2:51 There’s a Wikipedia page about this called “Tolkien’s moral dilemma”. He felt it was wrong to have them all be evil because they were sapient and would have souls, thus making them being all evil was contradictory to his Christian reliefs. So, he made them corrupted elves, giving them a reason to be all evil while having souls.
I think this is generally a good way to look at things but sadly too optimistic. Sometimes, people are just evil. A lot of times it's due to factors in their childhood but other times it's just something literally wrong in their head. Help can save them from being criminals but not all the time.
@@upg5147isn't this falling under corruption though? It's not like they were born evil. Like you said, childhood events and issues in mental faculties play a hand, but without those how do you just evil?
@@NeoPokebonz I think it's falling for corruption when it's external factors but if it's just neurological, then that's literally the way you were born and you will be considered "different" by social for lack of empathy and such which is a slippery slope to where they become evil. Some are just awkward people who don't get emotions and that's it but others never even understood what we consider morals or ethics and thus are "pure evil".
@@fraktaalimuoto I literally said they can be helped often but sometimes it's just not possible. Something is wrong in the brain, it's unfixable. That's a fact.
I think "pure evil" antagonists are usually those that act in a machine-like manner, because there are no moral considerations on their part, the objective is all that matters, which makes them largely inhuman to humans: the agents in the Matrix. the machines in the Terminator movies, the Borg in Star Trek, and zombies. For the most part, they can be just as exciting antagonists as any. How the story is executed in film or in fiction writing is what determines if they are boring or not.
Basically this. While the story gains a few things by having this machine-like manner, it kinda loses the moral deliberation of thinking beings. On the flip side having a character "Choose" evil gives you something else. For me it comes down to if the species has an independent mind. Because if they do, then it is possible for them to be different, and so in that case "Literally all of them are evil" is lazy to me. Even in the Matrix the main villain is an agent that goes rogue, showing us this "agency" (as well as good programs).
@@ODXT I think it's just different types of stories. For example, zombies don't have any moral deliberation. They're kinda like a tidal wave. Their main function is just to eat whatever is in their path. But in my view these types of antagonists excel in two things (at least, that I can think of: a) raise the pressure and stakes very high for the protagonists because they're usually relentless. b) and through this pressure, it reveals the true characters of the protagonists. How do they react under pressure? How do they treat each other under pressure? What existential, philosophical dialogues the protagonists have with each other due to this force that just keeps coming at them? How do they problem solve? I think what makes these antagonists boring or not is simply due to the skill of the writer. How well the writer places these antagonists in the story (and when). and how well they can craft scenarios that either create rising pressure (or fail to) for the protagonists. In the movie I Am Legend, the vampire/zombies were just this force that came after humans, but what made the story interesting was novelty of the situation and how the protagonist reacted when the zombies showed up. And again, it's also how well the writer can craft novel, high-stakes scenarios (like the protagonist's German shepherd barking at the charging mutant dogs instead of going back into the truck, while protagonist is on the ground with an injured leg trying to drag themselves back into their vehicle.). There's an episode of Twilight Zone where a man suddenly finds himself alone in a town where he can't find anyone. The antagonist is the scenario itself. It's not even an entity that one can reason with or talk to, but what made it fascinating was to see how the character dealt with it. These are just different types of stories, and any of them can be written well or written poorly. Not every story needs a three-dimensional antagonist to be fascinating. It just comes down to taste and preference really.
Moral considerations are overrated. Adding internal conflict to your character/race does not make them "well-written", stop the cope. This modern idea of needing a "moral justification" for evil has lead to the watering down of everything within villainy. It's why we only get tragic crybabies instead of real villains now. Evil justifies itself; and it does so through power, strength & selfish desires. That's it, that's all.
My big "Always Evil" race issue is when it's clear that such a race would be rendered extinct long ago either from their hyper-aggressive self-destructive nature or from their cartoonishly evil society that doesn't stand up to the barest scrutiny... but that doesn't matter if they need to exists for pure meta-reasons. You get ideas like an Evil God backing them and/or they out-breed their losses, so you'll never, ever, ever be rid of them. On the one hand that can be an interesting narrative concept for your character to deal with, but it's often just something writers need to contrive because the status quo is king.
This. This is especially the case with chaotic evil races. At least with neutral evil and lawful evil races, they can and will cooperate with each other to achieve common goals while chaotic evil doesn’t because cooperation is antithetical to chaos.
They don't have to be hyper-aggressive, they just have to be viscid manipulators, which lets them quite easily hack social structures. There's a phenomenon known as "social parasitism", in which all eusocial insect species are observed to have a parasitic subspecies: ants, bees and even termites. For these parasites, the most optimal defense mechanism is very simple: don't be identified, should the host become cognizant they would be purged entirely. Wood ants have a peculiar behavior, in which a singular nest can have several queens, even "adopting" new ones, resulting in a multigenerational society which may reproduce through budding; where a bunch of queens take their workers to build a new nest, causing expansion. Now, since the adoption happens within the common wood ant species, there is no reproduction barrier nor genetic isolation. However, when this adoption happens with a colony of sister species outside the wood ant gene pool, that is parasitism. From that "adoption" behavior, it is a very small step, and very beneficial, for the parasite queen to develop host queen killing behaviors (when the host queen is not of their own species), as she can then monopolize the workforce for her sole benefit. Something that's also interesting, the the mechanism of parasitic degradation, in which the parasite species lose the ability directly compete with any creature that did not take the path of parasitism, and gradually incurs mutational load each generation, as they have transitioned into a host-as-environment paradigm rather than an environment-as-environment mode. This is due to the two main catalysts for parasitic lifestyles for a species: A small gene pool (leading to bottlenecking) and An example how this could happen in a fantasy world? Complex, organized societies require a very large degree of agreeability within its members, some thing which can be subtly and ruthlessly manipulated should there be an "in". With that being said, the evil race that employs this strategy will have to be very active in its efforts, they will need to constantly communicate in a way that continues to convince the host race/society that they are part of the ingroup. In fact, inquiline parasitic ants constantly send out "propaganda pheromones" which trick the host ants that they do belong. The social parasite will inevitably have to create a mechanism that serves to deny the existence of social parasitism, or that anyone is engaging in it.
This is really dumb. What about races that continuously come into existence via spontaneous generation, like demons in 40k? What about races that will have their souls devoured by an evil god if they don't enjoy committing evil acts, and therefore build up an infrastructure to maintain constant evil, like the Dark Eldar from 40k? What about races that can't be killed easily like Viltrumites from Invincible? What about evil races that are currently on their way to becoming extinct because their nature makes them inimical to humans, and so they're being exterminated, like the demons from Frieren? What about races that are not going full-max evil at all times, and so get away with it because there isn't a will for others to exterminate them, like mosquitos or goblins from Goblin Slayer? This is such an unimaginative stance, there are so many reasons why this would not apply in so many situations.
@@theloweffortchannel7211 Orkz must fight and die in order to release spores, daemons of the warp are spontaneously generated through negative human emotions, Viltrumites are really really hard to kill. There are countless other reasons - why do some people find this confusing?
A society which embraces socially darwinistic practices such as the Drow would have no problem sustaining themselves, though; if anything they would eventually outcompete external polities as a result of greater selection pressure. The only fundamental problem of the Drow is their lack of regimented hierarchy & concrete foundations; their society is a little too anarchic & loosely-knit. But this is an issue of societal structure, not civic morality. Also, aggression=/=self-destruction. One could easily state that a hyper-aggressive race would probably be the best race at achieving goals & generally attaining things of desire; if done correctly they would likely have higher deathrates than other races as a result of increased conflict, but would also likely be more advanced & lethal in terms of weaponry (conflict-driven innovation). Selection pressure would mean each individual member of said race would likely be more capable than an individual member of any other race as well, both mentally & physically; at least with regards to the competitive arenas of life (IE. they may not be good scientists or have much in way of artistry, but they can lead Fortune 500 Companies & run a 40-YD Dash in less than 4 minutes.) Additionally, such a race would likely display a high tendency towards tactical brilliance (though this would probably coincide with decreased strategic acumen). Pure Evil races will thrive as long as they have even a tad bit more complexity than the average, run of the mill Orcs.
One thing people also seem to forget in fantasy is that literal gods exist. As in beings of incomprehensible power that can influence existence itself around them and even create beings for their benefit. With Forgotten Realms being brought up; the dragons are quite literally the product of two gods; Tiamat and Bahamut, the former being the god of the evil aligned chromatic dragons and the latter the god of the good aligned metallic dragons. Tiamat and Bahamut themselves in some legends are the two halves of Io, one being the superego the other the id of Io. Or gods like Lolth or Gruumsh who had a direct influence in the creation of drow and orcs, and these two gods are very much personifications of evil; Lolth being that or ego and spite and Gruumsh unfettered rage. Let alone all the other gods who are manifestations or embodiments of something, like Bane being the embodiment of the notion of tyranny, Bhaal the very act of killing and Myrkul being one of many embodiments on the perception of death. This very much comes from Tolkien as the orcs, balrogs among other creatures are tied directly to Melkor, who very much is the embodiment of the very concept of evil in the Legendarium.
I feel like the best "Evil Race TM" would be the Skeksis from the Dark Crystal. They're evil, but it because they are they are only half of one being, literally lacking empathy, shame, and guilt, driven by the very understandable fear of death.
If the Dark Eldar from 40k don't constantly commit (and enjoy committing) evil acts, then Slaanesh will literally eat their souls. You don't run into good Dark Eldar because 'good Dark Eldar' is an oxymoron. If one ever existed, it would immediately stop existing.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 I mean, Deldar aren't intrinsically evil. They have to indoctrinate their children into this mindset, who are usually not pleased with what they're witnessing until it's finally drilled into their skulls. I think there's a story of a deldar caregiver teaching their child how to torture people, as well as desensitize the child to their shenanigans, and all the while the child is mortified and begging them to stop.
Not to mention that some curses can develop motivations as to why they commit such evils, so they might not be doing something evil like Hanami wanting to purge humanity to save the earth, it is evil because there's a large loss of life, but to Hanami, it's a fight for survival as she was made from the earth's will (I believe, fact-check this if I'm wrong.)
I personally find evil as a race not only boring for a story but also representative of a boring worldview. Too easily mapped onto old views of seeing people of a race or ancestry as evil. Perhaps that ruins a lot of stories that I can still enjoy. I personally see evil as a do, not a thing. Someone could do evil it is not an inherent part of a person, just things like being racist or sexist. And I always interested in stories involving people who might be discriminated based on a reputation that made be made of their group, whether earned or not. I like an evil race at most coming from a culture, and something that can be overcome through understanding and empathy. And something that might be evil would be wholy artificial, like a machine, like a weapon. Not something that looks like a person, that thinks, that can speak.
@@Serocco Well, even before the Prometheus movies there was thought that Xenomorphs were biologically engineered so the act of creating them would be questionable. But a single xenomorph mostly goes by instinct, like an insect that lays its eggs in prey, they are not really people thinkers, as much as I liked playing one in the AvP game. The demons in Frieren were honestly one of the few things that made me uncomfortable in it. I understand the show wanted to set them as an unfeeling monster that we should feel happy about her being right about. I might think it be some allegory with neurodivergance or people with personality disorders, but both Frieren and Fern don't exactly come across as neurotypical, and some of mages look like they have personality disorders without the same kind of framing. I understand why some might go with that kind of unfeeling monster despite looks, but it is not something I am super into, maybe unless we find that someone designs the demons to be killers with a human like appearance.
