[Lalaith]

Hmmm.....

I've lived long enough to feel fairly confident about the following things.

a) lots of young people find bad and naughty things glamorous and exciting. This is, inter alia, why rumours of devilish messages played backwards at the end of certain heavy metal records do nothing but increase interest in said records. And why bands like Iron Maiden call their albums things like "Number of the Beast".

b) mostly this fascination with the bad and naughty is harmless, and most people eventually get bored with it. In real life, evil tends to be mundane, nasty, stupid and unpleasant - the hyperintelligent villain a la Lecter is a total fiction. I don't think Tolkien is a particularly good example of evil fascinatiion, because his villains are mostly quite un-glamorous, lacking a hinterland....they don't have a patch on Milton's Satan, for example...with the possible exception of Saruman, and Sauron-as-Annatar. The personification of Sauron in the films was a bit more metal, however, and that may be what's got people excited.

c) on the other hand, moral relativism sucks. I am probably considered to be on the liberal end of things, but there are certain things that I strongly believe are wrong, and I don't give a monkeys if these things were/are considered ok in ancient Babylon or Easter Island or whatever. They're still wrong.