The most interesting characters are not universally loved. In actuality there is something like a half split, given or taken, of people who will love them and people who will hate them. Yes, A LOT of people will tend to think on extremes and/or absolutes about them. They may recognize gray areas and complexities, but these characters will move passions like nothing else.
Mostly about the (western?) "hero" or the protagonist, who is mostly assumed to have to be a clearly, actively and throughout good person.
Liking the villain who is more complex or more charming than the protagonist is easier and more common because everybody sees them as "truthful" to themselves for...being an actual villain. So the "evil" and "bad" are just givens, none will discuss that.
Ps.: Yes, when the gray character is mostly considered attractive, it may tip the balance and make them more "likeable" for the general audience. Sex/gender may be a factor alongside other characteristics, but the general point still stands.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lisa Garland & Alessa Gillespie
Characters: Lisa Garland, Alessa Gillespie
Additional Tags: Pre-Silent Hill 1, Introspection, Guilt, Morally Ambiguous Character, Character Study
Series: Part 14 of Building A Silent Hill Universe of My Own
Summary:
She cared about the child's suffering, but she didn't care enough...Not to do more than she actually did.
"I'm sorry, I-" Lisa took a deep, shaky, stuttering breath, her shoulders slumping forward, inward, head lowered, the ends of her long, blonde hair annoyingly brushing the skin over her cheekbones. "I-I'm," she said, in a now quiet, choked-up voice, "sorry, child, I can't...I couldn't be stronger for you."
Notes:
A thing I noticed that people don't talk much about is SH1 characters' ambiguity. At a first, superficial glance, everybody seems to be good or evil, but there are shades of gray there that we tend to ignore.
Work Text:
"I'm sorry, I-" Lisa took a deep, shaky, stuttering breath, her shoulders slumping forward, inward, head lowered, the ends of her long, blonde hair annoyingly brushing the skin over her cheekbones. "I-I'm," she said, in a now quiet, choked-up voice, "sorry, child, I can't...I couldn't be stronger for you."
Her red-rimmed eyes barely touched the child's scarred face, terribly distorted by skin cooled back wrong, unnaturally before Lisa looked away sharply, sucking in a breath with the proof of her incomprehensible omission lying there, immovable, so damn fragile and vulnerable and small in that thin cot.
It was comprehensible to...Lisa wanted to live; she wanted the pain to end - her own pain.
She did care about Alessa, but not more than Lisa felt like she was hurting herself.
Her body rocked slowly forward and back, back and forth, softly like a broken clock, ticking away one inch just to return to the space before.
Her face distorted as she felt like crying, her lips pressing hard to be quiet, to not wake up her, the poor child.
Every time the child woke up, she would wake up in some amount of pain, even despite all the painkilling medication Lisa gave her when no one was looking.
It was opioids, Lisa's own stash sometimes.
She was addicted to White Claudia, but the methadone kept her cravings at bay for a few hours when it got too bad.
Lisa didn't know about much.
It was absolutely ineffable, absolutely impossible what was happening.
But what she did know was that they wanted to keep her in pain, that they thought it was their God's calling to make them innocent suffer for their own place in heaven.
Lisa thought it was ridiculous and inhuman, but she kept the thoughts to herself.
She was never upfront nor defended Alessa the way she deserved, the way she needed. As strongly as Lisa should!
She was too far into this, this...insanity.
Lisa wanted out. She didn't want to see this child ever again, to hear her weak moans of pain...
To see Alessa thrashing about in her sleep when...
When she seemed to dream, too vividly for comfort.
To have nightmares, that is.
Lisa once tried to wake her up once or twice; it never worked, and in a way, Lisa had hoped it didn't.
She was stuck between Alessa's pain and her own.
She couldn't... choose the child over her own sanity. Not that she was...sane at this point.
She wanted out; she wanted to hit--
No...
No, please, no!
I'm sorry, child. Lisa pressed her hands to her face and started to cry in silence, rocking again, slightly harder.
