In my book, there are only two bad guys: Darth Vader and Joker. All other bad guys in creation have to meet up to the standard of these two giants of evil. Reason being all evil acts fall under one of their two standards. In role-playing, they have a system for this wherein they categorize all evil characters under the standards of chaotic, neutral, or lawful. I don’t believe in neutral, though.

Darth Vader. Forget the robotic-overlord appearance. Forget the pseudo-space samurai thing. Okay, don’t forget the samurai thing, that’s kind of important. Darth Vader is a control freak. He must have all things ordered under his impossible standards. Part of his torment is that, just as everyone else fails to live up to his standards, he is always pushing himself to those same impossible standards. He has replaced most of his weak flesh with organized machinery. He feels that if only he could control a few more things, everything would be perfect. We see this in his one elated moment when he exclaims, “I have you now!� He’s pursued something, and it is falling under his control. For that brief instant, he has achieved some fleeting satisfaction. Therefore, failure will not be tolerated. Disobedience will not be tolerated. Insolence, challenge, and especially weakness will NOT be tolerated. The punishment for ANY of these things is immediate eradication in the method most satisfying to his frustration. In most cases, the crushing of the windpipe.

However, if I saw Darth Vader walking down the street, I would not immediately run in terror. I would give him a wide berth, certainly, but he’s not the kind to kill or torture you on sight. He has an agenda. So long as you are not hindering his agenda or a part of his agenda, you don’t really exist in his eyes.

Joker, on the other hand, would have me running in terror on sight. This is because Joker is the opposite kind of evil from Vader. Joker is impulsive, random, and mad. You can never really tell WHAT Joker is going to do, only that it’s going to be very unpleasant. His purpose is to break down order, to eradicate control. He wants to remake the world as he already sees it: an insane place that makes no sense and only serves to amuse him. If Vader walks around with a permanent scowl on his face because control is always just beyond his reach, Joker walks around with a permanent smile on his face because everything is JUST as chaotic as he likes it. Joker operates almost purely off what Freud would have called the ‘Id’, which is to say, the constant, incessant desire to have EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. What makes Joker so dangerous is that there is NOTHING HE WILL NOT DO if given the opportunity. He has no boundaries, no restraints.

Vader, on the other hand, operates more on the Freudian superego. He must have control, discipline, and constant denial of the immediate to serve the greater long-term goal.

These are the only two bad guys there are.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 at 1:15 am and is filed under Quiver. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.