Are warm and fuzzy villains a good idea?

[fictualities]

So, how do like your villains? That is, how evil (or not evil) should they be to make for a good story? Do you prefer vast impersonal forces of doom (like the distant, unutterably alien forces in HP Lovecraft)? Or do you like your villains to be flawed, misguided creatures who have at least the potential for some kind of redemption, even if they

Comments

[fictualities]

I guess I also have a hard time conceiving of something utterly inhuman as evil, regardless of how destructive it is. And it seems as though humans begin personifying things when they react emotionally to them. (Hurricane Katrina, for instance, in Spike Lee's documentary - I'm thinking of an image of a symbolic jazz funeral for Katrina that was filmed.)

This is a great point, and I love your example too. We're geared to respond emotionally to each other. If something functions as an obstacle, but an inhuman obstacle (like the weather, like natural forces) it's harder to know HOW to respond to it. Certainly it's harder to tell a story about it. I mean, there are all kinds of disaster movies about impersonal forces like earthquakes, fires, volcanoes, etc. But those disaster movies work as narratives because of the human conflicts within them. There's an initial conflict about whether the disaster might possibly happen. Then there's a conflict about how to respond to the disaster. Then there are a whole bunch of sub-conflicts about people trying to escape the disaster -- almost always in groups that are arguing with each other for one reason or another.

All that works as a plot line. What doesn't work as a plot line? This:

1. La la la here I am writing this LJ comment, la la.

2. Oh, my god, is that a meteor?

3. SPLAT

[kameni]

You know, now I'm imagining a Bambi Meets Godzilla crossover with Teasel Meets Meteor.

[fictualities]

Oh, that would be SPLAT

[kameni]

I found it on YouTube. Bambi Meets Godzilla.

I think I'm going to watch it again.

At the end of a long week, the ultimate in inhuman SPLAT