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Drowtales

2018-09-13T16:24:47Z

2600:1700:19C0:AE0:5188:4DBF:617B:9247: Woof, got a lot to unpack here, but this'll do as a start.

{{Fail}}
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[[File:Drows_in_SPEEES.jpg|thumb|In the skin darkness of the future, there is only Mary Sues.]]
[http://www.drowtales.com '''Drowtales''': Moonless Age] is a fantasy manga-style webcomic that has been running since 2001, starting out as shitty MSPaint-tier art and growing to dozens of artists collaborating on what is now unarguably one of the best looking webcomics on the internet, although whether the story has likewise improved at all is open to debate.

On /tg/ Drowtales (woo-oo!) is a [[skub]] topic, sometimes resulting in lulz, like when /tg/ had several raids of the site's roleplaying forums with neckbeards attempting to [[Derp|fight the drow Mary Sues with their own dwarf Mary Sues]].

==Setting==
It's standard fantasy fare with a few changes, mostly with the elves and Drow in particular (go figure) who are shown to be mostly cute, animesque and angsty nerdy teenagers who bitch to each other about their lives before having an orgy on the settlement they just conquered from humans (more on that later). Some other characters have cat ears, all are bisexual. The main character pulls out any imaginable power out of her ass when cornered, and there's dumb shit like the drow getting high on chocolate (seriously)(Maybe they just really easily get theobromine poisoning?).
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Basically a long time ago there were two elven nations at war, until they used a magic spell to break the fucking moon apart and opened a giant portal to the netherworld so that demons flooded the surface of the planet and ate everyone. What few elves survived this clusterfuck of a war went underground and turned into the drow, building a giant city and then fighting each other while preying on humans and slaughtering entire surface towns to drag the women and children to slavery.
The simplest way to describe what's wrong with Drowtales can be summarized as: Take [[Drizzt]] Syndrome, infect an entire planet's worth of elves with it and replace any self-awareness moments of characters with raging hypocrisy and pump up the [[Mary Sue]]. When you've done that, add in heaps of obnoxious T&A in the middle of all the wangst, and crank up the [[Grimdark#Grimderp|Grimderp]] to eleven.
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[[File:Sparklypoo.jpg|thumb|Drow politics]]

As alluded, the Drow are the villains of the setting. Full stop. The fanbase and the author itself claims that it has no real villains, but that's only really because the Drow are the creator's pets and are evil for the sake of being evil, but unlike the DnD drow nothing about their society requires them to do any of the shit they do. Combine that with blatant bullshit like being able to alter their own DNA with magic and being a futuristic civilization when everyone else is stuck in the middle ages, and you have what is effectively a race full of blatantly evil Mary Sues with a hypocritical streak a mile wide, and cringe-filled plot holes to match. Here are a few quick reasons on how/why they're so unreasonably evil:

*'''Slavery:''' The first and biggest characteristic of the drow, they like to take slaves. It all sounds grim but logical since they are Drow and all that... just... they do not necessarily have need of these slaves (and it's even counterproductive considering food is a very scarce resource), as all of their food/textiles the slaves produce could easily be made and tended to by golems and mana-powered devices on equal terms with modern industry, yet they insist on slaves for... bloodsports and sexual slavery (which is pretty rich when their society is sexually relaxed) for no good reason besides shits and giggles; one Drow even remarks that the races could easily live peacefully. The slavery in this is so juvenile that sentient beings enslaved by Drow immediately become docile and obedient to the point that the Drow can openly gloat about eating their captives to thier slaves' faces without as much as a spot of anger on the victim.
*'''Cannibalism:''' The second biggest offence of the Drow, and one of the main driving forces of the story. They eat people, and this includes other Drow. Apparently meat is rare in the not-underdark, and so are brains since nobody realized they could just have farms up on the surface. They do eventually return to the surface, only to fuck up, massacre and take over human towns and make it look as if it's a heroic act in the series.
*'''Racism:''' Oh dear lord, this is bad. The Drow do not consider other races besides Elves as anything more than soulless cattle to do whatever they want with. Normally this is a fantasy villain staple, but in Drowtales it means you're supposed to agree with their point of view - the [[TVTropes]] page even lists the attempts of Nordic peoples to free their families from slavery by chucking molotovs at drow outposts as "villainous valor". Every bit of atrocity inflicted on non-Drow are repeatedly justified, and any backlash they might get ignored, anything they do is justified and the other races being often even more morally/socially corrupt if barely. It's basically the grimdark White Man's Burden with '''every stereotype on inferior races being true and the inferiors gleefully accepting it'''.
*'''Magic:''' Here's the Mary Sue factor. Elves and Drow are the only race that can use magic, and it allows them to do whatever the hell they want, including having giant walking siege machines and pulse rifles. It also grants them immortality, regeneration, it gives children the ability to take down entire armies on their own and the ability to alter their DNA so that the main character can pull new powers out of her ass whenever she needs to.
*'''Empathic Abilities:''' Arguably the same as magic, but a lot of Drow have the abilities to feel others' emotions. This doesn't prevent them from doing any of the above however, it just means they're a special snowflake with on-the-go created bullshit abilities for Animu effects.
*'''Hypocrisy:''' The biggest issue with the series, its creator, its characters, and its fanbase. Drowtales is full of unintentional double standards, where it's okay for Drow to murder and enslave, but when another race tries to defend itself or counterattack, they're portrayed as being the villains: even Romans noted the strength and dignity of their Gaulish enemies and made an entire statue to commemorate their sorrow, "The Dying Gaul", seeing slavery and defeat as a sad human factor that can be redeemed with manumission. Here? [[What|apparently we have paladins of Sharess who exhort their kind Goddess and march against humans to enslave, massacre and murder...for their philosophy of light.]]
::The series tries to mitigate this point by saying the Drow have a different moral/ethical code. Apparently it's honourable to do something, with the greater honour the harder it is to do whatever it is, but it's dishonourable to fail. If you succeed then your act is worthy of respect and awe, no matter how evil, while if you fail you're looked upon with derision. This applies no matter what, so blowing up the fucking moon during a war is worth great respect. This is also a frequently forgotten point considering how often somebody fails to do something without many repercussions and by contrast, this allows the characters to get away with anything and still claim to be in the right so long as they win, and it fails to apply whenever the creators feel like writing the Drow with regular morals instead.
::This point, a true Crowning Moment of Retardedness is best illustrated (pun intended) when the the characters visit a surface colony (i.e a human village massacred and taken over) and typical of Drow, an orgy ensues. During the blissful after-sex sleep they are woken up to a counterattack by desperate humans coming to save their kin. The humans are defeated, mocked and vilified for trying to save other humans for a lifetime of slavery before the main characters, who are supposed to be against slavery, leave for home having done nothing in the village but support slavery, despite talking about making the world a more peaceful place a few issues before. Crack cocaine might be a reason for the plot writing here.

Arguments with its fans about the bullshit reveal that they simply hand-wave any contradictions with the words that "they are a species with different morals" or "they are morally justified to do so based on their own morals". Apparently they seem to have forgotten that the people reading it don't have those different morals. Besides, even by their own standards however they fall flat (as their morals are whatever they want them to be whenever it's convenient) and if you want to see a case of values dissonance done right, look at 40K instead- practically every single race is a textbook example of how it should be pulled off, from the Imperium to the Dark Eldar.
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TL;DR: All that needs to be done to remove the majority of the grimderp is for the Drow to use their golems/mana tech in place of the slaves to get the exact same results. If that happened though then they wouldn't have NSFW scenes with slaves in bondage, which is quite possibly the reason the comic got so well funded in the first place, or retcon the Magitech bullshit, keep slavery and have a still [[Grimdark]], but logically sounder setting.
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==Other Races==
*'''Elves:''' The surface elves are socially functioning normal people, having a prudish, pacifist and non-slaving sex-segregated caste system. They are the boring to the Drow's exciting, because while the Elves are summed up by 'normal people' the Drow on the other hand are a bisexual, sex-rich, matriarchal BDSM empire which has slaves by the ton to eat/rape/kill with no moral compunctions (odd considering that the Drow are supposed to be the ones to sympathize with).

*'''[[Dorf]]s''': Our good old diminutive curmudgeons are terrorists of the underworld, using gunpowder to ambush the Drow, and with good reason: their simple life was ruined by the arrival of hordes of Dark Elves (whose next generation was born as the Drow), who promptly enslaved them because...well...let's just forget we had no arable land and needed food and pretend they did menial slave work. Survivors and freedmen dwarves (Freedwarves?) ran away and now mostly are Taliban of Chel, the Drow underworld, complete with beards and explosives and ambushes, plus the complete justification for their acts. This alone should drive an elegan[[/tg/]]entleman insane.

*'''Everyone else:''' Humans, orcs, and so on. Their failure to manipulate mana makes them soulless and on par with animals in Drow eyes, and as such you're not supposed to feel pity for any of them either. Regularly enslaved (not that they don't enslave regular elves anyway), massacred and eaten even by the "good" characters. There's two flavors of humans, an Anglo-Saxon stereotype and a Japanese stereotype, the former desperately crusading against the Drow and the latter being their lapdogs and animal-like docile to the point of falling over each other to betray and collaborate with the Drow. The orcs and goblins are simply never discussed in detail due to nobody caring save for some dumb muscle tavern guard job.

==Factions==
*'''Sarghress:''' The clan the main character belongs to and taken to fighting slavers, so... and thus the default "heroic" or "reasonable" one. They are a clan of mercenary commoners with a musclegirl matriarch who somehow ride wolves around in the dark underworld and are best buddies with the blue empath drow. In the third arc, they free all human slaves and finally become the heroic clan of the series, well, better late than never.

*'''Sharen:''' The aristocrats of the city who all wear beautiful outfits and act haughty. Their clan is split into multiple bloodlines who constantly plot against each other. These are the most D&D-like drow in the setting, and the bad guys who invited demon infestation in many drow. Also they ride dragons around and their males are mostly nether tainted automatons who wear special armor to keep them from being transformed into demonic horrors. Their leader has serious mommy issues and goes hilariously apeshit at the sight of her blood.

*'''Sullisin'rune:''' Essentially the Brave New World society in drow form. They wear a lot of blue, use empath abilities and have regular orgies in their glowing dome fortress (it's implied to be for intelligence gathering reasons). The main character's lover is from there and quips about that they treat their slaves well (Maya, the light elf MILF slave had a real nice outfit and looked healthy and well cared for, albeit depressed), so apparently being an empath works for once in the series as a not-depressing detail. Since everyone in their clan is always sensing each others emotions, they amount to a kind of quasi-benevolent police state with omniscient surveillance. One of the more interesting factions in the story.

*'''Vloz'ress:''' Anarchist demon worshipers. Like anarchists IRL, they are generally useless and self-defeating. Their leader is a figurehead woman with brain damage making her equal to a 4 year-old child who turns the clan's slaves and captives into eternally tortured dolls, accompanied by a reality busting, 4th wall leaning LOLRANDOM orange haired kid.

*'''Beldrobbaen:''' Emo goths who live in an inverted castle built on the cavern ceiling. They dress in all black and mope around. Needless to say, they are by far the most popular clan among the fanbase. Their clan is dying out because they lost a whole generation of their girls during a summoning accident, which one would think wouldn't be too bad for a race of immortal beings who can apparently reproduce for their whole lives, except that they refuse to mate with commoners and traditionally turn any male that impregnates a Beldrobbaen woman into a drider knight, so they're basically drow [[Wat|panda...mantis...things.]].

