: Re: Is it bad writing or just the plot if the hero ends up being as evil as the villain in order to stop the villain's evil? The villain is evil; he does evil things to the world's people.

@Yeniel532

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IMHO, if your protagonist uses evil methods to save the world from the evil villain, and becomes popularly known as a great hero, evil things can result from that. Thus you should:

1) add a postcript telling that the hero's example has made every member of every side in every later conflict feel justified in using even the most evil methods to defeat their opponents. Thus ten thousand more people have been killed in conflicts per year for the past ten thousand years, or a hundred million people in total, more than would have been killed without that example.

2) Foreseeing such a possibility, the hero decides to keep secret the fact that he saved the world (and some of his methods were evil) secret, giving up all the glory for saving the world in shame at some of the evil things he did and fearing that others would use it as an excuse to do evil in the future.

3) Or perhaps the otherwise grateful people who the hero saves using evil methods arrest and try him for doing those evil things, out of fear they will become evil themselves if they don't, and fearing his evil example as in 1) above.

IMHO history is full enough of examples of people using evil methods to defeat evil villains, and other people later using those examples to justify their own evil deeds fighting against those they consider evil villains.

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