So, this is the kinder and gentler book roasting, in the form of a semi-serious, semi-satirical semi-fanfic. Maybe all poor Heathcliff needed was a friend, a man of similar trauma, life experience, social status and wealth. Someone who can tell him what's what and cut through all the self-delusions and BS. So, let me introduce: EDMOND DANTES, The Count of Monte Cristo!

ED: Hello sir, some Lit fans had suggested that we should meet, and here we are.

H: Yes, So I was told. We have some things in common, I hear? Like a revenge obsession? Here's my book! Read all about me!

ED: And here's mine. Let's meet in 3 weeks and exchange notes!

H: Deal!

(3 weeks later)

H: Uh oh, I think I see my ex-wife, Isabella. She carries steak knives in her purse. Let's duck into a tavern, "The Sergeant of Waterloo"? "Cafe Musain"? "La Reserve"?, your choice my friend, and talk.

ED: So, did you read my story? I was a young sailor, with a job and a very promising future. I had a girl I loved dearly and we were going to be married. But a good deed on my part, delivering a letter, as bidden by my dying captain got me into all kinds of political hot water.

H: I was a homeless and starving orphan on the streets of Liverpool. The English were racists, see, because I'm a Gypsy by blood. But Papa Earnshaw came to Liverpool, tucked me in his coat and brought me to his home. But his kids didn't receive me very well, especially the boy, Hindley.

ED: So I was framed by Fernand and Danglars, and Villefort did a huge cover-up to save his own father, and this got me sent to the hellhole prison, Chateau D'if for 14 years. The first 6 were the roughest. I was alone, going mad and I wished to die.

H: Mama and Papa Earnshaw died when I was still a tween, and Hindley hated me. As master of the house, he worked me like a slave and beat me.

ED: You think you had problems? LOL. The girl I loved, Mercedes, saw me arrested, and tried to inquire about me but got the runaround. She had no idea what happened to me.

H: Dude! If I could only tell you in words how much I loved Cathy Earnshaw. We spent time in the moors as tweens to get away from our sh** home life. We were as one- I was incomplete without her. And she didn't care that I was a dark-skinned Gypsy boy. She was my everything!

ED: In prison, I met a genius, Abbe Faria. He died, but left me instructions on finding a treasure. So I escaped from D'if, spent time with smugglers, found the treasure and came back rich with revenge on my mind. During that time, Mercedes needed a man to support her, and Fernand came back from the French wars and proposed. She accepted.

H: Are we twins? I overheard Cathy talking to the housekeeper, Nelly and she said that she couldn't marry me- she'd be degraded. So I stole a horse and left. I made my fortune by means that I won't mention, and came back a few years later for revenge! But my Cathy already married that worm, Edgar Linton!

ED: I spent time moseying up to my enemies, plying them, and their wives, and children with the things they wanted most, until I became friends with all of them. And so I wove my web of revenge like a spider in its web. They all jumped in willingly.

H: I hear you, friend! I came back and overwhelmed Edgar's sister, Isabella, with my charm, manliness and sexiness. She ran away with me, I almost killed her dog by hanging, and I married her. And just for revenge against all the Lintons, I'd beat her. And I threw a knife at her while she was pregnant. She asked for it.

ED: Wait, you what? You married a woman who never hurt you for spite and then you beat her? Unlike you, I don't marry innocent young women as a tool for revenge on others. But go on.

H: She escaped from me, dammit, but I didn't care about chasing her down. She gave birth to my son, and then she died 12 years later.

ED: I'm an expert at potions and poisons. When I met Villefort's wife, she had this odd interest in poisons, so I gave her my best tonic, the Magic Red Potion which could help or harm, based on the dosage. I gave her clear instructions on how to use it.

H: I moved back to Wuthering Heights as a tenant, and got my revenge on that Hindley. I got him addicted to booze and gambling, and soon enough, he started signing away the deed to his property. Then he died and I took possession of his lands and his boy, Hareton.

