"Haha! My evil plan is nearing it's completion! I've had cults work in the shadows for centuries after my death to amass armies, gain resources, unlock mystic secrets to make me immortal, and finally resurrect me once and for all! All that's left is for me to-" "Friendship" "o shit nvm fam im outta here"
Oh your friendship lifted the curse of evil from me. now i don my throne and my pitchblack bloodsined armor to join your party. Nevermind the empire i left with a power vakuum, because we are friends now.
God, how I hope my attempt to do this won't result in that. Since I intend for this Dark Lord and the hero to have stuff in common, and *both* to *easily* see how their positions could have been reversed if things had gone differently or each had made different life choices.
which, like anything else, can be done well, even explaining the whole 'Dark Lord' thing in the first place. Lord Voldemort, for example, embraced the Dark Lordness (right to to being an insane, disfigured, genocidal maniac in the first place) since he didn't know how to use the needs of the people or general niceness to get the resources he needed to conquer Death AND Britan. of course, he then proceeded to make the Macguffins, but he was a pretty smart Dark Lord otherwise.
ShinyDuke 17 naaaaah. It would completely make the audience stop paying attention to his cool outfit. Let’s just have him never talk about it anyway and no one will ask himself wether or not he feels love
@@natesmodelsdoodles5403 voldemort also had a good reason for him being heartless. He couldn't understand love. Voldy was well-written and had a good backstory to explain his inhuman appearance and showed the character development that he went through.
@Martin Toledo It'd be even funnier if he did the whole evil doom monologue before smiting them, because "dude, you're really getting this worked up over a few cows?" then boom, dead.
The fact that there are people yelling in the comments "HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE SAURON" because they don't realize that the caricature of Dark Lord presented in the video represents all the Darks Lords in fictional works that aimed at recreating Sauron while only using his appearance and completely overlooking the depths of his character really worries me.
Just once I'd like to see a dark lord just give a random minion a "good job" and give them a little reward just for being good. Like the whole setup when they usually kill the random minion but they just pat them on the back. "I appreciate you, Wilson McStabber. Here, take this coupon for a free yogurt in the cafeteria" -Thank you, my lord. But the coupon was expired. MUAHAHAHAHA!
But because he actually is a good boss when the clerk tries to turn down the coupon he just arises from a pillar of dark ether, his eyes glow red as he looms over them. "I am SO sorry, I forgot the date. How much was it?"
What about a story where the heroes prepare for the awakening of the Dark Lord only to have him wake up from his 1000 year slumber with no memory of what he was supposed to be doing. He just wakes up to see all these chosen ones and just like " Umm why are you in my house?"
You could have some real fun with an amnesiac protagonist who's hunted by the 'forces of good' for being said ancient Dark Lord sans memories. Especially if they never get any of it back. Meanwhile whatever's become of the old forces of evil latch onto the protagonist as their only hope.
I saw that in an anime once where the dark lord turned out to be this skimpily dressed loli(cause anime) and like they’re about to fight when the dark is lord then says “wait why do I wanna destroy all of humanity again?” Then they feed her biscuts and it’s adorable
StarKiller AKA Galen Marek AKA The Apprentice “How to not summon a demon lord” a fun little trashy isekai anime that’s well worth the price of admission
I’d like a story with a dark lord who’s also the chosen one that after completing his prophecy he decided “I have all this power, why not take the throne for myself?” Or that he believed that no one could rule a kingdom better than he could BECAUSE he was the chosen one. This could highlight the similarities between the hero and himself (should he be another chosen one) or simply make the hero powerless (should he be a regular guy). Also, it could have every Merlin-like character side with the dark lord because they still believe in destiny and that he’s doing the right thing, showing the weaknesses of this trope as a result.
That's been done before what if you follow him while he does dark lord stuff and be morally gray and make it so you root for him as he tries to smite the heroes
Ever hear of the epic poem Paradise lost? It stars Satan himself as the main protagonist shows his War in Heaven as well as his journey to corrupt Adam and eve. His speeches alone are enough to recommend the reading of it on UA-cam, staring Emperor Palatine himself as the devil
Hmm, i think i may have the best idea ever! I see you around so often that i may as well just watch every video you ever commented in, chances are i'll like them.
Didn't notice this bit until now: "Let's try enchanted tungsten, instead." Fun science trivia: If you poured molten tungsten onto lava, it'd freeze back into solid tungsten as it transfers its heat to the relatively cold lava. Also, there are chemists who want to study molten tungsten's properties, but they need to overcome one problem: What do they make its container out of that won't melt before the tungsten does?
That's pretty much every Dragon Ball villain excluding the two new ones and maybe Buu and they worked out just fine.Ironically the new series tried to make their villain a semi good guy with a sad past and everyone hates him.
You know what I think would be a fun thing to do in an "Evil Overlord" story? For the first part of the story, never show the evil overlord, just have lots of people mention him, and how evil he is, and give him lots of minions and evil officers doing evil things in his name. But never show him. Late into the story, introduce the plot twist that THERE IS NO EVIL OVERLORD. Maybe there was at some point, but he died of natural causes long before the story's beginning, and instead of letting the whole thing dissolve, his various followers decided to keep up the charade because the existing power structure was convenient for them.
I was thinking of something similar except the Dark Lord/Lady is actually the Chosen One from prophecies or what ever and he/she made up the prophecies to kill traitors or to help and fighting a even greater threat. It will make sense on why the Chosen One is sometimes a Mary Sue in the story and he/she is usually super naive about his world so he/she can play dumb. Also he/she is bored and wants a little fun especially if its a long lived or immortal Dark Lord/Lady.
The dark lord from my story came to power, because he found a box,which contained an army of disposable minions,a black castle,a black costume and a magic staff in his wardrobe.
For once, I want to see a dark lord who cares for his own men, someone who has actual bonds with his team and builds his way up from average joe to his current position. Give him actual character outside of the whole dark lord thing.
You know that was the one flaw with the Anti-Spiral in Gurrenlaggan to me. Where is his true companions? Wouldn't someone who reached the end of the journey and then realized they had to stop have nakama by their side?
I think it's more like Tolkien invented most of these tropes then people read Lord of the Rings, didn't understand what made the tropes effective and used only what they saw on the surface.
It's not that he invented or subverted anything. He actually stuck very strongly to many very old tropes in his Mythopoetic style, then people copied him poorly and thus our modern versions of many of these tropes were born. It only seems like an inversion now because we're working off of these modern versions as a baseline, which is sort of like saying Seinfeld is a parody of Friends. It's also worth noting that many of the cliches he talks about in this video aren't even really applicable to Sauron unless you're only evaluating based on a quick synopsis of the movies. For example, the video talks about badly written dark lords immediately just trying to take over everything with armies they acquire out of nowhere, and this is not the case in LoTR. Sauron started by recruiting people like Saruman and Wormtongue as lieutenants who then went to work constructing the infrastructure required to raise large armies and trying to weaken his opposition through subversion.
@@thewanderingmistnull2451 What sequels? Are you telling me that they decided to make main line SW movies again? We only got those spin-off recently so i hope they'll do good!
When the Dark Lord kills his minions, make sure that he either says "You have failed me for the last time" or they do that bit where the minion promises it will never happen again. Those will never get old like 20 years ago.
I did that with the DL telling his minion he had 'failed him for the last time'. The minion cowers then is told... Dark Lord: You're fired. And no severance package. Still employed minions, get this failure from out of my sight. He is dragged out screaming about not being able to make ends meet without a severance package.
I should point out that, although Sauron may be the archetypal Dark Lord, there is considerably more complexity to his philosophical conception than "pure evilness", though in fairness this is more apparent in Tolkien's personal writings than in LotR. "In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants, by a triple treachery: 1. Because of his admiration of Strength he had become a follower of Morgoth and fell with him down into the depths of evil, becoming his chief agent in Middle-earth. 2. when Morgoth was defeated by the Valar finally he forsook his allegiance; but out of fear only; he did not present himself to the Valar or sue for pardon, and remained in Middle-earth. 3. When he found how greatly his knowledge was admired by all other rational creatures and how easy it was to influence them, his pride became boundless." -Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Thank you! This guy either doesn't know enough about LOTR or just doesn't care, because pretty much every complaint he has related to Sauron is non existent in the story anyway. Sauron tried to take over Middle-Earth WITHOUT violence. He tried using the lust for power the rulers of ME had against them, using the rings. Not to mention he hadn't been asleep for a thousand years but he was in fact weakened because of the destruction of his physical body and the loss of the Ring
You do know that there are other Dark Lords than Sauron and many that imitated him right? Also, much of what OP said is outside material and wasn't told in story of LOTR.
The Villain: *Slaughters millions, burns down countless settlements, tortures prisoners for fun, and spreads general pain and despair along his campaign of conquest across the universe* Also The Villain when the good guy does something slightly dubious: "We're the same thing!"
@@ShibuNub3305 And despite the glaringly broken comparison, make sure the hero become very sad and questions everything they are, lengthening the story a decent bit by having them turn away their friends who just want to go home.
Dark Lord: The world was cruel long before I took to the stage. Nature and time itself are forces, endlessly hungry, devouring the “innocent” as much as the corrupt. What have I expressed that reality itself hasn’t made oh so clear already? Don’t you find it strange the gods do nothing to stop it? We are all but the sums of our fates. Surely YOU more than most. Something like that (it was cliched I know) directed towards a “chosen one”, especially one who’s taken a rather bleak and nihilistic view after their trials and tribulations, could be a potential example. But yes, too many writers go for the extra cliched “we’re not so different, you and I” without even a modicum of thought lol
"But..." the hero gasped, as the villain charged up his final magic attack, "Why are you evil!?" "Well to be honest", he said, "I only did it for the cookies."
So the Hero tells him smother stay there and don’t cause any destruction and leaves Then comes back with some other friends carrying a enormous amount of cookies “Would this suffice?”
You know it always drives me nuts about various fictions with the Dark Lord? The heroes always know who he is. Whether he rides a black dragon or is eye ball on the top of the tower, he is always very well known. I'd like for once for the protagonists to work hard to discover who they're fighting rather than have it spoon fed to them.
WanderingTaoist101 then there's me and my Villain Protagonist, who is out to find and destroy all magic based entities with magic since she hates fantasy stories.
Go read Mistborn. The arc words of that series (and Brandon Sanderson's work in general) are "There is always another secret". Time after time you (and the main characters) think it's clear now, except it's NOT. And it's never executed in an ass-pull way.