*'''Nal'sarkoth:''' Surface merchants who dress in all green. They are seen running a surface trading post and treating their human workers as equals as they actively recruit non-drow races to build up their numbers. They might have even been one of the good/more interesting factions (also being good people in general) but they barely show up in the story and nobody gives a flying fuck about them.

*'''Illhar'dro:''' The other merchant clan. Slightly more interesting in that they have a form of magic based on singing (and mana powered concerts). Biggest exporter of drow pop stars in the underworld.

*'''Kyorl'solenurn:''' [[Imperium of Man|Fanatic crusader assholes]], who, aside from torturing tainted Drow to death, are the exact same [[Mary Sue]] bastards, with a twist: most are descendants of former light elf slaves, so their hatred of tainted Drow might be an outlet for their passive-aggressive grudge, kinda like an entire society of half-black KKK. In an amusing irony, they're the only clan who regularly worships the Drow goddess Sharess and hunts down demonic threats, whereas the rest just dick around and ignore the demonic threats she tried to save them from (just imagine a bunch of high elves worshipping Lolth while the Drow go "ah fuck it, who needs her?"). Yes, the insane religious fundamentalists [[fail|have more sense]] than the "normal" Drow...

*'''Jaal'darya:''' Female-only clan who use [[Tyranids|biotechnology]]. They create artificial life forms and transform their bodies into all kinds of weird shit. Regularly seen snatching babies to make bio-golems, because apparently they don't know how to just clone them or simply because [[Edgy]].

==Characters==
Way too many to list. There are dozens of them. The comic just rains characters, most of which are unimportant or are only there for background. The reason is that the characters are commissioned by donators who want to show off their horribly designed alter egos.

Some semi-important characters who still do fuck all half of the time:

*'''Clan Matriarchs:''' The clan matriarchs are all expert mages who would kick your shit in if you fought them, yet can't even run their houses without fucking up half of the city in an enormous conflagration by magic and demons (all with unique abilities, [http://www.drowtales.com/longestwaitarchive//20050719c1p023.JPG basically straight out of Dragonball Z)].
*'''Ariel:''' Ariel is supposedly the main character: a rebellious-toward-parents, hair-dyed Mary-Sue-lesbian OC of the author (who is male and writing what amounts to a self-indulgent Drow-based [[Magical realm|magical realm]], in case you needed reminding) whose actions amount to fuck-all, with no real brains or courage. She goes to a magic school and then dicks around on the surface for a while, occasionally wrecking human towns and generally being a Mary Sue with a moral myopia. Before she was retconned, it was even worse: letting her light elf slave Maya be a sacrifice to Sharess for visions (a goddess who wasn't even supposed to be a Lolth expy but a sorcerer/turned savior goddess of her people and the world since she stopped demons from emerging). After the retcon she is still a fucking idiot with a case of Grimderp-lesbian-mana-operated mecha pilot (which is one of her hundreds of different, omnipotent skills) who accidentally killed Maya in a fit of rage when the light elf tried to maternally protect her young master, and started to feel bad about it... for a few days. When she grows up, she supposedly feels bad for slaves and how they are treated, yet cheerfully murderfucks humans who were massacred and were coming back to free their kin from being sold to slavery. Once she is given to judge a young Drow man accused of counterfeiting money, she pathetically apologizes to him saying "P-please work hard and earn your freedom" as the man is seized and stripped to be made a slave by angry shopkeepers. Once the plot goes forward, she comes out of closet to her mother and says she is in love with a girl and goes to the surface, coincidentally meeting her old slave Vaelia. As befitting of slaves in this setting, she greets her, claims to have forgotten all the massacres and basically says everything is totes OK now.

*'''Liriel:''' Ariel’s perky loli slave who is retardedly optimistic of her fate and cheered as Maya's guts were blasted by a magic missile by accident. It turns out she’s actually the Empress whose soul fled into her personal slave to escape death... yeah, some chuunibyou-grade cliche shit there (I was the Empress in my former life!).
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*'''Vaelia:''' Ariel's human gladiator bodyguard, and a character who is so fucked beyond all saving that she needs to be explained in detail.
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Vaelia is hands down the greatest missed opportunity of the series in the shape of a broken Aesop, and shows how Drowtales never fails to miss the mark of making its story uninteresting to those that don't bend over to the Drow concept 24/7.

To start things off, she was a human gladiator slave woman whose village was destroyed when she told the Drow where it was in a fit of anger. The survivors were put to chains and sold to Drow cities, while she was put to an arena to fight to death because nothing says that slavery is 100% vital to keeping their society alive like arena bloodsports.

Eventually Ariel buys her as a bodyguard, and Vaelia saves her from being strangled by some asshole Drow. This gets her freedom which amounts to fuck-all since Vaelia is now homeless, the rest of her tribe sold to a horrible life of slavery and alone below miles of rock, so she stays with our Skub loli Drow for some time. Vaelia's loyalty and the time she spent with the Drow makes Ariel wonder if humans have feelings and stories worth preserving; so just when we see the trigger of a change in the Drow society, she suddenly goes to the surface and leaves her circle of friends... to work with Drow raiders who hunt for artifacts and murder human towns for fun because she wants to see the sun and didn't feel like asking enough to get '''anyone fucking else''' (not even some wandering Drow trader dude/chick) to take her up there. From that point on she's treated like a dog, beaten and left to starve in a locked magic hut because she prevented Drow from crushing fairies to death for fun (remember, the Drow are supposed to be sympathetic!). At a point her "captain" even remarks how races could get along with a little effort (by robbing the villagers and sparing their lives), inadvertendly poking holes in the whole setting before forgetting this point entirely. One needs real brain damage to even appreciate the broken Aesop.

15 years later she is seen again, now a mother of three human children and helping the more peaceful, less racist Drow overthrow Sharen slavers, STILL treated worse than a dog by her captain, only mildly appreciated by a Drow whom she saved later, and reminiscing that some things get better (LOL they don't). Of course, in typical Drowtales fashion, the kids' fathers are irrelevant and unknown because father figures are anathema to the comic. Surprise: Last few chapters showed her living in a Drow colony with an entire quarter built for humans (Goblins), and Ariel's clan made it a policy to free every human slave. Soo...a belated happy end '''might''' be a redeeming final grace.
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*'''Chrys'tel:''' One of two ''actual'' main characters. She’s a Sharen petulant loli drow noble who investigates her traitorous family.
*'''Kiel'ndia:''' The other main character. A Vloz'ress tomboy punk demon summoner girl who breaks the 4th wall and speaks in modern English vernacular. This is as obnoxious as it sounds.
*'''Naal'suul:''' is the best character in Drowtales. She is a totally adorable Beldrobbaen emo goth drow girl who has a giant spider that she wears as a backpack. She’s also one of the few characters who could be considered to be purely heroic.
* There's 4-5 other characters from various clans that travel with Ariel, but they do nothing of any importance.
*'''Snadhya'rune:''' The main villain of the story. She is a purple haired Sharen summoner who wears fabulous fur coats and has smug levels that go into orbit. Though evil and cruel, at least she doesn't dick around or claim goodness or innocence. Perfect sociopath.

==Now for the Porn==

Amazingly enough, somebody thought a "Space Age" story arc/parallel universe about 10000 years later would be a good idea. In this timeline, the Drow apparently are the sole rulers of their world and [[Wat|explore the space with mana powered spaceships and Earth of all places]]. In this arc Drow are somehow good people after millenia of slavery and genocide and help Earth humans with some civil war; only after they beat the crap out of them when they mistake a powered-down human spacecraft for a derelict.

But what about the humans on the Drow planet?

They're left alone in hut reservations next to high tech Mary Sue cities. The exact reason for this is because apparently [[Derp|the humans haven't developed far enough to be on the same technological level as Drow, despite stating to have developed faster than regular human civilization]], (i.e. yet another "medieval stasis" handwave). Funnily enough, they also mention that humans used to be classed as beasts and hadn't developed nearly as - both of those were caused by Drow raids, and those 'modern day' Drow take no accountability for the actions of their ancestors and like to pretend they never happened.

Everyone else is only given the bare minimum of attention due to lack of interest. Instead, they just show bizarrely deviant porn involving nanomachine dildos.

...yeah, that'll do it actually: there is no real plot beyond a mishmash of repetitive lesbian sex scenes, because of course nothing else rakes in the donations harder than taking a page out of the standard webcomic playbook.

A saving grace is that Daydream is in a different universe (which means no Moonless Age!), so we can chill. Speaking of saving graces...

==Are there saving graces?==

Now to render unto Caesar...

As stated, the art is outrageously above and beyond the usual free webcomic fare. It really can't be stressed enough how beautiful some of the pages can get, though when other webcomics are mostly teenagers on DeviantART and you employ the best artists with porn sponsor money, that's to be expected.

The artists also deserves some praise for actually keeping this thing going since 2001. They also deserve a lot of praise for their hard work and improvement - just compare their current skill with the [http://web.archive.org/web/20040707183606/http://www.drowtales.com:80/archive_c1-3.php?location=20010417 original crayon art from 2001],

With 54 chapters and over 3500 pages not including the spin-offs, it is one of the longest webcomics ever and runs at an insane ''near daily update rate'', and it is not going to end until the fans stop paying. The artists work at a pace that makes [[Servitors]] look lazy. If only we could give some of their energy to [[A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire|GRRM]]... But then, they have a certain motivation called money and actually employ lots of artists by the fuckton and are financed by fan donations. Pay enough and they can have your own [[Derp|self-insert characters]](when humans try to liberate their imprisoned kin, an out-of-place drow character uses a female high heel shoe to kill the desperate (and justified) attackers while shouting a stupid line) as well as their own plot lines, so the sheer commercial motivation will allow this series to carry on for a long time yet, which is a good thing if you enjoy it, or enjoy to hate it.

==See Also==
*[[Goblin#Goblins_.28The_Webcomic.29|Goblins]]: A sort of inversion on Drowtales where instead of the main race being blatantly OP, the main race is constantly bullied by everyone else to show how sad they are.
*[[Edgy]]: Most of the problems in entertainment articles with a less-than-mature financing crowd and artists, permeating Drowtales.
*[http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Drowtales Drowtales' entry on the Bad Webcomics Wiki], which according to the page we inspired.

[[Category:Webcomics]]

Communism

2018-09-13T16:13:41Z

2600:1700:19C0:AE0:5188:4DBF:617B:9247:

{{flamewar}}
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{{NotFunny}}
[[Image:Communismleaders.jpg|right|thumb|400px|Contrary to western propaganda, this is how communism has always worked.]]
{{topquote|Under [[capitalism]], man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.|Attributed to Yakov Smirnov}}
{{Topquote|MASH THE DIRTY RED SCUM! KICK THEM IN THE TEETH WHERE IT HURTS! KILL! KILL, KILL! FILTHY BASTARD COMMIES! I HATE THEM, I HATE THEM! AH! AH!|Ordo Xenos Inquisitor John Cleese, responding to the threat of the Damocles Crusade}}

'''Communism''' is the social and economic theory of organisation wherein there is common ownership of the means of production (not private property, which is often mistakenly conflated with the means of production) and the absence of social classes, money, or indeed, the state itself.

