a thinking individual responsible for their actions but have been subsumed into the greater disaster that is the plague?

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#8: Sep 21st 2018 at 8:30:34 AM

It certainly raises some interesting questions about how the mind works in your universe. Is the personality some sort of mental force, apart from the brain that it occupies, such that it can travel from one brain to another? If he still retains his old memories, but his personality now resembles that of another person, then experiences do not create personality in your universe. Where do they come from, and how do they develop? And unless the hero's brain has been physically changed in some way, why doesnt the old personality try to reassert itself?

Not saying that you necessarily have to answer these questions, just that they arise naturally from the narrative, and I'm probably not the only reader who will think of them.

Edited by DeMarquis on Sep 21st 2018 at 11:30:21 AM

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Swordofknowledge Spreading literacy with book and blade from I like it here... Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Spreading literacy with book and blade
#9: Sep 21st 2018 at 9:12:07 AM

[up] I'll try to answer these questions as best as I can for now. The personality is shaped by the experiences one has during their lifetime, but in this case there are special circumstances involved.

The villainess who turned our hero into this monster drank an elixir long ago that induces immortality by turning the drinker into The Virus. So anytime her blood or whatever got into an open wound or orifice, she could then transfer her consciousness into that person's body whenever she felt like it, completely obliterating their mind and replacing it with her own (memories, knowledge, experiences, etc). She would get nothing from them however. The body would then over time turn into a replica of her own.

In this case, while he fought off her soul so it couldn't replace his, some of her traits like enjoying the suffering of others, intelligence, and thirst for knowledge was left behind. So in some ways I'm wrong—-he doesn't have her personality exactly, it's more like he has a unique combination due to having his own traits mingled with hers. So it's more like a...residual possession, if that makes sense.

An example would be this: While the original villain's goal was to prolong her life as long as possible in order to continue learning and obtain all that there was to know about the world, the transformed hero just enjoys using his knowledge to kill people through using their mental and physical weaknesses against them, like "fitting a lock in a key". He's a mass-murderer who kills for the pure joy of it, but he cannot stand simple murder, it has to be someone he has studied and analyzed on how to do it most efficiently.

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
Add Post

Total posts: 9
Top