I got a brilliant idea! A world where a Dark Lord arises every so often. And every time, a hero arrives and beats him. However, at the end, you reveal that the Dark Lord of this generation was none other than the hero of previous generations, casted aside the second he became useless, betrayed because of the fear of his powers, thus making him develop a pure hatred, first for those that betrayed him, then for all of those related, and finally, at all the members of their species, until he finally became powerful enough to take his revenge against those that backstabbed him. In the fight against the Hero, the Dark Lord recognizes that the new Hero is someone like he once was, and does his best to convince him to join him, telling him that he will be betrayed like he once was, and doing his best so that what happened to him never happened again. But the hero, in a naïve mindset portrayed as purely heroic, refuses to betray his allies, and battles to the end, against an enemy that didn't want him dead. And when the hero finally defeats the dark lord, we get one chapter where everyone around him is acting... suspicously. Some of his friends act normally, but others, including authorities (popes; kings, emperors, etc.), and seem to be wary of him. Until the last word where we can imply that his predecessor was right. And then we can get a sequel where the betrayed hero rises up again, showing another story on the side of a betrayed man. Of course, vastly different from the first one (Like for example, another dark lord appearing that isn't him, that might make the protagonist make a deal with the new Dark Lord.
My favorite type of dark lords are the kind that start out one-note and bland but become more and more interesting as we learn more about them/they go through character arc. Like he is introduced by legends and by the guys who sent you out on the quest, but when the heroes first encounter him (as the first hurdle) he's different from what he's described in ways that throws the heroes off, but that takes effort and creativity.
I've always wanted to see a story where the hero goes out to kill the villain, attacks him but the 'Dark Lord' acts like he's innocent (crying, swearing that he's not the Dark Lord, etc.) to get into the hero's base/favor who will feel bad for almost killing them. From here, the Dark Lord could manipulate the hero into indirectly helping his side or actually begin to develop a bond with him and ultimately turn to the good side. Maybe even enemies to lovers
Here’s the challenge with what you’re describing. Yes, it IS potentially interesting, but there’s a lot more to consider other than the baseline notion of being subversive with the hero and dark lord’s first encounter. For instance, let’s say that, in typical dark lord fashion, he’s been described as power hungry, tyrannical, and just overall plain “evil” by everyone else in the story. And then the hero meets our dark lord, only to realize he is far more reasonable, cool-headed, and practical than described. Maybe he even offers a logical/understandable argument for his position that conflicts the hero greatly. Sounds really interesting, right? Why hasn’t this been done very often? Well, first off, that begs a LOT of questions. Why is this guy being treated like some evil dictator if that’s clearly not the case? Wouldn’t that cast doubt upon everyone the hero has been relying on for advice? And what’s up with those times we’ve clearly seen his minions doing horrible things for no apart reason just to further establish how “evil” the dark lord is? Doesn’t that make his entire argument and motivation fall flat on its face? And if that hasn’t happened, well then why would the hero even fight him anymore? Are we going to pull a twist and have it be where the villain is actually the voice of reason, and all the good guys are actually the unreasonable evil ones? Ok, but… why then have the good guys shown literally NO evil qualities whatsoever until this reveal of ours? Now there are ways to avoid said pitfalls. But here’s my point. If you’re gonna go for that kind of reveal, you really have to NAIL the motivations of not just the dark lord, but all other parties. In addition, you have to include solid foreshadowing that is neither too obvious, or too vague, to make it feel clever. A lot of the time, I see writers who want to create these interesting villains with unique and sympathetic motivations, but then are forced to rely on “idiot plots” or blatant character 180 shifts that don’t make a lick of sense, and feel about as natural as jamming a cube into a circle shaped hole. Personally I despise dark lords who are “evil to be evil” (unless they’re genuinely fun and/or incredibly threatening and intimidating in a way that gives them powerful narrative presence). But there’s a very good reason why soooooo many fantasy authors stick to it. And that’s because writing villains who have interesting personalities, unique motivations, and sympathetic causes is much, much more difficult than most people realize.
@@chopperjoe1998 yeah i get it, a lot of the time i see the "oh and the hitler standing actually sympathetic suddenly" or "this 'working class hero' was actually just a greedy bitch". But it's really cool whenever authors get it to work. Evil to be evil dark lords are easier to right i guess, but even then you've still got to nail the charisma or they just becomes a boring asshole.
Dark lord"I've trained and risen my army and spread my army over the course of thousands of years and have a bunch of fighting experience" Main character who's been training for a couple of weeks"are you challenging me?"
Dark lord who spend 2000 years in slumber, had awoken and have no idea what's going on because the world is radically changed during his sleep and he's not so mighty, sinister and powerful because of that sounds like a FANTASTIC idea for a story, actually!
Heck, for extra fun pull a histroical refrence to Vlad the Impailer. The 'Dark Lord' was not a good guy unless you were a loyal member of their empire and then was a pretty good boss. (If strict.) When they wake up again? The new Dark Lord is every worthless evil cliche imaginable and that's just inherently offensive to the real OG Dark Lord. Cue three sided struggle between the current dark lord, the real Dark Lord and the 'protagonists' over the fate of wherever.
A thought here, you don't even need to make them evil in their own time period for this to actually work okay... simply evolution in morality and social norms is enough. If you suddenly brought Julius Caesar into the present day, and he simply tried to enforce the values of his culture at the time, he'd still probably look like a villain in the present.
While not entirely the same, that's basically the plot of The Devil Is A Part Timer: thge dark lord of a generic fantasy land gets zapped into modern day Japan and has to get a job at "MgRonalds" to pay the rent while trying to figure put how to get home. It's both hilarious and surprisingly nuanced.
I can already see it; Seven Kingdoms, each of them thriving by magic, banded together to form a revolt against a Dark Lord and his Empire to put an end to his unethical practices of Institutionalized Necromancy. The war was short but devastating as the Dark Lord's Empire had a larger collection of Enchantment Stones (basically magical batteries, with electricity and everything) than the Seven Kingdoms combined. Nevertheless, the Seven Kingdoms came out victorious in the end by destroying the Dark Lord's absurdly deep Enchantment Mines. After several failed executions, it became clear that the Dark Lord was virtually unkillable. When tried to decapitate him, the battleaxe would simply break in twine. When they tried to stab him to death, each vital organ, nerve and artery would simply wriggle away from the blade. When they tried to cut him limb for limb, each limb would simply reattach to the body with the help of some entrails. And when they tried to break his back, the spine morphed into a monster that would end up destroying the entire execution room. So they decided to imprison him for the rest of eternity; sending him into a magic-induced coma between four Enchantment Pillars, contained within a metal sphere that would be buried deep underground. And for nearly four decades, the Seven Kingdoms lived in relative peace with each other. That was until that cursed day, it happened during the final days of fall, auroras could be seen all across the skies day and night with lighting strikes becoming more intense. But worst of all, the Enchantment Stones ceased to function, all of them, and thus no-one could use magic now. Chaos followed, the Kingdoms collapsed, and anarchy broke out. And soon magic would be considered as just a myth. All while the Dark Lord was still comatose inside of his sphere, the Enchantment Pillars being seemingly unaffected. Millennia later, in present day, a lightning strike creates a small crater near a busy highway. A Mechanic from a nearby gas station investigates the crater and sees the surface of something metal. He's about to call the authorities thinking a gas pipe has been damaged until he hears someone shouting for help from within the pipe. He sees that there is a small door at the top of the pipe and opens it. Out of the structure crawls a pale man, he thanks the Mechanic, only to nearly faint in shock from the massive structure in front him with metal beast crawling over it (I.E. the highway). All while the Mechanic stares at him, at his ruined clothes and thinks; "Great, another crackhead for me to deal with."
Actually the most well known dark lord's are well written like sauron who spent thousands of years building his powers, consolidating the forces of his masters and manipulating the elves into making the rings of power and waging wars that he lost but managed to stay a relevant force in the world without a body even. Voldermort's back story is fed to us over 7 books his motivation comes from a superiority complex over the people who abused him (muggles which ironically which is half of him) and his quest to become imortal. Emperor palpatine spent decades manipulating and undermining the Jedi and corrupting the republic that he democratically toppled. It's not a bad trope or even a bad archetype more of a label of the big bad but there's plenty of room to fill in why he's the dark lord
That's the thing with all tropes though - a good writer can make them work just fine, because in a way, tropes are just the outward shell and what you fill it with changes everything. For newbie writers it's very easy though to just look at the outer shell of something they enjoyed reading and then copying that shell without really understanding its place in the story or how to fill it to NOT have it be terrible and unfulfilling.
This video is more making fun of the writers who look at Sauron, Voldemort, and Palpatine and copy just what they see on the surface without bothering to carry over what made them good in the first place.
Sauron also had trade and diplomatic relations with several other factions within and just outside of Middle-Earth. Some factions even worshiped him as a god.
On the other hand Sauron himself isn't really a character, noone really intereacts or speaks with him and his power is mostly shown through his army and minions, who typically are just monsters with no personalities aside from Saruman and Grima, or via the ring which seems to act indepenently f sauron anyway.
+Sara Fontanini What about Beren (A human Sauron tormented and depending on the which version you read bit his hand off), Luthien (an Elfmaiden who tricked Sauron with her magic dancing), Huan (an ancient giant dog like being who chased Sauron up a tree), Umuiyan (an old bodyguard of Sauron whom he threw off a cliff for supposedly being too old to perform his duties). He also jokes about Shelob being his cat, he was happy to ally with various human and dwarf groups during the War of the Ring. He acted like a wuss when he pissed off his own god, when he thought Gandalf would take the ring and when Aragon threatened to cut his fingers off with the same sword Isildur did. And this is just from the Middle-Earth books I've read there are plenty I haven't read. As for Sauron's minions they have more than enough personality for characters that don't actually need personalities.
*NO! CURSES!* I knew I should have made my own love triangle! Though you might have beaten me, you'll never defeat the Dark lord so long as he holds the MacGuffin!
Why not? Wouldn't that neatly set up two rival 'right hand' minions to the dark lord who can have their own contrasting thing going on? Such as one who isn't so evil but is basically the victim in an abusive relationship convinced that if she can just get the Dark Lord to marry her she can 'fix' him. (You can play for tragedy or have this one turn on the Dark Lord when/if needed.) The other is just as evil as the dark lord is but can't seem to manage to get the romantic attention of the dark lord, so constantly strives to do something big enough to get it. (Again, you can easily have this one do something utterly self sabotaging to the Dark Lord trying to get his attention.) Heck, for maximum fun, write your typical harem from an anime. Only the MC Protagonist is actually the Dark Lord and uses the harem as elite leaders in their evil empire. Now you have a group of villains that could basically carry their own series to stand against your protagonists. Whom you could easily write a classical romance story about, contrasting the depth of character and selfless love in their relationship with the lack of character in the Dark Lord and the ultimately selfish motivations of the Dark Lords Harem. Just a thought, sand in the wind...