Throughout history there were various systems and methods based around the idea of not owning anything to various degrees (see also: Jesus Christ, the Paris Commune), but proper (id est ''scientific'',''put-into-country-scale-practice'') communism starts with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Engels was the working son of an industrialist, while Marx got a PhD in law and spent much of his life in academia and radical politics; this arguably makes them the world's first [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee|socialist justice warriors.]] These two developed their economic theory as a response to the effects of the Industrial Revolution, particularly since OSHA and its analogues, child labor laws and a minimum wage weren't a thing. He observed that while the mechanization of production was a good thing since it generated a lot of wealth, it was [[Rage|grossly unfair]] since said wealth was accumulating in the pockets of only a few [[Games Workshop|fucking rich pricks]] and most other people lived in Victorian poverty. He viewed society as being on a very clear cut path of social evolution with clearly defined phases and stages based around competition between various socioeconomic classes, and came to the conclusion that soon a [[Horus Heresy|revolution]] would end the division between social classes entirely as a single centralized state claimed ownership of all property and land for the good of its people. While his motivated reasoning made a few leaps in logic, and he never made a clear explanation of how this all would be achieved, he considered such a transition to be inevitable.

Another controversial aspect of communism, since it's also a moral system, is that it is anti-religious. This is why communists are described by their detractors as "godless" (especially Marx's version, as Marx himself was outspokenly anti-theistic atheist, even calling religion "an opiate of the masses, the heart of a heartless world..."). Communism has either caused or played a role in the violent persecution of religion and religious people, and the violent propagation of atheism, from the 20th century onward to various degrees. To what degree varied from regime, period and the religion in question; Stalin stepped things up from Lenin including the destruction of places of worship, mass executions of clergymen and [[Imperial Truth|eerily familiar]] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists| pro-atheism propaganda] , but eventually relented in regards to Orthodox Christianity while not relenting on Buddhists in Siberia. China to this day puts limits and regulations in regards to organized religion, but has stepped back from the executions of Mao Zedong's regime. In North Korea, as recently as the 2000's, [http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/11/12/north-korea-publicly-executes-80-for-crimes-like-watching-films-owning-bible.html|simply '''having copies of religious texts''' can be deemed grounds for execution].

On a somewhat lighter note, Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Terk, was an aggressive atheist who wrote the Federation as an idealized secular society with a communist economy and made the Klingons and Romulans expies of unidealized communist nations. Later the Borg were brought in, and their assimilation M.O. has been used to make parallels to Communism.

To make a very long story short - a story that composes much of 20th century history short and would likely require a college-level economics, political science and history course just to understand why events played out the way they did (which doesn't stop modern communists from claiming they understand, whereas cappies oversimplify their temporary victory to MURICA) - some of his ideas were good on paper, but ol' Marxie forgot the old adage "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". In practice, having [[High Lords of Terra|so much power accumulated in the hands of just a few top-level ministers who weren't accountable to anybody]] didn't work out to the benefit of the people ([[derp|who would have guessed]]). Despite aiming for a classless society, oftentimes the heads of the party simply became an unofficial aristocracy; this is what Orwell meant when he wrote, "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." And that's besides the very frequent and violent purges or political imprisonment; states that attempted to implement communist ideology either tended to devolve into dictatorships themselves (or degenerated worker's states, according to Trostsky, such as the USSR); much to Orwell's displeasure, others got crushed by counter-revolutionaries (Revolutionary Catalonia), or learned the hard way that collectively controlling an entire economy in every possible way without something going horribly wrong is impossible. A common feature of communist regimes has been famines and a lack of domestic goods due to poor planning and short-sighted top-down strategies, although some commies willing to commit heresy, like Hungary's Goulash Communism or modern China/Vietnam, managed to rectify these problems by introducing markets. Because commies end up creating their own version of communism when another fails, there are more "variations" of Communism than there are lasguns in the Imperium.

==Communism in Traditional Games==
In general there are three ways communism is used in fiction and board games:

1: '''''FILTHY GODLESS RED BASTARDS''''': Dangerous, faceless enemies, ripped straight from the wettest dreams of the Cold War-era American John Birch society. These communists are the enemy; a vast, brutal, godless horde determined to take over the world that our heroes must resist. Nowadays, this attitude is usually played for comedy, as in ''[[Paranoia]]'' where Friend Computer's glitched-out personality has made it a paranoid wreck obsessed with a largely-imaginary adversary (while creating some actual communists in the process). By the way, if you want an example of literal CommuNazis, the East German Stasi are a good place to start, although the Nazi part is mostly aesthetic and the Communist ideology is what was dominant. No way would God Emperor Stalin let Nazism actually resurface.

2: '''Champions of the Proletariat''': The other side of the coin to what is listed above. These are either rebels against corrupt corporate overlords (frequently cyberpunk heroes) or a body of workers and soldiers fighting against fascist invaders (any game from the Russian perspective in WWII will count). Occasionally this show up in Medieval settings as anachronistic peasant revolts or other politically-radical types out to pull down the social parts of [[Medieval Stasis]].

3: '''GLORIOUS COMMUNISTS''': Somewhere between the other two and generally played for laughs. Communist regimes are oppressive, but also able to do great things through sheer force of Industrial Might, Soviet Super Science, Stalinist Architecture and Will-Of-The-People and can be heroic just as easily as villainous. See Red Alert-II and III, and to a lesser extent a few parts of the [[Imperium of Man]]. This is as close to the glorious accuracy of communism as you can get, comrade.

Communism has also provided us with the Russian army, which is an awesome gaming resource and reference, either in a drunken, drown-your-enemies-with-bodies-and-artillery sort of way (World War II), or a send-in-the-hardened-and-manly-Spetsnaz-and-tanks way (Cold War). It is a sacred law of [[/tg/]] alternate history [[/tg/'s homebrews|homebrew]] settings that there must be at least one communist faction and it must control at least 50% of the world's total landmass. Even [[Warmachine| Khador]] draws on the imagery of the Soviet armed forces, despite being more analogous to Tsarist/Imperialist Russia politically, aside from their Manifest Destiny "Why can't everyone else just roll over and let us conquer them?!" ideology that has... [[Nazi| other roots]].

Like all radical ideologies, communists are all over [[Shadowrun|the Sixth World]], mostly among the poor and disenfranchised who can't help looking up at the big fancy megacorp enclaves and wondering how ''that'' makes any kind of just sense. The Berlin Flux State was probably the biggest and most successful anarcho-communist enclave in-setting for a while, before it became such an embarrassment to the megacorps insisting they should be the only game in town that many of them (including the one run by the great dragon Lofwyr) had it dismantled somewhere around second or third edition.

People like to call the [[Tau]] communist. There's ''some'' truth to that, given they're a highly-collective society that generally values group achievement over personal accomplishment, but they're also a largely class-stratified society, with only the assurance that their leaders are theoretically cooperating for the [[Greater Good]] to keep them from being out-and-out feudalists with castes. Then again, that isn't too different from what many commie states became. There was also the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]], a parody of the kinds of communist guerrillas of previous decades, who are armed grots out to demand equal treatment from their Ork masters with comical results. The Imperium, being a decentralized feudalistic empire, undoubtedly has many worlds that have communist governing bodies and economies, and maybe even a few where things worked out okay.

[[Pathfinder Roleplaying Game|Golarion]] has got a semi-hemi-demi communist nation in-setting: Galt, land of insane, constant revolution where the only winners are the ''final blades''. It represents the "messy revolutionary" kind of communism rather than any of the three flavors above, though there's some obvious mixing with the principals of the French Revolution that was its more-direct inspiration.

''[[Star Trek]]'' is complicated. On the one hand, the Federation has essentially a communist economy, but their advanced technology has created a post-scarcity economy, so it can be interpreted that the producers thought this would be a natural product of a society where everybody was self-sufficient. Conversely, their chief rivals, the Klingons and the Romulons, are transparent analogues of the USSR and Maoist China seen through the pre-détente eyes of an American lounge lizard. Similar post-scarcity communists are common in ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'', though with a much stronger anarchist bent. They are largely and uncomplicatedly perfect due to the game designers' raging stiffy for that kind of thing.

Any WWII or quasi-WWII game worth its salt will have a communist faction, including the classic ''[[Axis & Allies]]'' and the modern wargame ''[[Flames of War]]''. Additionally, many classic board games have attempted to tap into the forty-five year struggle for dominance between Amurica and the communists. The most famous and best is probably ''[[Twilight Struggle]]''. [[TSR]] also released an RPG set during the Cold War called ''[[Top Secret]]'', though, like most non-''D&D'' TSR products, no one under thirty-five has ever heard of it.

{{BLAM|This article has been marked as containing treasonous capitalist road sentiments. Please report to your local commissariat for re-education through labor.}}

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
File:AK-47.jpg|Glorious Soviet Industries could be used to produce huge numbers of reliable and effective things which are still in high demand after a half a century...
File:Lada 1200.jpg|...Their cars are not on that list.
File:Communism and the NTS Fallacy.png|Either it's the No True Scotsman Fallacy, or we've never had a communist nation and [[Rip and Tear| then there are those that claim the kulaks deserved it]]
File:Space marine commie.jpg| Do your duty comrade
File: Stalin space marine.jpg| This is how World War II actually went
File: Space marine revolution.jpg| What these dorks think they look like
</gallery></center>

==See Also==
* [[Imperium of Man]] because the revolutionary utopian society it strove to become ended up becoming a metaphor for communism once Grim Dark kicked in.
* Come to think of it, most failed utopian societies that /tg/ loves probably borrowed from the history of Soviet Russia in some way.

[[category:Not related]]
[[Category:history]]

Butthurt

2018-09-13T16:01:34Z

2600:1700:19C0:AE0:5188:4DBF:617B:9247:

[[Image:BAWWW.jpg|300px|thumb|right|"You... you never let me play my half-dragon half-drow vampire swordmage!"]]

Butthurt is an emotional state consisting of frustration, angst and a general attitude of "IT'S NOT FAIR!". As you may have guessed, nobody wants to be butthurt, to the extent that the word is itself an insult, meant to indicate that one's opponent in a debate is hysterical or immature.

