are the Sith Stupid evil?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StupidEvil


LotF this was the major flaw with "Darth ceadus" besides to show he is evil, their is no point or real tenable goal, to 80% of his behavior.

Wyyrlock seems to try to avoid this.

Darth "Work-em-all-to-death" Krayt seem to go in to this zone a bit.


is it acceptable for sith to be like this?

or is evil with no point, silly. Espcialy when it is counterintutive to the bad guys goals?

 

Darth Wyyrlok has become dumber than Krayt ever was.

 

Absolute evil is fine (e.g. Voldemort, Sauron, etc.), the problems arise, I feel, when the author isn't sure what kind of a villain it is.

If you're going to write absolute evil you've really got to feel it. It isn't logical, there's no sense to it, that's the point of it: it's evil. There's no sense making sense of C'thulhu, that's the point of it, the point is that it's not got a point, that it's illogical to human reason.

I think the trouble is when you try to humanise that which cannot be humanised, that's when it can start to appear "stupid", as it's the attempt to apply human reasoning to something that was not intended to be human. For a Star Wars example, I'd say take Nihilus: KOTOR2 doesn't make him out to be anything but an insatiable hunger without reason or remorse, that wants nothing more than to bring death. Great. Nothing stupid there.

If we ever got a story that tried to sympathise with Nihilus? I think that's where the stupid gene could come in, as it'd take a bloody good author to make a reader really feel for a character like that, as the point of characters like Nihilus is for them to be beyond empathising with, for once we start to empathise with them... what? We understand why they do it? So... we understand an inhuman monster?

I think the key word there is "inhuman". The point of inhuman monsters like C'thulhu is they're meant to tap into primordial fears; the second you start trying to empathise with something like the Thing or the xenomorphs from Alien, you either need to throw the rule book of what to logically expect a character to do out the window, or else it's going to come across as stupid.

I suppose the danger Star Wars has is because it has lots of different authors writing the same characters, it's the same as how people often criticise Luke's portrayal as not always feeling consistent; here's we've just got examples of the same issue with villains, just with their inhumanity either not being as inhuman and totally evil in other authors' hands, or else their humanisation not feeling plausible enough.

 

Well, most sith arn't inhuman monsters.

They have an objective and they try to meet it.

Stupid evil is doing something counterproductive to your goals simply because it is "Evil".

for example

Dark Bob is facing down two Jedi knights.

Dark Bob has 4 minions with him, all more or less loyal.

Dark Bob Kills a minion simply to show he's "evil".

Dark Bob loses fight.

Why? well killing one of your own fighters and probably demoralizing the others right before fight likely had a big part in it.

its not evil, its counterproductive evil. stupid evil.

 

What you say is true.

Though, I still feel some of it is about an author not knowing what they actually want to write about.

If they want the villain to have a noble goal? Then, yeah, Dark Bob is a moron; killing your own people for no reason isn't helpful.

If they want the villain to simply be a cold hearted bastard? Then, like the Overlord in the video games of the same name, if you're genuinely that much of an evil badass that everybody obeys you, not because they want to, but because they know you'll kill them if they don't? In that situation I don't have any problems with it.

Vader largely falls into the second category, for instance. His officers know he's a killer, so they know not to piss him off.

The trouble with a lot of other villains though is like you say: Dark Bob acts like a good guy, then wonders why being evil for evil's sake backfires. If an author wants to write a "noble" villain, then they need to stick to being noble, not throw in token Vaderisms for the sake of it seeming "Sithy".

It's telling, for example, that the Commissars of the Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40k fit in perfectly well... their men know that if they don't follow orders they will get shot. They know that and it ensures obedience. But then, we don't see Commissars pretend they're anything they're not. They act like hardass bastards because they are hardass bastards.

In Star Wars, I think the problem is we get villains who don't really seem one thing or the other... almost as if they're not even sure themselves what they want to be? No wonder their troops then don't obey them, as they're neither scared into servitude nor inspired by leadership.

 

It depends on your definition of "Stupid Evil"

If you mean stupid evil like unintelligent people doing mean stuff, then no, the Sith are not stupid evil, or else they wouldn't be around for very long (well, you COULD debate that Maul falls under here...).

If you mean doing evil just for the sake of doing evil, then some of them are, for example Darth Caedus.

But I think for the most part, most of the sith are intelligent and they have motivation behind all their evil deeds.

 

Unless they are Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!

 

Star Wars really boils down to a game of the Sith and the Jedi playing "hot potato" with the Idiot Ball.

 

Well, anyone who actively joins the Sith has gotta be pretty stupid by this point.

 

Technically, stupid evil just means to the point of doing it just because it's evil. There's also stupid good (such as thinking that the bad guys are trustworthy enough to turn over those hostages once you meet their demands), lawful stupid (fascism: taking the 'good' out of lawful good for over 80 years), and chaotic stupid (such as committing a crime right in front of a bunch of cops). There's even a stupid neutral, and you can actually get both good and evil Force powers in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II by doing that.

Jacen is a good example of a stupid evil Sith. His grandfather was lawful stupid. I could go on.

 

I would say that it depends on the individual Sith...but, yeah, the philosophy is kind of self-defeating, as the Sith seem to turn on each other the minute they have the upper hand and give the jedi and the republic breathing room.

 

I like your Cthullu example... Cthullu is a sort of force of nature. It's evil for evil's sake because that's it's nature. Palpatine is very much that, though perhaps early on he wasn't. By Dark Empire he's sacrificed his humanity to the dark side and become a force of nature kind of evil. His entire being is that, what else could he be or do? Which is why he gets pretty stupid compared to PT Palpatine by the end of DE. Which is probably why the threat of a World Devastator is overstated constantly... worse than the Death Star? How so? There are a fleet of them? But then we get the stupidest of stupid superweapons... the Galaxy Gun. Seriously? Palpatine's gone off the karking deepend at that point, he believes himself to be the dark side incarnate. He says outlandish shavit too, like "by the darkness that I am..." Nihilus is very much that as well.

The Sith can be terrifying in that mode. I think Naga Sadow comes off like that, and ultimately so does Exar Kun. Caedus though... ugh. I just don't think the authors knew what they were doing with him. They made his turn to the dark side a conscious choice rather than a more traditional fall, or a turn out of some kind of desperation like Anakin or Exar Kun(remember that dude was curious for forbidden knowledge but then was put in a desperate situation where he was told he'd just die a shattered-boned cripple on Korriban unless he turned to the dark side for healing). Jacen Solo chose what he did because he believed it to be the best course for what he wanted for the galaxy... and then he just go progressively insane with occasional blips of that whole conscious decision for the dark side and the Sith thing. It ultimately made for a schizophrenic Dark Lord rather than a logical Dark Lord or a ZOMG-I-Am-The-Dark-Side Dark Lord. I could have respected the latter more than I can what we ended up with.

 

THIS.

Maul was no dumber than Kenobi, he just got caught holding the plot's-potato.

 

Geeze i hope not, playing hot-potato with the idot-ball leads to alot of unsatisfying stories. I hope lotf goes down as a lesson why this should not be.