Sympathy for the devil

There are consequences to living in a time that’s soaked in story, and one of them is the sympathy for the devil effect.

What do I mean?

Well, it goes like this: in stories, redemption is key to catharsis and even when no redemption is possible, the story is more interesting if there are reasons the villain went to the bad (particularly if the reasons can either be traced back to the protagonist or his family.) It’s just good plotting, since “he was just born evil” is not very satisfyi...