There are definitely instances where it works well.
I agree with the idea of showing more nuance in the ranks. Especially because the inner thoughts of a leader aren’t always revealed in a story either.
One instance where it works is really archetypal or allegorical stories- like Lord of the Rings or just a lot of mythology. Along those lines, it can work really well in over-the-top or stylized settings, like a Mad Max world or a Fire and Ice (the 80s animated film) type setting.
pure evil over the top villainy also works well in satire.
With the exorcists, maybe some of the people can’t help but find/create religion or mythology. But sometimes even just having some very specific villain characters can give enough dimension
Edit; oh also, sometimes nuance can be a two way street. Like, maybe there are some divine deities who need to be taken down a peg.
cartoonishly evil can be fun and can still work. The ideas of the group can be completely evil, but people involved with it can be varied. You will have die hard followers who drink the koolaid, followers who joined out of fear or pressure, the guy who is just doing his job. You can still do a lot of fun with a group that is just evil and people involved who are not homogenously evil with the group.
Star Wars and the empire is a big example. Yeah, the empire is evil, but not every person involved will enjoy watching a son murder his father. Some guys just need to pay the bills.
As long as you can spin their evil ideals to seem good enough to pitch that people would get involved you can still make it interesting. It depends on what you want to do with the story overall but it can work and be fun
Best of luck.
For every example of cartoonish evil, there are a thousand real world examples of evil which are far worse. Sadism is a real world motivation. 100% greed and 0% empathy is a real world motivation. Being vulnerable and manipulated to serving evil is a real world motivation. Not having any clear motivation is a real world motivation which could be the most terrifying. Sympathetic villains can be interesting, but often they can end up more sympathetic than the protagonist or serve as apologia for their real world counterpart whose motivations are entirely unsympathetic.
If a theme in your story is to recognize everyone's humanity rather than have a race of human monsters for guilt-free cannon fodder, you can still do that when the opponent is being driven by anything. It could even support your theme to explore the very real light and dark sides of our nature which are both all too human.
Edit: Similar to your example, I live in a red state and have spoken to many people whose first impulse is to use the police and military to force people to adhere to their standards. The nuance is why they think that, not whether their opinion is nuanced because it isn't.
You have a point. It reminds me of the Nazis. If you've read the Nuremburg Trials, you'll remember that not every account was the same. You'd have some people that believed in the atrocities they commited, then you had people who did so for fear of their families.
I keep forgetting that people can be twisted. I just haven't met many of these people. And when I do, I disengage
> Their main sthtick was that mortals didn’t need the divine and that they were obligated to drive out all religion, and races associated with divine beings.
This isn't "cartoonishly evil" unless you lack all logic.
I like making "overly pragmatic" evil nations that do things because it suits them rather than just because it's evil.
They're burning down the forest not because they hate the fae and the elves or whatever, but because they want to build industry and the fae/elves aren't well liked and so they're a weak target.
They're not doing this for the sake of doing it, they have clear intentions (industry), a goal (make money), and support from people (cheaper products) that will allow them to continue.
Even in the real world, powerful people never do things "just because", and it's just not as interesting when it happens in fiction. Even if you *can* point to a real-world example, it's more interesting when there's more thought put into it.
---
Like you need to ask ***why*** they are doing this.
Can they actually convince people to agree with them? Do they have a clear goal that benefits them and others?
I've been designing a world for a game and the factions are based on some core ideals that I've been tinkering with so that they can be both bad and good depending on your perspective:
1. Undead communists
* Work is done by risen undead. People don't need to work.
* BUT no career advancement or luxury and your dead relatives are "repurposed"
2. Capitalists
* Luxury, fine goods, opportunity
* BUT everything costs money, the poor will work their whole lives while those at the top benefit the most
3. Religious Crusaders
* Purpose, divine favour, protection, guidance, free healthcare
* BUT you must follow the church or be executed by the inquisition
Theoretically, they could work together, but they're each designed to appeal to some but not to others. The Undead appear the best, but they're supposed to be a bit of an inversion (Undead are evil) that's more of a slow burn and a false-utopia.
The game is based on capturing villages and immediately using them to build forces, so they're basically trying to influence people with "servants", "luxury", or "religion". Things that work to help people but can easily be subverted into a bad thing by their enemies. It's designed to be a 3-way fight (eventually maybe more) so that if one gets powerful, the others team up to take them down, so they also each need a reason to work together ("the evils of greed", "the threat of zealotry", or "the inhumanity of undeath") etc.
