Thread:Mesektet/@comment-27729149-20151002041329/@comment-3581997-20160126183818

Everyone has a reason for turning out they way they do. They key in that example is the base we are working with, If the person involved is a sociopath and emotionally unaffected then no tragedy has occurred.

Data from Star Trek The Next Generation, is one of only two of his kind, his father/creator was killed shortly after finishing him and he can not be a human no matter what he tries. So how Data's goals are the same as the likes of Pinocchio, so if that happened to Pinocchio would it count as tragedy?; Of course it would. But Pinocchio could feel his personal pain, It's what creates the tragedy. Data can not. life means something to him but ultimately he can not place any level of import on it, he just knows it is important because he was programed to. Now that is the example of an automation but having a sociopath will work on the same principal, if the person who all that is happening to can't be personally hurt then no tragedy has occurred.

In Yu-Gi-Oh! the main villain, an evil spirit, is shown to be truly vile. However in a flash back we see him in his past life as a child watching his village being burnt to the ground and moved to tears, those people meant something to him. This means he isn't a sociopath, but is also means that he is acting out of personal hurt. He isn't an anti-villain and none of what he has done becomes justified in anyway, but we can see what has formed his motivations. And he is motivated by, among other things, pain and loss. That is tragedy. That is one of the basics of drama, if the character is not invested, the audience can't be.

It is a lesson bad film-makers tend to forget, it's why the Last Airbender movie, Twilight, Pixels and Man of Steel were all critical flops, the directors and writers were so busy telling their stories and setting up their worlds they forgot to show how any of it affected their characters. A sociopath is someone who is immune to such affects. To make any of that tragic, the character needs to have some level of value for what they are or what they have lost.