The Many Faces of Evil

Just by looking at the topic name, you can get what this post is going to be about. Yep, that's right, everyone's favourite topic on EVIL.

There are many different types of evil. There is the Sauron-rules-the-world evil, the I'm-gonna-subvert-you-to-the-dark-side evil and the holy-shit-i-forgot-to-bring-dips evil. In any case, I'm sure you'll agree with me that most things are truly and irrevocably evil. Especially the last one.

Something I've noticed is that the face of evil has changed subtly over the last few years. It is quite interesting to note how it has done so - and even more interesting to note that good has also changed in the same way, except in the opposite direction!

To make things a bit more clear, let's look at the Evolution of Evil!

1. Early Evil

Well, early evil is a bit hard to recognise. Much of evil was pretty much indisguishable from good except for the fact that it was...err...evil.

Evil was mainly represented by random monsters and demons and unholy things. Good was mainly represented by random monsters and angels and holy things. The problem was that angels looked pretty much like demons (come on, six hands, six feet and 3 sets of wings? that's a demon right there folks!), and you couldn't really tell evil monsters and good monsters apart: Leviathan vs. Behemoth = Whale vs. Hippopotamus.

Hmm...anyway, symbols for evil were no better. Early evil seemed to be a bit taken aback by the discovery of mathematics, or maybe some random necromancer failed his math test and decided to exact revenge on the world. In any case, evil liked to have nice shapes and numbers in its arsenal of symbols.

2. The Age of the Ugly, Fantastically Evil Dark Lords

The Age of Fantasy! The golden age for blond archers, rugged kings, beautiful princesses, noble thieves, corrupt advisors and fantastically evil dark lords. An incredibly bad time to be a villager or a peasant.

In this time and age, evil and good are completely different. You could tell very easily who was evil and who wasn't. Especially because evil suddenly change their favourite to black. Pretty much everyone wearing black was either evil or some so utterly and completely badass good guy that he deserved to be evil.

Evil was also pretty damn ugly in this age. Orcs, trolls, bats - you name it, evil had it...except that whatever it is you care to name, evil probably needed a plastic surgeon to make sure they didn't die just by looking at each other's ugly mugs. Even the final boss/dark lord who is unbelievably badass is ugly. Sauron - heh, he doesn't even have a freaking face.

3. The Age of the Handsome, Fantastically Evil Dark Lords

Well, well, well. We know move into the age of evil that looks good. The "Heck, are you guys we're even on the right side? Evil looks so much more ass-kicking" Age. Anyway, this is the Age of RPGs! The Golden Age of blond archers, rugged kings, beautiful princesses, noble thieves, corrupt advisors and fantastically evil handsome dark lords. It was still an incredibly bad time to be a villager. But it was an incredibly good time to be a Japanese dungeon level designer. Still is, actually.

Anyway, evil finally got smarter from the last age, and they've hired some plastic surgeons to come do a make up on their minions. Skeletons never looked so sexy! Vampires never looked to utterly badass. Assassins were never so cool. And Zombies...well, necrophilia got invented somewhere along the line, right? In any case, Dark Lords got a lot more good looking. Just ask Arthas - one of the more good-looking evil dark lords around.

Oh, but remember that before you get attached to a Dark Lord, you must remember never to beat him up too much. Especially since that once the Dark Lord transforms into his Final Boss Form, he goes all the way back to the Stone Age in terms of fashion. Either that, or he becomes this angelic thing that looks...well, good.

4. Evil is Beautiful! It's also everywhere.

WARNING. Once your infestation of evil gets to this point, you are quite screwed. Indeed, it is difficult for the good guys to even win a battle in this day and age. That is, if you actually find the good guys. Most of the time, the people you start backing tend to be evil that looks like good. Or at least some chaotic neutral guy.

Evil finally realises that there's something in this world called style. Damn, these guys are really good when they want to be. Vampires generally become young, teenage women who can't decide if they're evil or not. Zombies are generally out of existence, Orcs died out half a century ago and Skeletons went out of fashion when necromancers realised that familiars were cheaper, more powerful, and were generally pretty good-looking.

Good really takes a beating in this age before they actually get up to try and stop the bad guys. Blond archers are still in high demand, but real heroes generally have some deformity or other, such as having leprosy, having half their face blown off, or at least having their hand severed at the wrist. Good should expect to get betrayed at least five times during their journey towards salvation, and that's being optimistic. Good should also have a set of good legs, because they have to do a lot of running in this age. Fret not, though, because Good also generally gets a lot more badass - good vampires, good shadow angels, good skeletons and good-looking dark lords generally join the good guys in this age.

Evil really pwns in this age. Their spies are badass enough to make James Bond look like Ron Weasley, they have enough hidden cameras to make the NSA file a lawsuit for having more cameras than they do, their armies are large enough to make Mr. Hellbent feel jealous. Evil is also a lot more elegant. Rather than the demons, sharks, and dragons, evil is represented by more elegant animals. Like ravens or butterflies. Somehow this makes evil look a whole lot more evil.

In the last few ages, evil was just annoying. But in this age, evil is evil. As in, you wouldn't want to join them even at the end of the world kind of evil. Scary stuff.

Taking a step back, it really is interesting to note how evil has changed over the past century. Evil became smarter, cooler, sexier (go watch the movie Twilight and you'll know what I mean), and eventually a whole lot more tempting. Which is pretty true, considering that no one is born evil. Evil pretty much has to evangelize everyone - and hell, they're doing a good job. They're doing such a good job that some evil people don't realise they're evil - they think that they're actually doing good!

But that's a post for another time. Shit, how come my posts are so long.