Signs of people who are or are soon going to be butthurt are:
* A DM whose [[Railroading]] [[Old_Man_Henderson|has]] [[Fur heresy|gone]] [[Chakats Meet the Hammer of the Emperor|wrong]].
* Players receiving a "[[Rocks_fall,_everyone_dies|Rocks fall & everyone dies!!!1!!one!]]"
* A DM whose players "don't understand" their "story".
* Anyone whose character got caught in a trap that is save-vs-death.
* A Chaotic Stupid character called out on their "LOL I stab paladin so randum" bullshit.
* A paladin who's about to fall because of a "baby or the mother?" moral dilemma.
* A [[Tau]] army on an urban/space-hulk battlefield. Double points if fighting Tyranids or [[Orks]].
* Much in game alcohol use.
* [[Furry|Furries]]. "STOP THE FURSECUTION!"
* People who hate [[5E|the latest edition]] of any rules system.
* People who like [[5E|the latest edition]] of any rules system.
* Anyone who accuses a publishing company of one or more of the following:
** in it only for the money, or otherwise accusations of being "whores";
** forcing people to buy new books to replace the ones they've been enjoying for years;
** [[Age of Sigmar|catering to the people who've never played before]];
** changing a pen-and-paper game to be more like a video game.
* See below for further on '[[Skub|SKUB]]' pros and cons.
* [[Gazebo|People who repeatedly embarrass themselves by not knowing the meanings of the words they are using]].
* People who keep refreshing a wiki page to make sure they can [[:Template:editwar|undo someone else's edit]] immediately. (Notable exceptions include the [[:Ork#Shoutas|Shoutas War]] and that's about it.)
* ANYONE playing against 5th Edition [[Blood Angels]] who suddenly has dreadnoughts fall from the sky around them.
* [[Serious business]] Neckbeards (who risk going into convulsions if they don't get a 200% dose of grimdark on the hour every hour) looking at the Tau, [[Noblebright]] or Reasonable/pretty/Silly/etc Marines articles.
* [[Tyranid]] players due to repeatedly being fucked by the meta
* Players whose army has been [[Squat|obliterated]] from the current meta.
* Players whose army has been [[Tyranid|nerfed]] in the current edition.
* Players whose army has been [[Imperial Guard|buffed]] in the current edition.
* Players whose army has become [[Eldar|THE]] [[Ultramarine|SHIT]] in the current meta.
* Players whose army are getting raped by Wraithknights.
* Orkies oo is ge'in screwed over by shiny alien gubbins.
* A squad of ork Boyz/Nobz within 3-4 inches of a tau fire warrior squad during the assault phase
* Players that are getting their shiny new Termies raped by a gang of cultists.
* A brand new titan that gets killed before it can fire a shot.
* 800 pts getting destroyed by 100 pts.
* Destroying an army and then suddenly getting ambushed by a titan. Wait, what the... [[Creed|CREEEEEEEEED!!!!!]]
* Ultramarine players who get raped on the tabletop.
* [[Fulgrim]] upon hearing revelations that [[Roboute Guilliman|Papa Smurf]] is alive and giving him the middle finger.
* [[/pol/]], [[SJW]]s, and anyone excessively involved in politics, all the time. Must be that giant rectally mounted stick all of them seem to have.
* Any quartermaster after a visit from the [[Blood Ravens]] / [[Trazyn the Infinite]]
* The result of a visit from [[Assholetep]]
*Playing against eldar on eternal crusade.

== Trivia ==
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1897#World_War_I_Protests One of the earliest 20th century examples of butthurt occurred in the First World War, where the Germans accused Americans of war crimes for using Winchester 1897s to clear trenches, instead of ineffectual stabbing with bayonets.]
* An even earlier example of butthurt occurred during the American Civil War when Hard-drinkin' Grant and Pimphand Sherman handed the South can after can of assrape, resulting in what "South Will Rise Again" bitches call Lost Cause--which is actually just butthurt that keeps on hurting even to this day.
* The dinosaurs' collective opinion of meteors. Whiny reptiles.
[[Category:Meme]]

Warhammer Adventures

2018-09-13T15:54:40Z

2600:1700:19C0:AE0:5188:4DBF:617B:9247: /* Reception */ Still not seeing as many political implications as I'd expect from what this is making out

{{WTF}}
{{Heresy}}
{{Stub}}
'''Warhammer Adventures''' is a series of Middle Grade (ages 8 to 12) novels published by [[Black Library]] and based on [[Age of Sigmar]] and [[Warhammer 40,000 8th edition]]. Each novel will feature a group of children going on ''amazing adventures,'' like in every Middle Grade novel ever released. Given that this generic plot template is being applied by freelance writers with little to no experience writing for Warhammer to settings filled with overpowered capeshit assholes and overpowered grimderp assholes, respectively, expect canon rape to ensue. The whole series has been described by Black Library in a Facebook comment as: "The Grim Darkness of the far future, but with a nightlight on".

Fucking fantastic. The death threats have already started rolling in, by the way.

==Novels==
===Warped Galaxies (40k)===
*''Attack of the Necron'' by [[wikipedia:Cavan Scott|Cavan Scott]]
===Realm Quest (Age of Sigmar)===
*''City of Lifestone'' by <strike>Loki</strike> Tom Huddleston

==Characters==
Something you'll notice is that both settings follow a particular set of generic token characters: a peace-loving leader, a brash misfit of a brawler, and a prodigal artisan. Who, despite never going past their teenage years, are somehow just as, if not more, proficient as full-grown professionals in their settings.

Yep, the writers either have teenage fanfic-tier writing abilities, or else they're pulling from every YA novel cliche possible. Bear in mind this is an officially-endorsed novel by GW and not something you dug out of the crusty underbelly of Deviant Art or fanfiction.net that you read for laughs; on the other hand, sometimes it's hard to tell them apart anyway (see also: [[C.S. Goto]]).

=== 40k ===

'''Zelia:''' The female leader (and also the token black) that every young adult novel seems legally required to have these days. A young daughter of an [[Rogue Trader|galactic explorer]], she [[Heresy|helps her mom dig up ancient alien artifacts]] and [[Derp|hates weapons in a setting where everything that's alien and most things that aren't actively try to kill you.]] Instead she believes that the best way to overcome fear is by [[Magnus|learning]]. Voted most likely to be slowly tortured to death by the [[Inquisition]] for seeking out [[Chaos|the truth]].

'''Talen:''' The son of an [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Guard officer]], Talen decided to run away from home to [[Heresy|avoid military conscription]] and became a hive ganger. He's fairly aggressive and kind of a brute; however, that is offset by his [[noblebright|loyalty to his friends]]. Expect someone to make a greenstuff version of him as a [[Necromunda]] Juve. He carries around a [[miniature|toy Soldier]] which is one of the only reminders he has of his older brother who went off to war. All in all, the only character whose preview is not a fluff-rape of [[C.S. Goto|multilasered]] proportions. It would be ironic if his gang got conscripted by the Imperial Guard anyway, as they are wont to do - he just better hope that the Commissar never finds out about the whole desertion thing.

'''Mekki:''' Pretty much your average [[Techpriest]] but younger. He hails from [[Mars]] and is described as an [[Heretek|inventor]], due to his creation of a small robotic swarm that assist him with certain duties. His right arm is paralyzed so instead of doing the normal, cool Mechanicus thing and replacing it with cybernetics he decides to just build a brace to help him move it. Omnissiah only knows why he wasn't forcefully re-purposed as a [[servitor]] for his blatant tech-heresy yet, especially considering he's from Mars and not some backwater Forge World where things like autonomous drone swarms can be overlooked. This goes double as this is post-Great Rift, where Guilliman's protection of Cawl's tech heresies (one of which includes AI-tech) has the AdMech inching closer to another civil war.

'''[[Space Marines]]:''' Here as usual. Depicted in [[Primaris Marines|Primary-sue]] armour, so this bright and happy tale is happening post-[[Great Rift]]. Naturally, they're using the [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurfs]], as they're "[[Matt Ward|bravest of all the heroic Space Marines]]", and not because they're just the most easily recognizable Chapter that gets the most publicity, honest.

'''[[Necrons]]:''' The cold and unfeeling "enslaving tyrants" we all know and purge, probably chosen because killing robots is much more family-friendly than shooting at living things, and some of their [[Gauss|primary weapons]] kill cleanly too. Them keeping slaves can be brushed off as an individual Phaeron's insanity, as there are dynasties who enjoy having slave/pet races, and some of those living under their thumb [[Heresy|even enjoy decent living standards]] as Necrons have no need for manual slave work with their techno-sorcery. Of course, [[Nemesor Zahndrekh|every]] [[Illuminor Szeras|canon]] [[Trazyn the Infinite|Necron]] that ''does'' take prisoners does so for reasons such as [[Grimdark|personal insanity, acquiring test subjects for deadly experiments or to have them <s> frozen in Carbonite </s> trapped forever as a living diorama]]. Though in retrospect, Trazyn being an evil space collector who traps living beings to keep as exibits and '''ART''' he actually would make a pretty good kid-adventure villian (leaving out the eternal agony parts in regards to some of his captives).

=== Age of Sigmar ===

'''Elio:''' Token black kid from the realm of life. His medical skills are "second to none", presumably among his age bracket of a mere 14 years. Obsessive about [[Drycha|plants]], but apparently interested in all critters great and small, up to and including monsters like [[manticore]]s. Also, he's not much of a fighter - because that's not a concern with giant man-eating monsters, right? Basically the embodiment of the gentle giant/pacifist healer trope, in a setting where people like that exist to be fed to Chaos warriors to show the audience how evil they are.

'''Alish:''' A 12 year old from the Realm of Light, who is "restless, inquisitive and highly intelligent" and has the instinctive ability to repair "almost any mechanical device". She also loves inventing and has apparently designed and built everything from clocks to airships, despite being 12. Mary Sue classic. And to make her extra stupid, the one thing she refuses to build is weapons, despite A) walking around with a sodding huge hammer and B) living in the monster and barbarian filled world of AoS where access to weapons can and will save lives. Basically Zelia, but in fantasy.

'''Kiri:''' At fifteen, she seems to be the oldest of the bunch, coming from the realm of metal. Kiri is "as strong and steadfast as steel" who was raised in the barbarian slave camps of Aqshy (because the whole character would probably have been a lot different if it was a Slanneshi warband) where she learned to fight as soon as she could walk. "Somehow this harsh life hasn't made her cruel or resentful" - direct quote, and we're pretty bloody surprised too. She uses a slingshot. She fought in chaos gladiator pits '''and won''' with a ''slingshot.''

'''[[Stormcast Eternals]]:''' As they are. Nothing particularly odd or inaccurate in their bio blurb - they even mentioned the whole "died and was reborn" bit.

'''Darkoath Barbarians:''' One of many tribes serving <s>[[Chaos]]</s> [[Derp|the forces of Evil]] (they're probably lumping all non-Order Grand Alliances into one big "bad guys" group, because Order ''totally'' lacks [[Drycha|any]] [[Daughters of Khaine|dark]] [[Idoneth Deepkin|side]]). Plundering, pillaging, enslaving... typical villain stuff. Their name is still less stupid than 99% of what GW Legal's shat out, though.

==Reception==
Initial reception has been [[Skub|polarizing]], to say the least. Many consider this series a futile attempt to dilute the grimdarkness of both Warhammer settings to try and appeal to a younger demographic, with the slim but worrying possibility of the dumbing-down and "modern" approach to writing working its way into the setting proper in a greedy lunge for Daddy's credit card. ([[End Times|It's not like GW isn't known for terrible ideas, after all.]]) Characters hating weaponry, gleefully searching xenotech and running away from conscription in 40k certainly don't give people that much confidence, leading to pointed questions regarding how they would deal with darker groups like Dark Eldar/Elves, Daughter of Khaine, Idoneth Deepkin, Chaos, Undead or Tyranids; when asked, Black Library deflected the question or gave non-answers to the effect of "very carefully." There's also the argument that many kids prefer fantasizing about character older than them, and that by making the protagonist kids, they are invariably just making it corny and unappealing to the very audience they want to attract.

