To be fair, I can think of a couple characters who skirt fairly close to the "evil" line, but could pull it off. Bester from Babylon 5 is close to being a flat-out evil villain because of what he gets up to and what he does to the good guys, but when you get an episode from his perspective, its believable because the focus is what he loves.
"The Corps is mother, the Corps is father." Bester buys into that 110 percent. If you're a telapath, you need to belong to the Corps whether you want to or not, and if you're not a telepath or part of the Corps, then you don't matter.
That was a very good post. It does make you think. I don't know that Stalin fits into that paradigm, or at least not until the end. Paranoid, yes, maybe I'm wrong. Now considering he just may have hid it better.
"Recently, I’ve come across yet another stupid “evil is so cool!” posts. The most recent execution being that “we should see a mad scientists hanging out with Igor after completing his death ray, just having some beers and high-fiving each other.”
No, seriously, are these people massively brain damaged?
The psychology of evil —there’s even a book by that name —does not work that way.
Evil, and evil people, do not function like that."
And yet, the people who make animated cartoons keep perpetrating this myth, at least when they're playing it for laughs...
As a teenager, I thought villains and assassins and the like were cool. I think every teen girl goes through an assassin phase. Then I grew up and observed actual evil people, and you're right. They're boring. I read a quote that said, "Saints are all unique in theyr own way, but tyrants are all the same." The only thing that can redeem a selfish ahole is Jesus himself.
The upside-down world training Mr. Finn is doing his part to remediate has told people two things over and over again:
1) What any ordinary decent person percieves to be good is really Evil.
2) What any ordinary decent person perceives to be wicked is really Good.
It's very confusing: on purpose. So when these confuzled ones say "a super-villain" they do usually picture Dr. Doom, or John Wick, or John Bauer, et al.
One of the strengths of J. K. Rowling's books was her depiction of three broken young men who were offered love, virtue, hatred, and unbridled ambition in equal measure. In all the other men in their ambit, both young and old, the coolness of evil was never, ever more than a mask which, under adversity, fell apart to reveal the mewling, ugly, stupid thing underneath.
I'm only shocked it took clownworld so long to suspect that millennials have been infected by it, and how few on team Good, Beautiful, and True understand the opportunity it provides.
I get the feeling those posters are confusing "villains" with "antagonists". Did they give any more examples?
Demons are cool. Serial killers are awesome. Cops are evil. The usual "we'll subvert things because we think it's cool" nonsense.
Eh. Pretty much what I thought.
To be fair, I can think of a couple characters who skirt fairly close to the "evil" line, but could pull it off. Bester from Babylon 5 is close to being a flat-out evil villain because of what he gets up to and what he does to the good guys, but when you get an episode from his perspective, its believable because the focus is what he loves.
"The Corps is mother, the Corps is father." Bester buys into that 110 percent. If you're a telapath, you need to belong to the Corps whether you want to or not, and if you're not a telepath or part of the Corps, then you don't matter.
They want to humanize evil. That's a contraction.
That was a very good post. It does make you think. I don't know that Stalin fits into that paradigm, or at least not until the end. Paranoid, yes, maybe I'm wrong. Now considering he just may have hid it better.
Stalin was a complete and utter sociopath.
"Recently, I’ve come across yet another stupid “evil is so cool!” posts. The most recent execution being that “we should see a mad scientists hanging out with Igor after completing his death ray, just having some beers and high-fiving each other.”
No, seriously, are these people massively brain damaged?
The psychology of evil —there’s even a book by that name —does not work that way.
Evil, and evil people, do not function like that."
And yet, the people who make animated cartoons keep perpetrating this myth, at least when they're playing it for laughs...
As a teenager, I thought villains and assassins and the like were cool. I think every teen girl goes through an assassin phase. Then I grew up and observed actual evil people, and you're right. They're boring. I read a quote that said, "Saints are all unique in theyr own way, but tyrants are all the same." The only thing that can redeem a selfish ahole is Jesus himself.
The upside-down world training Mr. Finn is doing his part to remediate has told people two things over and over again:
1) What any ordinary decent person percieves to be good is really Evil.
2) What any ordinary decent person perceives to be wicked is really Good.
It's very confusing: on purpose. So when these confuzled ones say "a super-villain" they do usually picture Dr. Doom, or John Wick, or John Bauer, et al.
One of the strengths of J. K. Rowling's books was her depiction of three broken young men who were offered love, virtue, hatred, and unbridled ambition in equal measure. In all the other men in their ambit, both young and old, the coolness of evil was never, ever more than a mask which, under adversity, fell apart to reveal the mewling, ugly, stupid thing underneath.
I'm only shocked it took clownworld so long to suspect that millennials have been infected by it, and how few on team Good, Beautiful, and True understand the opportunity it provides.
yes . I agree. But I think he hid it better if that's possible than Hitler. But its depressing that the 20th Century had such specimens of humanity.