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@ethryndal Ooh, this is going to be fun!!

Have to agree with you about that Bilbo scene in the LOTR…I think it’s like the creepiest scene in the whole movie. It scared the heebie-jeebies out of me the first time I saw it. 😨

I have different theories about what makes a villain scary, but I think the a big one is how relatable-or human-the villain is. I think sometimes we get this idea that villains are bad guys from the beginning…they were born bad. That’s just who they are. They don’t really choose to be bad…they’re more like machines, who are bad because that’s who they are. They are just bad through and through.

What’s really creepy though, is when you realize that bad people-murderers, terrorists, rapists, fill-in-the-blank-is that we actually share a lot in common with them. Take for instance people who worked under Hitler…they weren’t all these psychopaths thirsting for the blood of Jews, a lot of them were apart of the Holocaust because they did what they were told and because they were deceived into believing it was the right thing to do. In my opinion, it’s freaky to think that on Monday they were torturing and gassing Jews and on Tuesday they were at home playing with and loving their families. It’s easier for me just to imagine them as crazy psychopaths than to see them as (normal-ish) humans with families who lived and loved and laughed just like you and me.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is one of the big things that make villains creepy is their humanity (when they aren’t just evil machines trying to destroy humanity) and the realization that we ourselves could end up just like them.

Another thing that makes villains creepy, is their ability to turn falsehood into truth. Which makes sense considering that Satan, the worst villain of all, is called the “Great Deceiver”. Villains who know how to take darkness and make it appear as light are terrifying.

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END OF RANT. I feel like a lot of that may not have made sense because I was having a hard time putting into words the thoughts going around in my head, but hopefully it wasn’t too confusing. 🙃