I don't. I'm a monster lover and the very idea of pure evil races removes agency from the race in question and just makes them 1 not fudder instead of people that just so happen to be evil. I series Dandadan explores the inherit problem with that world view.
There's one demon in Frieren who is _almost_ good - he still doesn't understand human emotions on any intuitive level, but he's so intelligent and he's tried so hard that he's come up with a semi-accurate framework of what motivates humans. Using this framework lets him get along with the humans in a particular city, but only to a point. It's still purely rational, and if something deviates from his framework, his only recourse is to kill it, which he has no compunctions about. He talks about how he doesn't understand what words like 'malice' mean, and since his framework is based on rationality, when humans behave in irrational ways (or ways that he perceives as irrational) he just can't figure it out. Also, he killed a bunch of people in the past and has the second strongest magic after the Demon King, so when Frieren runs into him, she doesn't stand around asking questions or philosophizing about it.
Before watching the video. No, I think a good cackling, damsel train track tying villain can be a lot of fun. It all depends on what type of story is being told. They can also have some sort of reasoning to be evil while still being pure evil. Look at Jack Horner from Puss and Boots, the man says he's upset that someone was more popular than him when he was young and that caused him to be this way but he was still rich and successful and his parents didn't seem evil or cruel, he's just that kind of monster.
One important thing about pure evil villains though is that they do need some kind of logic or reason, I mean even sundowner from metal gear rising the guy who proudly proclaims to be a warmonger and mocks the concept of war crimes and code of conduct has a reason to be doing what he does, sure his reason boils down to war is good actually but it does mean his actions aren't random, it provides a consistent thought process behind the actions they take as otherwise they can start to feel more like a plot device then a character, otherwise they need to be very threatening, a pure evil force of destruction that isn't entertaining and has no reason for what they are doing only works if they are presented as a terrifying force to be feared in the story, if the ancient evil isn't threatening they become boring, basically even a seemingly simple trope like a pure evil villain still has some things you need to look out for to make them succeed
@@pandabanaan9208 That's what I said with the Jack Horner reasoning. It's no reason at all but enough and better than just "he's evil" even though it's practically the same.
@@upg5147 yeah I know, it's just sometimes it feels like other people simplify characters to them just being evil for the sake of being evil when that isn't actually the case, the main thing with pure evil villains is that you want an explanation for their thought process but not a justification unlike more nuanced villains
Pure evil race enemies are a good tool to explore the reactions of all the other characters when encountering them. That's where they can be complex. So if they are easily disposed of, they aren't as interesting. But make them deadly and dangerous, and then they can bring out interesting character work.
I think it depends, in theory having an entire race of beings all be evil for the sake of being evil sorta feels a bit reductionary especially if you are going for a fantasy war story or something and one faction is just the evil ones wich feels very unrealistic, in practice though it's similar to how different species will very rarely have more then one culture, you sometimes just don't have the time to flesh out an entire large group of people and just need an antagonistic force, there are still ways you can have an entirely evil faction and still have it feel a bit more realistic, like having the enemy forces consist entirely of mindless animalistic monsters, or have them be artificially created beings who were created by the villain purely to serve as his mindless soldiers, maybe they have a reason to all be evil like their leader did a funny oopsie and now they are all cursed to be soulless monsters, mass mind control can also be a thing, as it is entirely evil races often exist because there isn't enough time to flesh them out and they need to be the antagonistic force in the story and because they fill that function in the narrative they often don't feel as bad as they should though there are ways to justify an entirely evil faction that make sense within the story
There is a distinction between narrative stories, and role playing games. Stories are crafted to follow a plot. You don't need to delve too deeply into every character. Role playing games are designed for players to take on a variety of different roles. You need to have a more flexible set of rules to accommodate that. If orcs are irredeemably evil, it limits the player options
I didnt like the argument in the video. That if one member of an evil race is good, then that means that *every* member of that race has the capacity to become good. I dont know the % of humans who are left handed, gay or psychopaths, but couldn't you just have certain % of orcs be "not evil" by nature? And then design the orc society/culture such, that it discourages anyone from acting "good". After all, there are plenty of human societies throughout history, that i could argue were (more or less) evil. Now imagine if over 90% of the members of such societies had been psychopaths. Or how in some animal species, during puberty the males brains change, and from then on they become super aggressive, and will constantly want to fight. So you could have the orcs (or any other evil race) be irredeemably evil as a race, but still have the odd individuals who were good. Maybe the good orcs, just had a brain that didnt respond to the sex hormones properly? Like how some % of people are gay or trans. Maybe some % of orcs doesn't have the desire to fight/kill/torture. But then have the orc society be such, that it encourages such deviant orcs to "stay in the closet" and act like the rest of them. In such a case, the orcs would look as if they were all irredeemably evil. But you could still have individual orc characters, that were good. Like aren't main characters in stories, or player characters in RPG's, supposed to be exceptional? By having 90-99% of orcs be evil, by nature. Then even if somebody took them as babies outside of orc society. And tried lovingly to raise them up as good. Nearly all of the orcs would still grow up to be evil. And if the few good orcs, were to have kids. Chances are that 90-99% of their babies would still grow up to be evil. In such a world. The conventional wisdom would be that, orcs are evil by nature, and should all be exterminated... Maybe some long living race, could decide to breed good orcs. But it would take 20+ generations. And the resulting orcs would look different from normal orcs. Like how in the Soviet fox breeding experiment, the tame foxes ended up looking different from their wild counterparts. Maybe breeding "good orcs" would result in orcs that were smaller, have less muscle, smaller brow ridges, or something like that? Sorry for the rambling comment. I just didnt think its such a contradiction, to have a character be good, despite their race being seen as irredeemably evil.
@@puppeliyou understand there is difference between morality and left handness, right? That humans or anyone aren't born with morality and get mortality by environment and inner thoughts and that morality can change
I think the issue for me is believability. How does a whole species of intelligent self aware creatures end up with the same moral alignment, evil or otherwise? Even if they have certain traits like lacking empathy or being solitary, it's still possible for individuals to develop different ways of seeing and interacting with others... Unless they're artificial and programmed to be all be a specific way for whatever reason.
They can also be seen as boring because there isn’t to much to do with them other than being evil. When you see a member of an all evil race TM you already know they’re a baddie and that’s it. It makes it harder for there to be individuals or more possibilities that aren’t limited to bad guy.
I think the problem with writing about an inherently evil race is that we don’t have anything to compare it to. In the real world, inherently evil races don’t exist because each individual person is constantly choosing between good and evil acts. Such a race would have to be incapable of making that choice. And of course, suggesting that anything resembling a human could be incapable of anything other than evil may have some problematic implications. You’d essentially be making a fantasy world in which genocide is a good thing, which ends up happening more often than you might think. I’m not saying it’s impossible to write a good story about that. I’ve seen it done. It’s just hard.
In the modern world with the modern mindset it's unfathomable that a whole group could be evil, setting it in a time period or culture where that ain't the case makes it far easier to pull off
I once wrote a fanfic called Antifaseis (Greek for contradiction) set in the Goblin Slayer universe that doesn't involve the titular man himself starring a "good" goblin named Rogue. Good is in quotes because my goblin isn't a wholesome bb like Gubbo, but rather a selfish, self-loathing rogue who struggles with finding his reason for living in a world where he isn't a part of the mindless horde but most people don't care about that. If he's short, green, and good at getting in and out of places he's not allowed to be at? He's just a reasonable goblin only good for getting dirty deeds done with no questions asked. He's a combination of Styx from Of Orcs and Men/Styx: Master of Shadows + Shards of Darkness and Astarion from BG3, minus the charm, child-hating trait, and him disapproving every time you agree to do good deeds without asking for anything in return (it depends on Rogue). I have since discontinued the fanfic because I wrote it when I was less experienced and I can think of no way to continue it but I enjoy my time with it because it gave me a chance to create an ostracized character who struggles with being "good" and has to work towards trusting other people to heal from traumas.
Animals give a lot of good inspiration for pure evil races. Are so many flavors of evil depending on the animal you pick for inspiration. Like the hippo would be great for a large monster species, equivalent to something like a ogre or giant. Something so violent that other animals and monsters know better then to harm it's young, you can see videos of a baby hippo chewing on a crocs tail. The croc knows it cannot attack because a adult hippo would just kill it. Hippos are just monstrously aggressive with no actual nature predators, the only thing that controls numbers i the dry season.
neat video, I think psychopathy can be complex than this video makes it though. A lack of empathy doesnt mean one cannot still have values or respect. Like how we cant empathise with the behaviour of chips mentioned in the video but we can try to understand and respect it because we desire to be fair.
I feel like lately, people want a tragic villain who has fallen off the edge of morals , because in their mind they want to see someone go into that path of evil cause of tragic events that happened to the character , as well as tragedy helps really hook in people these days cause a tragic villain mostly rotates through the grey spectrum of morals where good and bad are fluid( e.g characters like itachi,eren Yeager , lelouch) , have become famous because of that, abd purely evil villains are seen as just a 2d interm of character and nit interesting, also just subscribed and love the channel
By far and away the best portrayal of always chaotic evil while still having depth that I've found is the Demons in Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous a decent amount of side content it explores how much free will do demons actually have what with being literally made of chaotic evil the obvious example being Arushale but also Ember's companion quests deal with the concept a lot too albeit simplisitcally and if the PC decides to go with the demon mythic path there's elements of it there as well although I haven't done a demon playthrough yet so I'm less versed in it. But the surprisingly best one and why it's my favourite is the Treasure of The Midnight Isle's expansion, it actually has a story about an old long dead demon lord Nahyndri as you progress the questline you find out more about him and wake up what's left of his soul each of the major unique bosses being one of his victims after defeating them you can talk to his soul and relive when he corrupted each of the bosses through his memories there's even dialogue choices to not pick the evil canon option but if you try to pick the good or at least less horrible options he basically gaslights himself out of it thinking it must be some kind of trick or deception that the thought even occured to him or sort of compulsively rejects the idea, until only the canon evil option remains but hearing his internal monologue through the memories and jsut what his spirit straight up says aloud it's clear that he deeply regrets his actions yet didn't and doesn't truly beleive any alternative was possible unable to admit or even fully understand that it's guilt he's feeling. Essentially he has an incomplete conscience enough to know that what he's doing is wrong if not morally than at least in terms of being short sighted, self destructive and ultimately unfullfilling and thus feel horrible about it, but not enough to ever truly comprehend alternative options and is evil to almost a compulsive degree, he has some semblance of free will enough to think and feel like his actions were truly a choice but is compelled by his nature which is far stronger than his conscious will to always take the most evil and self destructive option so he's in neverending anguish that just compounds on over his long lifespan unable to truly stop despite desperately wanting too.
As a person who has beaten that game 3 times (One of which getting the 'true' ending on unfair difficulty), that is the worst part of the story for me. Ember's questline is basically "Hey Demons! Have you ever tried... NOT being evil?" And then the demons, who are chaotic evil manifestations of the abyss are like, "Huh, we never thought of it that way! I guess we're NOT evil after all! Hey guys! Let's stop eating children!" Nahyndri and the DLC is fine though.
@@ScritRighter Oh I absolutely agree with you on Ember it is so corny I just wanted to not leave anything out. I've only done one playthrough so far but it was an SDG achievement and Ascension ending run as Lich, I wanted to finish the rest of the DLC campaigns before an Unfair playthrough.
I think the most convincing evil race must have an evolutionary reason for their traits, either why the traits benefits the species or why they do not harm the species at least. The reason why humans are generally "moral" is because it helped our species survive. The morality (or lack thereof) of evil races must also have a reason.
