How would an Evil Overlord ^tm work in such a world where he (or she) is Genre Savvy and almost always abides by all the The Evil Overlord Lists? In studying these for my NaNo (in which I plan to have such a character), I have come to the conclusion that such an overlord would not be completely and utterly Evil, but varying from ruthless to likable. How would such a character fit into a preconceived notion of a fantasy world?

I suppose that in a more realistic setting, this sort of applies, but I’m definitely going for a more comedic villainy…

How would that work?

I have read Watchmen, the overlord is incredibly genre savvy.

I suppose I just need to balance that likable aspect with evil.

I never watched it much but WiseWillow’s idea sounds a lot like the episodes I saw of Invader Zim. (except intellect was swapped)

Aw, but if he wants to be overthrown, it isn’t as funny when he looks dead at the camera and says “I kill off all the Luke Skywalkers, all the Harry Potters, all those James Bonds- and THIS moron beats me?”

“Oh well. “

Dies gracefully

Ohh… and I’ve never seen Invader Zim, so….

Ha. Sounds fun. But I like this Ultimate Neil Patrick Harris better :)

It’s hard to write a klutzy person who messes everything up without them being annoying. ‘Oh, I’m so clumsy and uncoordinated!’

Or worse, Jar Jar Binks.

Just pointing it out.

I hate “evil” and “good” at this point because so few authors really seem to know how to separate what that means by actual story action. Evil ends up meaning dumb and good means dumb, but likable. Blah.

Moral ambiguity is fun. I mean, when it comes down to it, your standard story almost has to have a “good” side and an “evil” side, but unless you’re doing high fantasy, you can muddy the waters as much as you like to make it more interesting.

(not to say that in high fantasy, all the characters are either Good or Evil. But there’s a definite Good side and a definite Evil side. Gollum in LotR is an ambiguous character, for example, but you can’t deny that there is Good [elves, Gondor, Rohan, Shire, etc.] and Evil [Sauron, Orcs, Mordor in general, Saruman, etc.].)

I think it helps to spread things around. In my story, there’s really not a central villain(yet) but there are a number of nasty people and “evil” factions, one of which is actually protecting the protagonists(who are mostly unaware) because it serves their interests. Most of the “good” guys are still criminals and outlaws, and most of the ruling class(samurai) is corrupt even while being mostly law-abiding.

There are a few characters who are mostly untarnished good, but for most of them it’s a consequence of being naive or inexperienced. For instance, after the female lead comes to power in the end of the one I’m on, she’s going to become steadily more autocratic in order to make reforms she considers necessary, and it’s my intention to leave judgment of that shift to the reader.

I read somewhere that Tolkien was himself bothered at how black and white LotR seemed at points, specifically with the orcs. I think he ended up handwaving it by saying that the good orcs were elsewhere, since they wouldn’t have fought for Sauron. There was some ambiguity besides Gollum though, depending on how you read guys like Denethor, and IIRC one of the fellowship(I forget who) felt sorry for the Southrons working for Sauron and wondered how they ended up there, instead of condemning them for being evil assholes.

Me too! highfive

Faramir was my favorite character. I was so incredibly pissed when they changed him in the movie. D:<

So, Evil Overlords. I have several in my current story, and I loves them all, I do. X3 They’re just so much fun. Then again, my two most favorite are extremely genre-savvy, so that makes things even more fun. The thing is, even though there is a clear distinction between Good and Evil, I have an in-universe explanation for it, and one of the plots of my current story is actually about the distinction between the two being slowly broken down. That makes things even more fun.

But yeah, most of my Evil Overlords are quite likeable, except where they are not very fleshed out because they are not all that important to the plot/if I fleshed them out, the monstrosity that is my book would never cease expanding. A number of them are either not evil for a value of Evil, else unabashedly so (for various reasons). I like variety. XD

I have a young queen who, when placed in power, everybody assumes she’s just a pawn, and there are numerous plots to depose her and have a republic. A rogue militant group called the Queen’s Supporters (imaginative, I know) springs up to protect her and to eliminate every trace of opposition.

However, in actuality, she’s really very in control of the government and what’s going on, and she’s behind the Queen’s Supporters, because they can work without seeming to be from the government (or, you know, the queen herself, anyway. Everyone thinks they’re set up by the government ministers to keep their pawn in place). She gave the orders to have my MC’s parents killed because they were an active part of the republicans. She’s very cool (cold, not awesome), and Chrestomanci-type-vague. She’s very shrewd, but can sometimes dismiss what she thinks of as ‘the little people’.

But she’s like Galbatorix in a way. She wants power, and she’s ruthless in getting and maintaining it, including stooping to blackmail people into doing what she wants, but she hasn’t actually done anything like raise taxes or demand impossible things from her nobles. I don’t necessarily have to have her deposed in the end, because that’s not the issue of the book.

