"Bad" seems to exist solely to act as the counterpart to good, which is why I think in 1984 the word is replaced with "ungood." People generally want to divide the world into black and white, good or bad, with us or against us, et cetera. I think evil is important simply because nothing is really that simple. If someone thinks or acts differently, they're often going to be seen as something bad or at least not as good because they're outside the norm.

Clarice wrote:

I like the complex bad guys who could be the good guys, if you looked at it all from a different perspective.

I think this puts it pretty nicely actually. Most people don't think that what they're doing is bad or wrong even if other people do think that. We admire the villains because of their distate for conformity and their freedom from the constraints of society but also I think it it's important to respect evil or bad or whatever because, with a few exceptions of course, nobody thinks they're the bad guy. Even though really we're all the bad guy to someone else, whether because of what we've done or because of what we represent.

I'm not wordy unless I have to be, so this'll probably be brief.

From the point of view of someone who's not attracted to Akio, but actively considers him one of my favourite characters and a character I somewhat look up to, the appeal for me is his power. It's hard for a naive person to get into positions of power. Climbing any kind of social ladder is like a game of chess where not only do you have to know your next moves but everyone else's as well. There can't be many surprises, and who better to avoid surpises than the man who's pulled all the dirty tricks before and knows exacly where the flaws are? Akio makes people do things they know are bad and every rational thought in their head tells them not to.

I have to admit I'm a little envious of that kind of control.

Hallelujah, thanks guys, this is great fodder for our villain rp!!

Giovanna wrote:

God sounds like a jerk.

A philosophy teacher used the analogy: if a teacher filled a room with various weapons like knives, guns, axes, chainsaws, swords, ice picks, drills, mallets, Iron Maiden's, and various other equipment for torture; then sealed a class of kindergarteners inside, with the parting words, "Don't touch any of this!" If the children then viciously maimed and killed one another, who would be to blame? The teacher. This story, of course, is supposed to be an analogy of what the popular idea of God has done to the people in the world.

Traditional villains are about expression, while traditional hero's repress their natural desires. That's where the admiration stems from. People admire villains a bit because they are doing something hard, like showing your true feelings of anger toward people.

I'll have to move away from religious figures for now, as they tend to make us feel prickly inside. But there are examples of good guys, I would ask, "In real life, is a good person more well liked than a bad one?" by each of you individually. I can say, I respect Mother Teresa more than John Gotti. But I think that you can respect Gotti more, and still be respecting him for the same reason that one would respect mother T.

We feel burdened by having to stifle our feelings of anger and vengeance. So much so that one wonders why we even try and force ourselves to behave. I think that problem lies in the fact that our stifled anger is righteous anger… the sort of anger any mistreated person would have, when confronted with unjust laws. In MLK JR’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he writes about how unjust laws will move a peace loving person to action, which should not be considered wrong under the circumstances.

In a space where there was nothing to agitate you, you would probably be in perfect peace.  Whereas a bad, bad guy, isn’t happy unless he’s disrupting the peace. In our minds, we might have violent urges against evil bosses, or strong sexual thoughts about our neighbor that we must restrain, but were we to act out those behaviors and put the boss in her bitchy place, or quench our libidos…what would have been restored, but our soul’s status quo. So, we, even in our most vicious mode, are fighting for peace in our life. Mostly.

And then there’s power. The ability to influence and control others. Why would you want power? You’d probably use it, even in the most hedonistic state, to gain money, friends, lovers, all things that are pretty good things. You use a bad thing to get a good thing, but what you wanted in the end, was a good thing.
Like Jack Sparrow, who technically by the good guy was thought of as the bad guy, but we know he was a good guy… Again, Jack’s doing all sort of crazy things, but in a pinch, he saves his friends. He’s made those friends by watching those people and deciding that they are worth caring about. The other guy, has watched people too, but at crucial points decided not to be a friend, not to even make one. I’d say, the laws were unjust due to circumstance, and therefore, Jack does the right thing. Or, does the wrong thing, for the right reason…

Even Akio seems to have a goal, motivating him forward, that is separate and apart from the cruelty he inflicts on others. His cruelty is a bi product of his ambition for whatever goal he has…which interestingly enough, boiled down in it’s simplest form, Akio wants power, Why? To become a prince again, or to become something good & worthy & noble again. Something he cannot ever do, because the very means he uses to acquire this power of Dios have made his the blackest soul of all. He maybe realizes this before the series has ever started, and so we see him, and he is insane…he just remembers the “wanting” and WANTS, like a child, as Gio so often describes him. 

