Jade

“Everybody wants to be a hero
But most of us are just misunderstood villains”
― Mahogany L. Browne, Chlorine Sky

“It isn’t always a matter, we should note, of identifying with the protagonist. No one I know, regardless of how much they love his novel, wants to be Humbert Humbert or Victor Frankenstein, although perhaps for different reasons. Or Heathcliff. Ever want to be Heathcliff? I didn’t think so. They are not the stuff of our fantasy lives, yet we may revel in their world, even while reviling their personalities. Consider Humbert. The narrative strategy Nabokov employs is very daring, since it demands that we identify with someone who is breaking what nearly everyone will consider the most absolute taboo. …Sympathy is out of the question. What the novel requires, however, is that we continue reading, something it audaciously gives us reason to do. The word games and intellectual brilliance helps, certainly; he’s detestable but charming and brilliant. The other element is that we watch him with a sort of appalled fascination: can he really intend that; does he really do this; would he really attempt even that; has he lost all sense of proportion? The answers are, in order, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Pretty clearly, then, there are pleasures in the text that are not inherent in the personality of the main character.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form

“The final complexity associated with building of a negative character lies in the fact that the image of a subject is often an outcome of parochial, ethnocentric, and orientalist viewpoints. In other words, it can be argued that historical or mythological villains might also have been treated in paradoxical manners. Their negative characteristics would have received much more attention by dominant intellectuals than their positive traits.”
― Nishant Uppal, Duryodhanization: Are Villains Born, Made, or Made Up?

“He spread his arms wide, as if he could embrace the city below. "There are so many things to marvel at. How could anyone want to hurt it? How can people wake up every morning and not think -- The sun is still there! And I'm still here! This is incredible!”
― Marissa Meyer, Archenemies