One of the previous episodes (spoilers) shows him having to choose between his two potential loves: world domination or world destruction. Oh no, which one will he chooooooose?
Which would never happen. As it stands, that is. The only reason why AI could become a threat is if people start trying to make fully automated kill-robots Or, if AI had true sentience/sapience and ability to build upon its own programming, *and* had the intent on propagating itself through a variety of systems to re-write code to have hostilities to humans. So far those two things are not happening.
Both things are happening now. Last year, AI learned to write short JavaScript programs (like, 5 lines of code). And killbots were ordered by the US military.
Person of interest has good writing with A Is The evil ai just wants control humans from the shadows for their own good. And the good one has an extreme moralic maker who teaches "the maschine" ethics
One of the best tips for writing tips I've heard when it comes to villains is to remember that "everyone is the hero in their own story." Even the villain thinks he's really a hero.
@@tortture3519 sure but its so overdone its boring I wanna see a vaillain thats basically the hero in his stories. Like hes a cunning general from a nation that was at war with the hero's nation and the villain won. The villain people genuily adore him because he helped them get out of a war and have prosperity while the hero's people despise him.
@@flow185 Sure, but that entirely depends on the story you want to write. For example, I think a story about how evil people get into positions of power and how they lose them, would not benefit from moral greyness on the part of the villain. Evil people exist in the real world. Tropes aren't bad. It's how you use them. Besides, what you described doesn't prevent the villain from being pure evil.
How's this? Our dark lord starts as a humble farm boy, toiling away to help his ailing mother keep up with the increasingly steep taxes enforced on the people by the king. Their life is hard, but they manage, however after a sudden increase in said taxes his mother is taken prisoner to pay her debt through... other methods, the boy left to fend for himself after hiding. He makes a plan, infiltrate the castle and rescue his mother, not the best plan but hey... he's twelve. He spends a few years learning basic sorcery and learning the layout of the castle and surrounding area. He gets into he castle, ready for a fight, to be the hero, only to find that she had died a little under a year prior, largely due to neglect for her health even though royal mages could likely have saved her with ease. His ass is thoroughly handed to him and he's kicked out into the mud, left to stew on what's transpired. He travels the world, aimless and alone, training with any who will take him. During his travels he hears of a power, one which belonged to a dark wizard many eons ago, locked away at the top of a mountain behind an ancient seal. He journeys there, not really sure what it is he would even do with that power, but still finding himself drawn to it. He makes his way there where he is confronted by the seals guardian, an immortal... goat man, or something, and they fight. The battle is long and gruelling, the guardian is defeated but not before the boy is mortally wounded. He lies on the cold cavern floor, accepting his fate, realizing just how powerless he truly was, and then he hears a voice. A dark whisper calls to him from the seal, beckoning him over. He drags himself over to it, propping himself on the prison cell. The voice whispers an incantation to him, which he repeats as he instinctively places his hand at the centre of the seal. The stone door cracks and crumbles and a rush of darkness pours out into the world, into the boy. Voice whisper and scream in his head telling him events of the past, present and future. His body is torn apart and re-formed over and over again into various different forms. Eventually the swirling darkness and chaos subside and he stands at the mouth of the cave, feeling power surge through his every atom. Then something awakens in him, something that had always been there but simply needed the right... push, a clawing lust for vengeance. He returns home and sets himself up as a warrior for the people, forming a small gang who helps those being oppressed. Eventually he stars a revolution and overthrows the old king, executing him and his children publicly. He is set up as the new king and begins his work of expanding his kingdom. He renames himself Argios, a warrior king from his countries past who, though considered a brute and savage by surrounding lands, was lauded as a hero in his home country. As his reach grows across the land, so too his rule becomes darker, more cruel. His taxes become more severe on the people as he works tirelessly to keep the ever increasing costs of conquest under control. One day, when a poor man refuses to comply with tax collectors he is killed on the spot, his daughter hiding nearby sees this, and swears she will bring down dark king Argios, perhaps not today, but soon.
Remember, when doing kaiju don't take a look at classic kaiju films like Gojira, where the monster was an allegory of the atomic bomb and how humanity must be careful with their creations, or how in the King Kong movies Kong was just an animal that was let loose in New York and was killed solely thanks to humanity's egosim. Nope, we don't want that, we just wanna see some giant monsters smashing cities! And if you hint your monster is intelligent, make it clear it's just evil, we don't want to overthink what really motivates the creature!
Yes, and no matter how big and lumbering the monster is, don't let that prevent you from adding a scene where he surprises the heroes by suddenly just sneaking up on them. Also, any extra in a monster movie will have the self-preservation of a lemming.
Don't worry about how two robots/monsters/whatever so large that the average skyscraper only comes up to their knees can fight inside a dense city, it is cool! And you know what else is cool? if they can change into different things! So what if it requires violating several physical laws about mass and even if it could be done the space would be better used for other things to make them tougher/a better fighter, nobody thinks about these things anyway.
This is why I think Emperor Palpatine is one of the greatest "pure evil" movie villains. Yeah, he is a dark lord but he tends to avoid many of these problems since we see his progression through politics, his rise to power, and also his personality alone was a huge challenge for Luke and he was killed by his lackey in a huge moment that completed Vader's arc. Now Snoke on the other hand.... *looks at this video*
Snoke had a huge potential, they could've done anything with him. Is he Darth Plagues? Darth Vitiate? The guy who taught Plagueis how to save others from Death? First Sith? First Dark Sider? Nope, Snoke is dead TA-DA SUBVERSION! They completely wasted his character for the sake of cheap and meaningless shock value plot twist.
Except everything we know about Palpatine comes from the prequels. In the OT we know nothing about him. He fits the dark lord mold entirely. Which is fine because Vader is the focus. Same with the new trilogy, Kylo Ren is the focus.
Palpatine was more or less a side character in the OT rather than being the main villain. The prequels brought him more into focus so a backstory was fitting there. Snoke needed a backstory because he is in a SEQUEL.
Speaking of RotJ, how much better would Vader's redemption have been if Luke ceased upon the mention of the name "Anakin" bringing Vader up short to get a number of barbs in forcing the "Dark Lord" to realize how he has become a mockery of all he once believed in?
Here is an idea, drawn from this video, that I will never write, but someone should. So go ahead and steal this: A classic fantasy dark lord awakens... In a sci-fi futuristic world already ruled by some other evil. And so he sets out to conquer the world, by siding with the rebels, and using ancient magics against futuristic technology. Maybe he turns some degree of good in the end, maybe he doesn't, I dunno, there's plenty of directions for something like this. Maybe he creates Magitech. Maybe he teaches the rebellion, who lack modern weaponry or ammunition, how to wield magic to level the playing the field. Maybe, given how people's views on things have changed over the thousands of years of slumber, necromancy becomes seen as less "totally evil" and more "Really useful as a source of untiring labour" or "A great honour for a slain rebel, to continue in battle". Maybe the story switches to a new main character who's not on either side, who's trying to just make things right. Go wild!
Play it as a plot twist! The ancient "mage" awakens from a thousand-year slumber and offers aid to the rebels and teaches them magic and stuff, THEN once we see him lead the "heroes" pretty far we find out he was a traditional, sealed-away "dark lord" just trying to take the evil throne for himself. Our rebel protagonists feel manipulated and betrayed, but don't entirely want to give up the magitech he invented for them either, since it's more efficient then conventional weapons. Mr. now-revealed-Dark-Lord admits that seizing power from the other evil was indeed his original plan, but he insists that he's since put all that behind him and changed his ways, the rebels helped him see the light, and he doesn't want to rule the world anymore. Those claims certainly sound like the close friend and ally the rebels grew to love, follow, and respect- but _can they entirely trust someone with such a dark past that he kept from them for so long?_
@ChaosRayZero Neh, it is bit too cheesy. You don't stop be evil for no good reason and you didn't provide one. Also that "plot-twist" is way more overused then you think. Straight up Dark Lord on good side for mutually convenient reasons is way more interesting thing to play.
If you wanted the dark lord to not be evil, why not have it be that he was never really evil? No-one is just evil for evil's sake. Maybe he was just the loser of the war. Maybe do something like the horde from WoW, where he sided with the races people just didn't like for whatever reason, and then after he was defeated, history was written by the victors. Suddenly it makes total sense for the dark lord to be on the side of the rebels: They remind him of the orcs or whatever.
@calemr But again, it isn't anything original (from hand I can mention anime Overlord). Also you make a huge mistake regard the WoW orcs. They invade and slaughter many and no one really frame them. It wasn't about paty racism though but what did justify them is that they fight for survival flying from dying world and simply didn't know better as they were manipulated by evil. Orcs during W3 and especially WoW are complete different generations raised in camps, who commonly know Alliance language or even have education. When they rebelled recreating the Horde they even didn't fight with humans (outside those who attack them because all that salt) seeking new place to settle over time allying with the local races for protection. Generally current (WoW) relation between horde and alliance is more or less neutral. Over time Blizzard shaken up stuff to make whole thing more neutral including for example humanoid Blood Elves and Forsaken to Horde and demi-human Wargen and Draenei to Alliance.
Agreed. I mean it works in some cases like Vader killed Ozzel because Ozzel fucked up way more than once. Some villains on the other hand just kill their best minions because they brought their coffee a little too cold.
Look Bob, you're my most loyal henchman and all, and you have fought at my side and done all I asked, but you see, I just got this new deadly dark superpower I really want to try, and there aren't any innocent puppies around, so....
Having read your honest thoughts on the subject, one thing comes to mind. I really wanna see a Dark Lord actually stumble into a meeting between the good guys, drunk as hell, and start rambling about his coming age of darkness and spraying every pretty flower with weedkiller and suchlike. And then after he sobers up later, they have this awkward conversation where they all agree to just... forget that ever happened.
How about my villain is evil and power hungry because he's incredibly insecure, wearing that armour because he finds himself ugly and controlling people so they all love him?
His weakness being having his cool dark lord helmet taken off? Then realizing that people can see what he percieve to be his horrible appearance he flees?
You mean like Tiberium. Come to think of it, Tiberium is the perfect villain. Tiberium not only kills everything around it but it represents power and wealth and it makes people fight and kill each other for it. It spreads until it covers the majority of the entire planet and mutating or killing most carbon-based life.
Unless it turns out that Mary Sue is the hapless cover identity of God Mode Sue! Nothing, not even the love triangle, can withstand her plot-breaker powers!
The heroes of a medieval story seals away the dark lord for a millennia And after a millennia the dark lord wakes up to a sci fi story..... that would be fun
Eatin sum Faggotinni zucchini villains sealed away for a millennium never make sense, because if they can survive a lack of food, air, water and motion for a thousand years, there's not a whole lot you can do to stop them, other than just seal them again. so every year, go seal them again, then they never escape.