ED: Not bad, this one revenge of yours. I manipulated the stock market and bankrupted Danglars' bank clients, so he started rapidly going broke. And I turned him against Fernand with my Clever Plan.

H: My Cathy died after giving birth to a girl. I was distraught and I cursed her to haunt me until I died.

ED: I exposed Villefort's secret baby, the result of an illicit affair.

H: I also reclaimed custody of my son, Lameton. So, some years went by and my Cathy's girl grew up. So I made plans on getting revenge against Edgar (for marrying my girl) and made plans on luring little Cathy into my clutches and make her marry my son, Lameton. All of this was a play to confiscate the Linton property. Oh, and to make the Lintons suffer.

ED: Mrs. Villefort started to go out of control with The Magic Red Potion. I wasn't involved. She had her own interests and agenda, namely making herself and her young son, Edouard, rich. So she started poisoning people nilly-willy in the Villefort household, knowing that if the deaths happened in a certain order, she could secure a hefty inheritance for her boy.

H: I lured little Cathy into my home, using her boredom and loneliness and my son Lameton as bait. Then I locked her in my home, forced her into a marriage with my boy. Even though legally, it didn't hold any water because it wasn't done in a Church and she was underage.

ED: You did what? Even I wouldn't sink that low. I might break up marriage plans and maneuver the pawns into positions advantageous to me, but I make sure that they all act on their own accord. And I don't hold women captive, I free them. My ward, Haydee was a slave. I bought her and she's free- just as free as any Frenchwoman in Paris!

H: Such a Boy Scout! Are you sure you're in it for revenge? But go on...

ED: No animals were harmed during the making of my revenge.

H: Well, I hanged Isabellas's dog. Damn thing yipping would have blown our cover in running away together. I raised Hareton to not give AF about animals, so he hanged a litter of puppies on a chair. And I declawed and defanged cats so my pu**y of a son, Lameton, could feel manly by abusing something smaller and more helpless than he was.

ED: (Sigh) Someday, animal rights organizations will curse your name.

H: Once Edgar died, my paid-for Lawyer handled the confiscation of the Linton property. My damned weak son, Lameton, let little Cathy out long enough for her to see her Dad. But be assured that I came back for her and kidnapped took her back to Wuthering Heights so I could "make her work for her keep" and verbally abuse her constantly to break her. How fun!

ED: How depraved is that? I ended up helping LGBT Eugenie Danglars run away with her girlfriend so they can have a happy life together in Italy. And I saved Valentine (Villefort) from death by poison and helped her and Maximilian Morell and get together and I gifted them money and property.

H: But you had collateral damage, didn't you? Johannes the jeweler murdered, young Edouard poisoned, Mercedes and Albert newly impoverished? They got screwed because of your plans.

ED: Yes. But my hand in these disasters was indirect. People had their own motivations, and my gifts were used for harm. All of them had choices. I did not make Caderousse murder the jeweler. His own greed did that. I did not make Mrs. Villefort poison Edouard. It was her crime and selfishness, and desire to take her boy with her in suicide. As for Albert and Mercedes, I regret what happened. But their guilt over how Fernand obtained his fortune made them to renounce their money and property to the poor. I offered to help, but Mercedes refused.

H: Fair enough. This analysis by one ZeMastor is true, then.

ED: It is. So if my deeds were weighed on a scale, in the end, I did more good than harm. And you, Mr. Heathcliff? Did your revenge make anyone's life any better? Or might it have been better for all if Papa Earnshaw left you on the streets of Liverpool?

H: Making someone else's life better, or helping anyone wasn't a priority. It was about me, my desire for the girl I wanted, and my revenge on anyone who represented me not having her, up til the very end. I regret nothing. At best, the people who got away from me and my heavy hand had the burden of repairing their shattered lives on their own.