I'm designing a card based TTRPG and I started with "evil" and "good" races... but after my testers hated it now there are "peaceful" and "hostile" races. A peaceful race is just as likely as any other to be full of d-bags who don't want you around, but they have treaties with other peaceful races and allow free trade and movement (like the EU) while "hostile" races might be extremely loving and caring individually.. but won't let you in or trust your intentions until you prove otherwise. They are strict isolationists with historically valid reasoning. In this light you can build any character in just about any way you want, its just the overall societies which they originate from are easy or difficult to work with.
17:40 Well then that would make them not “pure evil” in the first place. That would just make them evil, the protagonists of their own story and blah blah blah etc. Tbh I think the term “pure evil” gets tossed around way too much
I think the needs of the story determine this trope a lot of the time. Doom is a shooter, and the player needs something to shoot, so adding in always-evil enemies is a no-brainer. Zombies, vampires, Nazis, aliens, robots, and so on are often used to fill the same role. In a story about grand heroics or conquering evil, there's rarely any reason to humanise the villains; however some nuance can work for some stories- Gears of War often has thought provoking moments, like the Locusts essentially being refugees who invaded because they had no other choice. This doesn't stop the player killing them, but makes you realise both sides could have found a compromise through negoiations, if they didn't jump to war. At the same time, as others here have said, I think audiences get annoyed by this trope because some stories want to have nuance but then don't deliver. D&D is the perfect example; I'd argue the drow actually fell apart as an idea when they changed roles from antagonists to a playable race. Players could easily choose to play drow and realise they don't want to be a one-dimensional character, but a character that has some actual nuance- and if their character does, why don't all drow? LotR is probably similar, I don't know much about Tolkein's thinking but a lot of Christianity is very black and white, good vs evil, angels and demons/devils etc. If you approach storytelling with this mentality drilled into you, it's obvious what kind of writing you will naturally be drawn to. Finally, I think audiences as time has gone on have started to realise how there's no such thing as a good and bad side. Sure, WW2 was a very black and white war for that generation, but nowadays we have Vietnam and the cases of torture of Iraqi prisoners (one only needs to look at the Wikipedia page for 'Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse' to be reminded of how the 'good guys' ended up being), making audiences more aware that warfare isn't just good vs evil. I think there's more of a demand for this, but too much always makes audience demands flip the other way (e.g. the desire for classical Disney villains after so many Disney movies have avoidded using them).
The way you describe demons in Frieren makes me view them more as a species of animal in a sense. I find it hard to truly think of them as evil when they lack the capacity to choose something else. Like wasps suck, but I wouldn’t consider them evil on the same level as a serial killer.
What's boring is seeing the same things in every freaking game. And lately the majority wants to make orcs (and other) into nature loving honorable warriors with thriving civilizations. I just want to play the gritty high stakes heroic game i was told d&d was. Problem is it's all super hero powered protagonists that get rich quickly and unstoppable quicker, and there's never a true evil villain to fight.
I like pure evil, not because i finde them cool necesarilly but because they can help you think more outside the box with them, and also are an easy and manageable storrytelling device
If one thinks evil races are _impossible_ then one isn't very imaginative. The Dark Eldar from 40k must constantly commit evil acts or else Slaanesh will eat their souls. You don't run into 'good' Dark Eldar because the 'good' ones are all in Slaanesh's tummy. That's just one example. If you've ever actually met a raven and interacted with it for any significant period of time, or god-forbid _owned_ one, you'll know that the whole lot of them are sadistic as fuck. They're actually quite nice when they're younger, but something happens to them when they mature, and they turn sadistic: nothing brings them more pleasure than causing others pain and suffering, they're basically nature's trolls, trying to get a rise out of everyone and everything they can. It's just a biological fact. Sure, you could have a lobotomized adult raven who isn't so inclined, but that's literally the exception that proves the rule. If you had an intelligent race of bird-people descended from ravens who inherited their ancestors' penchant for sadism, they'd all be evil (by any common definition of the word). They might not all be _maximum possible evil,_ but that's not the same as evil. If I peck at you until you scream (and then keep on pecking), that's not quite as evil as murdering your whole family, but it's still perfectly good everyday evil.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 Pretty they can just have a bone singer craft a spirit stone from them, but I'm also going of vague memory and now have a rabbit hole to climb down to figure out how off I am on this.
For the first two examples you bring up how "inconvenient" it would be if moral complexity were added to the evil races, but I don't really see LoTR as a smooth or easy work, and I don't see Goblin Slayer as a work that needed to be this morally simplistic. LoTR doesn't consider the morality of orcs, ultimately, because it is too busy considering the morality of humans, and human-like characters. The orcs themselves are an extension of the wills of Sauron and Saruman, and the things that cause problems when dealing with them are the corruption within mankind. The fact that Goblin Slayer takes this and boils it down to a simplistic fantasy of killing something naturally evil with only the flimsiest interest in the greater scope of human failures makes it a boring and shallow work, which has thrived mainly out of fans' reaction to its own, largely deserved but misdirected backlash. Naturally evil races are not so much an interesting narrative presence as a narrative non-presence that shifts focus to the elements of the narrative that were given some element of moral dimension or interest. Viewing them as a "fun thing to kill," or viewing morally complex villains as an impediment to heroism, reveals a desire for catharsis and escapism over consideration or fulfillment, and while that may be your cup of tea, I wouldn't call that good media.
I'm currently finally watching Frieren and the demon arc was fascinating. I had believed purely evil races can be interesting before it, but it proved it to me yet again. I've played/read stories with purely evil races before and it can be VERY intriguing, specifically because of the purity of their evil. I do not understand pure evil and I cannot fathom someone to be driven by purely evil intentions, therefor I find pure evil in stories intriguing, scary or at least uncomfortable. If it is then played up to be very powerful or all-encompassing, that can be very strong writing. The goblins in Goblin Slayer are that. They are entirely detached from human concepts (no families, no birth as we know it, no relationships beyond numbers for power) and they are a threat everywhere. You can't write themselves to be interesting, but they make a great backdrop for the world and characters of Goblin Slayer. A backdrop that motivates the characters and can come crashing down at any time. In alien invasion movies, I feel the same. If the invading force shows humanity (sometimes even just by simple communication) that invading force, while still threatening in the plot, loses a lot of its edge - I find the unmoving, unrelenting faceless and unthinking world eater scarier than the cold and calculating emperor, because the latter shows the capacity for thought and has a reason to do what they are doing. The demons in Frieren are the first time I've seen that concept played in a way that it works - they ARE pure evil, but there's a reason for their human features/demeanor. Call me a wuss, but I thought that was fascinating and chilling. It also likened them more to predators luring prey into a trap than a humanoid race. From a moral perspective, I find it hard to write or think of an entire race as pure evil. From a writing perspective, it's always been really cool, when played to the extreme. But the complete lack of humanity is kind of a must for me in that case, to drive the point home further and to prevent any likeness or pity from the reader.
The Qu from all tomorrows are my favourite pure evil race in fiction because they are just so damn cruel. Instead of eradicating the star people, they mutated them into many nightmarish creatures.
I created a species of aliens who are made out of pure muscle. Veins and brain matter alongside nerves. Three colours are the roles they have as hunters. Pink is for hijacking and causing animals to exhuast themselves to death by forcing them to dance. There's blue which settles it's way of hunting by causing packs or herds of animals have civil wars or infighting racking up a decent bodycount. Then there's the red. Your standard hunter. Booby traps and chasing down prey like they're life depends on it. However these ways of hunting kinda stopped at certain point as the elders realised they overspecialized their methods of hunting so they resort to creating entire farms to care and look after livestock. You may be wandeirng how are they pure evil? They're not actually, only like three guys are but their not shunned for it. They all had one thing in common. BOREDOM. Hunting has became less fun and they already fought the toughest animals on their planet. So. These three left home in search for actual fun by causing as much chaos as possible to rack up a better body count then with animals. The others saw no problem with what they did. Cause they somewhat relate to them. Like going from a well respected hunter of the tribe now to a humble farmer is a staggering change to handle with. Basically TLDR: Three guys from a mostly peaceful species of farmers got bored then get off world to cause destruction on a unimaginable scale throughout the galaxy and the people respect their descion of doing so. Cause they would've done the same thing if they were in their shoes.
Can't remember who made it, but I recommend watching "How Undertale Does Evil Right". To sum it up, Undertale's definition of evil is something along the lines of 'Bringing harm to others with the full knowledge that you will gain ABSOLUTELY nothing from it'. I could be wrong tho. Now, keep in mind that this only applies depending on what kind of universe you're trying to write. For example, the goblins from Goblin Slayer are, as Scrit himself pointed out, written to be fully rooted against. They're written in a way that removes any reason to sympathize with them, and it's done to keep the story simple and clean. But what about a universe like Frieren's? Now, as of writing this I haven't watched much of Frieren yet, so please bear with me, but from what I understand so far, the sentient races in the anime are at least intelligent enough to be self-aware. In this case, people/races like Demons commits acts that us humans would otherwise see as atrocious because they have something to gain. While that's not something you can just sympathize with, it can still be justified to at least some extent. Of course, that can only go so far. If you do something that's completely unnecessary and gain nothing out of it, while also bringing harm to others, that can be considered "pure evil". TLDR; Morality is hard to write in a way that appeals to everybody. Just write what you enjoy. Man, I don't know why I keep turning my comments into full-on mini-essays lol 😅
this is what extra credits should have uploaded instead of the virtue-signaling slop they posted arguing that there NEEDS to be a "greater narrative" for having bad guys being bad
I find pure evil villains/individuals real nice and fine, and the same for evil societies/governments/teams/groups. But an entire species not so much, sure they can be *dangerous* and far from being pushovers still, but that can't really be qualified as evil. A beartrap is dangerous and built for harm and it's stupid to place a hand, face, or foot in one, but that wouldn't make it evil.
Short answer, no. Just like most things in fiction, it comes down to how a pure evil race is handled in the setting they come from. The Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar, for example, are a good example of a pure evil race done right in my opinion, they have an interesting reasoning to why they’re so evil, they serve as a huge threat to the setting they reside in and are distinct and interesting enough from the other “evil” races of the settings.
You can not kill parthy, its a long time ago but I think I remember that I just spoke with one of the oldies there and said "I will not kill him" or some such. I dont remember the details though, its a very long time ago.
Unless theyre antagonists because their "good" is incompatible with anything short of perfection, think like the hallow in terraria and how it seeks to destroy or convert anything that isnt hallowed because the existence of outside imperfection compromises its own perfection
The only other time i can think of an exception is Devil may cry with Sparda. Sparda was a demon general for basically satan and was planning to help him conquer humanity when he miraculously had a change of heart and decided to rebel against all of demon kind to protect humanity. In DMC the power of love is a thing, being able to love and care for someone other than yourself gives you a power boost which is why sparda was so powerful to stop all demons from attacking humanity. The thing about the demon world however is that the demon realm is a Darwinian dog eat dog hellscape where the strong rules over the weak. Demons don't have families, as soon as a demon is born, they must fend for themselves, this cultivates a behaviour where there is no love and thus most demons don't get access to the love power boost. throughout all of DMC media there are only 3 examples of demons turning good Sparda, Trish and the weak Demon in the DMC anime. I dont count the descendants of sparda or lucia because their home environment is the human world.
Depends upon how you play it, I suppose. At the very least, one can flip it around and claim that an entire race of goody-two shoes who do no evil can be as boring and unrealistic as an entire race of evil-mustache twirlers.