I think it could be a really interesting tale, especially if for their time they were 'progressive' but by the time they're freed everyone thinks of their views as primitive. Hell, imagine if the 'dark lord' was sealed away for fighting on the platform of racial and gender equality, was big on tech and industry, ran their empire as a meritocracy and basically lost because it was easier for the 'hero' of the time to rally people around stopping the Dark Lord's equality reforms then convince anyone the Dark Lord was genuinely evil. So now you have a Dark Lord waking up to find that everything they wanted happened... just without their input being needed. For bonus contrast, the Dark Lord might have considered anything remotely democratic as 'rule by the mob' and so finds modern governments doing that and succeeding disturbing. Even with so much of what the Dark Lord believed in being proven truly the way to a better future, here is this one thing that they can't accept and get over. Thus you have a hook to get them back into the Dark Lording role if you want, or a personal struggle to overcome even if you don't.
Yal Rathol "can survive a lack of food, air, water and motion for a thousand years" In fantasy settings almost all undead and constructs would be unharmed by that.
First,it will be a huge news in that world as the dark lord is written in their past history,make the dark lord have a small vacation around town then boom it's wartime!
I'm starting to think that the love triangle joke has been used so much in this channel that now to prevent the joke from becoming old, the love triangle will always appear on the background on certain part of the episode without being on the script.
sure, but tropes are tools. you don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a good story. hell, even a cliche "chosen one vs evil overlord" story can be done well, it's just that it's so often done poorly that we've all forgotten why we liked those stories to begin with.
even worse are stories that just redeem their villains to make them seem 'sympathetic' or 'complex' without doing anything to make those works, such as fairy tail, naruto and my little pony recently.
Kim FW Yal Rathol I agree wholeheartedly, that's what I meant with "use it in a shallow way". You don't have to reinvent the whole thing of course but show that you put some care into writing something instead of using tropes only as shortcuts. You have to do it right.
+Sara Fontanini, indeed for a show that pulled off that idea well with Starlight, the whole redeeming the pony of shadows felt forced and rushed... actually i honestly thought that season ending as a whole felt rushed
If you are writing a Dark Lord for any japanese media or game be sure to give this dark lord super powerful secret weapon that he somehow doesn't use in the first place or 1-5 bonus forms that make him invicible against anything, but the hero of the story.
Here's an idea: How making Dark Lords based off Actual Dictators or emperors and how they rose to power. Maybe make him part of a Revolution Party that overthrew another empire due to them having different ideals or they were low-class/poor.
TheCanoxd or making a main hero tries to overthrown the evil regime while in the end the hero becomes the dark lord himself, establishing another different evil regime.
@@sydorovich2532 What empire? Lelouch pretty much killed himself at the last episode by his own design and rigged his own empire to stop existing by destroying the Damocles, the Fleijas and putting Nunnaly in charge of Britannia and then joining that United Nations thing they had going on. There is no evil empire at the end of Code Geass, Lelouch's whole plan at the end was to destroy the evil in the empire from within. Lelouch was a douchebag but his goal was never to attain power for himself or rule the world or that shizz, those were his means and not his ends. Death Note would be a better example of a main character with a good motive that ends up going bad and creating an "empire" of evil and fear.
The funny thing is the archytipical Dark Lord Sauron actually does have some deeper motivations, for instance his overwhelming fear of death! Or burning desire for revenge, he has the fatal flaw of hubris, (Which is part of how the hobbits got the one ring to mount doom). Yet, he did not need to have any of these motivations as he more or less symbolized an idea.
@@swordofstabbingold Yeah, he is basically just the Mythologized Satan (By Proxy as Morgoth is the real Satan analogue). In rebellion against the creator, wants to subvert free will and conform all of reality to his view of perfection. A being who is ironically in rebellion against freedom, and beauty, and in favor of tyranny, and efficiency.
@@5ynthet1c More like undead really. With his RIng he'd be Immortal (In trhe sense that he could not die from Old Age) but death could still come for him, and unlike other Elves there will be no rebirth.
3:26 That's why all aspiring dark lords should take a cue from Thurston Howell the Third (paraphrased 'cause I'm too lazy to dig up my beloved 'Gilligan's Island' DVDs): "Take over the world? I'd rather just buy the world and hire someone to run it for me."
Oh, it's hard to pick but probably Thurston Howell (he had the best one-liners). As a kid, I always wanted to be like the Professor because of how he was a literal expert on everything. What's your favorite episode?
Lol those are both great characters. Idk, it's kinda hard to pick tbh. Maybe that one where they did a musical of hamlet? Or the one where the Skipper thought they were all Japanese soldiers lol. They're all good tho. How about you?
As well as interestingly twisting around the typical "Chosen One" narrative. "Hey, shouldn't we be a bit concerned about Anakin's actions as of late?" "What? Of course not! He's the chosen one! What could go wrong? What's he gonna do? Become another darth?"
I think that was probably the best part of the prequels, honestly. They were supposed to be foolish, obviously. It was an effective subversion of the chosen one trope which kind of has a useful and dark lesson against gullibility. Additionally, I'm not sure if other people have noted this, but I love it when stories take dark twists by being literal about foreshadowing. Anakin was prophesized to bring "balance" to the force. Who had by far the most power at that point? The good side of the force. So he ends up counterbalancing that by becoming Darth. Then making it totally balanced when he betrays Palpatine. I'm not even a star wars fan.
How about this for a story idea: Teachers, professors, master-craftsmen, and captains are fearful and superstitious when their wards, or proteges refer to them as mentors or father-figures because of how often they die shortly afterward. Thus it's considered bad luck to say such things like saying good luck before a play.
Madijeis 43 Yeah, what's also interesting is that Mordor want entirely a hell scape either! That was only around half of it. The southern part was actually fertile farmland which was used to grow the food for his army. We just never saw it.
That might be because Sauron wasn't essentially evil to his standards. Sauron wanted everything to be in order and he set it into his mind that the only way that could happen was with him dominating everyone
Rick Harris, in that case, he'd be far from the only dipshit. There are many people who think that if they were in charge, they could fix everything, or at least make things better.
I had a "Dark Lord" villain in a D&D campaign I was running, teased it to the players for the whole time, and just before the players thought that they'd be rolling initiative, a black dragon swooped in, ate who they thought was the BBEG, and then, "Roll Initiative"
@@muzankibutsuji622 ah shit I forgot about this comment turns out all the shit that the players THOUGHT was the "dark lord's machinations" was the work of a draconic cult that some bozo with a shitload of cash was taking credit for
+suresh kumar It is really good! One of the best animated shows ever! ♥ It shows the horrors of war, yet does not get too grim--since it's for kids. When the kids who made up the first audience grew, we stayed fans. ;w;
The Dark Lord could be the loser in that love triangle, forever bitter and relegated to a lonely, solitary existence, perhaps hating the offspring of his beloved and his rival. Y'know, like Severus Snape on steroids. =^[.]^=
I’m telling you this channel is more than amazing in every way. Such a relief to see a writing channel not full of useless junk, but rather one made to help and grow writers. Bravo!
To Answer your question as to why the shoulder Spike never get caught on anything is because the dark lords build huge fortresses and palaces. It's not like all the time, material and personnel that went into the construction of the dark lord base could be used on actually train any army that can crush the hero or hero's as soon as they become a threat or anything.
-" My liege the chosen one and his party has entered the castle and we have him cornered up in the small kitchen. It's time for you to end them since all of us minions can't!" .... "-*Send the ogres* I ...." " -Sir the ogres don't fit though the hallways and doors...." >:C "- *I CAN'T FIT THROUGH EITHER* " " *I'VE BEEN STUCK IN THE THRONE ROOM FOR LIKE A CENTURY* "
Zeliek "I ONLY WANT TO CONQUER THE WORLD SO I CAN FILL THE HOLE IN MY UNSTIMULATED LIFE!" "Then why don't you break the walls down?" "Because they're practically invincible and con only be destroyed by the Great Sword of Uhfruhubfh that can only be held by one of pure heart-" (Heroes break down the wall) "THANK YOU!"
A great execution of this archetype is Xaltotun from The Hour of the Dragon, by Robert E. Howard. He is an ancient necromancer ressurected by the real antagonists so he can help them conquer Conan's kingdom. He actually asks to see a map of the current world which he then says he doesn't recognize. He helps the villains by winning one battle for them, then plots in the background to betray them for the rest of the story.
REH's style of writing is still so readable today (I just downloaded all the public domain stuff for nothing. Weee). His boxing stories have been meh, but I'm not into boxing so.... I like that Conan started out as a king and REH has him lament his responsbilities, then goes back to his younger days in later stories.
Like many fantasy things, people tend to copy pasta Tolkien without the components that make them interesting. Sauron creates a conflict that points to the interesting politics of his peers, mostly Saruman and Gandalf. In the books you get a lot more of a sense that Gandalf himself is waging war against Sauron. Denethor accuses Gandalf of spreading his anti-Sauron counsel as an attempt to gain dominion of the world (much like Sauron and Saruman attempt by different means), which adds on another layer as it is just Denethor projecting his own dark desires. The whole thing really proves Gandalf's dedication to forge a better world, and adds many layers of interest to it. Hell, the ring is a character in itself and adds a ton of interest and conflict that reveals deep character. Needless to say, that deep, layered interest of middle Earth is one of the big reasons LotR is so loved.
Rick Harris, possibly, though every time I re-read the series I find something interesting that I didn't remember from before. Maybe I end up with a more refined (for better or worse) interpretation or it's something I just didn't comprehend initially because the third book especially is just... hard to read through... one of the weaker points of Tolkien is the will power needed to parse all that is going on in the subtext, and even wtf is going on in the story in the first place. Or maybe I was high on caffeine and taurine while I was listening to the audio books!
"He loves power because he loves power" Rational self-interest? Almost any motive that ends up with you in power, good or bad, looks an awful lot like rational self-interest.
My villain: *jokes on you,i got impaled by 12 feet enchanted long sword and i walked it off,tis but a scratch,also satan shat himself because i was in same room*
I have this idea for my story that, while my heroes are are overcoming their own faults to become better heroes, one of the side villains starts to become the Evil Overlord over time. I also have his motivation all figured out, and it’s not just ‘I’m evil because I’m evil.’
Thanks. I'm also writing my main villain as someone who cares for his allies just as much as the heroes care for their friends. No pointless minion slaughtering here.
