Thread:LucidPigeons/@comment-2175012-20160509175734/@comment-26205772-20160528032438

Well, if you want an excuse that only serves to reinforce how stupidly petty or hedonistic Schwarze is, that'll do so just fine. If you can work Schwarze's sense of humor in with her sadism (assuming she is a sadist, and from the description of her I imagine she is), that'll work wonders.

I've given both Faye and Lucia some semblance of an excuse. Lucia's ultimate excuse ends up being that she was betrayed by her own sisters (the Daydreamers) after she abused her powers. She really took this to heart (despite the fact everything that happened leading up to that was her fault) and after the extinction of the Seers (which Lucia considered beautiful) Lucia developed a nihilistic hatred of the world around her. Shortly before her ultimate defeat (she survives the events of The City of Never and makes her way into Memoirs of Never, where she's ultimately dragged into a decaying dimension and left to unconsciously drift in the void between worlds) Lucia ruminates on this. The person she relates this to flat-out states it justifies nothing she's done, and Lucia bitterly accepts she's been consumed by her own hatred long ago. For Faye, he's sort of a product of his own environment; he was raised in a brutal part of Brazil which was bad enough to make him sell out his own parents and risk his life boarding a ship to America, whereupon he found Malcolm Graves. Graves taught Faye his anarchistic philosophies from a young age and they kind of just snowballed Faye into the person he ultimately becomes.

Ultimately, I don't really think an excuse like Faye or Lucia have, or for that matter, Schwarze, really justifies in any extent what they end up doing, especially if it's not played for sympathy (although on that subject, I will confess Faye's death walks a dangerous line between satisfying karma and Alas, Poor Villain; his last moments are utterly miserable)