ED: And your collateral damage? Ghost Cathy- condemned to remain a spirit to haunt you, as your curse denied her eternal rest?, Isabella, the battered wife who foolishly fell for you? Lameton, a weak and sickly boy, groomed by you to be a Mini-Me sadist? Edgar Linton whose only "crime" was to marry the girl you loved so you messed with him? Hareton, the unfortunate son of Hindley, who you worked as an indentured servant and denied him an education? And most of all, little Cathy, who you abducted, imprisoned in your house, forcibly married to your son, re-imprisoned and treated like dirt? Oh and you took Hareton and little Cathy's inheritance to boot.

H: All of this is true. But I had an abused childhood, and people think I'm fascinating, and through fiction, they might even sympathize, all while having no sympathy for IRL criminals who do the same things. Go figure. I'm a fictional character, so the lurid descriptions of my crimes can be blown off as a character study or an "unreliable narrator" who's trying to gaslight people into hating me.

ED: Is that the best you can do? Fall back to "unreliable narrator" to make yourself seem all right and palatable? Your "adversaries" were weak and brainless fools and your triumph over them was like shooting fish in a barrel. Look at who I had to contend with: the Chief Prosecutor of the King. A wealthy banker with a huge financial empire. A decorated French General and member of the House of Peers.

H: Well, it is true that their stupidity and passivity made my revenge easy. I got away with everything. I telegraphed my plans and intentions and they didn't even try to stop me. Nobody even tried to call the police, or recruit a group of Edgar's gentlemen friends and minister to free the kidnapped girl. So how did things end for you, Mr. Dantes?

ED: I didn't die in the end. But I repented and regretted the actions I took. I tried to save young Edouard and I failed. I forgave the last of my enemies, Danglars, and allowed him 50,000 francs to re-start his life. I humbled myself, prayed to God to forgive me for taking such power, and acknowledged that supreme power and wisdom belong to God, and not to a man like myself. For going through this storm, I gained a new love (which some people object to because of her age, but she came to me willingly), and I'm sailing away from France with her, gifting a fortune and the words, "wait and hope" to Max and Val. What did you do to redeem yourself, Mr. Heathcliff?

H: I... hah.. didn't. I mean, life with little Cathy got a bit less worse, but she was still verboten to leave. Eventually, I got burned out on revenge, and felt Ghost Cathy calling to me. Not too long ago, I creepily had her coffin dug up so I could examine her dead body and I knocked out a few panels, and I worked out a deal so I would be buried next to her. Then I slowly went insane, took to wandering off alone, and I was found dead on a rainy night, looking out an open window for my girl, Ghost Cathy. I was buried beside her, and the locals have seen my ghost and my Cathy's ghost in the moors together. So the author gave me everything I ever wanted, in life (revenge) and in death (my Cathy) and I didn't have to even redeem myself or atone for any of my sins to earn it. I was invincible and omnipotent.

ED: I was also invincible and omnipotent, but I still had a conscience and I'm still recognizable as a human being. My book is 3x longer than yours and I had never hit a woman, I certainly wouldn't have forced any of them to marry against their will. I have nothing to do with that awful movie, A Modern Monte Cristo (1917) which sounds more like you instead of me.

H: Oh yeah, let's talk about movies! The most famous one of me was in 1939, with a young and handsome and magnetic Laurence Olivier, with Merele Oberon as my Cathy. The film-makers revised me completely by removing every chapter where I'm an a**hole, and that secured my place in pop culture as a romantic hero. Knowing only half my story, people would name kids, pets, comic strips after me! The famous book series, Twilight touts my book as Bella Swan's fave. So I had reached a whole new teen audience from 2005-2008.

ED: But people reading your book would realize that you're not any sort of hero- you're cruel and capricious. The overwhelming majority of my movies are terrible and cut too many corners or put me with the wrong girl in the end. The one that came closest to my book had me acting ice-cold towards the girl I'm supposed to find a new life with.

H: So, in conclusion, what if I posted my life story on reddit, asking "Am I the a**hole?"

ED: People would overwhelmingly respond YTA.