Brandon Sanderson is also very good at this. As an example, he’s religious, but he’s very good at writing both other religions and characters that atheistic (Jasna from Stormlight Archive is an atheist and she’s written very well).
His most extreme consequentialist is also supposed to be a bad guy, but he does not strawman him, and you actually get to hear a lot of his reasoning and you can agree with him. My problem with him (in world, not a problem of writing, I think he’s a great character) was he didn’t sufficiently consider the possibility he was wrong. But there are other consequentialist that aren’t portrayed in a bad light (like Jasna from before), and many of the main characters struggle with these moral ideas.
Even the character he had the most excuses to write badly, a god called ruin who is almost more a force of nature than a god (from Mistborn), isn’t written as a dull, obviously evil and wrong character, but is “steelmaned”, if you will. And he shows the many flaws of his counterpart, preservation, that doesn’t let things grow to preserve them, which often ends up being counter productive.
Brandon Sanderson is also very good at this. As an example, he’s religious, but he’s very good at writing both other religions and characters that atheistic (Jasna from Stormlight Archive is an atheist and she’s written very well).
His most extreme consequentialist is also supposed to be a bad guy, but he does not strawman him, and you actually get to hear a lot of his reasoning and you can agree with him. My problem with him (in world, not a problem of writing, I think he’s a great character) was he didn’t sufficiently consider the possibility he was wrong. But there are other consequentialist that aren’t portrayed in a bad light (like Jasna from before), and many of the main characters struggle with these moral ideas.
Even the character he had the most excuses to write badly, a god called ruin who is almost more a force of nature than a god (from Mistborn), isn’t written as a dull, obviously evil and wrong character, but is “steelmaned”, if you will. And he shows the many flaws of his counterpart, preservation, that doesn’t let things grow to preserve them, which often ends up being counter productive.