Orks in 40k all speak like English football hooligans or English pirates. I guess that must mean Games Workshop thinks British people are all inherently evil - which is funny, considering Games Workshop is a British company. It couldn't just be that the designers liked that aesthetic or something simple like that - it must be anti-anglo racism.
OK, genuine question, i don't if you will bother answering, but i felt a gut feeling it was strange, a little out of wack, and i'd like clarification, if possible. 13:02 : disapoint their mothers? What? children call for their mothers when they are in danger, asking to be saved. Is not because they are afraid to disappoint their mothers. I don't get what you tried to say there.
Do the xenomorphs count as a pure evil race? If so no I don't think so cause I'll never get tired of xenomorphs! But like you said it depends and it can always a cool enemy in tge right hands.
The idea of pure evil races is such a logical fallacy. These individuals have enough compassion to band together into a race, that already invalidates their pure evil characteristic. If you want pure evil, let it be just one single entity.
Cooperation is morally neutral. If you work together with other people to spread pain and suffering, you are still commiting and evil act. There is no compassion in working together. Even if compassion can be a motivation for cooperating, utility, necessity, and desire can be too.
@@ScritRighter Can you elaborate why you think cooperation is neutral? I'm furthering your goal, even protecting you against external danger, how is that supposed to be pure evil? "work together with other people to spread pain and suffering" = I'm bringing joy to my fellow "pure evils". How can I possibly do that if I'm pure evil myself, I'm supposed to make everyone miserable. The only way to upset all other pure evils is to become a benevolent hero myself.
@@southoceann Commiting evil acts to experience joy is the definition of evil. I have no clue how you're not grasping this concept tbh. Not to mention, working together with the intent to provide joy to others is still a motivation for an action and not the action itself. The action itself is cooperation. The intent is bringing joy to the ones you cooperate with. It is still evil despite intention because the act of spreading evil brings joy in this scenario. Therefore despite working together to bring happiness to each other, the group is still evil.
@@ScritRighter See this is where we differ. I totally agree with you that the group is evil. But you refuse to zoom in to the individuals in the group. I'm not saying those individuals are not evil either. However, "pure" evils, they can't be. Example: how is the race come for form? They mate and have off-springs right? Would they kill their off-springs right after birth? Or are they capable of loving each other? All I'm saying is, being a race means there is a level of compassion holding the group together via individual sacrifices. There can only be one "most evil", and that will be pure. The moment there are a thousand evils, they are not "pure". Hence, a logical fallacy.
@@southoceann Once again, procreation is a neutral and even if it can be done under the intention of love, it can also have other motivations. Forceful procreation, subjugation, eugenics, etc. Even things such as increasing numbers to perpetuate the evil species. Once again we see that a race can be pure evil despite cooperation and procreation because neither of these things require someone to be good to achieve.
Half-baked moral thesis IMO. Being a psychopath doesn't make you inherently immoral and frankly it's offensive to real people with psychopathy to say so. Most psychopaths are serial cheaters at worst.
It was a picture sent to me a little while ago without a link back to the artist, but it always stuck with me. I tried to look for the source, but I was unsuccessful. If anyone else knows I'll be sure to put a link in my description to them.
Pure evil races can be fun in design and having main characters killing a bunch of faceless characters. Even though the pure evil races don’t have nuance because they don’t need it for the story. Like the dark orc’s from lord of the rings or the androids from Star Wars.
The Lame "Be Careful Not to Play Into Any Harmful Stereotypes or Make Anyone Evil" DnD vs. the Chad "Make the universally evil Orkz talk like English pirates and footballers because it's funny" 40k
One of the problems with this video is you talk about "harmful stereotypes". Why do you think those stereotypes are harmful? What makes a stereotype harmful? Particularly if people don't even associate the stereotype with the group its supposedly being used to represent. If most people normal people don't immediately associate that stereotype with a person's skin colour and you do then wouldn't that make you racist? Just to be clear when right wingers say that the people who see everything through a race lens are racist they are indeed correct. If you see a group of Orcs that like watermelon and think "Black people" your racist. If you see a a group of Orcs eating pasta and think "Their Italian" your also racist. If you see a group of Orcs eating curry and think "Indians" then again your racist. If you look at a study and only account for race or sex then your racist and sexist.
Sure, but if like the video said you see a group of orcs that: - Love watermelon - Have rap culture - Love basketball - Wear their pants too low down - Live in the poor neighbourhoods of modern cities - Speak with a typical "hood accent" Saying they meant to be an allegory for a certain group is kinda stupid. 1 shared stereotypes or 10 is a very different scenario.
A Brown man here; The fact that people said orcs are like black people. Fucked me up. Like I have a brown skin character, who is Jojo levels of manly and feminine. Strong as hell cleric without ZERO "black" stereotypes. Imagine the shock of those people when I showed them my character or told them the story lf what he did. Let them call him an evil Orc he's gonna roast them with his words. And not feed them.
i feel like evil races work best when they are "born of evil" or something like that rather than just being a species who is inherrantly evil for uh.... reasons TM if you need a species to act purely as an obstacle for the hero to triumph over than it just makes the most sense to have them literally *be* evil, otherwise i cant stop myself from thinking about how sad or strange it is that someone would be evil simply because of the circumstances of their creation
Whatever happened make it interesting. I’ve played games with only evil orcs and iv played games where orcs are awesome heroes both have been awesome. I think you could have a chaotic vs lawful chaotic just means very emotional unpredictable more consumed by emotions. And lawful can be in more control but but stubborn harder to change opinions, of course at the end of the day you just do whatever the hell you want maybe there are no such things evil races. Maybe they are nothing but evil races and everyone’s evil do whatever.
I'm going to try to keep this comment short but the keyword is "try". There's a lot I want to touch on with my comment in response to the video. To start, I think it's important for context that I say I am a writer, so I have a lot of opinions when it comes to writing. However, you do make some points that I do agree with like that some writers are more concerned with being activists rather than being storytellers (even if it's not something you think anymore). Aside from that, I believe we agree on the conclusion of this video- evil races will work in some stories but not others. As a writer, I don't always want my heroes (or the audience) to have to morally reflect on their action every time they have to slaughter enemy after enemy. Personally, I don't even care much for writing heroes that have a strong "no killing rule". They might generally avoid it but will be willing to take a life for the greater good. When I use an evil race, it is so I can write entertaining fantasy stories where the heroes slay terrible monsters to save the princess, the kingdom, or their dog without having to question at any point if what they're doing is right. Even when the enemy isn't pure evil, it's typically pretty easy to justify killing them. Now I'll move on to some thoughts I had unrelated to the main point of the video: - I'm not sure what Elves being humans with pointy ears has to do with this or why it matters. Fantasy races likes elves, dwarves, and fairies come from human mythology, which is older than the fantasy genre. Tolkien took that lore in his own direction to create the immortal elves. The fantasy genre followed suit and it became the mold for all elves. But that doesn't mean it's the only way to write an elf. In my fantasy story, it wouldn't make sense for Elves to be the same as how Tolkien imagined them. Instead of just copying Tolkien like so many fantasy authors do I took inspiration from Norse and Germanic folklore and mythology where the concept of elves are magical beings originated. Even in the myths, there's not much to separate elves from humans but if I fully explained the historical belief of elves this comment would be way too long. - 20:31 it's obvious that you're showing the scene from Harry Potter with the goblin to perpetuate the idea that the goblins are spose to represent Jewish people. It's untrue. Goblins have been portrayed the same way in media a lot: greedy with pointy noses. That's it. By your own logic, that shouldn't be enough to say it was intentional. I don't think the HP goblins (or any fantasy goblin) or the Minecraft Villagers are meant to be "Jewish-coded". The only reason people argue that is to cause discourse in fandoms or paint the fans as racist. I never watched Dragon Ball but even I know that Mr. Popo was not intended to be a racial caricature! He is very clearly inspired by the Buddhist/Hindi deity Mahakala. The skin color and even the red lips are the same. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that he also resembles Jim Crow style depictions of Africans. If people are seeing racial stereotypes everywhere they look that's their problem. It might not be directly racist, but it is ignorant and just generally annoying for people to throw tantrums over everything without understanding it. Majority of the time, people will call something racist and be wrong about it; but they just double down instead of admitting they were wrong. It's so infuriating to watch people bash fantasy authors like Tolkien because they misunderstood what his intent was, and then they're too stubborn to listen to anyone else. It's crazy that the people that will attack Tolkien, literally the most popular fantasy writer, will also celebrate F tier movies or shows just because those shows are loudly political (on purpose). It's not even possible to criticize these types of shows -it's rather difficult to criticize anything anymore- because any criticism is met with unhinged backlash from people with emotional problems that can only shout ad hominems very loudly. To be clear and perfectly honest, I am more than willing to call something "woke". Not in the way leftists view it as a synonym for "progressive" or "socially aware" and I'm not here to say that anything political is bad. I don't see woke as being political. How I see it, something that's woke is a social performance. It takes social justice to an extreme without fighting for any real justice. An example of this would be the people calling Orcs racist. I could say more but this comment is getting too long.
Its lazy Nobody is talking about the narrow-minded foolishness if Christianity with their whole all of demons and spirits are evil... except the holy ones 🤦♂️ What separates those "holy ones" from the "evil ones"? Really think about that
2:51 There’s a Wikipedia page about this called “Tolkien’s moral dilemma”. He felt it was wrong to have them all be evil because they were sapient and would have souls, thus making them being all evil was contradictory to his Christian reliefs. So, he made them corrupted elves, giving them a reason to be all evil while having souls.
I think this is generally a good way to look at things but sadly too optimistic. Sometimes, people are just evil. A lot of times it's due to factors in their childhood but other times it's just something literally wrong in their head. Help can save them from being criminals but not all the time.
@@upg5147isn't this falling under corruption though? It's not like they were born evil. Like you said, childhood events and issues in mental faculties play a hand, but without those how do you just evil?
@@NeoPokebonz I think it's falling for corruption when it's external factors but if it's just neurological, then that's literally the way you were born and you will be considered "different" by social for lack of empathy and such which is a slippery slope to where they become evil. Some are just awkward people who don't get emotions and that's it but others never even understood what we consider morals or ethics and thus are "pure evil".
@@upg5147 That is some horrible ableist bullshit over there.
@@fraktaalimuoto I literally said they can be helped often but sometimes it's just not possible. Something is wrong in the brain, it's unfixable. That's a fact.
I think "pure evil" antagonists are usually those that act in a machine-like manner, because there are no moral considerations on their part, the objective is all that matters, which makes them largely inhuman to humans: the agents in the Matrix. the machines in the Terminator movies, the Borg in Star Trek, and zombies. For the most part, they can be just as exciting antagonists as any. How the story is executed in film or in fiction writing is what determines if they are boring or not.
Though it's pretty clear that the agents in the Matrix are capable of free will and emotion.
Basically this. While the story gains a few things by having this machine-like manner, it kinda loses the moral deliberation of thinking beings. On the flip side having a character "Choose" evil gives you something else. For me it comes down to if the species has an independent mind. Because if they do, then it is possible for them to be different, and so in that case "Literally all of them are evil" is lazy to me. Even in the Matrix the main villain is an agent that goes rogue, showing us this "agency" (as well as good programs).
