: Re: Characterisation: What lines can an antihero cross while retaining reader sympathy? Now, to clarify ahead of time; I'm quite aware that compelling doesn't necessary equal sympathetic and vice versa.

@Odierno164

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To me, the line you cannot cross is your hero intentionally harming an innocent for their personal pleasure (or irrational anger); that includes not just adults and children but dogs and pets.

Raping an innocent girl, smothering an infant for the fun of it, kicking a friendly dog in the face, all of these are worse than torturing an enemy combatant for information, or killing somebody that is otherwise innocent, but say working for or protecting an evil dictator. Those that protect and serve villains, no matter how innocent they look, are (with some gray areas) fair game.

For the MC, the point is evil intent (against innocents) and/or evil pleasure or other reward; those must be absent.

Let me present you with a good and moral surgeon out for dinner with his wife. A terrible car accident occurs; an overturned car is burning, a child is trapped in it, with a crushed arm. To save the child, the surgeon crawls into this burning car and amidst the flames he amputates the child's arm at the elbow using a steak knife, without anesthetic, with a fully conscious and screaming child trying to fight him. He succeeds in this endeavor, and escapes the flames with the child in his arms.

But he will not be perceived as evil for cutting off a child's arm with a steak knife while the child is screaming, he did NOT do it with evil intent, and gets no joy from doing it, he truly believed it just had to be done to save the child's life, and secure a less horrific future for the child's parents (versus watching their child burn to death).

Your anti-hero must be like the surgeon, truly believing the torture he commits is for the greater good and there is no viable alternative. He can be haunted by mistakes and feel enormous guilt for the pain he has caused innocents, but when he does, he will have to console himself with being fed wrong information that led him to innocents, and believe he did what he truly believed at the time just had to be done.

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