Defenders argue that this could be an opportunity to flesh out groups and aspects of the setting that often get ignored, showing positive aspects of the galaxy in a setting so focused on grimdark. There's also the possibility of new mini-lines being produced, probably somewhat cheaper than the mainline series to not scare children (or their parents) away, which could help flesh out the more neglected armies, assuming they don't just keep drowning us in Spacesigmarines and Stormhammer shit because that's what Marketing wants to sell. And the most obvious benefit being that parent gamers will be able to introduce their younger children to the setting with age-appropriate material before weening them into the more mature stuff (like it is meant for ages 8-12, older people aren't suppose to like it) thus giving young kids more options.

Considering that GW themselves have said that their ideal demographic is “an intelligent 18 year old,” it's somewhat baffling why they’ve chosen to write for a demographic so young. At best, they should have started with young teens, giving them more room to stay closer to the grimdark of 40k while still being able to pull back. Perhaps their reasoning is that younger kids are easier to sell merchandise to, which is probably true if properties like Skylanders are anything to go by. That being said, we don’t know what’s GW’s long-term strategies are for drawing in and maintaining this younger demographic, or what the parent’s reactions will be when their kids start screaming “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD” or “HERESY” at every opportunity.

Ultimately, market performance alone will probably put paid to Warhammer Adventures. Expect a few months, maybe a year, to go by of ''nobody'' buying it, either for their kids or [[Heresy|themselves]], after which GW will probably just sheepishly sweep their little failed experiment under the rug and join us in pretending it never existed. Considering just how smartly GW's been handling their relationship with the fanbase lately, it's actually hard to imagine them just bulling forward with such a stupid idea once it becomes clear that nobody's interested. In the unlikely event that it catches on and GW invests more resources into it, consider learning the history of Magic: The Gathering to see where that particular slippery slope will lead.

==Gallery of Memes==
One of the few good things to spring from the announcement of Warhammer Adventures is the number of lulzy images produced by /tg/ as anons interpret what little they know in their own "unique" way.
<gallery>
File:WHAdventuresWTF.jpg|Everyone's first reaction upon reading Zelia's bio
File:WHA-Commissar.jpg|The Commissar's first reaction upon reading Talen's bio
File:WHA-Mekki.gif|The Mechanicus' first reaction upon reading Mekki's bio
File:WHA-TheNecroning.png|How the Necron book is most likely going to end
File:WHA-ChaosSchoolbus.jpg|"Hey kids! Today we're going to learn about MURDERFUCKING!"
File:WHA-Scooby.jpg|"Jeepers! It was old man Abbadon the whole time!"
File:Warhammer Adventures.jpg|They ripped-off the rip-off!
File:WHA-Thanos.jpeg|This is why you don't play in front of the anti-tank guns, kids.
File:90EE3FA4-8EF1-43A7-AE7A-6CC30E92D56D.jpeg|Preview of the upcoming Dark Eldar Book (the next line is "I've got candy").
File:Look_what_i_found_mom%2C_an_alien%21.jpg| Look what I found, mom, an alien! Can we keep it?
File:WHA-ZeliaLore.jpg|Lore-friendly Zelia
File:WHA-TalenLore.jpg|Lore-friendly Talen
File:WHA-MekkiLore.jpg|Lore-friendly Mekki
File:Warhammer adventures.jpg|A sneak peek into the secret psyker character.
File:WHA-Chaos.jpg|"The spiky guy said he'd take us all over the galaxy, surely we can trust him!"
File:Change.jpg|Pictured; Zelia's father, Zelia's father's second-in-command, Zelia's half-brother (in the bag), unnamed warrior from the Kabal of the Black Heart.
</gallery>
[[Category:Games Workshop]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Age of Sigmar]]
[[Category:Black Library]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Stupid Evil

2018-09-13T15:09:26Z

2600:1700:19C0:AE0:5188:4DBF:617B:9247:

{{Topquote|No Muttley, we can't win fairly. We are villains, ergo we have to cheat!|Dick Dastardly, while the finish line is right behind him.}}
{{Topquote|If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you'll be treated as a mad dog; taken out back and slaughtered for pig feed.|Roose Bolton to his son Ramsay, on why Stupid Evil is such a terrible idea.}}

Yes, [[Lawful Stupid]] has its Evil counterpart. A general trait of '''Stupid Evil''' is doing evil things for the sake of being evil, rather than because they are (morality aside) easy or viable paths towards wealth, power, revenge, or whatever the villain's goal is. This is especially true when a non-evil, or less evil way of doing things would work better.

A villain who is truly insane can get away with this sort of thing since what compels them to act in an evil manner is the fact that they have some screws loose, and likewise comedic villains can get away with it because their evil-ness is just a plot device to cause funny things to happen. However, "serious" nemeses and long-term, high-threat villains are usually expected to have a goal and some capacity for rational planning; a villain who takes time out of a busy day to kick a puppy or eat a kitten just to establish evil credibility will probably be treated with derision by players. By the same token, a villain who presents an otherwise seemingly insurmountable threat being undone by a fatal flaw - such as pride or hubris - can make for quite a compelling yarn.

Compare to [[Chaotic Stupid]]. They're not quite the same, but there's often a lot of overlap due the tendency of bad players and writers to mistake "chaotic" with "act like as big of an obnoxious asshole as physically possible".

==Examples of Stupid Evil==
===[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]===
The amount of retarded villains in this series is truly staggering. And yet despite all of the stupid evil committed by them, [[Grimdark|they are still winning]], even if only because the good guys are either more [[Lawful Stupid]] or [[Stupid Good]]. Joffrey and Gregor got offed painfully, as did the Boltons in the TV series, while Cersei got publicly shamed, but compared to what happened to the good guys in the story, it's a slap on the wrist. Of course, A Song of Ice and Fire is known for its grey morality at time, and most Stupid Evil characters have something of an explanation. Even then, you'd be inclined to wonder how far ahead some of them were really thinking, especially in the adaptations.
* Joffrey Baratheon is overall far too impulsive and sadistic for his own good, which is an already disastrous pairing of personality traits to combine with the fact that he's 12 or 13 years old in the books. On the note of not-even-really-excuses, there's also possible mental instability resulting from the fact that he's inbred and his mother is Cersei (more on her in a moment).
** He sends an assassin armed with a Valyrian Blade (one of only a few hundred such weapons in all of Westeros, and an unusual weapon for a common hitman when a common dirk would have sufficed) to kill Bran Stark, and when that fails, it causes the Starks to suspect the Lannisters. He also kills Eddard Stark, therefore sparking an unnecessary and very costly civil war that went against what his family had planned. Despite that, they still came out on top since they are still standing while the Starks are scattered, due mainly to Tywin and Tyrion being [[Creed|tactical genii]] and strategic masterminds.
** He also chooses to ignore his duties and the welfare of his people in favor of satiating his sadistic behavior, even abusing his people when they're seeking his help. He regularly abuses Sansa in particular, and threatens to have her killed despite the fact it will reduce her value as a political hostage and (in their eyes) could cause the Starks to kill their political hostage, Jamie Lannister.
** Even his family isn't safe from his viciousness, occasionally to the point of team-killing fuckery: he has one of his Kingsguard try to murder his uncle Tyrion in the middle of the Battle of Blackwater instead of just simply poisoning him (as Tyrion pointed out). He even calls Tywin a coward. ''Out loud. In front of other people. '''To his face.''''' Luckily for Joffrey they were related, or he would have been struck down. And as what turns out to be a final hurrah at his wedding, he insults his in-laws and his bride at their wedding reception and subjects Tyrion to petty tortures in front of everyone.
* Cersei Lannister, while not as dumb as her son Joffrey (hardly something to be proud of) is egotistic and paranoid as fuck; if she, for any reason, thinks you might threaten her or her children, even for something as minor as telling her her latest idea is a bad one, you're in trouble. At best, she will view you as an enemy and will be a passive-aggressive bitch to you, and at worst she'll have you brutally tortured to death, even if you're one of House Lannister's allies to whom good relations are vital. On top of all that she's a contender for Worst Mother in Westeros, and her cruelty drove away even her incestuous lover, Jamie Lannister (which happened much earlier into the books than in the TV show).
** She invited Gregor Clegane (see below) to King's Landing at the same time Oberyn Martell is visiting, despite the fact that Gregor is the reason there's bad blood between house Lannister and House Martell, and the Martells know it.
** After Joffrey died, she went out of her way to rig the trial for his death against Tyrion, despite the circumstances already being against him, which made him more determined than ever to survive and tips off Oberyn that Tyrion is innocent of killing Joffrey. This led to the duel between Oberyn and Gregor that ruined the Lannister/Martell alliance and cost the Lannisters their pet beast.
** She also responded to a satirical puppet show about House Lannister being evil tyrants by having anyone who saw it either sharply fined (up to half of all their money if they're rich) or mutilated (an eye cut out if they're too poor to pay) and ordering the puppeteers executed. She didn't even mind the play at first; she only took offence because the ending had the Lannisters getting their comeuppance at the hands of a Targaryen. Then, instead of the headsman, she did something worse and handed the puppeteers over to her resident mad scientist for deadly experiments at his request.
** Cersei encouraged the worst aspects of her kids; in the case of Joffrey, this is like attempting to put out a forest fire with napalm. Her atrocious parenting, combined with conceiving Joffrey with her brother Jamie AND Robert's own negligence, is the reason Joffrey's such a repulsive asshole. She ignores the numerous acts of cruelty and stupidity of her eldest son and brushes off any criticism of him as being a personal attack.
** She was an overbearing mother to Tommen - her actually half-decent person of a second son - to the point of [[What|trying to make him more like Joffrey]], and when that inevitably failed, she inadvertently made him a gullible yes-man of a momma's boy in trying to stop him disagreeing with her, leaving them vulnerable to the ambitions of Margaery Martell, who tries to drive a wedge between them and threatens her plans to rule as queen regent until Tommen was of age.
** She killed a high septon because he was a cat's paw Tyrion put into power to keep the faith in House Lannister's pocket, being a decent but easily manipulated man, because Cersei's paranoia meant she feared that Tyrion was out to get her and that guy was in on it. This leads to a more competent and devout high septon getting into power with ambitions of his own. She then let him raise his own army, creating another player to threaten House Lannister's precarious position and one unbeholden to politics, which leads to her arrest (though he was smart in the books and played Cersei like a fiddle, not to mention Cersei's undoing is a good thing - especially for everyone not allied with House Lannister).
** In the TV show, as revenge for the High Sparrow imprisoning her and Margaery taking her place as Queen (which is partly her fault in the first place, she makes the perfectly rational decision to blow them all the fuck up using magical napalm while they were at church for a trial. The end result: Pissing off nearly every person in the Seven Kingdoms who followed the Faith; driving Tommen (who was friends with the High Sparrow and loved Margaery dearly) to commit suicide via jumping out a window; pushing a pissed Olenna Tyrell withdraw all Tyrell support from King's Landing and declare for the resurgent House Targaryen alongside Dorne. Cersei and House Lannister now literally have no major allies left in Westeros sans the Freys, who aren't at all reliable and in the process of being destroyed by Arya. Unfortunately, she was still one step ahead and easily took out Houses Tyrell and Dorne, despite their efforts in backing the Targaryen, by using the Iron Bank to buy herself a mercenary force and recruiting Euron at the cost of losing Casterly Rock to her rivals (though this was helped by some internal team-killing from Oberyn's widow, you'd swear it's a bloody epidemic in that show).
** Also in the TV show, when Daenerys and her supports come to parley with Cersei's forces for help against the White Walkers and their zombie armies (bringing a captured zombie to Cersei's court as proof and cutting it up with all the pieces still attacking), Cersei did the stupidest possible thing and refused to support them, deciding she'd rather "let the dead eat them all". She ignored the fact that this would leave her on the receiving end of a curb-stomp battle from either the aforementioned (who would be bolstered by the dead from Daenerys' forces) or Daenerys' forces AND everyone still living in King's Landing who's had enough of her tyranny.

