[Salacia Deloresista]

I don't think it's at all petty to examine the bad guys. The heroes are extremely heroic, and that's why we love the story, but what makes the bad guy's tick, and why is that fascinating? That's a question worth a discussion thread.

Now granted, I don't root for the bad guys in LotR (at 4' 11" I sympathize a little too much with the hobbits) but I have to admit to a kind of fascination with them. One of the things that really struck me when I read LotR for the first time was how, unlike a lot of other fairy tales, the lines between "good" and "evil" are not quite as defined. The ring works by twisting the weaknesses and desires of each character and bending them to it's own will. The servants of Sauron are not some "other" which we can put in a box and call evil, but a vision of what we could become, a vision of fallen humanity. Sauron's servants are those creatures who simply gave up fighting with themselves and gave in to the lure of the ring.

We all know/knew people like that, especially in high school. That's the guy who got sick of constantly trying and failing and so gave up, became a stoner, dropped out of school and now flips burgers somewhere. Recognizing that evil is something we all have in us brings the orcs and goblins and other creatures a lot closer.

So those guys, the ones who root for the bad guys, they're not rooting for evil, they're rooting for themselves.