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Old 06-05-2005, 10:34 AM   #17
Lalwendė
A Mere Boggart
 
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Join Date: Mar 2004
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Lalwendė is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Lalwendė is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Encaitare
I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes I find the super-evil, black-clad villain to get very old. A "color reversal" I liked was in Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, in which the chief baddie -- not a nice guy at all -- lived in a beautiful palace in a pleasant land, was very handsome, and happened to fancy wearing white robes.
I've got some thoughts! There are two types of 'bad guys'. We have the outright bad guy like Sauron or Morgoth, who is not only evil in character but is also unattractive in appearance; usually their acts of evil are not shown to ultimately bring them anything we would class as a benefit, their lands are not pleasant, their castles are not glamorous, and they don't have hordes of admirers. This is the type of evil character who we are immediately repelled by, and hence we fall in on the 'side' of the good charachters

Then we get the handsome bad guy. This is more of a Miltonic or possibly Byronic evil character. Such figures are usually attractive, glamorous, seductive; they have gained benefits from being bad which attract us to them as we want something of what they have. Dracula is probably the best example, as he exerts a powerful attraction on people yet is thoroughly evil. As an aside, the modern vampire stories develop this by showing vampires who are very attractive and make people want to 'be like them' and also have eternal life, whereas we see that secretly such vampires do not always enjoy their immortality.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Encaitare
In Tolkien's works, evil is associated with darkness -- but then, if it were not for darkness, we could not see the stars. This may just be a random musing, but I just wondered whether there is a difference in Tolkien between blackness and darkness.
I reckon there must be something in davem's idea of unlight, i.e. the absence of Light. Darkness itself is not evil, as it is always counterbalanced with Light - even if this Light is just the light of the stars. But Darkness (with a capital D) is different, as it is the absence of Light. I'm thinking of how Ungoliant sucked the Light from the trees; it was as though her evil nature had a complete absence of Light and that her Darkness would totally negate and consume Light. A bit like a Black Hole!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Encaitare
The Moriquendi never beheld the Two Trees, which might be considered a sorrow to the Calaquendi. Yet these "Dark Elves" are not evil.
No, they are indeed not evil, but in a way, they are viewed as 'fallen'. All the Elves are expected to eventually go to Valinor. On death if the Fea refuses to go to the Halls of Mandos, then it is considered to be very wrong, something 'suspect'. Maybe the Calaquendi are so sorrowful because they know that the loss of their cousins will also hurt them on a deeper level, that as Elves, their nature depends upon them going to Valinor. So it's definitely not that they are evil, but they are not blessed either.
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