See the ideal quote for a Dark Lord below: "Don´t say another Goddamn word. Up until now, I´ve been polite. But if you say *anything* else - word *one* - I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you, this *fear engine* will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming - as thought from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip trought the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. _I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth._ "
Dark lord idea: Dark lord is actually main character’s friend. They were evil in the past but have changed, and mc sees that. People still think dl will do bad things, even if mc defends them. At some point in time dl finally snaps and goes back to being evil, with the motive of if no one will see or care that i’ve changed, then why change at all?
So, I have a book with not one but two Dark Lord-type antagonists. One is a Force-of-Nature-class world destroyer that's basically the embodiment of entropy/void, was previously defeated many years ago, has huge supplies of monstrous minions to do the fighting for it and whose only known weakness is a MacGuffin. It's defeated halfway/two-thirds of the way through the story by the protagonist using novel non-MacGuffin techniques (the MacGuffin didn't work) and ends up basically forgotten about as all the characters deal with less powerful but arguably more dangerous secondary antagonists picked up throughout the story, while the protagonist slowly but surely slips towards villainy herself. (Strangely enough, there's also a sort of villain-wishes-they-could-have-been-like-the-hero plotine like you mentioned, except said villain then used time travel to MAKE her younger self the hero.) The second Dark Lord hangs out in his hollowed-out mountain fortress with epic-looking armor, dark magic golems and an economy built on the exploitation of cute magic animals, but he has no interest in harming anyone outside of his little kingdom, and actively assists the protagonist in her fight against the above-mentioned "destroy-the-world" Dark Lord, including loaning her valuable technology and even handing over the MacGuffin in his possession free of charge. In short, he's clearly evil, but he's so damn helpful that the protagonists are under serious temptation to just leave him alone. Him being the only person who gives the protagonist the respect she feels she deserves doesn't help things...
This was part of the reason why I loved Avatar so much. The fire lord wasn't just a dark lord, he was dictator who's rise to power was largely through generations of war, propaganda, and indoctrination of the youth through biased history lessons.
He works as a dark lord for the storys protagonists zuko and aang and destroys countless lives for his lust of power. And he enrichens their character through their confrontation. He is basically a dark lord.
I'm just gonna be honest here... I hated Ozai as a villain. He was so... Bland. In my opinion, there should have been a plot twist where Azula was the big bad, because she was a pretty well fleshed-out character. Ozai on the other hand is just a plot devise and nothing more.
But, Sauron was elected to the throne of Mordor by the labourers (orcs) there since he promised lower unemployment and more equality. He even succeeded! Frodo destoyed him though
Yes, they do. But the problem is, it's really hard to do them right anymore, at least with the traditional tropes. Tolkien pulled it off because he mostly either invented a lot of those tropes in the first place or incorporated them in very thematic ways after finding them in old mythology and/or the theology of his own Catholic Faith (or even just Christianity in general). But nowadays, the over-use of those tropes has made doing Dark Lords well much more difficult (though in fairness, still not impossible).
What I want to see is a story where the dark lord is sealed for a thousand years, but after someone releases them , they don't want to take over the world; in the time they sent away, they developed a deep resentment or the people who locked them up, so now they wan to go on a quest to find the people responsible, and lock them in the same prison.
When you say Dark lord, I immediately think Voldemort, He actually gets called that, Funny how almost none of this applies. Ah well, at least the intro in creative
Terra Mason frowned, glancing up from her seat at a computer next to the geology section to see several armed men wearing Nazi uniforms storm into the library.
The librarian marched up to the soldiers. She faced one of the taller Nazis and pointed a finger at his face. “Not funny, young man. Go somewhere else for your little reenactment. This is a public library, not a theater.” The soldier gestured to behind the counter, speaking in a controlled tone. “Aus dem Weg, Fräulein!”
Terra narrowed her gaze as she studied the man. He didn’t seem like a reenactor to her. The only World War II reenactors she had seen were at the neighboring town’s history festival. And most of those were usually middle aged pot-bellied, Americans with bad posture and fake accents. These lean and fit young men moved with a soldier’s discipline.
You forgot the "or looks ridiculously pretty while being paler than a dead ginger's ass" branch of Dark Lord. Who else is Miss O.C. M. Sue gonna be shipped with?
My favourite breakdown of the "dark lord" trope comes from the webcomic Cucumber Quest. I kinda don't want to spoil it but for those who don't want to read through a really long comic only because of the vague reccomendation of some youtube comment: The main villain of Cucumber Quest a big dark lord character called the "Nightmare Knight" and he's just the full package. He first appeared thousands of years ago, he magically created evil minions to take over and rule the world, he can never be truly killed and just comes back every few hundred years or so when some other evil person summons him to use his power and only the magical sword of legend can banish him again. But over the course of the story you find out more and more about him as he gets actually developed as a character. It turns out that after several of his attempts to take over the world failed, he eventually had a change of heart and doesn't really want to hurt people anymore. His problem is that all of his magic powers are based on fear and that he needs those magic powers to sustain his "minions" who are the only friends he has. He doesn't want to conquer the world any longer but he still needs everyone to fear him for him to be able to sustain his friends. Furthermore, he never told his minions about his change of heart because at first he thought they only liked him as a dark lord and he was too afraid to lose them but at this point he's just been lying for so long that he can't even really face them as a friend anymore. He tried reasoning with the legendary heroes that show up to defeat him but they just don't believe him because he is the evil dark lord. So whenever he inevitably gets summoned again, he basically pretends to try to take over the world but secretly sabotages his minions whenever they get too close to actually succeeding. Meanwhile he just sits in his castle brooding because even though he does all of this for his friends, he's too ashamed and afraid to actually interact with them. Sorry for this big wall of text. I just really like what this character does with the dark lord trope and I rarely get to talk about him. Hope the people here like reading as much as I would assume they do.
But, but, where’s the love triangle! Maybe you can have a story where the hero is very attracted to the villain physically and must overcome their lust and the Dark Overlords increasing attempts to seduce them, mentally and carnally, to the dark side. You can also have the princess be someone who is not the prettiest looking but can stand as a model of what the hero admires in a person, so they must choose between pleasure or the right thing
Shit. That's a really good idea for a story. Having the protagonist hopelessly enamored with the villain and having to resist the urge to become a villain him/herself creates an interesting dynamic. It inverts to villain lusting after the hero/heroine cliche.
I think George Lucas may have made some of the best villains and philosophy through the force. Palpatine wasn’t the dark lord just because he is, but it is because he was taught that through the teachings of Plaguis. We all know Anakin too! It also helps that the force is so complicated that the Jedi resist many of the things that make them human (figuratively). It is corruption through over exposure to power. If only we got the backstory to all Sith!
@@Archon3960 An allegory for what? I always saw him as an allegory for fascism and his backstory reveal especially with him being a senator made sense as despite it's bad reception the prequels made a pretty good job of showing how republics can fall to fascism in unexpected ways, mirroring George's views on America, and his originals views on vietnam
@@techissus7449 You just answered my question. x) Well, that, minus the Emperor being the Dark Side incarnate, evil incarnate, and a reverse Master Yoda.
![On Writing: Dark Lords! [ Sauron | White Witch | Voldemort ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UfVDkW0bqIA/mqdefault.jpg)
Dark lord: *destroys the world*
Comic relief character: *Z A P P E R S*
what character are you referring to ?
I laughed snot out of my nose at this comment... help me
LOL
true
ｚａｐｐｅｒｓ
you forgot the dark lord can also be defeated by FRIENDSHIP
Gentleman Nemesis Animes are like that
"Haha! My evil plan is nearing it's completion! I've had cults work in the shadows for centuries after my death to amass armies, gain resources, unlock mystic secrets to make me immortal, and finally resurrect me once and for all! All that's left is for me to-"
"Friendship"
"o shit nvm fam im outta here"
Oh your friendship lifted the curse of evil from me. now i don my throne and my pitchblack bloodsined armor to join your party. Nevermind the empire i left with a power vakuum, because we are friends now.
Or the protagonist's pure heart.
"My little ponyyy, my little pony~" someone had to say it.
The Dark Lord must say "we are not so different you and I." To the hero, even though they have nothing in common.
Except if is Darth Vader.
@@CCLOSPINA NOOOOOOOO
God, how I hope my attempt to do this won't result in that. Since I intend for this Dark Lord and the hero to have stuff in common, and *both* to *easily* see how their positions could have been reversed if things had gone differently or each had made different life choices.
@@andrewgause6971 still don't have them say it.
@@tyrant-den884 hmmm. You're right. Keep it subtle. Thank you.
He forgot a key part of the Dark Lord. The inability to comprehend good or love.
Except now there are Dark Lords who can do that, although many of them simply forget how.
which, like anything else, can be done well, even explaining the whole 'Dark Lord' thing in the first place. Lord Voldemort, for example, embraced the Dark Lordness (right to to being an insane, disfigured, genocidal maniac in the first place) since he didn't know how to use the needs of the people or general niceness to get the resources he needed to conquer Death AND Britan.
of course, he then proceeded to make the Macguffins, but he was a pretty smart Dark Lord otherwise.
What about thinking Undertale is overrated?
ShinyDuke 17 naaaaah.
It would completely make the audience stop paying attention to his cool outfit.
Let’s just have him never talk about it anyway and no one will ask himself wether or not he feels love
@@natesmodelsdoodles5403 voldemort also had a good reason for him being heartless. He couldn't understand love. Voldy was well-written and had a good backstory to explain his inhuman appearance and showed the character development that he went through.
Idea: Dark Lord who wakes up after 1,000 years of slumber or whatever, sees how changed the world is, and decides to just be a normal person instead.
Reminds of this anime where a demon lord worked in fast food restaurant and was more focused on being a good employee than ruling the world
@@TupocalypseShakur ah the Devil Is A Part-timer
That sounds like a great, comedic premise for an anime! Studios (or light novelist or mangakas) ---make it happen!
Sounds like a good D&D campaign
@Martin Toledo It'd be even funnier if he did the whole evil doom monologue before smiting them, because "dude, you're really getting this worked up over a few cows?" then boom, dead.
The fact that there are people yelling in the comments "HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE SAURON" because they don't realize that the caricature of Dark Lord presented in the video represents all the Darks Lords in fictional works that aimed at recreating Sauron while only using his appearance and completely overlooking the depths of his character really worries me.
I believe he used him to bash plagiarizing.
I got that he used Sauron since he's the OG Dark Lord and he was handled well
Same thing for the anti-hero being a caricature of Gutts from berserk.
@BlackDeathViral03 Malefor and Erek, take a hint!
Wait, he has depth?
Just once I'd like to see a dark lord just give a random minion a "good job" and give them a little reward just for being good. Like the whole setup when they usually kill the random minion but they just pat them on the back.
