They say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and I think it's really true. It can start off rather simply, for example there is the age old question which I will paraphrase:
"Imagine a train coming down a railroad, and the track splits in two, down one track are 10 people strapped, the other track only has 1, you control the switch which determines the track, what track do you send the train down"
Now, most people and characters would send the train down the track with 1, however what you are really doing is making the conscious decision to murder 1 person, to save 10.
Now say your character has a gun, and can shoot the driver of the train and stop it before it even gets to the junction, now you are literally murdering someone to save lives.
When you scale it up to city and continent sized groups of people, you get things like the Garleans, who unleashed countless horrors on eorzea, because to them the train was coming, with Eorzea on one track, and the world on the other.
What I'm saying is that most characters and villians will never be truly "bad", but it can be really seductive to engage in that sort of moral relativism, and eventually you get to the point where it's ok to quench your new blade in the blood of an innocent, because that demon over there is doing worse stuff, and you need it that sword to kill it. Keep doing that, and eventually you'll be the demon, and the cycle will continue.
"Imagine a train coming down a railroad, and the track splits in two, down one track are 10 people strapped, the other track only has 1, you control the switch which determines the track, what track do you send the train down"
Now, most people and characters would send the train down the track with 1, however what you are really doing is making the conscious decision to murder 1 person, to save 10.
Now say your character has a gun, and can shoot the driver of the train and stop it before it even gets to the junction, now you are literally murdering someone to save lives.
When you scale it up to city and continent sized groups of people, you get things like the Garleans, who unleashed countless horrors on eorzea, because to them the train was coming, with Eorzea on one track, and the world on the other.
What I'm saying is that most characters and villians will never be truly "bad", but it can be really seductive to engage in that sort of moral relativism, and eventually you get to the point where it's ok to quench your new blade in the blood of an innocent, because that demon over there is doing worse stuff, and you need it that sword to kill it. Keep doing that, and eventually you'll be the demon, and the cycle will continue.