It just seems he isn’t bothered by that cruelty, and his goal out weighs the suffering of those other people. For some bad guys, the suffering of others IS the goal. Those extreme cases, like serial killers, who for some reason, like to watch frightened people squirm for their lives. A mastermind like Akio, will watch someone squirm, you could even say that the squirming of others fuels all of his plans, but that’s not his end goal. He’s less evil, and more insane. One version of insanity I’ve heard, passed around in AA propaganda, is “doing the same thing expecting different results”.

So, actually, when rooting for the bad guy, one might be cheering for justice, against unjust laws. In some sick minds, Nelson Mandela was considered a bad guy, but anyone with a brain would definitely root for him. I think there’s merit to adoring baddies, but is it because those qualities are admired and respected for themselves, but for what they represent, which is the “peace on the other side of war”?

Again, no sense at all. I’ve lost myself. I had a point, something about bad guys had redeeming qualities, which makes them good in some lights, which in turn, would put good slightly over bad, or light and dark might not be distributed evenly. But have fun picking that out of this mess I’ve written.

That's true, but I think in the end my biggest fear would be having to kiss up to my badguy.

Akio gives the impression that he doesn't have anyone he needs to kiss up to. That's debatable, though. o:

Well, yeah, you have to kiss up & you have to conform... no one likes that. But why do you do it? So you can live like the good guy, and have the things the good guy is fighting for.

Bad guys are selfish. Interesting, Gio said "honest" because a lot of what we do is hide our own selfishness and pretend it isn't there. Bad guys are all about serving themselves, and they don't apologize. We serve others and apologize when "serving ourselves" pops out.

So, to truly align yourself with a bad guy, you might be shown a way out of having to apologize for yourself. A way out of being trapped by politeness.

But you would only need that in certain areas, in areas where YOU were being treated unfairly. That's when you want to lash out and be hateful. However, if you were in a circle you liked... okay, a lot of people were having dreams of IRG forum members together in some sort of gathering. We're all quirky friends here. In a gathering of people you liked, would you need power & control. Actually, would you want it?

Because, by assuming you could manipulate people into doing what you liked, if you genuinely liked those people, I don't think you'd really want that power...as if they did what you liked, you couldn't trust it. For instance, if you forced people to love you, could you trust the love? No. Would it matter, probably not to a bad guy. But to an average person, it probably would make a difference.

But, if you were in a position you hated, like a crappy work environment where you aren't respected, a school full of bullies who torment you, then the power to control others/make them suffer would be really alluring. You could use it to force the bullies to submit, and expose coworkers & evil bosses inferiority. Pretty much get even.

Those are all things a good guy would do too, though... The definition of evil, I've read, is highly contested. People were arguing, that according to a certain definition of "evil" one could not lable Hitler as evil. The definition of Evil in question, being, to consciously do wrong. So, highly respected Jewish biographers, studying the holocaust, were saying you could not say Hitler was evil, because in HIS mind, he was not doing wrong. Listening to that, makes one cringe, but according to the definition it's true. However, does that make his actions less wrong, not at all.

So I guess there are types of bad guys, ones who consciously do wrong, and one's who do wrong because of an ulterior selfish motive that is not in itself, wrong. Akio, I think, falls into the category of bad guys who do a lot of terrible things, because of something he's trying to get which he thinks is a good thing. Killers, would be of the type that do wrong, because wrong/chaos/suffering is their goal. We'd like to say that those are the SCARIEST bad guys, but in reality, I go back to the Hitler example, to say that perhaps the bad guys who don't even think they are wrong, are the most villainous of all.

