Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 3752432" data-attributes="member: 1757">In this case, wikipedia is doing you wrong if you've come to the conclusion that Elric is &quot;good&quot; by any stretch of the imagination. He is strongly motivated by eldritch passions and selfish desires (curiosity, revenge, etc.) rather than any desire to do good. He dooms friends, lovers, and allies to die, in many cases for his own selfish purposes (witness the invasion of Melnibone that he &quot;commands&quot;).Elric doesn't appear to develop any hatred for the Lords of Law, actually; they tend to get a good rap from him. &quot;Hell&quot; doesn't mean the same thing in Moorcock's cosmology as in, say, the Christian; he's using the idea of Hell as a jumping-off point for the alien or feared. That said, Arioch is presented as just flat-out evil; I always felt that Moorcock really dropped the ball in consistently showing only the &quot;bad sides&quot; of Chaos, since he made it an enemy in every single one(?) of his Eternal Champion books.Chaos-forged, yes. Defined as &quot;evil&quot; separately from its origins: Yes.Not so.&nbsp; Actually no. It's more a Nietzschean rejection of &quot;divine influence&quot; as a damning cycle of behavior than a good-vs.-evil thing. Moreover, Elric never turns against the Lords of Law. Interestingly enough, the Chronicles of Corum end up this way as well, with the influence of both Law and Chaos banished from the world.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="ruleslawyer, post: 3752432, member: 1757"] In this case, wikipedia is doing you wrong if you've come to the conclusion that Elric is "good" by any stretch of the imagination. He is strongly motivated by eldritch passions and selfish desires (curiosity, revenge, etc.) rather than any desire to do good. He dooms friends, lovers, and allies to die, in many cases for his own selfish purposes (witness the invasion of Melnibone that he "commands"). Elric doesn't appear to develop any hatred for the Lords of Law, actually; they tend to get a good rap from him. "Hell" doesn't mean the same thing in Moorcock's cosmology as in, say, the Christian; he's using the idea of Hell as a jumping-off point for the alien or feared. That said, Arioch is presented as just flat-out evil; I always felt that Moorcock really dropped the ball in consistently showing only the "bad sides" of Chaos, since he made it an enemy in every single one(?) of his Eternal Champion books. Chaos-forged, yes. Defined as "evil" separately from its origins: Yes. Not so. Actually no. It's more a Nietzschean rejection of "divine influence" as a damning cycle of behavior than a good-vs.-evil thing. Moreover, Elric never turns against the Lords of Law. Interestingly enough, the Chronicles of Corum end up this way as well, with the influence of both Law and Chaos banished from the world. [/QUOTE]

Verification