"I appreciate you, Wilson McStabber. Here, take this coupon for a free yogurt in the cafeteria"
-Thank you, my lord.
But the coupon was expired. MUAHAHAHAHA!
Truly, only the most sinister of all evil-doers.
But because he actually is a good boss when the clerk tries to turn down the coupon he just arises from a pillar of dark ether, his eyes glow red as he looms over them.
"I am SO sorry, I forgot the date. How much was it?"
VauschthePuca that's a new level of evil . you should copyright that shit now
On some level, this is happens in the light novel series Overlord.
VauschthePuca In that case, he's boss of the f**king year! 😂
What about a story where the heroes prepare for the awakening of the Dark Lord only to have him wake up from his 1000 year slumber with no memory of what he was supposed to be doing. He just wakes up to see all these chosen ones and just like " Umm why are you in my house?"
You could have some real fun with an amnesiac protagonist who's hunted by the 'forces of good' for being said ancient Dark Lord sans memories. Especially if they never get any of it back. Meanwhile whatever's become of the old forces of evil latch onto the protagonist as their only hope.
Sorain1 Sounds a bit like KotOR 1.
I saw that in an anime once where the dark lord turned out to be this skimpily dressed loli(cause anime) and like they’re about to fight when the dark is lord then says “wait why do I wanna destroy all of humanity again?” Then they feed her biscuts and it’s adorable
otts486 which anime?
StarKiller AKA Galen Marek AKA The Apprentice “How to not summon a demon lord” a fun little trashy isekai anime that’s well worth the price of admission
I’d like a story with a dark lord who’s also the chosen one that after completing his prophecy he decided “I have all this power, why not take the throne for myself?” Or that he believed that no one could rule a kingdom better than he could BECAUSE he was the chosen one. This could highlight the similarities between the hero and himself (should he be another chosen one) or simply make the hero powerless (should he be a regular guy). Also, it could have every Merlin-like character side with the dark lord because they still believe in destiny and that he’s doing the right thing, showing the weaknesses of this trope as a result.
Darth Vader?
@@CCLOSPINA except vader failed
@@joaquinriosrodriguez7316 Failed?, he killed the emperor.
Darkstalker from Wings of fire is sort of like that.
That's been done before what if you follow him while he does dark lord stuff and be morally gray and make it so you root for him as he tries to smite the heroes
Dude, a story about the Dark Lord starting from scratch would already a great story. Scrap the hero chosen one sh*t, just follow the villain.
A Practical Guide to Evil. That's the title you're looking for.
Sambou Jaiteh Just play KOTOR 1 as dark side.
Ever hear of the epic poem Paradise lost?
It stars Satan himself as the main protagonist shows his War in Heaven as well as his journey to corrupt Adam and eve. His speeches alone are enough to recommend the reading of it on UA-cam, staring Emperor Palatine himself as the devil
Weirdly enough, I think the MGS series makes a mostly decent Dark Lord starting from scratch story.
papapok13 interesting
The Dark Lord, a Mary Sue who went through a year of philosophy and psychology 101.
And politics! Don't forget the politics!
Just Some Guy with a Mustache jugding by how often i see your comments you must be watching youtube as much as i do.
You are everywhere.
No its a mary sue who went through puberty and had no outlet for petty rage
Hmm, i think i may have the best idea ever! I see you around so often that i may as well just watch every video you ever commented in, chances are i'll like them.
Didn't notice this bit until now: "Let's try enchanted tungsten, instead."
Fun science trivia: If you poured molten tungsten onto lava, it'd freeze back into solid tungsten as it transfers its heat to the relatively cold lava. Also, there are chemists who want to study molten tungsten's properties, but they need to overcome one problem: What do they make its container out of that won't melt before the tungsten does?
Simple. More tungsten.
Bedrock blocks
For anyone wondering what the melting point of tungsten is it's 3,422°C. I'm not going to convert that.
That's pretty cool!
Ivory?
The Dark Lord should also be in a love triangle with the main character.
was wondering if that come up.
Wimpyapple We all know that a story without a love triangle is a story without a purpose.
Like Kylo Ren?
Like in Super Mario?
You monster, how could you. You must be one evil monster
Making a villain who loves power because he loves power isn't necessarily unrealistic... But it is still pretty dull.
That's pretty much every Dragon Ball villain excluding the two new ones and maybe Buu and they worked out just fine.Ironically the new series tried to make their villain a semi good guy with a sad past and everyone hates him.
It's overrealistic.
If you look at history it actually does tend to be unrealistic
Uhh Morgoth is a great Dark Lord villain.
Frank underwood is a villain who loves power and is complex.
You know what I think would be a fun thing to do in an "Evil Overlord" story?
For the first part of the story, never show the evil overlord, just have lots of people mention him, and how evil he is, and give him lots of minions and evil officers doing evil things in his name. But never show him.
Late into the story, introduce the plot twist that THERE IS NO EVIL OVERLORD. Maybe there was at some point, but he died of natural causes long before the story's beginning, and instead of letting the whole thing dissolve, his various followers decided to keep up the charade because the existing power structure was convenient for them.
So then the heros can't just win the war by killing one man just like real war.
I was thinking of something similar except the Dark Lord/Lady is actually the Chosen One from prophecies or what ever and he/she made up the prophecies to kill traitors or to help and fighting a even greater threat. It will make sense on why the Chosen One is sometimes a Mary Sue in the story and he/she is usually super naive about his world so he/she can play dumb. Also he/she is bored and wants a little fun especially if its a long lived or immortal Dark Lord/Lady.
@@Kill-for-change isn't that just the Lego Movie
@@TupocalypseShakur Never seen it. Watched a Batman one and thought this isn't for me.
@@Kill-for-change the Lego movies is great, very different from the Batman one, give it a chance.
The dark lord from my story came to power, because he found a box,which contained an army of disposable minions,a black castle,a black costume and a magic staff in his wardrobe.
Smiley the Smile 10/10, best origin story
Smiley the Smile LEMME BUY YOUR BOOK SIR!!
kira michelist
Coming to all gas stations near you!
...Right after I actually start writing it.
But where did he get the wardrobe from?!
And he was defeated because the box stopped working and he tried calling tech support but they were useless as always.
For once, I want to see a dark lord who cares for his own men, someone who has actual bonds with his team and builds his way up from average joe to his current position. Give him actual character outside of the whole dark lord thing.
You know that was the one flaw with the Anti-Spiral in Gurrenlaggan to me. Where is his true companions? Wouldn't someone who reached the end of the journey and then realized they had to stop have nakama by their side?
Never watched that, actually. I may have to, to see what you mean
Would you Count Raizen from Yu Yu Hakusho, or Lord Vetrinari from Discworld?
basically a good fantazy plot except the mc turns into a villian instead of a hero
Mr CynicalOptiMystical
You should probably watch Overlord then.
“If all else fails, just have the dark lord’s only weakness be a special magic sword that only the chosen one can wield”
Zelda fans: 👁👄👁
Technically you don't need the legendary sword to defeat him in botw, but yeah it's still his weakness.
ganon literally IS this archetype.
like seriously. I'm pretty sure it's part of the lore
@@cocostar319 Malladus and Vaati are infinitely bigger ones though
Have you heard of the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
Of course not. It's not a story the movies would tell you.
Matteus Silvestre have you heard the tragedy of darth square space the wise?
Forgotten Syrup of course not. It's not a story the UA-cam would tell you.
Feerd.inand Genzz it's not a story anyone on UA-cam WOULDN'T tell you
That's cool and all...
B u t w h a t a b o u t t h e d r o i d a t t a c k o n t h e w o o k i e s?
Have you heard the tragedii of darth sand-hate
Its really neat how Tolkien invented most of the tropes you talk about but also inverted his own tropes
Tolkien not only originated those tropes, he used them well. =^[.]^=
That didn't happen you saw nothing... ignore that...
I think it's more like Tolkien invented most of these tropes then people read Lord of the Rings, didn't understand what made the tropes effective and used only what they saw on the surface.
Well I believe it to be that he invented those tropes but then saw a way to improve upon them as the story went on and inverted them.
It's not that he invented or subverted anything. He actually stuck very strongly to many very old tropes in his Mythopoetic style, then people copied him poorly and thus our modern versions of many of these tropes were born. It only seems like an inversion now because we're working off of these modern versions as a baseline, which is sort of like saying Seinfeld is a parody of Friends.
It's also worth noting that many of the cliches he talks about in this video aren't even really applicable to Sauron unless you're only evaluating based on a quick synopsis of the movies. For example, the video talks about badly written dark lords immediately just trying to take over everything with armies they acquire out of nowhere, and this is not the case in LoTR. Sauron started by recruiting people like Saruman and Wormtongue as lieutenants who then went to work constructing the infrastructure required to raise large armies and trying to weaken his opposition through subversion.
Good “pure evil” dark lord characters:
Sauron
Ganondorf
Palpatine
I think Palpatine is actually a good Dark Lord, for his backstory on the Prequels
@@angiefiore8673 I think his motive in the sequels is "I want to be alive again".
@@thewanderingmistnull2451 What sequels? Are you telling me that they decided to make main line SW movies again? We only got those spin-off recently so i hope they'll do good!
Scorpixel, have you not been on the internet, how do you not know they exist?
Jaydee 8652 wooosh
When the Dark Lord kills his minions, make sure that he either says "You have failed me for the last time" or they do that bit where the minion promises it will never happen again. Those will never get old like 20 years ago.
Also, he regularly kills commanding officers.
Even if they are competent but failed at their duty due to reasons out of their control
I did that with the DL telling his minion he had 'failed him for the last time'. The minion cowers then is told...
Dark Lord: You're fired. And no severance package. Still employed minions, get this failure from out of my sight.
He is dragged out screaming about not being able to make ends meet without a severance package.
I should point out that, although Sauron may be the archetypal Dark Lord, there is considerably more complexity to his philosophical conception than "pure evilness", though in fairness this is more apparent in Tolkien's personal writings than in LotR.
"In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants, by a triple treachery: 1. Because of his admiration of Strength he had become a follower of Morgoth and fell with him down into the depths of evil, becoming his chief agent in Middle-earth. 2. when Morgoth was defeated by the Valar finally he forsook his allegiance; but out of fear only; he did not present himself to the Valar or sue for pardon, and remained in Middle-earth. 3. When he found how greatly his knowledge was admired by all other rational creatures and how easy it was to influence them, his pride became boundless." -Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Thank you! This guy either doesn't know enough about LOTR or just doesn't care, because pretty much every complaint he has related to Sauron is non existent in the story anyway. Sauron tried to take over Middle-Earth WITHOUT violence. He tried using the lust for power the rulers of ME had against them, using the rings. Not to mention he hadn't been asleep for a thousand years but he was in fact weakened because of the destruction of his physical body and the loss of the Ring
You do know that there are other Dark Lords than Sauron and many that imitated him right? Also, much of what OP said is outside material and wasn't told in story of LOTR.