I tend to prefer bad guys who believe that they are right not because they are loony or warped but because they don't think the good guys way of doing things is realistic or workable (eg Magneto)

Tamago wrote:

I tend to prefer bad guys who believe that they are right not because they are loony or warped but because they don't think the good guys way of doing things is realistic or workable (eg Magneto)

Magneto and his kind are a blast, but I honestly tend to forget they're the bad guy, even if they wear black and get all the cool lines. Nevermind how it's presented and how clearly they're the 'villain', I see both sides and can easily agree with either one of them such that I have a hard time going 'that one's wrong'. Yes, we know Xavier's solution is prettier and nicer, but there are plenty of cases in human history where it wasn't the solution to bear fruit. If the conflict between the hero and villain is so clearly a moral one, I'm very unlikely to decide either of them is good or bad.

I also rarely count characters who are specifically out to make others suffer to be villains. What? Yes. I don't usually count those because the vast majority of the time, they're literally god damn out of their minds. Psychopaths and sociopaths are nasty business, but they're not villains to me, they're too driven by a disorder they probably didn't choose to have. Now granted, some of them are calculating enough to ease into villain territory, like Hannibal Lecter. Which brings us to...

Personal_IceQueen wrote:

Is it just Akio for some of you? Do you tend to root for the bad guy in movies? Do you date dangerous people, find them more attractive? Why do you think this is? Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing that is?

I almost invariably root for the bad guy. Off the top of my head I can only think of Lord of the Rings as the exception. I would also add James Bond, but my favorite Bond movie also has my favorite villain, although I wasn't so much rooting for him as wishing the both of them would walk into my living room and screw the bejeezus out of me.

There's no real life experience to relate my preference for villains in entertainment to my daily life, as I've never had the opportunity to get involved with any dangerous people. I'm quite sure if I ran into a guy with the personality traits I value in most of my baddies, that I'd soak my panties and probably attempt to grind them a little on his leg, but I actually trust myself to have the wisdom to keep a safe psychological distance. Probably sticking my foot in my mouth there.

As for the why...Almaser pretty much totally said it. Arrogance. Ego. Power and the sense to flaunt it. Villains do what they want, and it tends to result in that set of traits, after all, if you're in it for you, and you get what you want...well you're pretty hot stuff then, aren't you?

There are just all kinds of villains, but the ones that are arrogant and selfish tend to get the most interest from me. Honestly, the group that does horrible things and thinks that they're in the moral right tend to interest me the least, but I'm distinguishing between that group and the group that does horrible things because they think it's perfectly alright. It's a hard difference to explain, except that one is backed by morality and the other is usually backed by a 'reasonable' argument. 'KILL WITCHES FOR GOD' versus 'We're animals and animals fight for dominance, thus it's perfectly alright to kill my boss.' The latter is where most portrayals of the devil fall. It's not their moral sensibilities justifying their behavior, but rather it's usually a very cynical or pessimistic worldview, one so bad that their actions don't matter or they'll argue only their interests matter, since the world is screwed anyway and it's every man for himself except for the sheep that get slaughtered. Those are the ones that stick with me, they tend to take a cynical view of life and twist it into a 'moral' justification for grossly selfish behavior. (Akio? Meet Gordon Gekko.) I suspect they're my favorite because I often dance very, very close to seeing the world that way and it's oh so seductive.

I can't explain my take on villains without explaining a chunk of my moral system. Sorry guys, feel free to skip it if you'd like.

I don't believe in evil. Not even a little.

By the same token, I don't really believe in good. I'm trying not to go all RAGE AGAINST TEH MACHINE on you here, but seriously, think about it a second. We generally consider things that our society accepts as good to be good. We generally consider things that our society accepts to be evil as evil. And no matter who you are, if you are not raised in this society, you will not be instilled with these values-- that's not to say that you can't hold comparable ones, but your view of right and wrong, good and evil, will always be tainted by the perspective of the culture you grew up in.

What does that make good into? Good, in some areas of the world, is carving off a girl's labia majora and pulling out her clitoris by the root, stitching the labia together, and leaving a tiny hole for urination and menstruation.  The husband is supposed to break open the scar tissue when he wants sex; the scarring is sewn shut to be broken open again upon childbirth, and then sewn shut yet again afterward to repeat the cycle. This is good. Stopping it is evil.

What can those words possibly mean beside something like that? To those people, in that place, in that time, that is good. That's one of the signs that a daughter is virtuous, and if she does not have that done to her, she cannot hope to marry well. The evil is in preventing the child from having the outward signs of virtuousness.

