What I look for is exactly what everyone else does; diversity and growth. I was never really super into the whole “super hero and villain” dynamic. It’s played out to me, and when characters are intricate and complicated, it makes the story more intriguing. When it’s a battle over right and wrong, but nobody truly knows which is which. Roger Waters of Pink Floyd said it best (I mean he usually says everything the best) with his lyrics “Us and Them, and after all we’re only ordinary men”. Which is what I’m trying to get across here. People have their own specific ideologies, so when you hold one above the other it makes the story two dimensional and the characters flat. Because the best stories are of individuals struggling against what they believe is right, and what they know needs to be done. That struggle is exactly what leads to the second property of a good character, growth. Because when you entice philosophy and morality to shift, you grow, you evolve and become more well rounded as a person. So when you can take a character and make them grow, make them question their own mind, they expand. It becomes something much larger than a book, it becomes a frantic enigma, challenging the reader to develop themselves. Then in turn, we as people grow alongside the character.