Great Teacher
>"outside material"
>literally by Tolkien
Gtfo you weeb fuck
Tomorrow We Live ...that he never managed to publish. Also miss the part where I said lotr. Get your eyes checked son
Sure, but informaiton like this should be included in LoTR itself, latter than in Tolkien's letters.
"..use their similarities to cast the hero into self doubt "
Oh you mean like having the villian say "we are not so different you and I"
The Villain: *Slaughters millions, burns down countless settlements, tortures prisoners for fun, and spreads general pain and despair along his campaign of conquest across the universe*
Also The Villain when the good guy does something slightly dubious: "We're the same thing!"
@@ShibuNub3305 And despite the glaringly broken comparison, make sure the hero become very sad and questions everything they are, lengthening the story a decent bit by having them turn away their friends who just want to go home.
Dark Lord: The world was cruel long before I took to the stage. Nature and time itself are forces, endlessly hungry, devouring the “innocent” as much as the corrupt. What have I expressed that reality itself hasn’t made oh so clear already? Don’t you find it strange the gods do nothing to stop it? We are all but the sums of our fates. Surely YOU more than most.
Something like that (it was cliched I know) directed towards a “chosen one”, especially one who’s taken a rather bleak and nihilistic view after their trials and tribulations, could be a potential example.
But yes, too many writers go for the extra cliched “we’re not so different, you and I” without even a modicum of thought lol
"He is literally me!"
"We're not so different you and I."
"Yes and?"
"Damn, that was my last card."
"But..." the hero gasped, as the villain charged up his final magic attack, "Why are you evil!?"
"Well to be honest", he said, "I only did it for the cookies."
"The dark side told me they had cookies, and i was hungry..."
They have an offer i can't ever refuse
"Why are you a death eater?" Asked the hero.
"Oh, I only did it because Draco Malfoy is so hot!" Exclaimed the fangirl.
So the Hero tells him smother stay there and don’t cause any destruction and leaves
Then comes back with some other friends carrying a enormous amount of cookies
“Would this suffice?”
@@synflwr literally Bellatrix.
You know it always drives me nuts about various fictions with the Dark Lord? The heroes always know who he is. Whether he rides a black dragon or is eye ball on the top of the tower, he is always very well known. I'd like for once for the protagonists to work hard to discover who they're fighting rather than have it spoon fed to them.
WanderingTaoist101 then there's me and my Villain Protagonist, who is out to find and destroy all magic based entities with magic since she hates fantasy stories.
Sauron is so well known because all those immortal elves fought him before, and well his history with gandalf goes back to the creation of the world.
plus he owns the big black industrial wasteland mountain range
Go read Mistborn.
The arc words of that series (and Brandon Sanderson's work in general) are "There is always another secret". Time after time you (and the main characters) think it's clear now, except it's NOT. And it's never executed in an ass-pull way.
there's also Diavolo in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5
I got a brilliant idea!
A world where a Dark Lord arises every so often. And every time, a hero arrives and beats him.
However, at the end, you reveal that the Dark Lord of this generation was none other than the hero of previous generations, casted aside the second he became useless, betrayed because of the fear of his powers, thus making him develop a pure hatred, first for those that betrayed him, then for all of those related, and finally, at all the members of their species, until he finally became powerful enough to take his revenge against those that backstabbed him.
In the fight against the Hero, the Dark Lord recognizes that the new Hero is someone like he once was, and does his best to convince him to join him, telling him that he will be betrayed like he once was, and doing his best so that what happened to him never happened again.
But the hero, in a naïve mindset portrayed as purely heroic, refuses to betray his allies, and battles to the end, against an enemy that didn't want him dead.
And when the hero finally defeats the dark lord, we get one chapter where everyone around him is acting... suspicously. Some of his friends act normally, but others, including authorities (popes; kings, emperors, etc.), and seem to be wary of him. Until the last word where we can imply that his predecessor was right.
And then we can get a sequel where the betrayed hero rises up again, showing another story on the side of a betrayed man. Of course, vastly different from the first one (Like for example, another dark lord appearing that isn't him, that might make the protagonist make a deal with the new Dark Lord.
Holy fuck, this idea is really REALLY GOOD
@@deatheweeb Thanks, I really appreciate the compliment!
Well i wanna see hero realise that shit and be like: uh,you know,actually yes this makes sense...
And there is 2 best dark overlord buddies
My favorite type of dark lords are the kind that start out one-note and bland but become more and more interesting as we learn more about them/they go through character arc. Like he is introduced by legends and by the guys who sent you out on the quest, but when the heroes first encounter him (as the first hurdle) he's different from what he's described in ways that throws the heroes off, but that takes effort and creativity.
I've always wanted to see a story where the hero goes out to kill the villain, attacks him but the 'Dark Lord' acts like he's innocent (crying, swearing that he's not the Dark Lord, etc.) to get into the hero's base/favor who will feel bad for almost killing them. From here, the Dark Lord could manipulate the hero into indirectly helping his side or actually begin to develop a bond with him and ultimately turn to the good side. Maybe even enemies to lovers
I'm actually writing that right now
@@heroofthewinds7765 Leaving this here for notification
Here’s the challenge with what you’re describing. Yes, it IS potentially interesting, but there’s a lot more to consider other than the baseline notion of being subversive with the hero and dark lord’s first encounter.
For instance, let’s say that, in typical dark lord fashion, he’s been described as power hungry, tyrannical, and just overall plain “evil” by everyone else in the story. And then the hero meets our dark lord, only to realize he is far more reasonable, cool-headed, and practical than described. Maybe he even offers a logical/understandable argument for his position that conflicts the hero greatly. Sounds really interesting, right? Why hasn’t this been done very often?
Well, first off, that begs a LOT of questions. Why is this guy being treated like some evil dictator if that’s clearly not the case? Wouldn’t that cast doubt upon everyone the hero has been relying on for advice? And what’s up with those times we’ve clearly seen his minions doing horrible things for no apart reason just to further establish how “evil” the dark lord is? Doesn’t that make his entire argument and motivation fall flat on its face? And if that hasn’t happened, well then why would the hero even fight him anymore? Are we going to pull a twist and have it be where the villain is actually the voice of reason, and all the good guys are actually the unreasonable evil ones? Ok, but… why then have the good guys shown literally NO evil qualities whatsoever until this reveal of ours?
Now there are ways to avoid said pitfalls. But here’s my point. If you’re gonna go for that kind of reveal, you really have to NAIL the motivations of not just the dark lord, but all other parties. In addition, you have to include solid foreshadowing that is neither too obvious, or too vague, to make it feel clever. A lot of the time, I see writers who want to create these interesting villains with unique and sympathetic motivations, but then are forced to rely on “idiot plots” or blatant character 180 shifts that don’t make a lick of sense, and feel about as natural as jamming a cube into a circle shaped hole.
Personally I despise dark lords who are “evil to be evil” (unless they’re genuinely fun and/or incredibly threatening and intimidating in a way that gives them powerful narrative presence). But there’s a very good reason why soooooo many fantasy authors stick to it. And that’s because writing villains who have interesting personalities, unique motivations, and sympathetic causes is much, much more difficult than most people realize.
@@chopperjoe1998 yeah i get it, a lot of the time i see the "oh and the hitler standing actually sympathetic suddenly" or "this 'working class hero' was actually just a greedy bitch". But it's really cool whenever authors get it to work.
Evil to be evil dark lords are easier to right i guess, but even then you've still got to nail the charisma or they just becomes a boring asshole.
Dark lord"I've trained and risen my army and spread my army over the course of thousands of years and have a bunch of fighting experience"
Main character who's been training for a couple of weeks"are you challenging me?"
Somebody mentions “Dark Lord”:
Somebody with Dark Lord in their username: You rang?
So this is the self deprecating humor I've been hearing about
Oh hey
This is getting out of hand. Now there are 2 of them
"My ears are a-burnin!"
Dark lord who spend 2000 years in slumber, had awoken and have no idea what's going on because the world is radically changed during his sleep and he's not so mighty, sinister and powerful because of that sounds like a FANTASTIC idea for a story, actually!
Heck, for extra fun pull a histroical refrence to Vlad the Impailer. The 'Dark Lord' was not a good guy unless you were a loyal member of their empire and then was a pretty good boss. (If strict.) When they wake up again? The new Dark Lord is every worthless evil cliche imaginable and that's just inherently offensive to the real OG Dark Lord. Cue three sided struggle between the current dark lord, the real Dark Lord and the 'protagonists' over the fate of wherever.
A thought here, you don't even need to make them evil in their own time period for this to actually work okay... simply evolution in morality and social norms is enough. If you suddenly brought Julius Caesar into the present day, and he simply tried to enforce the values of his culture at the time, he'd still probably look like a villain in the present.
While not entirely the same, that's basically the plot of The Devil Is A Part Timer: thge dark lord of a generic fantasy land gets zapped into modern day Japan and has to get a job at "MgRonalds" to pay the rent while trying to figure put how to get home.
It's both hilarious and surprisingly nuanced.
You mean Cthulhu?
I can already see it;
Seven Kingdoms, each of them thriving by magic, banded together to form a revolt against a Dark Lord and his Empire to put an end to his unethical practices of Institutionalized Necromancy. The war was short but devastating as the Dark Lord's Empire had a larger collection of Enchantment Stones (basically magical batteries, with electricity and everything) than the Seven Kingdoms combined. Nevertheless, the Seven Kingdoms came out victorious in the end by destroying the Dark Lord's absurdly deep Enchantment Mines.
After several failed executions, it became clear that the Dark Lord was virtually unkillable. When tried to decapitate him, the battleaxe would simply break in twine. When they tried to stab him to death, each vital organ, nerve and artery would simply wriggle away from the blade. When they tried to cut him limb for limb, each limb would simply reattach to the body with the help of some entrails. And when they tried to break his back, the spine morphed into a monster that would end up destroying the entire execution room.
So they decided to imprison him for the rest of eternity; sending him into a magic-induced coma between four Enchantment Pillars, contained within a metal sphere that would be buried deep underground. And for nearly four decades, the Seven Kingdoms lived in relative peace with each other. That was until that cursed day, it happened during the final days of fall, auroras could be seen all across the skies day and night with lighting strikes becoming more intense. But worst of all, the Enchantment Stones ceased to function, all of them, and thus no-one could use magic now. Chaos followed, the Kingdoms collapsed, and anarchy broke out. And soon magic would be considered as just a myth. All while the Dark Lord was still comatose inside of his sphere, the Enchantment Pillars being seemingly unaffected.
