Avoiding a "Dark lord" big bad

When a work was not made to entertain, it is usually targeted towards the opposite of entertainment. Disappointing, Annoying, Angering, Offending and Worrying the reader are acceptable motives for creating said work.

Offensive works gain notoreity (and eventually sales) by not entertaining the readers, but by pissing them off. Angering works role is to inspire anger or hatred towards the content within the story (for example, stories whose plots revolve around Corrupt Corporate Executive winning). Works aiming to worry the reader convey a message in their story that outside of the fictional world they were in, something similar is about to happen (again, 1984 and Brave New World inspire this in their stories.)

Disappointing stories and Annoying stories are an anti-thesis to traditional fiction, and generally appeal to nobody but the author. Intentionally annoying or disappointing the readers is their only reason for being, and when people have invested time and money into such works, people tend to get very pissed off at the author. These works tend to Shoot the Shaggy Dog.

Okay, can I propose that we move this "opinions in fiction" discussion to another thread? Maybe put it in On-Topic, since it doesn't have much to do with writing questions?

Well there are Dark Lord-esque characters in real life. Of course, no real figure fits the trope perfectly, but some can bear some resemblance when viewed from a certain angle. Genghis Khan and his army must have looked more or less like Sauron from the perspective of the people he invaded: A cruel, sadistic, violent warlord with a endless horde to do his evil bidding who won't stop until everything is under his boot.

Edward Longshanks, what with being insanely tall, deep-voiced and utterly ruthless, commanding an army of loyal subjects to conquer foreign lands must also make him look like goddamn Satan from the perspective of a Scottishman.

Ivar the Boneless, commander of the largest Viking army ever asssembled, must also have looked like something out of a nightmare for the Dark Age Britons. An army of merciless raiders from beyond the sea with a strange language who come to Rape, Pillage, and Burn and worse, desecrate your gods and replace them with their own.

Reality is more complex than that, but if you look at these three and similar figures as analysis of the "Dark Lord" concept you'll get a pretty interesting idea of how this concept works in the real world and the possible nuances it might have.

A big facet of what makes a villain a Dark Lord is that they're the leader of a vast horde of evil, usually doing the Orcus On The Throne thing most of the time. So, if you want to avoid the Dark Lord archetype, you could simply have your Big Bad be a lot more hands-on, taking care of evil business themselves instead of sending minions to do it.

The micromanaging evil overlord.

>> how do you you avoid using a cliche "dark lord"? and still giving your character a good villain that serves the same role?

Well, one can't always do that because it would get boring after some time, but ... make them dark grey rather than pure black, and not uniformly dark grey but rather a mix of white and black and everything in-between. Have them be people who could be protagonists of their own, maybe more tragic or more violent, but their very own, story, and only aren't because their goals are mutually exclusive with the goals of whoever happens to be the protagonist. Have them be jaded WellIntentionedExtremists gone too far, tired of the inability to act those who aren't "dark" show or even outright forced to act because someone has to and the "light" people don't believe their warnings. Show them as people who, before kicking yet another puppy that they think has to be kicked, make a sad expression and then steel themselves, but are too tired of it to search for an alternative to kicking puppies.

Or alternatively, make the villain pure black. But then make people doubt that they can see the colours properly. Keep the villain black, their choices not even dubious, but make it ambiguous if they really are evil or simply ruthless, worse than the world or simply responding in kind. Make the heroes doubt if their cause is right, if the decisions they make are the best ones they could have made.

You can try it for yourself by taking some existing character and asking some "what if" questions.

So let's take, let's say ... Voldemort from the Harry Potter series.

What if he and his followers were right, and muggleborns really were aberrations that would in the end make magic disappear?

What if nobody believed Tom because that knowledge was passed to him in the Chamber of Secrets and nobody can verify it due to them not speaking parseltongue?

What if he had no choice but to become a "dark lord" because he had to take actions and his biggest opposition self-identified themselves as "light"?

What if their questionable and seen as unforgivable killing curse was used because, though they disliked their opponents, that curse at least minimised the pain of those who "had" to die?

What if the horcruxes were not as much for making him immortal as for keeping him alive until he fixed the problem?

What if his offer at the end of the first year was genuine and he was hoping to recruit the child of prophecy to make it possible to get through what had to be done with less casualties, only to find out that Dumbledore had already made Harry one of his people?

What if he had wanted to get the job as a teacher back in the days not to recruit followers but to be able to make the next generation aware of the problem and Dumbledore had refused him because of that?

I'll admit I don't really like that particular character. But I have to admit that if those particular "what if" questions were what defined him, it'd make for a pretty interesting story with a fairly tragic conflict.

The point is, whether they are "dark", "light", or "purple", whether they are "lord", "emperor", or whatever else, the characters have to behave in a way that makes sense, and that's it. There has to be something human-like in them, and their actions must be defined by something, be it their desires or fears or some sort of knowledge. A character who does something "for the goodz" or "for the evulz" is most likely a failure.

Well ... unless they are a "force of nature" type of villain, that that's a different case and I don't think anything like that can be counted as a "dark lord" anyway, assuming that it's done properly.

edited 12th Jan '15 3:39:36 PM by Kazeto

A good example of that type of non-evil "dark lord" is Satoris from The Sundering duology, which is a direct subversion of Tolkienist fantasy with many of the characters being Expies of The Lord Of The Rings characters.