User blog comment:DYBAD/Character Sheet/@comment-24955665-20160816020851/@comment-4867780-20160817053431

"He is essentially amoral, feeling little actual concern for anyone aside from the people he comes to care about, but his hedonistic nature makes him very hostile to whoever selfishly destroys the happiness of others, and inherently respectful of every person’s right to the pursuit of their own happiness, paradoxically leading to a fairly moral behavior overall."

Personality, second paragraph. It was one of the first things I wrote, before even laying the first stones of Selforge City. Basically, I wanted a him to be a respectable person without being slave to the greater good, and enjoy his own life for his own sake while still being a great person to his closed ones. In short, a balanced and complex character in a human and realistic way.

So no, Lawrence was never an egotist sociopath. There are lots of these around already, and their all-consumming megalomania is as predictably two-dimensional as it is despicably primitive, so it just felt boring and unsatisfying to me (Darkseid for example is just a godly primate).

I suppose I could have come up with a compromise to indulge dark impulses in a harmless and inconsequential way, but even then it would remain a terribly wrong note in the global empathic theme, the kind that turns a genuine utopia into a decadent court.

It's like a sadistic kid having a blast torturing hamsters : even if the poor rodents are as utterly insignificant as they are cheap and numerous, you can be sure the parents will still freak out all the same. Why ? Because messed-up is still messep-up, even if there is no consequence.

Not to mention sadism is never inconsequential, it's a mental disease that inexorably festers and proliferates, gradually eating away the good sides of your personality until all that's left is a fucked-up bastard.