META: The problem of "Good vs. Evil"

[Martin Phipps]

On Feb 19, 1:13 pm, Lalo Martins <lalo.mart... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also spracht Tom Russell (Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:29:49 +0000):
>
> > On Feb 18, 12:38 pm, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> One strong point that needs to be made them is that creating a universe
> >> with an evil LNH does not do away with the need to explore why the evil
> >> LNHers behave in an evil manner.  It's almost scary, in
>
> > Yes and no; if Lalo was simply using the trope, such as the way he uses
> > the Living God trope, I'd expect there to be more exploration of the
> > concept and be disappointed by its absence.  But here he's clearly
> > making fun of the trope and so I think the use of parody exempts him
> > from this burden.  They're evil in a "campy" way, as it were.
>
> Why thanks, I was beginning to fear I failed to make that point :-)
>
> The Evilverse should not be construed as a study in ethics, or a metaphor
> for Nazi Germany, or whatever-have-you; it's a satire of DC's current
> multiverse and, more than that, it's... hmm... The Addams Family in
> planetary scale?

Well, okay, but the Addams Family didn't think of themselves as evil.
They thought of themselves as good.  Getting back to the Looniverse
for a moment, notice that Dorfs do not think of themselves as rude and
would probably be more offended by a compliment than an insult.  A
real world analogy would be ancient Sparta where the way a man
expresses his love for his son would be to constantly beat him until
he learned to be more aggressive.  (And, no, I'm not basing this
solely on having seen 300: that was presumably what life was like for
young boys in Sparta.)  A more modern analogy would be in the world of
professional boxing where "good" is defined as "having the ability to
knock your opponent to the mat".

Martin