I find this practice disgusting. How can good mean anything at all if it means that? I can't imagine a world where that is considered good, and yet I live in it.

Good is not a useful word to me, and neither is evil. It's really in the eye of the beholder as to whether Hitler was evil; I think he was a person making the decisions he thought to be best. That doesn't mean I agree with or condone his decisions. In fact, given the chance, I'd happily murder him and anyone like him. But he was a person acting in the way that he felt best. I can respect that without respecting the actual decisions he made. I can also respect people like Mother Teresa. She, too, was making her decisions in the way that she felt best. I happen to agree with her more often than I agree with Hitler, but that does not impose a standard on her behavior outside the way I personally see it. It just means we agree on some things. Not even all things. I don't believe in monogamy. I don't believe in strictly heterosexual relationships. I don't believe in Christianity. I don't agree with them at all. By the same token, I do believe in the value of art, and the importance of family, and the need to inspire people to action. And those are all values of Hitler's.

How can those things be classified so simply into good and evil?

It's too complex. I can't bring myself to think that one of those people is good and the other is evil. One of them is someone I would kill, and the other is someone I would be kind to. But that implies a moral judgment of some sort, doesn't it? I have to have some basis for making that decision. I'm not going to pretend that I'm entirely free of the moral restrictions of this culture, but I happen to like a lot of the moral views, if not the beliefs and imperatives they seem to carry with them. I tend to believe, and it's perhaps the only aspect of Wicca I carried away when I left it, that harm is undesirable, and help is desirable. I can see this purely from putting myself in others' shoes. I would prefer to be helped, so I help. I would prefer not to be harmed, so I try to prevent harm. This is the criteria on which I base my judgment of myself, because I damn well said it was going to be.

But I really have no right to judge anyone else or hold them to my standard. I decided on it. They didn't. My morals apply to me alone.

Which, coming back to the point, brings me to villains. You can probably guess already that I don't see villains as any more or less evil than anyone else. I can't. They're not subject to my morals. You can probably guess, too, that despite that, there are rather a lot of villains I'd just plain choose to get rid of, because I disagreed with their actions and in my opinion, they weren't accomplishing anything but causing pain. They may not be subject to my morals, but they are subject to the actions I determine to be morally right for myself. Akio's not one of the ones I would get rid of. Why? Because he has enough qualities that I value to save him from that fate. He doesn't go on the death train with the rest of the people I don't like, because a) he's hot, b) he's intelligent, c) I could learn from him, and d) he's lazy/cowardly enough to limit himself to less harm than he could inflict. He doesn't get off easily, however, because I disagree with his views and he does end up doing more harm than good. It boils down to this: I like him, but he's on the line. It doesn't prevent me from enjoying watching him, but if I was to take in in a realistic sense, I would be close to offing someone like that, and the only thing holding me back would be how much he limited his capacity to do harm. I may not have the right to judge him morally, but I would feel the stirrings of a moral imperative to remove a source of harm to me and others.

In the sense that he's a fictional character, it's a moot point. He's fictional, and he's harming no one. I can feel free to enjoy the aspects of his character that I feel are desirable without having to consider whether the world would be better off without him. The same with any other fictional villain. I can admire them for the qualities I find worthy of admiration without feeling any moral imperative over them, because they're not real. There's no reason to be offended or disgusted by their behavior, because it didn't actually happen. I guess it's one thing to apply morals to a real-life situation and a completely different thing to apply them to fiction.

Hopefully this makes some sense... it's late, and I'm tired. I love arguing morality, though.

Personally I'm most in agreement with Yasha, here. I, personally have renounced good and evil from my ethical lexicon, as they can be used to mean so many things, often contradictory to each other. Also, I see no reason to believe that morals and ethics are anything more than human creations used to make human life functional. I have often gotten into debates because of this - many immediately state that because I think morals are relative, I'm supporting raping babies and other, most disgusting things my opponents can think of. That, ofcourse isn't true. As I have a fully functional sense of empathy, I'm capable of mirroring feelings of others - I couldn't be happy if everyone around me was miserable. I can imagine what the pain of others feels like and I don't like it, one bit. I base my ethics purely on this sense of empathy and I don't think there is a better guideline to my actions than that.