@@ODXT I think it's just different types of stories. For example, zombies don't have any moral deliberation. They're kinda like a tidal wave. Their main function is just to eat whatever is in their path. But in my view these types of antagonists excel in two things (at least, that I can think of: a) raise the pressure and stakes very high for the protagonists because they're usually relentless. b) and through this pressure, it reveals the true characters of the protagonists. How do they react under pressure? How do they treat each other under pressure? What existential, philosophical dialogues the protagonists have with each other due to this force that just keeps coming at them? How do they problem solve? I think what makes these antagonists boring or not is simply due to the skill of the writer. How well the writer places these antagonists in the story (and when). and how well they can craft scenarios that either create rising pressure (or fail to) for the protagonists.
In the movie I Am Legend, the vampire/zombies were just this force that came after humans, but what made the story interesting was novelty of the situation and how the protagonist reacted when the zombies showed up. And again, it's also how well the writer can craft novel, high-stakes scenarios (like the protagonist's German shepherd barking at the charging mutant dogs instead of going back into the truck, while protagonist is on the ground with an injured leg trying to drag themselves back into their vehicle.). There's an episode of Twilight Zone where a man suddenly finds himself alone in a town where he can't find anyone. The antagonist is the scenario itself. It's not even an entity that one can reason with or talk to, but what made it fascinating was to see how the character dealt with it. These are just different types of stories, and any of them can be written well or written poorly. Not every story needs a three-dimensional antagonist to be fascinating. It just comes down to taste and preference really.
@@SummerDream3r That's what I'm saying
Moral considerations are overrated. Adding internal conflict to your character/race does not make them "well-written", stop the cope. This modern idea of needing a "moral justification" for evil has lead to the watering down of everything within villainy. It's why we only get tragic crybabies instead of real villains now. Evil justifies itself; and it does so through power, strength & selfish desires. That's it, that's all.
My big "Always Evil" race issue is when it's clear that such a race would be rendered extinct long ago either from their hyper-aggressive self-destructive nature or from their cartoonishly evil society that doesn't stand up to the barest scrutiny... but that doesn't matter if they need to exists for pure meta-reasons. You get ideas like an Evil God backing them and/or they out-breed their losses, so you'll never, ever, ever be rid of them. On the one hand that can be an interesting narrative concept for your character to deal with, but it's often just something writers need to contrive because the status quo is king.
This. This is especially the case with chaotic evil races. At least with neutral evil and lawful evil races, they can and will cooperate with each other to achieve common goals while chaotic evil doesn’t because cooperation is antithetical to chaos.
They don't have to be hyper-aggressive, they just have to be viscid manipulators, which lets them quite easily hack social structures. There's a phenomenon known as "social parasitism", in which all eusocial insect species are observed to have a parasitic subspecies: ants, bees and even termites. For these parasites, the most optimal defense mechanism is very simple: don't be identified, should the host become cognizant they would be purged entirely. Wood ants have a peculiar behavior, in which a singular nest can have several queens, even "adopting" new ones, resulting in a multigenerational society which may reproduce through budding; where a bunch of queens take their workers to build a new nest, causing expansion.
Now, since the adoption happens within the common wood ant species, there is no reproduction barrier nor genetic isolation. However, when this adoption happens with a colony of sister species outside the wood ant gene pool, that is parasitism. From that "adoption" behavior, it is a very small step, and very beneficial, for the parasite queen to develop host queen killing behaviors (when the host queen is not of their own species), as she can then monopolize the workforce for her sole benefit.
Something that's also interesting, the the mechanism of parasitic degradation, in which the parasite species lose the ability directly compete with any creature that did not take the path of parasitism, and gradually incurs mutational load each generation, as they have transitioned into a host-as-environment paradigm rather than an environment-as-environment mode. This is due to the two main catalysts for parasitic lifestyles for a species: A small gene pool (leading to bottlenecking) and
An example how this could happen in a fantasy world? Complex, organized societies require a very large degree of agreeability within its members, some thing which can be subtly and ruthlessly manipulated should there be an "in". With that being said, the evil race that employs this strategy will have to be very active in its efforts, they will need to constantly communicate in a way that continues to convince the host race/society that they are part of the ingroup. In fact, inquiline parasitic ants constantly send out "propaganda pheromones" which trick the host ants that they do belong. The social parasite will inevitably have to create a mechanism that serves to deny the existence of social parasitism, or that anyone is engaging in it.
This is really dumb. What about races that continuously come into existence via spontaneous generation, like demons in 40k? What about races that will have their souls devoured by an evil god if they don't enjoy committing evil acts, and therefore build up an infrastructure to maintain constant evil, like the Dark Eldar from 40k? What about races that can't be killed easily like Viltrumites from Invincible? What about evil races that are currently on their way to becoming extinct because their nature makes them inimical to humans, and so they're being exterminated, like the demons from Frieren? What about races that are not going full-max evil at all times, and so get away with it because there isn't a will for others to exterminate them, like mosquitos or goblins from Goblin Slayer? This is such an unimaginative stance, there are so many reasons why this would not apply in so many situations.
@@theloweffortchannel7211 Orkz must fight and die in order to release spores, daemons of the warp are spontaneously generated through negative human emotions, Viltrumites are really really hard to kill. There are countless other reasons - why do some people find this confusing?
A society which embraces socially darwinistic practices such as the Drow would have no problem sustaining themselves, though; if anything they would eventually outcompete external polities as a result of greater selection pressure. The only fundamental problem of the Drow is their lack of regimented hierarchy & concrete foundations; their society is a little too anarchic & loosely-knit. But this is an issue of societal structure, not civic morality.
Also, aggression=/=self-destruction. One could easily state that a hyper-aggressive race would probably be the best race at achieving goals & generally attaining things of desire; if done correctly they would likely have higher deathrates than other races as a result of increased conflict, but would also likely be more advanced & lethal in terms of weaponry (conflict-driven innovation).
Selection pressure would mean each individual member of said race would likely be more capable than an individual member of any other race as well, both mentally & physically; at least with regards to the competitive arenas of life (IE. they may not be good scientists or have much in way of artistry, but they can lead Fortune 500 Companies & run a 40-YD Dash in less than 4 minutes.) Additionally, such a race would likely display a high tendency towards tactical brilliance (though this would probably coincide with decreased strategic acumen).
Pure Evil races will thrive as long as they have even a tad bit more complexity than the average, run of the mill Orcs.
Gubbo the Goblin deserves her own anime.
Fuck it let Gubbo the Goblin take over the Scrit channel! I'll buy a Gubbo the Goblin plushie.
One thing people also seem to forget in fantasy is that literal gods exist. As in beings of incomprehensible power that can influence existence itself around them and even create beings for their benefit. With Forgotten Realms being brought up; the dragons are quite literally the product of two gods; Tiamat and Bahamut, the former being the god of the evil aligned chromatic dragons and the latter the god of the good aligned metallic dragons. Tiamat and Bahamut themselves in some legends are the two halves of Io, one being the superego the other the id of Io. Or gods like Lolth or Gruumsh who had a direct influence in the creation of drow and orcs, and these two gods are very much personifications of evil; Lolth being that or ego and spite and Gruumsh unfettered rage. Let alone all the other gods who are manifestations or embodiments of something, like Bane being the embodiment of the notion of tyranny, Bhaal the very act of killing and Myrkul being one of many embodiments on the perception of death.
This very much comes from Tolkien as the orcs, balrogs among other creatures are tied directly to Melkor, who very much is the embodiment of the very concept of evil in the Legendarium.
I feel like the best "Evil Race TM" would be the Skeksis from the Dark Crystal. They're evil, but it because they are they are only half of one being, literally lacking empathy, shame, and guilt, driven by the very understandable fear of death.
If the Dark Eldar from 40k don't constantly commit (and enjoy committing) evil acts, then Slaanesh will literally eat their souls. You don't run into good Dark Eldar because 'good Dark Eldar' is an oxymoron. If one ever existed, it would immediately stop existing.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 Pretty sure Craftworlders and exodites who were fromer Druchari are a thing though?
@@migarsormrapophis2755 I mean, Deldar aren't intrinsically evil. They have to indoctrinate their children into this mindset, who are usually not pleased with what they're witnessing until it's finally drilled into their skulls. I think there's a story of a deldar caregiver teaching their child how to torture people, as well as desensitize the child to their shenanigans, and all the while the child is mortified and begging them to stop.
Curses from jjk are pure evil due to the fact that they manifest from negativity, but they are far from boring
Yeah. Mahito was pure £¥(king evil, but far from boring
Not to mention that some curses can develop motivations as to why they commit such evils, so they might not be doing something evil like Hanami wanting to purge humanity to save the earth, it is evil because there's a large loss of life, but to Hanami, it's a fight for survival as she was made from the earth's will (I believe, fact-check this if I'm wrong.)
@user-np7rb9ip6s actually she manifested from humanity's fear of natural land based disasters(I googled it)
This is a trope that works better in some mediums than others.
I personally find evil as a race not only boring for a story but also representative of a boring worldview. Too easily mapped onto old views of seeing people of a race or ancestry as evil. Perhaps that ruins a lot of stories that I can still enjoy.
I personally see evil as a do, not a thing. Someone could do evil it is not an inherent part of a person, just things like being racist or sexist. And I always interested in stories involving people who might be discriminated based on a reputation that made be made of their group, whether earned or not.
I like an evil race at most coming from a culture, and something that can be overcome through understanding and empathy. And something that might be evil would be wholy artificial, like a machine, like a weapon. Not something that looks like a person, that thinks, that can speak.
What about the Xenomorphs from Alien or demons in Frieren?
@@Serocco Well, even before the Prometheus movies there was thought that Xenomorphs were biologically engineered so the act of creating them would be questionable. But a single xenomorph mostly goes by instinct, like an insect that lays its eggs in prey, they are not really people thinkers, as much as I liked playing one in the AvP game.
The demons in Frieren were honestly one of the few things that made me uncomfortable in it. I understand the show wanted to set them as an unfeeling monster that we should feel happy about her being right about. I might think it be some allegory with neurodivergance or people with personality disorders, but both Frieren and Fern don't exactly come across as neurotypical, and some of mages look like they have personality disorders without the same kind of framing. I understand why some might go with that kind of unfeeling monster despite looks, but it is not something I am super into, maybe unless we find that someone designs the demons to be killers with a human like appearance.
@@DuskyPredator All I have to say about the demons in Frieren is read the manga and pay attention to someone named Macht.
I think pure evil races can work. It just depends on the writing.
Yup
Frieren does it well
Goblin slayer
The skaven
Thanquol (one of the major character of its race): "there are more than one way to skin an infant"
I don't. I'm a monster lover and the very idea of pure evil races removes agency from the race in question and just makes them 1 not fudder instead of people that just so happen to be evil. I series Dandadan explores the inherit problem with that world view.
There's one demon in Frieren who is _almost_ good - he still doesn't understand human emotions on any intuitive level, but he's so intelligent and he's tried so hard that he's come up with a semi-accurate framework of what motivates humans. Using this framework lets him get along with the humans in a particular city, but only to a point. It's still purely rational, and if something deviates from his framework, his only recourse is to kill it, which he has no compunctions about. He talks about how he doesn't understand what words like 'malice' mean, and since his framework is based on rationality, when humans behave in irrational ways (or ways that he perceives as irrational) he just can't figure it out. Also, he killed a bunch of people in the past and has the second strongest magic after the Demon King, so when Frieren runs into him, she doesn't stand around asking questions or philosophizing about it.
Before watching the video.
No, I think a good cackling, damsel train track tying villain can be a lot of fun. It all depends on what type of story is being told. They can also have some sort of reasoning to be evil while still being pure evil. Look at Jack Horner from Puss and Boots, the man says he's upset that someone was more popular than him when he was young and that caused him to be this way but he was still rich and successful and his parents didn't seem evil or cruel, he's just that kind of monster.
