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Little e or big E?

Daeldalus

Dreamer
Which do you prefer? to read? to write?
if you don't know my definitions are
Little e - Evil as found within the hearts of humans. Such as lust for power driving a man to murder.

Big E - Evil as an entity. Satan, Demons, other world creatures, ETC



I think that I prefer reading Big E but that may only be because of the fact that many epic fantasy books take that route.

Overwhelmingly I prefer to create stories involving Little e. I can actually only think of one that I made with Big E, it was fun but I just don't usually do it.

what about you guys? have any different/better definitions? thoughts?
 

Yellow

Minstrel
Well, I'd say I like stories dealing with both little evil and Big Evil, depending on how they are executed.
However I do think that a well executed Big Evil should cause smaller conflicts dealing with the evil in the human heart for at least some of the characters. After all, what would LotR be without Frodo's struggle with his own darker side, magnified by the Ring? Not to mention Boromir's or hell, Gollum, which is considered by some as one of the most interesting characters in the story. A Big Evil that doesn't make at least part of the cast doubt or twist their moral code wouldn't seem all that threatening to me, even if he's super duper powerfull combat wise. What's the use of being Supreme Overlord if you can't convert at least some to your cause?
 
In general, I don't write otherworldly antagonists as evil. I tend to write them as irrational or even incomprehensible--they're more like natural disasters than characters, so why pretend they have personalities when they obviously don't? If I write evil, it's evil that's in some way understandable.

Edit: I might as well note that I wrote an evil demon once, but I didn't really write him as big-E Evil--he was just a power-hungry idiot with a fondness for violence, no different from a gang leader in our world.
 
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A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
I don't like saying we have good guys or bad guys - we're not black hat/white hat writers. So, no matter how badass our antagonists get, they have personalities, they have pain, they even love, and sometimes they can find redemption. Same goes for our protagonists - we have some who think humans make lovely, crunchy treats. Redemption is a major theme in our series - some find it, some don't, some violently reject it. We also spend a lot of time questioning the nature of good and evil.

So, as for big-E or little-e - we see them as social constructs. Even Darth Vader, in the end, was only a man.
 

Daeldalus

Dreamer
I see what all of you are saying and actually thought about how my meaning could get misunderstood in such a fashion.

What my intention was which one you prefer as an overall theme. I see that there is no way to write a (good) Big Evil story without there being a number of smaller undercurrents that involve little evil(even within the Big Evil).
 
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