ShatteredMirror wrote:

I tend to think that morals shouldn't influence the creation of law in an already-stable society, but if nothing is either right or wrong, why have laws at all? It makes for interesting food for thought, as I don't have the answer.

Social rules exist to make a functional society where people can interact and live their lives without fear. Today these social rules are formalized as systems of laws that define acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in a society. However, another, just as important purpose for laws is to uphold a certain power-structure within the society and ensure that this power-structure can only change under a certain set of rules. Laws have no direct relationship with ethics, even though they are normally modelled after the ethical models of their creators. Ethics are very personal guidelines that can easily adapt to different situations, whereas the laws are rigid rules designed to uphold a certain order. Sometimes following your ethics can demand you to break the law or vice versa.

It is neccecary to have a set of rules, if you wish to live in a society - those ethical rules are tools of human interaction. My favourite metaphor on the matter, which I cooked up during a certain ethical debate is that you need hammers and nails to build a house - it's not absolutely neccecary to have a house or to live in it, but it makes life much more easier all around. Same way living in a society isn't completely neccecary, but almost everybody prefers it infinately to the other choice and in order to live in a society, we need social tools, the ethical rules. They aren't neccecarily formalized laws - they are a relatively new invention in their current form - but they must make it possible for people to interact without fear for each other.

And as for villains, they are so symphatetic because they tend to be so determined and strong and they dare to act against the social and ethical norms of their surroundings in order to make great and ambitious acheivements. We all have certainly wanted to do the same, at some point of our lives. The villains dare to rebel in order to create something new. All great heroes and innovators have done so, as well. The villains just tend to take even greater lenghts to acheive their ends.
For the same reason the villains who are doing the right thing under their social norms, like the witch-burners and nazis rarely get the same sympathy - they are conforming to their social order and enforcing others to do the same with maximum prejudice. That rarely appeals to people - except when they are personally doing the same.

Bah to the concepts of "good" and "evil"... it's all a matter of perspective.  I personally just find people who persevere for their goals sexier.  "Villains" typically think for themselves and break some sort of mold.  I'm all for the non-conformist.  Read Milton's "Paradise Lost" and just try to tell me you'd chose God over the Devil.

Last edited by Scortia (12-30-2006 08:56:49 PM)

Scortia wrote:

Bah to the concepts of "good" and "evil"... it's all a matter of perspective.  I personally just find people who persevere for their goals sexier.  "Villains" typically think for themselves and break some sort of mold.  I'm all for the non-conformist.  Read Milton's "Paradise Lost" and just try to tell me you'd chose God over the Devil.

This is it, for me. Actually I should have noted that and didn't bother to, my philosophy there is much like Yasha's. When I say 'good' and 'evil' I tend to treat the terms as plot devices in story; though fascinating in a book or series or whatever else, I don't think they're really applicable in day to day life. The psychological realism in SKU is what leads to the sour taste I get in my mouth whenever anyone in the series is labelled 'good' or 'evil'. Yes, that includes Akio.

One thing that I do notice that, now that I think of it, tends to drive my interest in villains, is that they're always the 'reasonable' character. A hero never has to explain their motives, and when they do, it often boils down to some dodgy rant about doing the right thing or being a good person, and ultimately they don't have to reason out their behavior in logical manner because no one questions it. 'I would die for a friend' 'Why?' 'It's the right thing to do.' 'Why?' 'uh...' Versus villains who often have to reasonably explain their motives to justify their behavior. Why is it always the depiction of Satan that does all the talking? That's something that draws me to villains. The need of a 'bad' person to justify or explain their behavior leads to them being able to reasonably justify horrible things while the hero can't justify stopping them. Akio spends episode 38 talking around Utena while she can hardly answer him without it being an emotional response. I love it.

As for Paradise Lost, I don't think it should count, because I'm quite sure Milton took every precaution to make God as miserably boring as possible.

Seriously, what the crap?

It's supposed to be a warning about how seductive the devil is. Fine, I get it. Consider me seduced. What, we're going to choose the OH CHORUS OF GOD SING HIS PRAISE HE'S PERFECT over an incredibly charismatic, smooth talking, scheming nasty nasty fallen angel? One of those is going to make for a pretty boring Saturday night.