One important thing about pure evil villains though is that they do need some kind of logic or reason, I mean even sundowner from metal gear rising the guy who proudly proclaims to be a warmonger and mocks the concept of war crimes and code of conduct has a reason to be doing what he does, sure his reason boils down to war is good actually but it does mean his actions aren't random, it provides a consistent thought process behind the actions they take as otherwise they can start to feel more like a plot device then a character, otherwise they need to be very threatening, a pure evil force of destruction that isn't entertaining and has no reason for what they are doing only works if they are presented as a terrifying force to be feared in the story, if the ancient evil isn't threatening they become boring, basically even a seemingly simple trope like a pure evil villain still has some things you need to look out for to make them succeed
@@pandabanaan9208 That's what I said with the Jack Horner reasoning. It's no reason at all but enough and better than just "he's evil" even though it's practically the same.
@@upg5147 yeah I know, it's just sometimes it feels like other people simplify characters to them just being evil for the sake of being evil when that isn't actually the case, the main thing with pure evil villains is that you want an explanation for their thought process but not a justification unlike more nuanced villains
@@pandabanaan9208 Well said!
Pure evil race enemies are a good tool to explore the reactions of all the other characters when encountering them. That's where they can be complex. So if they are easily disposed of, they aren't as interesting. But make them deadly and dangerous, and then they can bring out interesting character work.
I think it depends, in theory having an entire race of beings all be evil for the sake of being evil sorta feels a bit reductionary especially if you are going for a fantasy war story or something and one faction is just the evil ones wich feels very unrealistic, in practice though it's similar to how different species will very rarely have more then one culture, you sometimes just don't have the time to flesh out an entire large group of people and just need an antagonistic force, there are still ways you can have an entirely evil faction and still have it feel a bit more realistic, like having the enemy forces consist entirely of mindless animalistic monsters, or have them be artificially created beings who were created by the villain purely to serve as his mindless soldiers, maybe they have a reason to all be evil like their leader did a funny oopsie and now they are all cursed to be soulless monsters, mass mind control can also be a thing, as it is entirely evil races often exist because there isn't enough time to flesh them out and they need to be the antagonistic force in the story and because they fill that function in the narrative they often don't feel as bad as they should though there are ways to justify an entirely evil faction that make sense within the story
Finally, the take on this I’ve been looking for. Thank you for the nuance!
There is a distinction between narrative stories, and role playing games. Stories are crafted to follow a plot. You don't need to delve too deeply into every character. Role playing games are designed for players to take on a variety of different roles. You need to have a more flexible set of rules to accommodate that. If orcs are irredeemably evil, it limits the player options
I didnt like the argument in the video. That if one member of an evil race is good, then that means that *every* member of that race has the capacity to become good.
I dont know the % of humans who are left handed, gay or psychopaths, but couldn't you just have certain % of orcs be "not evil" by nature? And then design the orc society/culture such, that it discourages anyone from acting "good". After all, there are plenty of human societies throughout history, that i could argue were (more or less) evil. Now imagine if over 90% of the members of such societies had been psychopaths. Or how in some animal species, during puberty the males brains change, and from then on they become super aggressive, and will constantly want to fight. So you could have the orcs (or any other evil race) be irredeemably evil as a race, but still have the odd individuals who were good. Maybe the good orcs, just had a brain that didnt respond to the sex hormones properly? Like how some % of people are gay or trans. Maybe some % of orcs doesn't have the desire to fight/kill/torture. But then have the orc society be such, that it encourages such deviant orcs to "stay in the closet" and act like the rest of them. In such a case, the orcs would look as if they were all irredeemably evil. But you could still have individual orc characters, that were good. Like aren't main characters in stories, or player characters in RPG's, supposed to be exceptional?
By having 90-99% of orcs be evil, by nature. Then even if somebody took them as babies outside of orc society. And tried lovingly to raise them up as good. Nearly all of the orcs would still grow up to be evil. And if the few good orcs, were to have kids. Chances are that 90-99% of their babies would still grow up to be evil.
In such a world. The conventional wisdom would be that, orcs are evil by nature, and should all be exterminated... Maybe some long living race, could decide to breed good orcs. But it would take 20+ generations. And the resulting orcs would look different from normal orcs. Like how in the Soviet fox breeding experiment, the tame foxes ended up looking different from their wild counterparts. Maybe breeding "good orcs" would result in orcs that were smaller, have less muscle, smaller brow ridges, or something like that?
Sorry for the rambling comment. I just didnt think its such a contradiction, to have a character be good, despite their race being seen as irredeemably evil.
@@puppeliyou understand there is difference between morality and left handness, right? That humans or anyone aren't born with morality and get mortality by environment and inner thoughts and that morality can change
I think the issue for me is believability. How does a whole species of intelligent self aware creatures end up with the same moral alignment, evil or otherwise? Even if they have certain traits like lacking empathy or being solitary, it's still possible for individuals to develop different ways of seeing and interacting with others... Unless they're artificial and programmed to be all be a specific way for whatever reason.
They can also be seen as boring because there isn’t to much to do with them other than being evil. When you see a member of an all evil race TM you already know they’re a baddie and that’s it. It makes it harder for there to be individuals or more possibilities that aren’t limited to bad guy.
I think the problem with writing about an inherently evil race is that we don’t have anything to compare it to. In the real world, inherently evil races don’t exist because each individual person is constantly choosing between good and evil acts. Such a race would have to be incapable of making that choice. And of course, suggesting that anything resembling a human could be incapable of anything other than evil may have some problematic implications. You’d essentially be making a fantasy world in which genocide is a good thing, which ends up happening more often than you might think. I’m not saying it’s impossible to write a good story about that. I’ve seen it done. It’s just hard.
In the modern world with the modern mindset it's unfathomable that a whole group could be evil, setting it in a time period or culture where that ain't the case makes it far easier to pull off
I once wrote a fanfic called Antifaseis (Greek for contradiction) set in the Goblin Slayer universe that doesn't involve the titular man himself starring a "good" goblin named Rogue. Good is in quotes because my goblin isn't a wholesome bb like Gubbo, but rather a selfish, self-loathing rogue who struggles with finding his reason for living in a world where he isn't a part of the mindless horde but most people don't care about that. If he's short, green, and good at getting in and out of places he's not allowed to be at? He's just a reasonable goblin only good for getting dirty deeds done with no questions asked. He's a combination of Styx from Of Orcs and Men/Styx: Master of Shadows + Shards of Darkness and Astarion from BG3, minus the charm, child-hating trait, and him disapproving every time you agree to do good deeds without asking for anything in return (it depends on Rogue).
I have since discontinued the fanfic because I wrote it when I was less experienced and I can think of no way to continue it but I enjoy my time with it because it gave me a chance to create an ostracized character who struggles with being "good" and has to work towards trusting other people to heal from traumas.
...would you object to someone potentially continuing said story/ giving you ideas for continuing it? The concept interests me.
@@Sara3346 Hello there! I’d love to discuss ideas on how the story can be continued. How would you like to be contacted?
Animals give a lot of good inspiration for pure evil races. Are so many flavors of evil depending on the animal you pick for inspiration. Like the hippo would be great for a large monster species, equivalent to something like a ogre or giant. Something so violent that other animals and monsters know better then to harm it's young, you can see videos of a baby hippo chewing on a crocs tail. The croc knows it cannot attack because a adult hippo would just kill it. Hippos are just monstrously aggressive with no actual nature predators, the only thing that controls numbers i the dry season.
I don't want to kill all mosquitoes. They pollinate flowers, feed frogs and a re fun to draw.....Is something wrong with me?
neat video, I think psychopathy can be complex than this video makes it though.
A lack of empathy doesnt mean one cannot still have values or respect. Like how we cant empathise with the behaviour of chips mentioned in the video but we can try to understand and respect it because we desire to be fair.
I feel like lately, people want a tragic villain who has fallen off the edge of morals , because in their mind they want to see someone go into that path of evil cause of tragic events that happened to the character , as well as tragedy helps really hook in people these days cause a tragic villain mostly rotates through the grey spectrum of morals where good and bad are fluid( e.g characters like itachi,eren Yeager , lelouch) , have become famous because of that, abd purely evil villains are seen as just a 2d interm of character and nit interesting, also just subscribed and love the channel
By far and away the best portrayal of always chaotic evil while still having depth that I've found is the Demons in Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous a decent amount of side content it explores how much free will do demons actually have what with being literally made of chaotic evil the obvious example being Arushale but also Ember's companion quests deal with the concept a lot too albeit simplisitcally and if the PC decides to go with the demon mythic path there's elements of it there as well although I haven't done a demon playthrough yet so I'm less versed in it.
But the surprisingly best one and why it's my favourite is the Treasure of The Midnight Isle's expansion, it actually has a story about an old long dead demon lord Nahyndri as you progress the questline you find out more about him and wake up what's left of his soul each of the major unique bosses being one of his victims after defeating them you can talk to his soul and relive when he corrupted each of the bosses through his memories there's even dialogue choices to not pick the evil canon option but if you try to pick the good or at least less horrible options he basically gaslights himself out of it thinking it must be some kind of trick or deception that the thought even occured to him or sort of compulsively rejects the idea, until only the canon evil option remains but hearing his internal monologue through the memories and jsut what his spirit straight up says aloud it's clear that he deeply regrets his actions yet didn't and doesn't truly beleive any alternative was possible unable to admit or even fully understand that it's guilt he's feeling. Essentially he has an incomplete conscience enough to know that what he's doing is wrong if not morally than at least in terms of being short sighted, self destructive and ultimately unfullfilling and thus feel horrible about it, but not enough to ever truly comprehend alternative options and is evil to almost a compulsive degree, he has some semblance of free will enough to think and feel like his actions were truly a choice but is compelled by his nature which is far stronger than his conscious will to always take the most evil and self destructive option so he's in neverending anguish that just compounds on over his long lifespan unable to truly stop despite desperately wanting too.
As a person who has beaten that game 3 times (One of which getting the 'true' ending on unfair difficulty), that is the worst part of the story for me.
Ember's questline is basically "Hey Demons! Have you ever tried... NOT being evil?" And then the demons, who are chaotic evil manifestations of the abyss are like, "Huh, we never thought of it that way! I guess we're NOT evil after all! Hey guys! Let's stop eating children!"
Nahyndri and the DLC is fine though.
@@ScritRighter Oh I absolutely agree with you on Ember it is so corny I just wanted to not leave anything out. I've only done one playthrough so far but it was an SDG achievement and Ascension ending run as Lich, I wanted to finish the rest of the DLC campaigns before an Unfair playthrough.
I think the most convincing evil race must have an evolutionary reason for their traits, either why the traits benefits the species or why they do not harm the species at least. The reason why humans are generally "moral" is because it helped our species survive. The morality (or lack thereof) of evil races must also have a reason.
21:21 Villagers are Jewish coded? I always thought they were squid coded. [Insert Squidward’s laugh here.]
Big nosed merchants that make golems
I'm designing a card based TTRPG and I started with "evil" and "good" races... but after my testers hated it now there are "peaceful" and "hostile" races. A peaceful race is just as likely as any other to be full of d-bags who don't want you around, but they have treaties with other peaceful races and allow free trade and movement (like the EU) while "hostile" races might be extremely loving and caring individually.. but won't let you in or trust your intentions until you prove otherwise. They are strict isolationists with historically valid reasoning. In this light you can build any character in just about any way you want, its just the overall societies which they originate from are easy or difficult to work with.