* Gregor Clegane is a serial killer with severe anger control issues, having gone through three wives who died under suspicious circumstances. At his keep there's a high turnover rate among the servants, and even animals avoid his chambers. Before this, he maimed his brother Sandor - and would've killed him if three other people didn't intervene - and he's heavily implied to have murdered his sister and father, despite the father doting on him even when his evil started to become apparent.
** The circumstances surrounding him and his brother are as such: Gregor once caught his brother playing with one of Gregor's discarded toy soldiers when they were children. He took the logical next step of holding his brother's face over the fire, permanently disfiguring half his face and mentally scarring him, and from that point he's arguably stagnated into a phase of prolonged "adult childhood", based on this and his other actions.
** Before the story starts it's an open secret that he raped and murdered Rheagar's wife Elia Martell, even though he hadn't been ordered to do so. He also killed a baby, and though he'd been ordered to do so, the fact remains that [[Grimdark|he had no qualms about the deed and went so far as smashing its head against a wall]]. This bites him and the Lannisters in the ass BIG TIME later on, though he deserved it.
** After losing a jousting match, Gregor decapitates his own horse, then tries to kill his opponent, Loras Tyrell, and his own brother when the latter intervenes. Had Gregor succeeded, it's likely the Lannisters would've kiss any hope of an alliance with the Tyrells goodbye.
** The men who Gregor recruits as his hand-picked warriors aren't chosen for their intelligence or resourcefulness, just their fighting skills and sadism (not even loyalty, as they serve Gregor out of fear and plunder); the group essentially rape and torture random peasants to death for the lulz. This includes the prisoners from the taking of Harrenhal, many of whom were nobility and could be used as leverage in the war.
** Arugably when, before killing Oberyn, Gregor shouts a confession to his crime of murdering and raping Elia in front of all of the nobles in King's Landing. This would've put House Martell and House Lannister at open war if the Martells hadn't been already secretly plotting to destroy them, though this ''does'' push their schedule forward.
** For all that, there is at least some "justification" as to why this guy is kept around by House Lannister. He's a brutal warrior in every sense of the word who has an aura of fear and for all his butchery, rapine, rage and blunt cruelty he's never threatened House Lannister directly and is (for want of a better word) content to be their pet beast.
** The logical conclusion of this and the damage from fighting Oberyn makes it painfully literal: he is now kept permanently addled by a powerful cocktails of painkillers and other drugs, likely on purpose, to keep him useful as a warrior, albeit an effective husk of one. It is mentioned that milk of the poppy (opium in all but name) has basically no effect on him any more due to consuming it so much.

* Ramsay Bolton
** He killed his half-brother, despite the fact that this also deprived his father of another heir which in medieval-type societies is important as the more offspring they have the more like the noble family is to survive.
** Even though his father, Roose, is a cunning general who manipulated and back-stabbed his way into rulership of the North, Ramsey lacks any of the strategic foresight and critical thinking that Roose possesses. He is totally fearless and reckless with his actions, which Roose points out will most likely be his downfall if they are not curbed.
** His savage exploits are known across Westeros, and he continuously pisses off the other Northern lords by hunting down their subjects for fun. This is part of the reason why half of the Northern Houses rebel against Bolton overlordship. He chooses to flay Ironborn captives alive despite promising them clemency if they surrendered, along with turning Theon Greyjoy into his personal eunuch slave. This has ensured that the Ironborn will now fight to the death rather than sue for peace, and contemplate a full invasion of the North instead of merely raiding its settlements.
** After marrying the fake-Arya Stark (who everyone else thinks is the real one) he tortures her, threatens her and [[FATAL|tries to make her do certain things to his hunting dogs]]. This sets off the Northerners' [[Powder Keg of Justice]], causing an uprising against the Boltons that will likely end with Ramsay's and Roose's heads on spikes.
** The TV version actually murdered his father in the middle of the war, fed his step-mother and infant half-brother to his dogs, and ultimately got his own army wiped out through sheer team-killing fuckery before being beaten to near-death by Jon Snow before Sansa fed him to his own dogs -- who were only hungry enough to turn on him because he'd starved them for a week beforehand in anticipation of feeding them the Starks. He'd also raped Sansa Stark beforehand after manipulating an arranged marriage between them.
**It should be noted that the TV version of Ramsay is a controversial character with numerous viewers calling him a villainous Mary Sue for some downright insane successes from fighting off trained armored killers while half-naked (especially jarring because a scene in a previous episode made a point about Arya’s unarmored swords instructor losing to an armored opponent and Arya’s own sword failing to pierce The Hound’s armor) in the infamous “twenty good men” scene. This is high contrast to his book counterpart who, while having some success, is nowhere close to the all-capable show Ramsay in scheming, tactical or fighting ability. Instead, the evil Bolton mastermind happens to be his more pragmatic father Roose who criticizes Ramsay’s methods on multiple occasions.
* Slaver's Bay (aka ''Stupid Evil: The Civilization'')
** The neo-ghiscari civilization of slaver's bay is run by a bunch of decadent slave dealers who do nothing besides wax on about how great the 5 millennia dead old Ghiscari Empire was and leave their society in the bronze age in a world one step removed from [[Medieval Stasis]]
** Of the four cities of Slaver's Bay, two of them (Meereen and Yunkai) believe that a bunch of slaves with spears and shields led by fops on horseback or in chariots wearing linen vests and helmets made to accommodate their stupid hairdos constitute a proper army. After Yunkai gets its butt kicked by Dany when she brings a half decent army to the field which does not run at the first excuse, they decide that it would be a good idea to raise new slave armies that are [[What|chained together and fight on stilts]].
** One of them (Astapor) trains Unsullied elite spear slaves who obey any order given to them without question, which they sell and use for defense. The Masters of Astapor [[Derp|agree to sell all the Unsullied they've got to Dany]], who proceeds to have them sack their city and kill them.
***Admittedly, the prospect of owning a dragon, especially after they’re thought to be extinct for centuries and the equivalent of a self-replenishing WMD, is an awfully tempting one given how new Unsullied are made each year. Despite that, it’s at extremely stupid that they neither questioned how they can control said dragon (leading to one Master burning to death seconds after grabbing the dragon’s chain) or if selling every Unsullied warrior-slave to the same person and leaving none to defend themselves is a good idea. They also never considered that the Unsullied, though trained to be obedient, might resent the brutality involved in their training ([[Grimdark|which included sending aspirants into the city tasked with killing babies in front of their mothers to prove they'll follow even the vilest orders, giving them a puppy to care for in their first year then making them strangle it to death as a test of loyalty, and making them take new names each day on pain of death - demeaning names like "black rat" or "red flea" - so they cant' develop a sense of individual identity) and would seize a chance for vengeance (which Dany gave them).
** For no particular tactical reason, the leadership of Meereen decided to taunt an oncoming army by having child slaves nailed to mileposts to die along the road - a decision which backfires on them rather spectacularly.

===Others===
* Any Captain Planet villain
** Strawman Villains in poorly written fiction in general.
* Humans in science and fantasy fiction often end up being Stupid Evil when the writer wants to make a statement about discrimination. According to these tales, humans are apparently overly-panicky and violent psychopaths itching for an excuse to murder the shit out of other species. For instance, in [[Avatar]] the human army is portrayed as a bunch of jingoist lunatics who want to slaughter the peaceful Na'vi for the resources they need rather than trying to reap long-term benefits by making peaceful contact. The advent of [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] is in part a reaction to this phenomenon.
* Some followers of Chaos such as [[Firaeveus Carron]] can prove to be this most of the time.
[[File:Evil.jpg|thumb|right|Sicks, a pretty stupid evil dude, also a [[neckbeard]]. His face should remind you of someone [[Matt Ward|who should not be named]].]]
* Sicks (yep, that's his name) from [[manga|Demonic Detective Neuro]].
** Causing unnecessary murder or tragedy on other family for his own satisfaction(he is a sadist btw).
** Randomly pissing off Neuro, a real demon and starting the most gory and violent arc that Jump had ever published.
** Claiming his own ideal of evil is the "true evil" but rather just a cheap, rotten flavor of a puzzle in Neuro's tongue.
*** Also, his family has done the same thing as he did for many generations and claiming that this "evil" has evolve them into more human than anyone else.
* Grimdark as a whole often suffers from characters who make things crappy just for the sake of making things crappy.
* [[Lolth]] actually enforces Stupid Evil in her worshipers. Because of her the Drow spend 3 quarters of their energy fighting each other instead of defending themselves, which is a really bad idea since they live in an underground city under constant threat of being [[Rape|raped]] by [[Illithid]]s and [[Beholder|Beholders.]] In fact, when things get really bad she literally has to tell them to stop for a short period of time.
* The [[Skaven]] from [[Warhammer Fantasy]], whose rival clans always plan on backstabbing each other even if they're all fighting a mutual (and far worse) enemy. A perfect plan for them involves getting their own enemies and allies to kill each other, until they are the only one left to face the next enemy (keep in mind that "they" doesn't just mean rival clans either, in an apocalyptic scenario even their personal secretary is only barely less of an enemy than the hordes of the undead). As above, it takes the [[Horned Rat]], their god, as well as the invention of instant communication via the [[Farsqueaker]] to get their fuzzy little asses united.
* The Joker. Once merely a criminal mastermind with a chaotic, unpredictable bent, he's devolved as time goes on into a murder-happy rabid dog who kills for the jollies and because [[Gay|he gets off on being punched in the face by Batman]].
* [[Edgy|Edgelord]] characters by preteens/actual teens on DeviantArt.
* Starscream from [[Transformers]]. He's too ambitious and egotistical to realize how good his position as Megatron's second-in-command is, and so spends much of his time trying to usurp his leader with predictable failure. He also tends to do things on the spur of the moment to satisfy his own ego, as demonstrated in ''Prime'' where he angrily takes credit for killing Arcee's best friend Cliffjumper ''while in handcuffs in front of Arcee'', simply because he doesn't want Airachnid stealing the credit for things he did.
* The Sith in the Star Wars universe suffer from this greatly, and it's a major reason they keep losing to the Jedi and failed to keep any of their empires intact long-term. In fact, one could argue that they're a perfect case study on why Stupid Evil is a bad idea:
** Firstly, whereas the Jedi code encourages understanding yet controlling your emotions (that way you take them into account, but they don't prevent you from doing what is necessary), the Sith code encourages embracing your emotions and indeed, many of the most powerful Sith like Darth Vader are incredibly emotionally damaged. Thus Sith tend to do things in the heat of the moment and often lack the patience needed to be truly effective. Darth Malak can't find Revan and the Ebon Hawk crew on a planet he has control of? Oh well better just ''level his own planet'' with Star Destroyers, costing himself thousands of workers and soldiers in his psychotic and desperate rush to off his old master.
** Secondly, the Sith code is built on a hyper-Darwinist, "survival-of-the-fittest" structure. While this sounds decent enough on paper, in practice it meant that the Sith ''constantly'' backstabbed each other in idiotic power plays, often leading to Sith killing each other more often than they killed Jedi. Crossing with the "overly emotional" thing above, their lack of patience often led to them betraying each other way before it was beneficial to do so. Darth Bane was the first major Sith Lord to realize how stupid and unsustainable this lifestyle was and did something about it. His "rule of two" may have led to the Sith population being lower than ever before or after, but at least it kept the Sith order alive and prevented most of them from slaughtering each other in pathetic attempts to gobble up more power.
*** It should be noted that even the Sith themselves violate or weasel their way around the Rule of Two every now and then. Darth Maul was alive at the same time as Dooku & Palpatine. They also have characters like Ventress who aren’t officially Sith Lords yet are trained just like one. So while it decreases their numbers by a lot, they find ways around even when they actually obey said rule.
** Thirdly and finally, Sith who engage in too much evil and envelope themselves too deeply in the Dark Side often suffer from an inability to properly sense the Light Side. This alienation of the Light is what lead to the otherwise brilliant Palpatine's death. He alienated altruism and good so utterly that he was not only unable to sense Luke Skywalker's presence during a critical moment, but he was also unable to sense that his apprentice Darth Vader still had some morality in him. Thus he attempts to tortuously kill Luke and is killed himself when he fails to expect Vader to attack him out of paternal feelings.
*The 'villains' of fringe-conspiracy theories would be stupid evil if they existed since their plans undermine their own power bases, have little to no tangible gain or draw attention by plastering their logo on everything. It's also weird that despite how cartoonishly evil they are thought of, they don't bother to kill anyone exposing the conspiracies while making it look like an accident. This is probably because there is some overlap with the Strawman characters.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Alignment]]

