Quote Originally Posted by Fenral View Post
That's also why races of Pure Evil™ are considered Bad Writing™ these days. Psychopaths and monsters can exist on their own, and may have people attracted to them for various reasons, but an entire society of them would collapse on itself long before it could become a major threat.
Ehh, I kinda missed the mark. My point was more along the lines of how a villain doesn't have to be sympathetic to be a good villain - yae Galvus is stated to be difficult to empathize with, and while that remains to be seen him being unsympathetic won't mean he's a bad villain. A lot of villains are good even if they're unsympathetic - see Terumi - though most every villain has a motivation beyond "because evil." Yes, even Terumi, hard as that is to believe.

Quote Originally Posted by Alacran View Post
Was it not a Shinra program that produced Sephiroth, and in doing so lead to everything going wrong in the first place? I could be mistaken, it has been a very long time.
That's right!

Jenova is an alien entity discovered deep underground, in the Northern Crater if I'm remembering correctly, which was mistaken for an Ancient / Cetra because of its ability to mimic other living beings. Shinra dug it up and used it to perform experiments in the hopes of finding the "Promised Land," a prophesized paradise that would be presumably rich in mako.

Sephiroth is a product of the Jenova Project S, wherin an unborn human fetus was injected with Jenova cells. Genesis and Angeal are products of the Jenova Project G, wherein a living human woman was injected with Jenova cells which would then be theoretically passed down to her children. All three learned of their origins and were driven to various states of madness: Angeal allowed himself to transform into a monster and had Zack kill him, Genesis began to degrade and unsuccessfully tried to get Sephiroth's cells to cure that degredation, and Sephiroth himself... well, went nuts and Final Fantasy VII happened.

Shinra as an organization, post-VII, isn't so much heroic as it is cleaning up its own messes and Rufus knows that keeping the planet alive is a better business decision than killing it.

Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
Great points. Honestly it's rare for a character to be completely lacking in justifications for their actions. Kefka is horrible, yes, but he was literally driven mad as a result of a failed project. Charibert was - for the most part - a bad apple who enjoyed torturing people.
Motives, not justifications. Very few things villains do are truly justified - after all, they wouldn't be terribly villainous if their actions were just, would they?