Spent my evening ranting about Doctor Who and how I think family shows, if they're written well are the best thing out there- not stuff for children and not stuff for adults. Because it forces you to be creative if you're going to tell a story. It forces you to create layers for different types of audiences at the same time. And you can't just have some character stab somebody's eye out and go ohhh gore, blood, drama, pain!!! You can't just write about power and pain and thrills in explicit detail because it's fascinating.
Anyway I really loved those first few series because the question was again and again and again, what do we do after we've done terrible things? How do we go on? What joy is there in the world, what hope? How do we make up for it? Can we? How does it damage us? Is there even a way to heal? How can we survive being alone? How can we survive committing such sins? How could we ever be good?
And then the other half is, what's worth dying for? What's worth living for? What's worth killing for? What's the right way to live?
But the heart of the character is a power fantasy after all. That's the heart. To step into a narrative, make things better, and step back out. And it will always have that potential, and I can't ever really give it up because of that. There's nothing else out there that does that. No other character.