: Re: How to make the villain relatable/human without making the hero seem like a monster for killing him? I have a story I'm writing which has a villain that, in order to make him more human/developed,

@Gonzalez219

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Self-Defense, or Suicide.

One way to do this is to make the hero killing the villain a matter of self-defense. Trap the villain, the hero would do the moral thing and take him alive, put him in a prison, try to get him treatment for his crazy: But the villain is so obsessed or dead set on doing what he does, that even when he is trapped, he tries to kill the hero to escape, and the hero has no choice but to shoot back, push back, whatever, and this kills the villain.

A similar alternative is inadvertent suicide: The hero, trying to be moral, traps the villain, and intends to imprison him. The only way out of the trap is a 90% chance of suicide. The villain, obsessed with his mission will risk anything, and does -- and dies. He can't jump the gap, he misses the rope, he throws a parachute from the plane and dives after it: He catches it --- then loses it in the wind, and falls to his death.

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