Destructive Characters with a Righteous Cause
Warning, Contains Spoilers for Avengers, Doom Eternal, and The Dream Smp. Turn back if you wish to avoid spoilers.
Characters in fiction can be many things. They can be strictly “evil” or strictly “good.” But, some characters go a little deeper than that. Characters can do good things through evil or have good intentions despite doing less than ethically sound actions. Thanos is a great example. The characters here could be the Hero, if not for one critical flaw. Their cause is righteous, but their execution rarely justifies the end goal.
Thanos is an excellent example of this. He witnesses his world fall to hunger and overpopulation and thought up a way to stop it from happening again. He proposes a system in which half of the population is randomly selected and killed for the good of the whole. He is called insane, and rightfully so. But, his system might just work. He wants to stop pain and ruin but will indirectly cause it by continuing with his plan. He got one idea, and refused to think of other, less destructive methods, like using the infinity stones to make every creature in the universe 100 times more efficient so that they need to eat only 1% of what was formerly necessary. He has tunnel vision for this one goal. Thanos is a character that means well and has righteous intentions, but the means of carrying out his goals aren’t good. He did something wrong while meaning well.
Davoth from Doom Eternal The Ancient Gods Part 2 is an interesting character as well. He was the creator of the universe. After creating his first people, he wanted them to have life eternal. In doing this, he also creates Vega, his apprentice. To assist Vega, he also constructs The Maykrs to help him achieve this. The Maykrs are a race of essentially robotic angels. Vega and the Maykrs realize that eternal life results in one losing their free will. We are never given an answer why, but my guess would be an incompatibility with living forever and the sentient mind. I would go nuts if I lived forever. The Maykrs then overthrow Davoth, sealing him in his first dimension, which becomes hell.
Vega takes responsibility as the Father and Davoth scheme to get revenge on his creations for turning their backs on him. He wants to grant his people the gift of living forever, but to do so; he must turn the rest of his realm into a hellish landscape and rob them of their minds. Again, his intentions are true, but again, his means of execution are terrible.
And finally, I’m going to talk about the Dream SMP. The Dream SMP is a Minecraft server that tells stories through a script and improvised comedy displayed by various creators(YouTubers and Twitch Streamers). Each creator plays a character in the story. The character that is my personal favorite is Technoblade. Technoblade’s character is an interesting one. He stands for freedom of people as well as Anarchy. Technoblade believes that governments are fundamentally corrupt and can only cause problems. He clarifies this from the beginning to his fellow revolutionaries, who attempt to overthrow Manburg, who, rather than listening to his point of view, see him as only a weapon to be used. When Manburg is overthrown, the revolutionaries replace the old government with a new one rather than dissolving it. This enrages Technoblade, who unleashes two powerful beings known as Withers to destroy the newly formed Manburg. He wanted to take down a tyrant, and when he saw his hard work of taking down a government being erased by those he called friends, he was rightfully pretty pissed. Technoblade thinks the threat he gave was enough to discourage anyone from following him, and he retires to the Arctic. Manburg comes to hunt him down. Technoblade gives a chance for them to leave him be, and they don’t take it. Instead, they attempt to execute him and invoke his wrath. With the help of Dream and Philza, he carpet bombs New Manburg, this time unleashing over thirty withers and leveling the place to a 30-meter pit in all directions. Total annihilation. It is true that Technoblade was provoked and then gave Manburg a chance to back off. He is ruthless in his quest to force his views on others when provoked. While his means are ridiculously over the top, he follows a strict code that says he will only use his means when someone violates his code.
The characters seen today are seen as the Antagonists or adversaries of their respective stories, but all have concrete reasons based on who they are to justify what they do. In other scenarios or without a single piece of their character, they could be seen as heroes.
