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Evil is Boring
And good is messy and complicated.
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
There is a common bit of wisdom in writing characters for your story: make the villain the most interesting character. This is why you often have flamboyant villains with complex histories, bad guys who get deep, fascinating monologues, who have tragic origins, or who just chew the scenery at any opportunity.
By comparison, most heroes are boring. They do good deeds and fight for things like Truth, Justice, and the American Way, undeterred by things like “complexity” or “nuance.” The “worst” examples are referred to as “boy scouts,” meant more as a slur than anything else.
Having a code of ethics and a level of morality that tilts in the direction of good to any large degree is considered boring and uninteresting by many media commentators. Lots of people prefer antiheroes, characters who could be described as “gritty” who might save your life or steal your wallet depending on their mood. They operate in varying shades of gray, ranging from “basically good but willing to bend rules” to “cold-blooded murderer…for good!”
That said, fiction is very different from reality, and the notion of good and evil are much more varied and squishy in the real world. Fiction (at least, good fiction) generally has a cohesive plot arc and some sort of satisfying ending. There are exceptions, but the three-act structure and hero’s journey has served creators well for centuries.
On top of that, fiction is meant to be escapism. We turn to fiction to escape from the world to some degree, albeit in different ways depending on the format. Sometimes, we like simple, straightforward stories where good wins in the end to restore faith in humanity. Other times, we like to consume stories with darker premises and ambiguous endings as a means of catharsis — the world can feel bleak and hopeless, so we consume media that reflects that feeling so we can better process it.