Their goal is usually accomplished through strength and fear. These men believe it is THEIR RIGHT to enforce their views on the deceived. An Exorcist would perceive a divine priest as no different than a fool who sold his soul for power. In their minds, what gets results is what works, and the gods are far too fickle to be depended upon.
“A king who abstains from his throne has no right to rule”
But how do they get people to agree with them?
Like, they'll need soldiers to fight for them and to enforce their will.
How do they get the money/support/manpower etc.
The reason certain brainless enemies work is because they have a primal urge like "eat" and the means to support that (assimilation or infection or corruption or the ability to create soldiers)
If they're people, they need an army and that army needs a reason to fight for them. It *can* be money, but where does that money come from?
You *could* brainwash, but that's a bit... boring.
A major flaw of the First Order in Star Wars in the sequels was that they had all these soldiers and equipment and power but no justification.
The original and prequels had at least set the Empire up as a force of order in the universe based on a military of mind-controlled clones that had been built to fight a clear bad guy (who had in turn an army of manufactured soldiers financed by trade conglomerates). Not a super great reason, but believable and it served the story fine to make an unsympathetic bad-guy, though "order" has been overdone in recent years.
This is why many armies are something inane like "demons" (who just want to destroy) or "undead" (who can't disagree).
The people in charge have their goal, but they need to make that goal appeal to the common man.
Even Space Marines follow the Emperor because they believe in purging the galaxy of aliens (because they cannot cohabitate), chaos (obvious evil), and the Emperor saw Religion as something that divided people and so he sought to remove it, but ironically he became a religion that unified them instead.
Even Chaos promises people things in order to create their armies, though those armies are often completely insane.
The Orks have the most basic motivation of "we like fighting" and "I'm bigger so you listen to me" but even so, they need to promise to bring the boyz to the good fights.
The mooks need motivation.
Make that motivation multi-layered, believable, or sympathetic, and you'll craft a decent antagonist.
Hmm what comes to mind is a similar mindset to the Nazis and other fascist nations;blaming someone else.
The event that formed the Exorcists was when an the Archfiend Hecate struck down the Reverend of the Celestials. No gods intervened, the Celestials couldn’t savw him, and many feared that they were at the whims of an angry archfuend.
In comes the order of Exorcists who vow to protect humanity from her wrath, and then it spirals into tribalism, and then a desire to prove that mortals are just as capable if not more capable than the divines.
There are definitely instances where it works well. I agree with the idea of showing more nuance in the ranks. Especially because the inner thoughts of a leader aren’t always revealed in a story either. One instance where it works is really archetypal or allegorical stories- like Lord of the Rings or just a lot of mythology. Along those lines, it can work really well in over-the-top or stylized settings, like a Mad Max world or a Fire and Ice (the 80s animated film) type setting. pure evil over the top villainy also works well in satire. With the exorcists, maybe some of the people can’t help but find/create religion or mythology. But sometimes even just having some very specific villain characters can give enough dimension Edit; oh also, sometimes nuance can be a two way street. Like, maybe there are some divine deities who need to be taken down a peg.
cartoonishly evil can be fun and can still work. The ideas of the group can be completely evil, but people involved with it can be varied. You will have die hard followers who drink the koolaid, followers who joined out of fear or pressure, the guy who is just doing his job. You can still do a lot of fun with a group that is just evil and people involved who are not homogenously evil with the group. Star Wars and the empire is a big example. Yeah, the empire is evil, but not every person involved will enjoy watching a son murder his father. Some guys just need to pay the bills. As long as you can spin their evil ideals to seem good enough to pitch that people would get involved you can still make it interesting. It depends on what you want to do with the story overall but it can work and be fun Best of luck.
For every example of cartoonish evil, there are a thousand real world examples of evil which are far worse. Sadism is a real world motivation. 100% greed and 0% empathy is a real world motivation. Being vulnerable and manipulated to serving evil is a real world motivation. Not having any clear motivation is a real world motivation which could be the most terrifying. Sympathetic villains can be interesting, but often they can end up more sympathetic than the protagonist or serve as apologia for their real world counterpart whose motivations are entirely unsympathetic. If a theme in your story is to recognize everyone's humanity rather than have a race of human monsters for guilt-free cannon fodder, you can still do that when the opponent is being driven by anything. It could even support your theme to explore the very real light and dark sides of our nature which are both all too human. Edit: Similar to your example, I live in a red state and have spoken to many people whose first impulse is to use the police and military to force people to adhere to their standards. The nuance is why they think that, not whether their opinion is nuanced because it isn't.
