Quote Originally Posted by Neophyte View Post
Yeah, but there is no one saying that either Sephiroth, the Empire nor Joker are just misunderstood beings who are in real not that bad.
Are you kidding? There's LIBRARIES worth of fan fiction detailing how Sephiroth is actually not that bad. And this was a guy who was Shinra's most lethal and ruthless enforcer even BEFORE he went looney tunes and decided to kill everybody in the world for Mother Dearest. XD

Joker has less fangirls, but I'd be shocked if there wasn't some kind of sob story out there assuring us of the sweet and tortured soul lying behind the madman's facade. :P

Nah, there's always gonna be someone out there trying to humanize the bad guys, and that makes sense - because these people are humans. Each of us has exacly one human that we can truly say that we understand, and that is ourselves. It can be difficult to believe that other human beings are so different that they can do such horrible things, and so we try to find explanations or reasons why villians are the way that they are.

The fact that Sephiroth, Joker, and the Empire are FICTIONAL human beings only further muddies the water. Since they're made-up individuals, they might as well be aliens for all we can assume about them. The monstrous things they do may mimic the monstrous things people have historically done in real life, but those monstrous things are kind of empty without real human beings behind them.

The Empire might seem straightforward and clear in their goals, but that's only because their goals are really all there are to their characterization.