17:40 Well then that would make them not “pure evil” in the first place. That would just make them evil, the protagonists of their own story and blah blah blah etc. Tbh I think the term “pure evil” gets tossed around way too much
I think the needs of the story determine this trope a lot of the time. Doom is a shooter, and the player needs something to shoot, so adding in always-evil enemies is a no-brainer. Zombies, vampires, Nazis, aliens, robots, and so on are often used to fill the same role. In a story about grand heroics or conquering evil, there's rarely any reason to humanise the villains; however some nuance can work for some stories- Gears of War often has thought provoking moments, like the Locusts essentially being refugees who invaded because they had no other choice. This doesn't stop the player killing them, but makes you realise both sides could have found a compromise through negoiations, if they didn't jump to war.
At the same time, as others here have said, I think audiences get annoyed by this trope because some stories want to have nuance but then don't deliver. D&D is the perfect example; I'd argue the drow actually fell apart as an idea when they changed roles from antagonists to a playable race. Players could easily choose to play drow and realise they don't want to be a one-dimensional character, but a character that has some actual nuance- and if their character does, why don't all drow?
LotR is probably similar, I don't know much about Tolkein's thinking but a lot of Christianity is very black and white, good vs evil, angels and demons/devils etc. If you approach storytelling with this mentality drilled into you, it's obvious what kind of writing you will naturally be drawn to.
Finally, I think audiences as time has gone on have started to realise how there's no such thing as a good and bad side. Sure, WW2 was a very black and white war for that generation, but nowadays we have Vietnam and the cases of torture of Iraqi prisoners (one only needs to look at the Wikipedia page for 'Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse' to be reminded of how the 'good guys' ended up being), making audiences more aware that warfare isn't just good vs evil. I think there's more of a demand for this, but too much always makes audience demands flip the other way (e.g. the desire for classical Disney villains after so many Disney movies have avoidded using them).
It's funny this hit just after my Drow playthrough in BG3 😂😂
The way you describe demons in Frieren makes me view them more as a species of animal in a sense.
I find it hard to truly think of them as evil when they lack the capacity to choose something else.
Like wasps suck, but I wouldn’t consider them evil on the same level as a serial killer.
I think at around 18 minutes something about tokyo ghoul was missing, i think they did a good job on that oerspective
It's tragic the anime wasn't that good.
The manga is way better @@ScritRighter
@@neolordie I know
On topic of "pure evil race" i can remember Curses from JJK
What's boring is seeing the same things in every freaking game. And lately the majority wants to make orcs (and other) into nature loving honorable warriors with thriving civilizations.
I just want to play the gritty high stakes heroic game i was told d&d was. Problem is it's all super hero powered protagonists that get rich quickly and unstoppable quicker, and there's never a true evil villain to fight.
Who told you d&d was that?
Cause what you describe is just something it can be
@@victoroliveira3577 that is literally every advertisement of d&d since it was first created.
Also, not really, no.
I like pure evil, not because i finde them cool necesarilly but because they can help you think more outside the box with them, and also are an easy and manageable storrytelling device
i like evil characters so an entire race of evil characters sounds awesome to me
If one thinks evil races are _impossible_ then one isn't very imaginative. The Dark Eldar from 40k must constantly commit evil acts or else Slaanesh will eat their souls. You don't run into 'good' Dark Eldar because the 'good' ones are all in Slaanesh's tummy. That's just one example. If you've ever actually met a raven and interacted with it for any significant period of time, or god-forbid _owned_ one, you'll know that the whole lot of them are sadistic as fuck. They're actually quite nice when they're younger, but something happens to them when they mature, and they turn sadistic: nothing brings them more pleasure than causing others pain and suffering, they're basically nature's trolls, trying to get a rise out of everyone and everything they can. It's just a biological fact. Sure, you could have a lobotomized adult raven who isn't so inclined, but that's literally the exception that proves the rule. If you had an intelligent race of bird-people descended from ravens who inherited their ancestors' penchant for sadism, they'd all be evil (by any common definition of the word). They might not all be _maximum possible evil,_ but that's not the same as evil. If I peck at you until you scream (and then keep on pecking), that's not quite as evil as murdering your whole family, but it's still perfectly good everyday evil.
...dark eldar are more a culture than a race though, former dark eldar are a thing to my understanding. See especially the Ynnarri for examples.
@@Sara3346 But aren't such cases solely the result of supernatural intervention? Maybe not, it's possible that I don't know all my Dark Eldar lore.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 Pretty they can just have a bone singer craft a spirit stone from them, but I'm also going of vague memory and now have a rabbit hole to climb down to figure out how off I am on this.
I think skaven are one of the most interesting and entertaining factions from warhammer and the skaven are nothing more than evil
I think a comedic aspect to them helps their case
For the first two examples you bring up how "inconvenient" it would be if moral complexity were added to the evil races, but I don't really see LoTR as a smooth or easy work, and I don't see Goblin Slayer as a work that needed to be this morally simplistic. LoTR doesn't consider the morality of orcs, ultimately, because it is too busy considering the morality of humans, and human-like characters. The orcs themselves are an extension of the wills of Sauron and Saruman, and the things that cause problems when dealing with them are the corruption within mankind. The fact that Goblin Slayer takes this and boils it down to a simplistic fantasy of killing something naturally evil with only the flimsiest interest in the greater scope of human failures makes it a boring and shallow work, which has thrived mainly out of fans' reaction to its own, largely deserved but misdirected backlash. Naturally evil races are not so much an interesting narrative presence as a narrative non-presence that shifts focus to the elements of the narrative that were given some element of moral dimension or interest. Viewing them as a "fun thing to kill," or viewing morally complex villains as an impediment to heroism, reveals a desire for catharsis and escapism over consideration or fulfillment, and while that may be your cup of tea, I wouldn't call that good media.
2:05 Totally caught me by surprise. wtf happened! XD
I have a problemm with killing mosquitoes
I'm currently finally watching Frieren and the demon arc was fascinating. I had believed purely evil races can be interesting before it, but it proved it to me yet again. I've played/read stories with purely evil races before and it can be VERY intriguing, specifically because of the purity of their evil. I do not understand pure evil and I cannot fathom someone to be driven by purely evil intentions, therefor I find pure evil in stories intriguing, scary or at least uncomfortable. If it is then played up to be very powerful or all-encompassing, that can be very strong writing. The goblins in Goblin Slayer are that. They are entirely detached from human concepts (no families, no birth as we know it, no relationships beyond numbers for power) and they are a threat everywhere. You can't write themselves to be interesting, but they make a great backdrop for the world and characters of Goblin Slayer. A backdrop that motivates the characters and can come crashing down at any time. In alien invasion movies, I feel the same. If the invading force shows humanity (sometimes even just by simple communication) that invading force, while still threatening in the plot, loses a lot of its edge - I find the unmoving, unrelenting faceless and unthinking world eater scarier than the cold and calculating emperor, because the latter shows the capacity for thought and has a reason to do what they are doing. The demons in Frieren are the first time I've seen that concept played in a way that it works - they ARE pure evil, but there's a reason for their human features/demeanor. Call me a wuss, but I thought that was fascinating and chilling. It also likened them more to predators luring prey into a trap than a humanoid race.
From a moral perspective, I find it hard to write or think of an entire race as pure evil. From a writing perspective, it's always been really cool, when played to the extreme. But the complete lack of humanity is kind of a must for me in that case, to drive the point home further and to prevent any likeness or pity from the reader.
The Qu from all tomorrows are my favourite pure evil race in fiction because they are just so damn cruel. Instead of eradicating the star people, they mutated them into many nightmarish creatures.
I love this video and love this channel I’m now your newest biggest fan
It's starting to become important for me to hear you say "and start writing."
Evil angles ftw
AZRAEL MENTIONED. AZRAEL MENTIONED. WOOOP WOOP WOOOP.
I created a species of aliens who are made out of pure muscle.
Veins and brain matter alongside nerves.
Three colours are the roles they have as hunters.
Pink is for hijacking and causing animals to exhuast themselves to death by forcing them to dance.
There's blue which settles it's way of hunting by causing packs or herds of animals have civil wars or infighting racking up a decent bodycount.
Then there's the red.
Your standard hunter.
Booby traps and chasing down prey like they're life depends on it.
However these ways of hunting kinda stopped at certain point as the elders realised they overspecialized their methods of hunting so they resort to creating entire farms to care and look after livestock.
You may be wandeirng how are they pure evil?
They're not actually, only like three guys are but their not shunned for it.
They all had one thing in common.
BOREDOM.
Hunting has became less fun and they already fought the toughest animals on their planet. So.
These three left home in search for actual fun by causing as much chaos as possible to rack up a better body count then with animals.
The others saw no problem with what they did.
Cause they somewhat relate to them.
Like going from a well respected hunter of the tribe now to a humble farmer is a staggering change to handle with.
Basically TLDR:
Three guys from a mostly peaceful species of farmers got bored then get off world to cause destruction on a unimaginable scale throughout the galaxy and the people respect their descion of doing so. Cause they would've done the same thing if they were in their shoes.
Can't remember who made it, but I recommend watching "How Undertale Does Evil Right".
To sum it up, Undertale's definition of evil is something along the lines of 'Bringing harm to others with the full knowledge that you will gain ABSOLUTELY nothing from it'. I could be wrong tho.
Now, keep in mind that this only applies depending on what kind of universe you're trying to write. For example, the goblins from Goblin Slayer are, as Scrit himself pointed out, written to be fully rooted against. They're written in a way that removes any reason to sympathize with them, and it's done to keep the story simple and clean.
But what about a universe like Frieren's? Now, as of writing this I haven't watched much of Frieren yet, so please bear with me, but from what I understand so far, the sentient races in the anime are at least intelligent enough to be self-aware. In this case, people/races like Demons commits acts that us humans would otherwise see as atrocious because they have something to gain. While that's not something you can just sympathize with, it can still be justified to at least some extent.
Of course, that can only go so far. If you do something that's completely unnecessary and gain nothing out of it, while also bringing harm to others, that can be considered "pure evil".
TLDR; Morality is hard to write in a way that appeals to everybody. Just write what you enjoy.
Man, I don't know why I keep turning my comments into full-on mini-essays lol 😅
this is what extra credits should have uploaded instead of the virtue-signaling slop they posted arguing that there NEEDS to be a "greater narrative" for having bad guys being bad
I find pure evil villains/individuals real nice and fine, and the same for evil societies/governments/teams/groups. But an entire species not so much, sure they can be *dangerous* and far from being pushovers still, but that can't really be qualified as evil. A beartrap is dangerous and built for harm and it's stupid to place a hand, face, or foot in one, but that wouldn't make it evil.
Short answer, no. Just like most things in fiction, it comes down to how a pure evil race is handled in the setting they come from. The Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar, for example, are a good example of a pure evil race done right in my opinion, they have an interesting reasoning to why they’re so evil, they serve as a huge threat to the setting they reside in and are distinct and interesting enough from the other “evil” races of the settings.
You can not kill parthy, its a long time ago but I think I remember that I just spoke with one of the oldies there and said "I will not kill him" or some such. I dont remember the details though, its a very long time ago.
pure good races are probably boring tbh
Unless theyre antagonists because their "good" is incompatible with anything short of perfection, think like the hallow in terraria and how it seeks to destroy or convert anything that isnt hallowed because the existence of outside imperfection compromises its own perfection
@@Mae_Dastardlythe borg
Would you believe I didn't realize Popo was a problem until people told me why Popo was a problem?
Mr. Popo isn't a problem. People who think Mr. Popo is a problem are the problem.