Stupid Evil

2018-09-13T14:34:55Z

2600:1700:19C0:AE0:5188:4DBF:617B:9247: >claims it's a misdirection but offers up no proof in a tiny and poorly typed paragraph

{{Topquote|No Muttley, we can't win fairly. We are villains, ergo we have to cheat!|Dick Dastardly, while the finish line is right behind him.}}
{{Topquote|If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you'll be treated as a mad dog; taken out back and slaughtered for pig feed.|Roose Bolton to his son Ramsay, on why Stupid Evil is such a terrible idea.}}

Yes, [[Lawful Stupid]] has its Evil counterpart. A general trait of '''Stupid Evil''' is doing evil things for the sake of being evil, rather than because they are (morality aside) easy or viable paths towards wealth, power, revenge, or whatever the villain's goal is. This is especially true when a non-evil, or less evil way of doing things would work better.

A villain who is truly insane can get away with this sort of thing since what compels them to act in an evil manner is the fact that they have some screws loose, and likewise comedic villains can get away with it because their evil-ness is just a plot device to cause funny things to happen. However, "serious" nemeses and long-term, high-threat villains are usually expected to have a goal and some capacity for rational planning; a villain who takes time out of a busy day to kick a puppy or eat a kitten just to establish evil credibility will probably be treated with derision by players.

Compare to [[Chaotic Stupid]]. They're not quite the same, but there's often a lot of overlap due the tendency of bad players and writers to mistake "chaotic" with "act like as big of an obnoxious asshole as physically possible".

==Examples of Stupid Evil==
===[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]===
The amount of retarded villains in this series is truly staggering. And yet despite all of the stupid evil committed by them [[Grimdark|they are still winning]], even if only because the good guys are either [[Lawful Stupid]] or [[Stupid Good]]. Joffrey and Gregor got offed painfully, as did the Boltons in the TV series, while Cersei got publicly shamed, but compared to what happened to the good guys in the story, it's a slap on the wrist. Of course, A Song of Ice and Fire is known for its grey morality at time, and most Stupid Evil characters have something of an explanation. Even then, you'd be inclined to wonder how far ahead some of them were really thinking, especially in the adaptations.
* Joffrey Baratheon. He sends an assassin armed with a Valyrian Blade (one of only a few hundred such weapons in all of Westeros, and an unusual weapon for a common hitman when a common dirk would have sufficed) to kill Bran Stark. And when that fails, it causes the Starks to suspect the Lannisters. He also kills Eddard Stark, therefore sparking an unnecessary and very costly civil war that went against what his family had planned. Despite that, they still came out on top since they are still standing while the Starks are scattered, due mainly to Tywin and Tyrion being [[Creed|tactical genii]] and strategic masterminds.
** He also chooses to ignore his duties and the welfare of his people in favor of satiating his sadistic behavior, even abusing his people when they're seeking his help. He regularly abuses Sansa in particular, and threatens to have her killed despite the fact it will reduce her value as a political hostage and (in their eyes) could cause the Starks to kill their political hostage, Jamie Lannister.
** Even his family isn't safe from his team-killing fuckery: he has one of his Kingsguard try to murder his uncle Tyrion in the middle of the Battle of Blackwater instead of just simply poisoning him (as Tyrion pointed out). He even calls Tywin a coward. ''Out loud. In front of other people. '''To his face.''''' Luckily for Joffrey they were related, or he would have been struck down. And as what turns out to be a final hurrah at his wedding, he insults his in-laws and his bride at their wedding reception and subjects Tyrion to petty tortures in front of everyone.
** His only excuses (if even that) are the fact that he's 12 or 13 years old in the books, possible mental instability resulting form the fact that he's inbred and his mother is Cersei; More on her in a moment.
* Cersei Lannister, while not as dumb as her son Joffrey (hardly something to be proud of) is egotistic and paranoid as fuck; if she, for any reason, thinks you might threaten her or her children, even for something as minor as telling her her latest idea is a bad one, you're in trouble. At best, she will view you as an enemy and will be a passive-aggressive bitch to you, and at worst she'll have you brutally tortured to death, even if you're one of House Lannister's allies to whom good relations are vital.
** She invited Gregor Clegane (see below) to King's Landing at the same time Oberyn Martell is visiting, despite the fact that Gregor is the reason there's bad blood between house Lannister and House Martell, and the Martells know it.
** After Joffrey died, she went out of her way to rig the trial for his death against Tyrion, despite the circumstances already being against him, which made him more determined than ever to survive and tips off Oberyn that Tyrion is innocent of killing Joffrey. This led to the duel between Oberyn and Gregor that ruined the Lannister/Martell alliance and cost the Lannisters their pet beast.
** She also responded to a satirical puppet show about House Lannister being evil tyrants by having anyone who saw it either sharply fined (up to half of all their money if they're rich) or mutilated (an eye cut out if they're too poor to pay) and ordering the puppeteers executed. She didn't even mind the play at first; she only took offence because the ending had the Lannisters getting their comeuppance at the hands of a Targereyn. Then, instead of the headsman, she did something worse and handed the puppeteers over to her resident mad scientist for deadly experiments at his request.
** As seen above, Cersei encouraged the worst aspects of her kids; in the case of Joffrey, this is like attempting to put out a forest fire with napalm. Her atrocious parenting, combined with conceiving Joffrey with her brother Jamie AND Robert's own negligence, is the reason Joffrey's such a repulsive asshole. She ignores the numerous acts of cruelty and stupidity of her eldest son and brushes off any criticism of him as being a personal attack. She was an overbearing mother to Tommen - her other actually half-decent person of a son - by trying to make him more like Joffrey then after failing accidentally making him a gullible yes-man in trying to stop him disagreeing with her.
** She killed a high septon because he was a cat's paw Tyrion put into power to keep the faith in House Lannister's pocket, being a decent but easily manipulated man, because Cersei's paranoia meant she feared that Tyrion was out to get her and that guy was in on it. This leads to a more competent and devout high septon getting into power with ambitions of his own. She then let him raise his own army, creating another player to threaten House Lannister's precarious position and one unbeholden to politics, which leads to her arrest (though he was smart in the books and played Cersei like a fiddle, not to mention Cersei's undoing is a good thing - especially for everyone not allied with House Lannister).
** In the TV show, as revenge for the High Sparrow imprisoning her and Margaery taking her place as Queen, she decided to blow them all the fuck up using magical napalm while they were at church for a trial. Despite the fact that this would piss off nearly every person in the Seven Kingdoms who followed the Faith, resulted in Tommen (who was friends with the High Sparrow and loved Margaery dearly) to commit suicide via jumping out a window, and made a pissed off Olenna Tyrell withdraw all Tyrell support from King's Landing and declare for the resurgent House Targaryen alongside Dorne. Which means that Cersei and House Lannister literally have no major allies left in Westeros sans the Freys, who aren't at all reliable. And Freys are in process of being destroyed by Arya. Unfortunately she was one step ahead and easily took out Houses Tyrell and Dorne despite their efforts in backing the Targaryen by using the Iron Bank to buy herself a mercenary force and recruiting Euron the process despite losing Casterly Rock to her rivals (though this was helped by some internal team-killing from Oberyn's widow - there's some problems with the TV show).
** Her cruelty drove away even Jamie Lannister, though his happened much earlier into the books than in the TV show.
** Also in the TV show, when Daenerys and her supports come to parley with Cersei's forces for help against the White Walkers and their zombie armies (bringing a captured zombie to Cersei's court as proof and cutting it up with all the pieces still attacking), Cersei did the stupidest possible thing and refused to support them, saying "let the dead eat them all". She ignored the fact that this would leave her on the receiving end of a curb-stomp battle from either the White Walkers undead (who would be bolstered by the dead from Daenerys' forces) or Daenerys' forces + everyone still living in King's Landing who's had enough of her tyranny.
* Gregor Clegane
** Gregor is a serial killer with severe anger control issues, having gone through three wives who died under suspicious circumstances. At his keep there's a high turnover rate among the servants, and even animals avoid his chambers. Before this, he maimed his brother - would've killed him if three other people didn't intervene - and it's heavily implied to have murdered his sister and father, despite the father doting on him even when his evil started to become apparent.
** He maimed his brother as above, but these are the circumstances; Gregor once caught his brother playing with one of Gregor's discarded toy soldiers when they were children. So took the logical next step of holding his brother's face over the fire, permanently disfiguring half his face and mentally scarring him.
** Before the story starts it's an open secret that he raped and murdered Rheagar's wife Elia Martell, even though he hadn't been ordered to do so. He also killed a baby, though he'd been ordered to do that the fact remains [[Grimdark|he had no qualms about killing a baby and did so by smashing its head against a wall]]. This bites him and the Lannisters in the ass BIG TIME later on, though he deserved it.
** After losing a jousting match, Gregor decapitates his own horse, then tries to kill his opponent, Loras Tyrell, and his own brother when the latter intervenes. Had Gregor succeeded, it's likely the Lannisters could kiss any hope of an alliance with the Tyrells goodbye.
** The men who Gregor recruits as his hand-picked warriors aren't chosen for their intelligence or resourcefulness, just their fighting skills and sadism (not even loyalty, as they serve Gregor out of fear and plunder) that rape and torture random peasants to death for the lulz.
** After taking Harrenhal, Gregor and his men torture the prisoners to death, including ones who are nobility and could be used as leverage in the war.
** Arugably when, before killing Oberyn, Gregor shouts a confession to his crime of murdering and raping Elia in front of all of the nobles in King's Landing. This would've put House Martell and House Lannister at open war if the Martells hadn't been already secretly plotting to destroy them, though this ''does'' push their schedule forward.
** For all that, there is at least some justification as to why this guy is kept around by House Lannister. He's a brutal warrior in every sense of the word who has an aura of fear and for all his butchery, rapine, rage and blunt cruelty he's never threatened House Lannister directly and is (for want of a better word) content to be their pet beast.
** ''Second opinion: "Modern day" Gregor is a victim as much as any others. A drug addict, kept permanently addled by a powerful cocktails of painkillers and other drugs, likely on purpose, to keep him useful as a warrior. It is mentioned milk of the poppy (opium in all but name) has basically no effect on him any more due to consuming it so much. Some even say it's a lifelong problem, Gregor attempting to dull the pain of his physical condition, gigantism.''
** Third opinion: That doesn't excuse Gregor's sadism or actions. Opium isn't steroids, it doesn't increase your aggression or take away your free will. While Gregor is a victim of migranes, he was still an evil person.
* Ramsay Bolton
** He killed his half-brother, despite the fact that this also deprived his father of another heir which in medieval-type societies is important as the more offspring they have the more like the noble family is to survive.
** Even though his father, Roose, is a cunning general who manipulated and back-stabbed his way into rulership of the North, Ramsey lacks any of the strategic foresight and critical thinking that Roose possesses. He is totally fearless and reckless with his actions, which Roose points out will most likely be his downfall if they are not curbed.
** His savage exploits are known across Westeros, and he continuously pisses off the other Northern lords by hunting down their subjects for fun. This is part of the reason why half of the Northern Houses rebel against Bolton overlordship. He chooses to flay Ironborn captives alive despite promising them clemency if they surrendered, along with turning Theon Greyjoy into his personal eunuch slave. This has ensured that the Ironborn will now fight to the death rather than sue for peace, and contemplate a full invasion of the North instead of merely raiding its settlements.
** After marrying the fake-Arya Stark (who everyone else thinks is the real one) he tortures her, threatens her and [[FATAL|tries to make her do certain things to his hunting dogs]]. This sets off the Northerners' [[Powder Keg of Justice]], causing an uprising against the Boltons that will likely end with Ramsay's and Roose's heads on spikes.
** The TV version actually murdered his father in the middle of the war, fed his step-mother and infant half-brother to his dogs, and ultimately got his own army wiped out through sheer team-killing fuckery before being beaten to near-death by Jon Snow before Sansa fed him to his own dogs -- who were only hungry enough to turn on him because he'd starved them for a week beforehand in anticipation of feeding them the Starks. He'd also raped Sansa Stark beforehand after manipulating an arranged marriage between them.
**It should be noted that the TV version of Ramsay is a controversial character with numerous viewers calling him a villainous Mary Sue for some downright insane successes from fighting off trained armored killers while half-naked (especially jarring because a scene in a previous episode made a point about Arya’s unarmored swords instructor losing to an armored opponent and Arya’s own sword failing to pierce The Hound’s armor) in the infamous “twenty good men” scene. This is high contrast to his book counterpart who, while having some success, is nowhere close to the all-capable show Ramsay in scheming, tactical or fighting ability. Instead, the evil Bolton mastermind happens to be his more pragmatic father Roose who criticizes Ramsay’s methods on multiple occasions.
* Slaver's Bay (aka ''Stupid Evil: The Civilization'')
** The neo-ghiscari civilization of slaver's bay is run by a bunch of decadent slave dealers who do nothing besides wax on about how great the 5 millennia dead old Ghiscari Empire was and leave their society in the bronze age in a world one step removed from [[Medieval Stasis]]
** Of the four cities of Slaver's Bay, two of them (Meereen and Yunkai) believe that a bunch of slaves with spears and shields led by fops on horseback or in chariots wearing linen vests and helmets made to accommodate their stupid hairdos constitute a proper army. After Yunkai gets its butt kicked by Dany when she brings a half decent army to the field which does not run at the first excuse, they decide that it would be a good idea to raise new slave armies that are [[What|chained together and fight on stilts]].
** One of them (Astapor) trains Unsullied elite spear slaves who obey any order given to them without question, which they sell and use for defense. The Masters of Astapor [[Derp|agree to sell all the Unsullied they've got to Dany]], who proceeds to have them sack their city and kill them.
***Admittedly, the prospect of owning a dragon, especially after they’re thought to be extinct for centuries and the equivalent of a self-replenishing WMD, is an awfully tempting one given how new Unsullied are made each year. Despite that, it’s at extremely stupid that they neither questioned how they can control said dragon (leading to one Master burning to death seconds after grabbing the dragon’s chain) or if selling every Unsullied warrior-slave to the same person and leaving none to defend themselves is a good idea. They also never considered that the Unsullied, though trained to be obedient, might resent the brutality involved in their training ([[Grimdark|which included sending aspirants into the city tasked with killing babies in front of their mothers to prove they'll follow even the vilest orders, giving them a puppy to care for in their first year then making them strangle it to death as a test of loyalty, and making them take new names each day on pain of death - demeaning names like "black rat" or "red flea" - so they cant' develop a sense of individual identity) and would seize a chance for vengeance (which Dany gave them).
** For no particular tactical reason, the leadership of Meereen decided to taunt an oncoming army by having child slaves nailed to mileposts to die along the road - a decision which backfires on them rather spectacularly.

