This is a bit of a rambly (is that a word, I'm making it a word) post. I'm typing it out here, so it might be a bit messy, just something I was thinking about for a while that I find interesting so apologies if it becomes hard to follow in parts
A while back I was watching Squid Games clips on TikTok, and a lot of comments were calling out characters that are portrayed as good from a single ooc action that is clearly done out of desperation. This made me think about right Vs understandable, how can looking at character motivations and the situations they find themselves in, that affect their moral standings. I will be using Miraculous as a source for my points as I am currently watching it and the new season brings up this topic a lot, so spoiler warning for Miraculous season 6.
The overarching storyline for this season (and probably several more if I know Miraculous) is Marinette lying to Paris and Adrien about Monarchs identity. This has been portrayed to the audience as wrong. We know lying is wrong, and believing his father was a hero has effected Adrien in a much worse way than Marinette has anticipated, where it could be fair to say that knowing the truth would be better for Adrien in the long run. However bad this situation is, we know Marinette is doing it because she believes it to be in the best interest of Adrien, we must remember that she's 14 and was manipulated by Gabe (who I don't fully believe cared if Adrien knew or not, but that's for another post). Marinette is doing the wrong thing, and the writers want us to know it, but we can understand Marinette's pov in this regard.
Of course doing something wrong means that you will be called out for it, which is where Alya comes in. In Revelator she found out that Marinette was hiding the fact that Gabe was Monarch, and got understandably angry. Many people on TikTok took this as just more evidence that Alya is a bad friend (which she isn't), but isn't being a bad friend mean letting your friend keep doing wrong even if it will hurt them? Alya was right in principle, she knows that this isn't something to lie about and although she does not want to lie to Adrien (who is her friend outside of their connections with Marinette and Nino) but she still promises Marinette she will because she knows that Marinette isn't doing it due to malicious purposes. You can feel bad for Marinette in this situation, and feel as if Alya overreacted, but we need to hear what she's saying before we make snap judgements.
This concept is a double edged sword though, if we can excuse a characters behaviour based on why they do it, then nobody is actually a villain. I see this problem a lot, a backstory just tragic enough can make a whole fan base suddenly see a pure evil character as someone to sympathise with. Let's take Chloe from Miraculous, certainly not the most evil character but definitely a devicive one. We meet Chloe, a bully who soley picks on Marinette and makes her life a living hell, but as the series goes on we learn that she was abandoned by her mother as a child, is the victim of emotional abuse from said mother, and to make up for this her father is an enabler. Chloe was never shown love and what it looks like, so she never learned about how to treat others as she was able to use her father to threaten and/or buy her way out of consequences, until the very last moment that left her in a worse position than where she started, where if Andre had given her a stern talking to a few years back this whole mess would have not happened, he's either a power hungry rich man with no regards to the citizens of Paris it's his duty to serve, or a spineless woe is me my wife and daughter bully me I'm so sad character. With all being said does this justify Chloe's actions? No of course it doesn't she hurt people without regards for their mental and physical wellbeing, but her life and reasons for how she turned out made Chloe a more fleshed out and interesting character, antagonists with motivations around their actions make not just them more fleshed out and make the story as a whole more richer. It's unfortunate that Chloe's failed redemption arc storyline was so early in the shows run, I feel that if they wrote it today we could be seeing a very interesting character study that isn't just Chloe bad.
Motivations make characters and worlds more fuller and exciting, but we need to look at why a character made the choices they did, did something happen in their past to lead to this decision, what were the other options, were there other options? Looking at characters on a surface level of the action and it's effect on others can tell us a lot about the characters affect on others, but not a lot on the characters themselves.
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