The bad guys from war of the worlds had giant walking robots, cool power, ray guns, cool power,
and they waged war over a planet that was uninhabitable to them, illogical.
Just send one guy and see if he survives, don't commit your planet to a war footing
and then discover that you don't want what you are fighting for.
If they were so clever, they would have been the goodies
Plus,
'minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish.'
So nice of HG to leave us the plans for his unperishable mind before he died, and his mind perished.
We all perish, bad guys most of all.
Without baddies, who do you rake with satisfying minigun fire?
without baddies, how do you make your love interest glad to be with your inattentive lead?
*sings* without baddies, the world is cold and dark, harsh and stark.
send me baddies without end,
send me infidels to rend, and demon's lives to spend; in warfare... *end*
Give me characters so rank that no person who reads them will ever willingly act like them.
Give me bad guys like brakes on the narrative gocart,
suppressing the sickening rise of acid-house self satisfaction,
allowing quick turns and leaps and crashes without losing our central identity.
If no baddies, why thick people?
cut 'em out, reason is not so difficult, let 'em drop.
People too boring to write about? Don't put them in either, everyone is worth the same.
Everyone is as good as they can be and we are all trying so hard, aren't we?
No evil people, because you never meet allmightybastards in the workplace do you?
There are no justifiably hated people, we are all equal and fine.
Even writing crime there can be no baddies, the killer is explained in chapter 3,
he's as much a victim as anyone.
No problem that the writer had to think up the rationale,
but the evil crimes just leapt to mind unbidden.
Evil is what you fight every day not to do.
Much of it is not resisted, it happens.