Bring back extreme racial stereotypes in media. They're great!
@@migarsormrapophis2755
Based.
It's only boring when you naively believe there's so such thing as unironic evil.
Because postmodernism requires from us to foot for evil doers and to defile and to mock at good.
Someones been watching too much jordan peterson lmaon
A small channel dropping a big banger
The only other time i can think of an exception is Devil may cry with Sparda. Sparda was a demon general for basically satan and was planning to help him conquer humanity when he miraculously had a change of heart and decided to rebel against all of demon kind to protect humanity. In DMC the power of love is a thing, being able to love and care for someone other than yourself gives you a power boost which is why sparda was so powerful to stop all demons from attacking humanity. The thing about the demon world however is that the demon realm is a Darwinian dog eat dog hellscape where the strong rules over the weak. Demons don't have families, as soon as a demon is born, they must fend for themselves, this cultivates a behaviour where there is no love and thus most demons don't get access to the love power boost. throughout all of DMC media there are only 3 examples of demons turning good Sparda, Trish and the weak Demon in the DMC anime. I dont count the descendants of sparda or lucia because their home environment is the human world.
I just have all my races neutral
28:38 how do you know you’ve explored a concept deep enough? Do you need a checklist or something?
You won't know until you actually do some writing and show it to other people to get their feedback tbh.
Depends upon how you play it, I suppose. At the very least, one can flip it around and claim that an entire race of goody-two shoes who do no evil can be as boring and unrealistic as an entire race of evil-mustache twirlers.
Orks in 40k all speak like English football hooligans or English pirates. I guess that must mean Games Workshop thinks British people are all inherently evil - which is funny, considering Games Workshop is a British company. It couldn't just be that the designers liked that aesthetic or something simple like that - it must be anti-anglo racism.
OK, genuine question, i don't if you will bother answering, but i felt a gut feeling it was strange, a little out of wack, and i'd like clarification, if possible.
13:02 : disapoint their mothers? What?
children call for their mothers when they are in danger, asking to be saved.
Is not because they are afraid to disappoint their mothers.
I don't get what you tried to say there.
Do the xenomorphs count as a pure evil race? If so no I don't think so cause I'll never get tired of xenomorphs! But like you said it depends and it can always a cool enemy in tge right hands.
The idea of pure evil races is such a logical fallacy. These individuals have enough compassion to band together into a race, that already invalidates their pure evil characteristic.
If you want pure evil, let it be just one single entity.
Cooperation is morally neutral. If you work together with other people to spread pain and suffering, you are still commiting and evil act. There is no compassion in working together. Even if compassion can be a motivation for cooperating, utility, necessity, and desire can be too.
@@ScritRighter Can you elaborate why you think cooperation is neutral? I'm furthering your goal, even protecting you against external danger, how is that supposed to be pure evil?
"work together with other people to spread pain and suffering" = I'm bringing joy to my fellow "pure evils". How can I possibly do that if I'm pure evil myself, I'm supposed to make everyone miserable. The only way to upset all other pure evils is to become a benevolent hero myself.
@@southoceann Commiting evil acts to experience joy is the definition of evil. I have no clue how you're not grasping this concept tbh. Not to mention, working together with the intent to provide joy to others is still a motivation for an action and not the action itself. The action itself is cooperation. The intent is bringing joy to the ones you cooperate with. It is still evil despite intention because the act of spreading evil brings joy in this scenario. Therefore despite working together to bring happiness to each other, the group is still evil.
@@ScritRighter See this is where we differ. I totally agree with you that the group is evil. But you refuse to zoom in to the individuals in the group. I'm not saying those individuals are not evil either. However, "pure" evils, they can't be.
Example: how is the race come for form? They mate and have off-springs right? Would they kill their off-springs right after birth? Or are they capable of loving each other? All I'm saying is, being a race means there is a level of compassion holding the group together via individual sacrifices. There can only be one "most evil", and that will be pure. The moment there are a thousand evils, they are not "pure". Hence, a logical fallacy.
@@southoceann Once again, procreation is a neutral and even if it can be done under the intention of love, it can also have other motivations. Forceful procreation, subjugation, eugenics, etc. Even things such as increasing numbers to perpetuate the evil species. Once again we see that a race can be pure evil despite cooperation and procreation because neither of these things require someone to be good to achieve.
Half-baked moral thesis IMO. Being a psychopath doesn't make you inherently immoral and frankly it's offensive to real people with psychopathy to say so. Most psychopaths are serial cheaters at worst.
Can you explain this in Fortnite terms?
Pure Evil races are skibidi or something.
@@ScritRighterluv u
@@ScritRighterhave u read the frieren manga? They do analyze what a "good" demon could be.
@@TyBe-uo4ud Just started reading it where the anime left off yeah.
NO simple as hell man
Leave my Beloved cacaodemon out of this
No
fallout 1s super mutants
23:16 who made this?
It was a picture sent to me a little while ago without a link back to the artist, but it always stuck with me. I tried to look for the source, but I was unsuccessful. If anyone else knows I'll be sure to put a link in my description to them.
Pure evil races can be fun in design and having main characters killing a bunch of faceless characters. Even though the pure evil races don’t have nuance because they don’t need it for the story. Like the dark orc’s from lord of the rings or the androids from Star Wars.
The Lame "Be Careful Not to Play Into Any Harmful Stereotypes or Make Anyone Evil" DnD vs. the Chad "Make the universally evil Orkz talk like English pirates and footballers because it's funny" 40k
no.
One of the problems with this video is you talk about "harmful stereotypes". Why do you think those stereotypes are harmful? What makes a stereotype harmful? Particularly if people don't even associate the stereotype with the group its supposedly being used to represent. If most people normal people don't immediately associate that stereotype with a person's skin colour and you do then wouldn't that make you racist?
Just to be clear when right wingers say that the people who see everything through a race lens are racist they are indeed correct. If you see a group of Orcs that like watermelon and think "Black people" your racist. If you see a a group of Orcs eating pasta and think "Their Italian" your also racist. If you see a group of Orcs eating curry and think "Indians" then again your racist. If you look at a study and only account for race or sex then your racist and sexist.
Sure, but if like the video said you see a group of orcs that:
- Love watermelon
- Have rap culture
- Love basketball
- Wear their pants too low down
- Live in the poor neighbourhoods of modern cities
- Speak with a typical "hood accent"
Saying they meant to be an allegory for a certain group is kinda stupid. 1 shared stereotypes or 10 is a very different scenario.
A Brown man here;
The fact that people said orcs are like black people. Fucked me up. Like I have a brown skin character, who is Jojo levels of manly and feminine. Strong as hell cleric without ZERO "black" stereotypes.
Imagine the shock of those people when I showed them my character or told them the story lf what he did. Let them call him an evil Orc he's gonna roast them with his words. And not feed them.
@@C_0_Nngl that jojo analogy is hilarious ngl.
i feel like evil races work best when they are "born of evil" or something like that rather than just being a species who is inherrantly evil for uh.... reasons TM
if you need a species to act purely as an obstacle for the hero to triumph over than it just makes the most sense to have them literally *be* evil, otherwise i cant stop myself from thinking about how sad or strange it is that someone would be evil simply because of the circumstances of their creation
Imo nah
Whatever happened make it interesting. I’ve played games with only evil orcs and iv played games where orcs are awesome heroes both have been awesome. I think you could have a chaotic vs lawful chaotic just means very emotional unpredictable more consumed by emotions. And lawful can be in more control but but stubborn harder to change opinions, of course at the end of the day you just do whatever the hell you want maybe there are no such things evil races. Maybe they are nothing but evil races and everyone’s evil do whatever.
They’re not. Next question.
I'm going to try to keep this comment short but the keyword is "try". There's a lot I want to touch on with my comment in response to the video. To start, I think it's important for context that I say I am a writer, so I have a lot of opinions when it comes to writing. However, you do make some points that I do agree with like that some writers are more concerned with being activists rather than being storytellers (even if it's not something you think anymore). Aside from that, I believe we agree on the conclusion of this video- evil races will work in some stories but not others. As a writer, I don't always want my heroes (or the audience) to have to morally reflect on their action every time they have to slaughter enemy after enemy. Personally, I don't even care much for writing heroes that have a strong "no killing rule". They might generally avoid it but will be willing to take a life for the greater good. When I use an evil race, it is so I can write entertaining fantasy stories where the heroes slay terrible monsters to save the princess, the kingdom, or their dog without having to question at any point if what they're doing is right. Even when the enemy isn't pure evil, it's typically pretty easy to justify killing them.
Now I'll move on to some thoughts I had unrelated to the main point of the video:
- I'm not sure what Elves being humans with pointy ears has to do with this or why it matters. Fantasy races likes elves, dwarves, and fairies come from human mythology, which is older than the fantasy genre. Tolkien took that lore in his own direction to create the immortal elves. The fantasy genre followed suit and it became the mold for all elves. But that doesn't mean it's the only way to write an elf. In my fantasy story, it wouldn't make sense for Elves to be the same as how Tolkien imagined them. Instead of just copying Tolkien like so many fantasy authors do I took inspiration from Norse and Germanic folklore and mythology where the concept of elves are magical beings originated. Even in the myths, there's not much to separate elves from humans but if I fully explained the historical belief of elves this comment would be way too long.
- 20:31 it's obvious that you're showing the scene from Harry Potter with the goblin to perpetuate the idea that the goblins are spose to represent Jewish people. It's untrue. Goblins have been portrayed the same way in media a lot: greedy with pointy noses. That's it. By your own logic, that shouldn't be enough to say it was intentional. I don't think the HP goblins (or any fantasy goblin) or the Minecraft Villagers are meant to be "Jewish-coded". The only reason people argue that is to cause discourse in fandoms or paint the fans as racist.
I never watched Dragon Ball but even I know that Mr. Popo was not intended to be a racial caricature! He is very clearly inspired by the Buddhist/Hindi deity Mahakala. The skin color and even the red lips are the same. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that he also resembles Jim Crow style depictions of Africans.
If people are seeing racial stereotypes everywhere they look that's their problem. It might not be directly racist, but it is ignorant and just generally annoying for people to throw tantrums over everything without understanding it. Majority of the time, people will call something racist and be wrong about it; but they just double down instead of admitting they were wrong. It's so infuriating to watch people bash fantasy authors like Tolkien because they misunderstood what his intent was, and then they're too stubborn to listen to anyone else. It's crazy that the people that will attack Tolkien, literally the most popular fantasy writer, will also celebrate F tier movies or shows just because those shows are loudly political (on purpose). It's not even possible to criticize these types of shows -it's rather difficult to criticize anything anymore- because any criticism is met with unhinged backlash from people with emotional problems that can only shout ad hominems very loudly.
To be clear and perfectly honest, I am more than willing to call something "woke". Not in the way leftists view it as a synonym for "progressive" or "socially aware" and I'm not here to say that anything political is bad. I don't see woke as being political. How I see it, something that's woke is a social performance. It takes social justice to an extreme without fighting for any real justice. An example of this would be the people calling Orcs racist. I could say more but this comment is getting too long.
Use of the term race in this context is jarring and a holdover from when the pure evil race trope was literally just racism. An update would be cool
Its lazy
Nobody is talking about the narrow-minded foolishness if Christianity with their whole all of demons and spirits are evil... except the holy ones 🤦♂️
What separates those "holy ones" from the "evil ones"?
Really think about that
First?
yeah israel is pretty boring
Hialarity of using Frieren after the author decided potrayal of demons sucked and ditched it for something more nuanced is immense
This kinda reminds me of dragon age
No.