Motive Decay: Difference between revisions

** [[Evil Counterpart|Faith]] is another example. In the heat of fighting, she mistakes a passing human for a vampire, and stakes him. [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]] is a big deal to Buffy & co, because they really freak out about this. When it transpires that he was connected with [[Big Bad|the Mayor]], she argues that killing him wasn't that bad because he was a bad guy anyway. Only the audience, not the other characters, are shown how upset she actually is by the incident. Then, within a short time, she's ''working'' for the Mayor, and the reason for her switching from his enemy to [[The Dragon|his Dragon]] is never really explained beyond 'she's evil now'.

*** Faith's slide from the heroes who excluded and distrusted her to the villains who appreciated her was clearly marked and a matter of [[Character Development]]. But after being very clearly conflicted, she switches to acting like she was completely evil all along, and the 'good guys' treat her as if that were true.

* Mandatory ''[[Doctor Who]]'' example: When they first appeared, the Cybermen, who at the time appeared roughly half-human, not mostly machine, had plausible motive for their villainy: they had become fixated with survival at all costs. By their fourth appearance the rails had begun to come off this idea and from then on, [[Depending on the Writer|they've have various different motivations ascribed to them]].

** There's also the Silurians, who in their first appearance were three-dimensional characters who had an equal claim as humans to live on Earth. Most of them wanted a peaceful solution to the issue, and it was just a few bad apples who led to it ending in tragedy. Their next appearance portrayed the entire race as genocidal maniacs. When a newly awakened subspecies of Silurians appeared in the new series some thirty years later, they shifted back to the original portrayal.