===Others===
* Any Captain Planet villain
** Strawman Villains in poorly written fiction in general.
* Humans in science and fantasy fiction often end up being Stupid Evil when the writer wants to make a statement about discrimination. According to these tales, humans are apparently overly-panicky and violent psychopaths itching for an excuse to murder the shit out of other species. For instance, in [[Avatar]] the human army is portrayed as a bunch of jingoist lunatics who want to slaughter the peaceful Na'vi for the resources they need rather than trying to reap long-term benefits by making peaceful contact. The advent of [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] is in part a reaction to this phenomenon.
* Some followers of Chaos such as [[Firaeveus Carron]] can prove to be this most of the time.
[[File:Evil.jpg|thumb|right|Sicks, a pretty stupid evil dude, also a [[neckbeard]]. His face should remind you of someone [[Matt Ward|who should not be named]].]]
* Sicks (yep, that's his name) from [[manga|Demonic Detective Neuro]].
** Causing unnecessary murder or tragedy on other family for his own satisfaction(he is a sadist btw).
** Randomly pissing off Neuro, a real demon and starting the most gory and violent arc that Jump had ever published.
** Claiming his own ideal of evil is the "true evil" but rather just a cheap, rotten flavor of a puzzle in Neuro's tongue.
*** Also, his family has done the same thing as he did for many generations and claiming that this "evil" has evolve them into more human than anyone else.
* Grimdark as a whole often suffers from characters who make things crappy just for the sake of making things crappy.
* [[Lolth]] actually enforces Stupid Evil in her worshipers. Because of her the Drow spend 3 quarters of their energy fighting each other instead of defending themselves, which is a really bad idea since they live in an underground city under constant threat of being [[Rape|raped]] by [[Illithid]]s and [[Beholder|Beholders.]] In fact, when things get really bad she literally has to tell them to stop for a short period of time.
* The [[Skaven]] from [[Warhammer Fantasy]], whose rival clans always plan on backstabbing each other even if they're all fighting a mutual (and far worse) enemy. A perfect plan for them involves getting their own enemies and allies to kill each other, until they are the only one left to face the next enemy (keep in mind that "they" doesn't just mean rival clans either, in an apocalyptic scenario even their personal secretary is only barely less of an enemy than the hordes of the undead). As above, it takes the [[Horned Rat]], their god, as well as the invention of instant communication via the [[Farsqueaker]] to get their fuzzy little asses united.
* The Joker. Once merely a criminal mastermind with a chaotic, unpredictable bent, he's devolved as time goes on into a murder-happy rabid dog who kills for the jollies and because [[Gay|he gets off on being punched in the face by Batman]].
* [[Edgy|Edgelord]] characters by preteens/actual teens on DeviantArt.
* Starscream from [[Transformers]]. He's too ambitious and egotistical to realize how good his position as Megatron's second-in-command is, and so spends much of his time trying to usurp his leader with predictable failure. He also tends to do things on the spur of the moment to satisfy his own ego, as demonstrated in ''Prime'' where he angrily takes credit for killing Arcee's best friend Cliffjumper ''while in handcuffs in front of Arcee'', simply because he doesn't want Airachnid stealing the credit for things he did.
* The Sith in the Star Wars universe suffer from this greatly, and it's a major reason they keep losing to the Jedi and failed to keep any of their empires intact long-term. In fact, one could argue that they're a perfect case study on why Stupid Evil is a bad idea:
** Firstly, whereas the Jedi code encourages understanding yet controlling your emotions (that way you take them into account, but they don't prevent you from doing what is necessary), the Sith code encourages embracing your emotions and indeed, many of the most powerful Sith like Darth Vader are incredibly emotionally damaged. Thus Sith tend to do things in the heat of the moment and often lack the patience needed to be truly effective. Darth Malak can't find Revan and the Ebon Hawk crew on a planet he has control of? Oh well better just ''level his own planet'' with Star Destroyers, costing himself thousands of workers and soldiers in his psychotic and desperate rush to off his old master.
** Secondly, the Sith code is built on a hyper-Darwinist, "survival-of-the-fittest" structure. While this sounds decent enough on paper, in practice it meant that the Sith ''constantly'' backstabbed each other in idiotic power plays, often leading to Sith killing each other more often than they killed Jedi. Crossing with the "overly emotional" thing above, their lack of patience often led to them betraying each other way before it was beneficial to do so. Darth Bane was the first major Sith Lord to realize how stupid and unsustainable this lifestyle was and did something about it. His "rule of two" may have led to the Sith population being lower than ever before or after, but at least it kept the Sith order alive and prevented most of them from slaughtering each other in pathetic attempts to gobble up more power.
*** It should be noted that even the Sith themselves violate or weasel their way around the Rule of Two every now and then. Darth Maul was alive at the same time as Dooku & Palpatine. They also have characters like Ventress who aren’t officially Sith Lords yet are trained just like one. So while it decreases their numbers by a lot, they find ways around even when they actually obey said rule.
** Thirdly and finally, Sith who engage in too much evil and envelope themselves too deeply in the Dark Side often suffer from an inability to properly sense the Light Side. This alienation of the Light is what lead to the otherwise brilliant Palpatine's death. He alienated altruism and good so utterly that he was not only unable to sense Luke Skywalker's presence during a critical moment, but he was also unable to sense that his apprentice Darth Vader still had some morality in him. Thus he attempts to tortuously kill Luke and is killed himself when he fails to expect Vader to attack him out of paternal feelings.
*The 'villains' of fringe-conspiracy theories would be stupid evil if they existed since their plans undermine their own power bases, have little to no tangible gain or draw attention by plastering their logo on everything. It's also weird that despite how cartoonishly evil they are thought of, they don't bother to kill anyone exposing the conspiracies while making it look like an accident. This is probably because there is some overlap with the Strawman characters.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Alignment]]