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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6462836" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes.  I'm addressing in a round about way some definitions like 'demon' and 'dark' before I'd even begin to answer the question.   If I don't do that first, and if we can't agree to the definitions, there isn't much point in giving an answer.I'm not going to quibble much, while I'd prefer a little more nuanced take, because I don't really need to for these purposes.  Yes.  They can be happy because they are not wholly ruined yet.  Although again, on the level of nuance, if your description of sociopaths was in fact true, many of them would not want to be caught or would not commit suicide.  Mass murders almost invariably commit suicide afterwards.  Killing was their last chance at happiness, and it failed them.  The happy serial killer has a certain level of romanticization of sociopathy to it and occurs in a far higher percentage of fictional representations of sociopathy than in reality.  Or more simply put, the recognizably insane are usually not themselves very happy people.  Most live lives of joyless terror haunted by irrational fears and anxiety.  Many have severely damaged pleasure centers which render them virtually incapable of having happy feelings, so that the act of killing remains one of the few ways that they can still tickle the lizard brain enough to get a cocaine like jolt of pleasure.  Typically, our stories about serial killers make it seem far cooler than it actually is.  How about we don't?  I dislike using Nazis as short hand for non-subjective and consensus evil between members of different cultural subgroups, not because I don't find Nazism vile but because I find it impoverishing of the vocabulary and imagination to do so.  In particular, in discussing something as broad as 'Nazis', we probably ought to ask a question like, "Which one?  There were 10's of millions of Nazis."  From those, we could find examples of evil working in every sort of way, and among all sorts of different types of people with different experiences.  But again, I don't have to object to your claim that the Nazis were pursuing good ends and that many of them enjoyed what they did, even in some cases the most abominable sorts of things that they did.  However, nothing good I think can come from exploring this question through Nazism.  Ironically, we are far more likely to find people turning off their brain at the mention of Nazi than they are the word demon.The point is, with something like a person, you'll never quite get a perfect representation of evil.  Truly terrible and horrible evil, yes - I'd argue more horrible than any of the suggestions of this thread - but not quite absolute unadulterated evil.   So far most suggestions regarding demons amount to, "Make them cool, powerful, smiling, happy, joking sorts of human villains."   Not to put to blunt a point on it, but most suggestions are really answers to the question, "How would you make demons really sexy?"  I grant you that is dark, but it requires backing out to the meta-scene.  For example, a slasher movie isn't scary or disturbing.  The audience watching the slasher movie is scary and disturbing.  Our imaginations are capable of taking us to even darker lands.  But the slasher movie itself isn't the vehicle that can take us there, which is why Morrus isn't actually putting his head around how to make his monsters darker.</blockquote>

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