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Originally Posted by Raynor
There is nothing wrong with recognising that evil characters pose greater challenges in stories, and greater challenges in stories make them more interesting. However, such a recognition is not in itself an equivalent for justification of delighting in evil.
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I think one has to make a distinction between liking, being amused by or being intrigued by an evil character and delighting in evil. Personally, I have observed that it is often the evil characters in stories that have the most interesting past, the writer has to decide what made them evil and why. In Tolkien's work one does grow curious about why characters fell into evil, like Saruman, for example, if he just became evil and no explanation was given, wouldn't you want to know what the reason was? Is this curiosity to know the reasons a delight in evil? I do not think so.
Also, more often than not, many amusing quotable quotes come from the evil characters.
One of my favorite scenes is the confrontation between Gandalf, Theoden and the rest with Saruman. Mainly because a lot of the things Saruman says make me laugh, especially since it sometimes seems that he over-reacts. "LATER? LATER? Yes, when you have the keys of Barad-Dur itself..."
Granted, many of the good characters have good quotes to, so there is a good balance.