I'm in the middle of a fanatsy where my heroine is an assassin. She's proud of her success ratio...but the world she lives in has guilds for their assassins and while they are somewhat feared they are respected members of society. Just got done with a scene where she killed more than six and less than a dozen as a job went bad and grew into a big problem. She took joy in killing her enemies yet cried over a ten year old child who got swept up in the middle of the battle.
IS she a bad person because she enjoys her job even though its an accepted norm or is she a good person because she is able to care for the innocents.

That's not to say that no one should ever die in stories.

spcpthook says: "...she killed more than six and less than a dozen as a job went bad..." I can handle this, as long as the character understands that she just killed six sons or fathers or brothers (or daughters, wives, and sisters). If she acts like she just completed a series of easy assignments, I would not want to keep reading about her. Give her some depth by letting her respect death, and you've got a character I can stay interested in. "Is she a bad person because she enjoys her job even though it's an accepted norm or is she a good person because she is able to care for the innocents." I will admit that I'd be more interested in a slightly different approach, an assassin who enjoys being good at her job, rather than just enjoying the job. (However, I may not be the intended audience for this story, if I bring such expectations to the table.)

Hardwired, same author. Sara is an assassin. We believe that her victims deserve it, and she's desperate to outwit her employers.

I don't regard biological life as having any intrinsic value. Bacteria and fungal organisms are alive, after all. Osama Bin Laudin is (probably) alive. Maggots and mosquitoes are alive.

I would regard the man who would allow the Mona Lisa to be destroyed rather than kill a bull rampaging in it's vicinity as a moral idiot. I would regard the man who would kill a baby rather than scratching his car against a retaining wall as even more disgusting. It's not about whether something is alive or not.

If you show me a mess of brains and blood, my initial reaction will be mild disgust. If I find out that it came from a slaughtered pig or some such my reaction wouldn't be much affected (since I'd probably have assumed as much anyway). If I find out that it was the result of the brutal murder of an innocent bystander I'd be horrified. If I found out that it was the result of an innocent bystander's self-defense against a violent criminal I'd be delighted (still a bit nauseated, but delighted all the same).

If you convince me that the killer has good reason to believe that the world would be a better place without certain people breathing its air, then I'm okay with them having their breathing privileges suspended permanently. Even messily. And I'll expect a darn good reason for the killer to feel bad about it. Maybe the killer has bad memories of killing the wrong person once. That's practically cliche, but you can hardly become an experienced killer without messing up once or twice. But a guy who's never killed anyone who didn't richly deserve it? I'd have real trouble seeing why he'd ever feel bad about killing. I'd have no problem with him enjoying it every time, as long as he didn't act unprofessional.

It's the current intellectual fashion to try and pretend that life is inherently valuable. That each biological organism has an easily identifiable quantity of that value by virtue of its species, health, age, and so forth. But that's simply nonsense. It doesn't hold up under the slightest scrutiny. It isn't even internally consistent, because a significant number of those organisms are, by necessity or choice, killers of other organisms. If the staph living in a test tube that is helping me to find a better antibiotic has the same intrinsic value as the staph living in your bloodstream, then that value is necessarily insignificant relative to the nonintrinsic value that results from the use to which one might be put and the danger the other poses.

Sort of like this: pretend Luke Skywalker detested killing in any form, then pretend they are in the death star, or whatever, and there is a reasonable but risky chance they could sneak past some guards. There's a perfect chance they could kill them if they take the initiative. If they risk sneaking past and lose the initiative, they are at high risk but not grave peril. Luke sees them as humans and wants to sneak by, Han sees them as storm trooper robots (not trully full of life) so he kills them, knowing Luke would not. This must ultimately cause character tension between them, both characters must remain likable, and for the plot purposes the gaurds must be removed. Is this situation reasonable to you as a reader? I find it interesting, but I don't want to come across promoting violence although I happen to like both chracters involved.

Luke is already starting to show his adherence to that path. He never is the one to shoot first. Whereas Han does (at least in the original version). When Han blasts away a room full of Imperials early on, Luke criticises him for "blasting everything in sight." It's extremely illogical if he were actually talking about the danger of raising an alarm, since leaving those guys alive would make that a near certainty. He's really appalled by the violence of Han's methods.

I am a combat veteran, and would like to relate a few observations. I have killed enemy cobatants. I did this to survive, and get home to my wife and daughter. I did it so that my comrades would not get wounded or killed because I hesitated or failed in my duty. I wound up serving a long time in the Army, and I have two stars on my CIB. (if you don't know what that means it's OK, I'm just trying to say I have a lot of experience in this.

Here's the point; most veterans I know don't feel bad about killing anyone. When they do feel guilty (and sometimes I do, but its not like I think about it every day) IT IS NOT BECAUSE I KILLED ENEMY COMBATANTS. Its because somewhere in my bony little heart I think "How come you don't feel bad? You should, shouldn't you? Why were you soooo happy that day when you and the platoon took out those bad guys? (Because we thought we were going to get our butts handed to us, and instead we walked away without a scratch!) I feel guilty because at the time I became so callus to the whole thing. Blood and guts? I tell you in all honesty, after a very short while you don't even care how much of it is on you, as long as its not your own.

Sorry to be a downer, but take this away. Make the character callus, make him uneffected (if that's a word). Make him take the attitude "Hey, they decided to die when they took me on. I'm just tryin' to survive. That's what I have to do." It ain't pretty, but its the truth.

Thank you. I'm glad you made it home.

Thayards,

His portrayal of the Jedi makes it very clear that they need superhuman abilities to be able to practice their "superior morality", specifically by the way he contrasts them with "ordinary" people like Han Solo, Leia, Lando, and so forth.

Leia, like Han, does whatever it takes to survive. She totally shoots guys from ambush, kills guys that have forborne to kill her because she's a girl, kills from behind, plays innocent, and all that stuff.

I think that the prequel trilogy, at least as Lucas originally wrote it, clearly shows that it is the Jedi's arrogant sense of moral and personal superiority that is the primary weakness which dooms the Republic. Certainly it has a lot to do with their failure against the Sith. Mace Windu dies because of Anikin's misplaced sense of Jedi fairness as much as anything.

There's an ethic I like to apply to the idea of when it becomes just to fight against your own civilization. The general idea is that, as long as you enjoy the protection of your basic rights (like freedom of speech, the right to defend yourself, worship according to your conscience, and to associate with whom you choose), it is unbecoming for you to use violence against those who protect you.