Do you believe it's possible to write any character sympathetically, Veeky Forums? A rapist? A child molester...

An intelligent reader acknowledges there is no evil human being alive that has not the same innate flaws shared in all humanity, and human beings are always layered by circumstances not fully explainable or knowable, there is always a thread of sympathy found in fellow man. However, while still being able to logically and conclusively draw the line between bad and good behavior, and under no circumstances condoning that which impedes progress.

Wasn't Dexter like this? Until everyone forgot he was murderer and hated the last episode?

le utilitarian autist face

How many books have you read? 1-2 tops?

>rape someone
>decide on not raping two other people
Wow, what a great guy

He was a bad guy who killed bad people, so he was the good guy in their eyes.

>sickly pretentious student kills some old fucks and cries about it until accepting Jesus
>"Woah, what a monster I am sympathizing with!"
Post the biggest piece of shit in lit you've ever felt sympathy for.

>Or if someone raped one person, but saved two people from rape he is a good character
If I ever read a book about a rapist that genuinely pat himself on the back for saving two people from rape, i would piss myself laughing at how dense that person is

This basically. If every person can justify their own actions to themselves, then if you present it from this viewpoint it would make them "sympathetic" to some degree. Go read Crime and Punishment.

This isn't lit related but the main antagonist of star trek deep space nine is a narcissistic rapist but his narcissist tricks worked too well and the audience came to love him

Not literature but still holds true:
If you only saw the final episode of Breaking Bad you might be inclined to thing negatively of Walter White, though a deeper knowledge of the series would easily subdue such contempt at least to an agreeable level.

>this is what utilitarians actually believe

Funny you should say that because I watched Breaking Bad in reverse order and I was pretty sympathetic to Walt at first but became less so as I saw how many chances he had to quit before things got to that point. Still better than Hank and Marie though, fuck them.

the only way you could make your character unsympathetic is if they were boring as fuck

no one would care for a literal who that is completely passive and doesn't have anything to say about whatever is happening to him

Let's take this a step further and ask if it's possible for a reader to be sympathetic towards any character?

...

>he rapes but he saves
You snuck it in pretty well but I'm still surprised no one's called you out on it.

came here to say this

sometimes rapists dont want other people to rape, whats wrong with that

youtube.com/watch?v=JTeKe_mkUFU

I'm not sure if you're pretending to be retarded but your premise is very similar to a recent Dave Chappelle joke