: Re: Dangers of being sympathetic to the killer I wrote a piece of flash fiction as a mental exercise. I happened to listen to Glen Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” and happened to watch an

@Odierno164

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What are the dangers of painting a sympathetic view of the killer through the family of the killer’s perspective and in seeing the obvious interior dysfunction of the killer by seeing inside his mind?

The danger is in becoming an apologist for the villain, and losing the reader's immersion. I'm not saying it can't be done, but for the most part readers do not want to be on the side of the villain, and it would be very easy to screw up this sympathetic view.

Through his family: You might generate sympathy for the villain's family without generating sympathy for the villain. The villain's parents do not believe their kid is guilty. But if they are apologists for a mass shooting or the rape and murder of a child, if they are making excuses for why that was justified, you won't find any reader sympathy there, either.

Through their dysfunctional mind: A small chance of understanding if the villain is clearly convinced others are trying to kill them or their loved ones so their act is in self-defense. But this conviction could not be based in racial or bigoted violence. Even a villain that truly believes homosexual women threaten all of humanity and thus must be raped and murdered will not gain sympathy with readers. Same for racial bias or other bigotries. Sure, they might truly believe all redheads are squid aliens that have to be stalked and stabbed to death, but their true belief will not generate sympathy in readers, only horror.

You might be able to get away with that by invoking "magic", for example the body is not the real person, they are literally possessed by a demon or being forced by the devil or something.

Obviously all of this is my opinion. I don't think sympathy can be achieved once the horrors of innocent death reach a certain level; at that point the scales are permanently tipped and locked to the dark side. The author them trying to tilt them back the other way will then break reader immersion, make them recall they are reading fiction and an author wrote it, and then perhaps make them consider the author too weird to continue.

Once your villain has killed a room full of innocent dancing teenagers (sexualized or not), IMO, by "real world rules", they are irredeemable. Nothing they can do will make up for those lost and ruined lives.

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