Is there good in him? Luke Skywalker thought so. He was wrong. Today we’re talking about toxic empathy. You may have heard it called suicidal empathy, ruinous empathy, or murderous empathy, but it’s all the same thing: holding the perspective of others to a degree that it impacts your own safety, and feeling for a person so much that you stop asking about the rightness of what they actually do. We get into where this shows up in entertainment, starting with Darth Vader, who never repents and only saves Luke once it’s selfishly beneficial to him, and then gets three prequels so you can feel bad for him. From there it’s Magneto, Mr. Freeze, Loki, Scarlet Witch, Jean Grey, the Joker, Wicked, Cruella, Maleficent, Songbirds and Snakes, Fantastic Beasts, Euphoria, Breaking Bad, that one Law & Order: SVU two-parter, and why Hollywood keeps going back and giving villains origin stories so we can say “it’s not her fault she wanted to murder 101 dogs to make a coat.” We also talk about the difference between a sympathetic villain and an actual redemption arc, why Prince Zuko did it right, and why Tom Hiddleston being good-looking is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Then we get into why this matters outside of entertainment. We used to be a society that based things on actions, and now we base things on motives. A great therapist once said you cannot judge other people by their intentions, only by their actions, because you can’t read their mind. And when humans try to take God’s place as the one who hands out mercy, we crucify Christ and release Barabbas. Yes, the Lindsay Clancy case comes up, because it’s a very public example of exactly this. And yes, Rebekah brings the research: the 2006 Nature study on what happens in men’s and women’s brains when a cheater gets punished, the gendered answers to the trolley problem, who actually wants prison reform and why, and the uncomfortable question of what all of that means for women on juries. We end with how this shaped our own books, and why Lion is going back to stories about good triumphing over evil, the importance of family, and self-sacrifice. In this episode: 🧠 Defining toxic empathy (and why it never seems logical once you spot it) 🎬 “Heartwashing” and the Darth Vader problem 🦹 Magneto, Mr. Freeze, and the rise of the sympathetic villain 🧪 Beloved, Euphoria, Breaking Bad, and the villainous protagonist 📚 Voldemort and Snow were real villains, then the prequels showed up ⚖️ Sympathetic villain vs. real redemption arc: Loki and Prince Zuko 🟢 Lanterns and when writing becomes a mouthpiece for the writer’s politics ✝️ Only God gets to hand out mercy, and it still requires repentance 👩⚖️ The Lindsay Clancy mistrial and why so many women “stand with Lindsay” 🔬 The study that shows men’s reward centers light up when a cheater gets punished 🚃 The trolley problem, Iron Man, and the kind of female hero Rebekah wants to see 🦁 How we wrote our own villains, and why Lion is going noble bright Follow Lion Publishing: Website: https://lionpublish.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lion-Publishing Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lionbookpublishing/ X: https://x.com/lion_publish TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lionbookpublishing Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lionbookpublishing/ Follow the hosts/authors: Rebekah: https://rebekahedwards.com/links/ Seth: https://linktr.ee/sethcordleauthor Support the launch: BackerKit: COMING SOON Like, subscribe, and share as we push back against Narrative Decay — one good story at a time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
