always evil fanatics

[marycatelli]

Pondering the question of always evil groups.  One that works better than the people who are (ludicrously enough) evil for evil's sake, or for personal motives that would naturally lead them to clash, is the group of fanatics.  Conviction of their purity would offset a lot of the problems that would cause other groups to naturally collapse.

IF they are done right.

The most common problem I see is that a group can not be fanatically for being fanatics.  Nor can it be fanatically for being a nuisance to the main characters.  That includes being fanatically against some group.  "Being against" is not a view.  There will be some reason for their views, and if the reasons are false, you have to give some human reason why.  (If you think that this is not realistic, it is one of many things where things in fiction need more justification than those in real life.)  It gets silly when the antagonist is depicted as hostile to some particularly angelic group -- and particularly silly when you get things like prejudice against vampires being treated as obviously wrong despite their habit of drinking people's blood. I have read with my own eyes a story in which a woman lets off a ghoul that's committed repeated murders with a warning and then rages against a man who killed an unintelligent monster that preys on human beings on the grounds that he should have watched and seen whether it was dangerous.  (Indeed, the story tempted me with a story idea about a fanatical organization that preserves all monsters as the man's tries to exterminate them, and the rebel character, like the woman's ancestor who split with this group, is one that wants to kill when the unintelligent ones are dangerous, or the intelligent ones murderers.)

Comments

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where this started. I think stuff like True Blood has definitely made it much worse, with it's dim-witted protagonist who moral compass is off it's axis and who repeatedly saves the lives of her mass-murdering lovers.

really hoping that pop sci-fi/fantasy latches on to the Hunger Games as an example next, as at least there we have a heroine who understands when it's necessary to kill monsters, and who is intelligent and pragmatic enough to pick her battles wisely.

I had a problem with this when creating and writing my Protagonist in the current nanowrimo novel. I originally wanted him to be this Picard-like figure, equal parts altruistic explorer and stoic warrior when necessary, quick to speak words of peace and slow to draw his railgun, but unafraid to fire it when necessary.

Of course then I made the mistake of also making him a nanotech super soldier/ninja who basically only ever gets sent against the very worst and most dangerous monsters, which means he pretty much has to kill everything he comes up against with extreme prejudice, because that's the entire purpose of his job. I may have to rethink this premise at some point.

[marycatelli]

I think it's an attempt to have Guys In Black Hats, and also to show Awareness and Sensitivity toward prejudice without noticing little details that a distaste for drinkers of human blood is a judgment, not a prejudice.

For unsolicited advice -- the art of making him reason his way out of problems that others think must use force is tricky to pull off, but very satisfying. A simpler art is send him through a space warp or something to get him away from his superiors and give him more leeway in what he confronts.

[metaphorsbwithu.livejournal.com]

Hmmm ... In my opinion, good and evil must stem from a belief in some absolute sense of right and wrong.

In human behavior, as I see it, most evil stems from the rejection of these basic principles and grows in the desire to obtain one's desires and advance one's goals by oppressing others outside of these self-evident principles.

What applies to ants does not apply to humanity unless you consciously reject the idea of some basic absolutes in behavior (or the best people can determine them to be) and in human values.

Evil, to me, would be the awareness of what is right and wrong but rejecting and ignoring it - no matter the context.

The character Marya Zaleska (Dracula's daughter) is an example of a conflicted person doing evil acts but being driven to do so and is seeking help to overcome her "curse".

The example you gave, to condemn someone for killing a monster "without cause' would not be rejecting the concept of right and wrong, IMO, but would be simply applying the concept of "morality" in an odd and parochial way.

Killing "monsters" who simply don't look like you, for sport, that you know are harmless would enter the realm of evil behavior.

Just MHO.

[marycatelli]

Evil is the sacrifice of a greater good for a lesser good.

Not realizing that you are doing it makes it innocent only if a reasonably prudent person would not have known it. It may be a mitigating circumstance, if you made some effort to know what you ought to know, but if you made no effort at all, or worse, you went out of your way to avoid knowing, it means you are still as guilty as you would have been with full knowledge.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

In my experience, most people think of themselves as "the good guys," believe their actions are justified, and believe that their enemies are tragically in the wrong. What I look for in fictional worlds is that similar attitude. Not, "I'm bad and I want to be bad," but, "I'M not bad; my opponent is the bad guy! Obviously!" With both sides believing the latter of themselves.

[marycatelli]

That's another flaw with the Always Evil group.

Though you can have adolescents of the sort who posture about satanism or the like. Somewhat limiting in how evil they can do. (They're also the ones that would really name themselves something like Mordic the Murderous.)

And there are always the characters who declare them above such considerations. I remember one villain whose response to a question about good and evil was a chuckle and the comment it was so conventional a question.

[marycatelli]

Come to think of it, there's the famous incident with Blackbeard and his crew, who closed up a hold with sulphur pots in order to see how well they could stand their future destination. Blackbeard was rather proud of lasting the longest.

A certain amount of posing involved.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

William Styron had an interesting discussion of evil in Sophie's Choice. (He was quoting some scholars of the Holocaust.) It involves the theory that true evil is bland and routine, deadly in its indifference. The more dramatic brand of badness that we usually see depicted (like the posturing adolescents or pirates) was actually not the worst form of evil.

[marycatelli]

Oh, they're both evil. The bland and routine type, however, has a hardness of heart that makes it hard and impervious.

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

It gets silly when the antagonist is depicted as hostile to some particularly angelic group -- and particularly silly when you get things like prejudice against vampires being treated as obviously wrong despite their habit of drinking people's blood. I have read with my own eyes a story in which a woman lets off a ghoul that's committed repeated murders with a warning and then rages against a man who killed an unintelligent monster that preys on human beings on the grounds that he should have watched and seen whether it was dangerous

Hmm, odd to be seeing this as right now I'm watching Universal's "Ghost of Frankenstein". Everyone tries to make the Monster out as a total innocent through the whole series, and maybe he was in the first movie; but by the second film he was shown murdering an elderly couple in their home and strangling a child!

[marycatelli]

That is kinda a hint.

Of course, he might not fathom what he's doing, but you still have to stop him.

[izuko.livejournal.com]

So, basically, you're dealing with the modern left. Good luck with that.

[marycatelli]

Who, me? Make political references? 0:)