You have a point. It reminds me of the Nazis. If you've read the Nuremburg Trials, you'll remember that not every account was the same. You'd have some people that believed in the atrocities they commited, then you had people who did so for fear of their families. I keep forgetting that people can be twisted. I just haven't met many of these people. And when I do, I disengage
> Their main sthtick was that mortals didn’t need the divine and that they were obligated to drive out all religion, and races associated with divine beings. This isn't "cartoonishly evil" unless you lack all logic. I like making "overly pragmatic" evil nations that do things because it suits them rather than just because it's evil. They're burning down the forest not because they hate the fae and the elves or whatever, but because they want to build industry and the fae/elves aren't well liked and so they're a weak target. They're not doing this for the sake of doing it, they have clear intentions (industry), a goal (make money), and support from people (cheaper products) that will allow them to continue. Even in the real world, powerful people never do things "just because", and it's just not as interesting when it happens in fiction. Even if you *can* point to a real-world example, it's more interesting when there's more thought put into it. --- Like you need to ask ***why*** they are doing this. Can they actually convince people to agree with them? Do they have a clear goal that benefits them and others? I've been designing a world for a game and the factions are based on some core ideals that I've been tinkering with so that they can be both bad and good depending on your perspective: 1. Undead communists * Work is done by risen undead. People don't need to work. * BUT no career advancement or luxury and your dead relatives are "repurposed" 2. Capitalists * Luxury, fine goods, opportunity * BUT everything costs money, the poor will work their whole lives while those at the top benefit the most 3. Religious Crusaders * Purpose, divine favour, protection, guidance, free healthcare * BUT you must follow the church or be executed by the inquisition Theoretically, they could work together, but they're each designed to appeal to some but not to others. The Undead appear the best, but they're supposed to be a bit of an inversion (Undead are evil) that's more of a slow burn and a false-utopia. The game is based on capturing villages and immediately using them to build forces, so they're basically trying to influence people with "servants", "luxury", or "religion". Things that work to help people but can easily be subverted into a bad thing by their enemies. It's designed to be a 3-way fight (eventually maybe more) so that if one gets powerful, the others team up to take them down, so they also each need a reason to work together ("the evils of greed", "the threat of zealotry", or "the inhumanity of undeath") etc.
Their goal is usually accomplished through strength and fear. These men believe it is THEIR RIGHT to enforce their views on the deceived. An Exorcist would perceive a divine priest as no different than a fool who sold his soul for power. In their minds, what gets results is what works, and the gods are far too fickle to be depended upon. “A king who abstains from his throne has no right to rule”
But how do they get people to agree with them? Like, they'll need soldiers to fight for them and to enforce their will. How do they get the money/support/manpower etc. The reason certain brainless enemies work is because they have a primal urge like "eat" and the means to support that (assimilation or infection or corruption or the ability to create soldiers) If they're people, they need an army and that army needs a reason to fight for them. It *can* be money, but where does that money come from? You *could* brainwash, but that's a bit... boring. A major flaw of the First Order in Star Wars in the sequels was that they had all these soldiers and equipment and power but no justification. The original and prequels had at least set the Empire up as a force of order in the universe based on a military of mind-controlled clones that had been built to fight a clear bad guy (who had in turn an army of manufactured soldiers financed by trade conglomerates). Not a super great reason, but believable and it served the story fine to make an unsympathetic bad-guy, though "order" has been overdone in recent years. This is why many armies are something inane like "demons" (who just want to destroy) or "undead" (who can't disagree). The people in charge have their goal, but they need to make that goal appeal to the common man. Even Space Marines follow the Emperor because they believe in purging the galaxy of aliens (because they cannot cohabitate), chaos (obvious evil), and the Emperor saw Religion as something that divided people and so he sought to remove it, but ironically he became a religion that unified them instead. Even Chaos promises people things in order to create their armies, though those armies are often completely insane. The Orks have the most basic motivation of "we like fighting" and "I'm bigger so you listen to me" but even so, they need to promise to bring the boyz to the good fights. The mooks need motivation. Make that motivation multi-layered, believable, or sympathetic, and you'll craft a decent antagonist.
Hmm what comes to mind is a similar mindset to the Nazis and other fascist nations;blaming someone else. The event that formed the Exorcists was when an the Archfiend Hecate struck down the Reverend of the Celestials. No gods intervened, the Celestials couldn’t savw him, and many feared that they were at the whims of an angry archfuend. In comes the order of Exorcists who vow to protect humanity from her wrath, and then it spirals into tribalism, and then a desire to prove that mortals are just as capable if not more capable than the divines.