...what’s my explanation for the way she is? (this is so bad of me) Do I need to give her some evilness like wanting to conquer other countries or something, for no reason other than that she wants more power? I could deal with that in later books… (I’m not currently planning a sequel, but I’m open…)

I try not to have the good or evil thing, if you think about it there pretty much is no “Good” or “Evil”. It depends more on the PoV.

Y’know, if I was an evil overlord, I would be the nice kind.
“But master, I cannot possibly torture those souls on Monday, I have my nephew’s birthday!”
“Oh alright, Beelzebub. I’ll take over for you on that day… but let it never happen again.”

What I mean is like if country A attacked country B, both sides would probably think of themselves as “Good”, and the other “Evil”.

Well… yeah, everyone thinks of themselves as “good”. (hmmm… didn’t we go over this before?) but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an objective standard or third party that can stand back and say: ‘this side is doing good, this side isn’t. Or both sides are wrong.

I read somewhere that Tolkien was himself bothered at how black and white LotR seemed at points, specifically with the orcs. I think he ended up handwaving it by saying that the good orcs were elsewhere, since they wouldn’t have fought for Sauron.

Well the orcs were corrupted elves. In fact, throughout LotR, every “evil” race was in fact the corrupted version of an original “good” race.

IIRC one of the fellowship(I forget who) felt sorry for the Southrons working for Sauron and wondered how they ended up there, instead of condemning them for being evil assholes.

That was Sam.

http://www.sff.net/paradise/overlord.html#bad_lead

This was useful. It was also interesting to note that my female evil person is somewhat genre-savvy.

I’m beginning to nut out her character. I’m not sure the ‘simply staying alive’ thing will work, sorry, K. It could render her sympathetic to the reader.

I’m slightly worried about my female evil person. Her start of darkness was really tragic (and ironic), and I don’t want to fall into either extreme. Extreme 1: She is a completely flat evil person, like Galbatorix. She is evil for the sake of being evil. Extreme 2: She turns into an Ensemble Darkhorse/Draco in Leather Pants, because she is a more sympathetic character than the heroes.

Oh, the trials of making a perfect villain…

@ Kyllorac:

That was kind of the point. XD

Lol, she can’t be sympathetic to the reader. She’s not sympathetic to anybody else.

I think maybe the main reason she’s not heavy-handedly evil to her populace is that she doesn’t want to sow extreme discord. She’s genre-savvy. I take pride in that.

@ swennie: Yeah, I think she does desire power as her goal. But she’s not mad.

Well, you don’t have to be crazy to take over the world. Opinions differ on whether Hitler was crazy or not, but I’ve never thought he was- just extremely, extremely twisted. And remember that no evil person thinks of themselves as evil. They think of themselves as “working for the greater good” or “protecting a group” or “making the world a better place”, even if their underlying motive is that they just want power. So maybe make her think everyone else is incompetent and she’s the only option for protecting the people, etc.

Like Hitler- he came to power because everyone in Germany felt like they were under attack from everyone else, so they “needed” a strong leader to rescue them. Your villainess may feel the same way- that she’s the strong leader the people need, etc. etc. Does the populace like her or not, by the way? Not just other political figures, but the actual common person.

Do Physical Gods count in any of this, or just the stock cartoony overlords?

Steph,
Have you read any of the Discworld series? Your character reminds me of The Patrician/Havelock Vetinari – and nobody could say that he’s just a basic evil overlord.

@ProsperinaFC:
Sauron never ruled the world, he was an evil presence who didn’t let his intentions show until he invaded the neighboring nations, so wouldn’t have “ruled” for several thousand years.

No, seriously, she HAS to be evil. Maybe I’ll raise taxes or something. No, wait. They want a revolution, but it doesn’t follow that she has to be evil. She did order a lot of people’s deaths though. But they were planning to revolt against her, so…

It could just be competing interests.

I’d say also look at culture destruction. That was usually the biggest complaint about invaders was that they outlawed the natives’ “way of doing things” as a measure to break the captive population’s will. (an example would be in Braveheart when they talk about bagpipes being banned – or for real life example, Jews wearing the yellow star before the holocaust)

Oppression is usually not so much about being unable to do something, but about being unable to do it my way.

Lol. The thing is, my protag has to start opposing the queen for motives of personal revenge, but giving it out that she’s doing it because. Then she has to get over the revenge thing and truly mean the right things.

Of course, the whole point becomes moot anyway when she finds out that the queen WAS an usurper after all and she’s the rightful heir to the throne, but we must keep up appearances, musn’t we?

(anybody know how to spell ‘mustn’t’?)

I only just discovered that last night, coughcough.

hmmmm heres some nice evil lord laughter (maniac style) to sink your teeth into
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvh3j3WrMIY

And I have to admit thats some beautifully freaky laughter
As to why i watched the video

I see lawzard works at the repetitive redundancy department of organization.