Wednesday, April 16, 2025

This is the twenty-third installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. Currently the wind is blowing toward the topic of scarcity.

This is also the 100th article I’ve posted on Substack! Yay!

It seems obvious, but scarcity is the driving force for most conflicts. Children see a toy they don’t have, and believe they will never have it unless they take drastic actions now. Nations are governed by the same people who fought over toys as children, and who still want what they believe is theirs. This leads to insecurities, disagreements, and even wars.

It’s the same thing in fiction. Supervillians need money to finance their big and evil plans, and money is by its nature scarce. There are plenty of Dark Lords who want to conquer the world just to rule it or destroy it, but there are plenty more who dwell in fiery and barren wastes and who want the resources of the lush, peaceful kingdom next door. Most of the time the resolution is to vanquish or banish the threat, but every so often there is a story where the solution is to help the antagonists obtain the resources they want or need, and avoid vanquishment altogether. This is part of the recent movement to ultimately redeem villains instead of kill them as a way to resolve conflicts, which I am all for.

Provided the villains can be redeemed, of course. Elemental forces of darkness and chaos can’t be brought back to a peaceful path of kindness and goodness, so they can and should be destroyed. Pretty much everything else deserves to at least have redemption attempted, otherwise the heroes become much the same as the villains. If all they do is destroy, even in the name of good, how good can that really be?