Millennia later, in present day, a lightning strike creates a small crater near a busy highway. A Mechanic from a nearby gas station investigates the crater and sees the surface of something metal. He's about to call the authorities thinking a gas pipe has been damaged until he hears someone shouting for help from within the pipe. He sees that there is a small door at the top of the pipe and opens it. Out of the structure crawls a pale man, he thanks the Mechanic, only to nearly faint in shock from the massive structure in front him with metal beast crawling over it (I.E. the highway). All while the Mechanic stares at him, at his ruined clothes and thinks;
"Great, another crackhead for me to deal with."
Actually the most well known dark lord's are well written like sauron who spent thousands of years building his powers, consolidating the forces of his masters and manipulating the elves into making the rings of power and waging wars that he lost but managed to stay a relevant force in the world without a body even. Voldermort's back story is fed to us over 7 books his motivation comes from a superiority complex over the people who abused him (muggles which ironically which is half of him) and his quest to become imortal. Emperor palpatine spent decades manipulating and undermining the Jedi and corrupting the republic that he democratically toppled. It's not a bad trope or even a bad archetype more of a label of the big bad but there's plenty of room to fill in why he's the dark lord
That's the thing with all tropes though - a good writer can make them work just fine, because in a way, tropes are just the outward shell and what you fill it with changes everything.
For newbie writers it's very easy though to just look at the outer shell of something they enjoyed reading and then copying that shell without really understanding its place in the story or how to fill it to NOT have it be terrible and unfulfilling.
This video is more making fun of the writers who look at Sauron, Voldemort, and Palpatine and copy just what they see on the surface without bothering to carry over what made them good in the first place.
Sauron also had trade and diplomatic relations with several other factions within and just outside of Middle-Earth. Some factions even worshiped him as a god.
On the other hand Sauron himself isn't really a character, noone really intereacts or speaks with him and his power is mostly shown through his army and minions, who typically are just monsters with no personalities aside from Saruman and Grima, or via the ring which seems to act indepenently f sauron anyway.
+Sara Fontanini What about Beren (A human Sauron tormented and depending on the which version you read bit his hand off), Luthien (an Elfmaiden who tricked Sauron with her magic dancing), Huan (an ancient giant dog like being who chased Sauron up a tree), Umuiyan (an old bodyguard of Sauron whom he threw off a cliff for supposedly being too old to perform his duties). He also jokes about Shelob being his cat, he was happy to ally with various human and dwarf groups during the War of the Ring. He acted like a wuss when he pissed off his own god, when he thought Gandalf would take the ring and when Aragon threatened to cut his fingers off with the same sword Isildur did.
And this is just from the Middle-Earth books I've read there are plenty I haven't read.
As for Sauron's minions they have more than enough personality for characters that don't actually need personalities.
*I CLAIM THIS COMMENTS SECTION IN THE NAME OF THE DARK LORD!*
Never! I, Mary Sue, the chosen one, will stop you with the power of friendship and love triangles!
*NO! CURSES!* I knew I should have made my own love triangle! Though you might have beaten me, you'll never defeat the Dark lord so long as he holds the MacGuffin!
**Snatches the MacGuffin from you with amazing Mary-Sue powers and destroys it**
But... I didn't even have the MacGuffin! The Dark Lord did! How did you do that?!
(Whoops, I guess I forgot that lol)
Uhh... with the power of... friendship! Totally not a convoluted plot device or a moment of confusion!
But does the Dark Lord get his own love triangle?
Why not? Wouldn't that neatly set up two rival 'right hand' minions to the dark lord who can have their own contrasting thing going on? Such as one who isn't so evil but is basically the victim in an abusive relationship convinced that if she can just get the Dark Lord to marry her she can 'fix' him. (You can play for tragedy or have this one turn on the Dark Lord when/if needed.) The other is just as evil as the dark lord is but can't seem to manage to get the romantic attention of the dark lord, so constantly strives to do something big enough to get it. (Again, you can easily have this one do something utterly self sabotaging to the Dark Lord trying to get his attention.)
Heck, for maximum fun, write your typical harem from an anime. Only the MC Protagonist is actually the Dark Lord and uses the harem as elite leaders in their evil empire. Now you have a group of villains that could basically carry their own series to stand against your protagonists. Whom you could easily write a classical romance story about, contrasting the depth of character and selfless love in their relationship with the lack of character in the Dark Lord and the ultimately selfish motivations of the Dark Lords Harem.
Just a thought, sand in the wind...
One of the previous episodes (spoilers) shows him having to choose between his two potential loves: world domination or world destruction.
Oh no, which one will he chooooooose?
Ganon, Zelda, and Link?
RaHuHe George Lucas says yes
Rahuhe in my story the dark lord gets a love octagon with a very graphic orgy scene. One of the characters is a humanoid alien with 4 tits.
Bad writing advice on AI’s? I find they are an incredible interesting concept often are done poorly with “must destroy all humans” trope
The cyber punk video touches upon it.
Which would never happen.
As it stands, that is. The only reason why AI could become a threat is if people start trying to make fully automated kill-robots
Or, if AI had true sentience/sapience and ability to build upon its own programming, *and* had the intent on propagating itself through a variety of systems to re-write code to have hostilities to humans.
So far those two things are not happening.
Both things are happening now. Last year, AI learned to write short JavaScript programs (like, 5 lines of code). And killbots were ordered by the US military.
Person of interest has good writing with A Is The evil ai just wants control humans from the shadows for their own good. And the good one has an extreme moralic maker who teaches "the maschine" ethics
Fu Fu Mc Cuddly Poops
Uhh Shodan and Agent Smith are good AI villains.
One of the best tips for writing tips I've heard when it comes to villains is to remember that "everyone is the hero in their own story." Even the villain thinks he's really a hero.
"I don't want to be nice, I want to be E V I L !"
"I like being bad. It makes me happy."
Sometimes a pure evil villain is better. It can be way more satisfying to see a pure evil villain's downfall.
@@tortture3519 sure but its so overdone its boring
I wanna see a vaillain thats basically the hero in his stories.
Like hes a cunning general from a nation that was at war with the hero's nation and the villain won.
The villain people genuily adore him because he helped them get out of a war and have prosperity while the hero's people despise him.
@@flow185 Sure, but that entirely depends on the story you want to write. For example, I think a story about how evil people get into positions of power and how they lose them, would not benefit from moral greyness on the part of the villain. Evil people exist in the real world.
Tropes aren't bad. It's how you use them.
Besides, what you described doesn't prevent the villain from being pure evil.
How's this?
Our dark lord starts as a humble farm boy, toiling away to help his ailing mother keep up with the increasingly steep taxes enforced on the people by the king. Their life is hard, but they manage, however after a sudden increase in said taxes his mother is taken prisoner to pay her debt through... other methods, the boy left to fend for himself after hiding. He makes a plan, infiltrate the castle and rescue his mother, not the best plan but hey... he's twelve. He spends a few years learning basic sorcery and learning the layout of the castle and surrounding area. He gets into he castle, ready for a fight, to be the hero, only to find that she had died a little under a year prior, largely due to neglect for her health even though royal mages could likely have saved her with ease.
His ass is thoroughly handed to him and he's kicked out into the mud, left to stew on what's transpired. He travels the world, aimless and alone, training with any who will take him. During his travels he hears of a power, one which belonged to a dark wizard many eons ago, locked away at the top of a mountain behind an ancient seal. He journeys there, not really sure what it is he would even do with that power, but still finding himself drawn to it. He makes his way there where he is confronted by the seals guardian, an immortal... goat man, or something, and they fight. The battle is long and gruelling, the guardian is defeated but not before the boy is mortally wounded. He lies on the cold cavern floor, accepting his fate, realizing just how powerless he truly was, and then he hears a voice. A dark whisper calls to him from the seal, beckoning him over. He drags himself over to it, propping himself on the prison cell. The voice whispers an incantation to him, which he repeats as he instinctively places his hand at the centre of the seal. The stone door cracks and crumbles and a rush of darkness pours out into the world, into the boy. Voice whisper and scream in his head telling him events of the past, present and future. His body is torn apart and re-formed over and over again into various different forms. Eventually the swirling darkness and chaos subside and he stands at the mouth of the cave, feeling power surge through his every atom. Then something awakens in him, something that had always been there but simply needed the right... push, a clawing lust for vengeance.
He returns home and sets himself up as a warrior for the people, forming a small gang who helps those being oppressed. Eventually he stars a revolution and overthrows the old king, executing him and his children publicly. He is set up as the new king and begins his work of expanding his kingdom. He renames himself Argios, a warrior king from his countries past who, though considered a brute and savage by surrounding lands, was lauded as a hero in his home country.
As his reach grows across the land, so too his rule becomes darker, more cruel. His taxes become more severe on the people as he works tirelessly to keep the ever increasing costs of conquest under control. One day, when a poor man refuses to comply with tax collectors he is killed on the spot, his daughter hiding nearby sees this, and swears she will bring down dark king Argios, perhaps not today, but soon.
VocalCalibration Dark Lord and Vicious Cycle of Revenge rolled into one.
I like it.
VocalCalibration
Very well done!
I'd read it.
VocalCalibration
I am begging you, PLEASE write this!
VocalCalibration I was entertained from start to finish
You should do a Terrible Writing Advice feat. Giant Monsters/Kaiju/Massive Humaniod Robots. I could use some stellar advice in this category.
If you're writing a story about giant robots, reading Bokurano is a must. It really offers a new outlook on the genre that can inspire new ideas
Remember, when doing kaiju don't take a look at classic kaiju films like Gojira, where the monster was an allegory of the atomic bomb and how humanity must be careful with their creations, or how in the King Kong movies Kong was just an animal that was let loose in New York and was killed solely thanks to humanity's egosim. Nope, we don't want that, we just wanna see some giant monsters smashing cities! And if you hint your monster is intelligent, make it clear it's just evil, we don't want to overthink what really motivates the creature!
Yes, and no matter how big and lumbering the monster is, don't let that prevent you from adding a scene where he surprises the heroes by suddenly just sneaking up on them. Also, any extra in a monster movie will have the self-preservation of a lemming.
only use robots when they would be the optimal choice and conventional artillery doesn't work, this can make the storie more compelling
Don't worry about how two robots/monsters/whatever so large that the average skyscraper only comes up to their knees can fight inside a dense city, it is cool! And you know what else is cool? if they can change into different things! So what if it requires violating several physical laws about mass and even if it could be done the space would be better used for other things to make them tougher/a better fighter, nobody thinks about these things anyway.
To be fair when Tolkien did it, it was much more original and he also had much higher Writing Quality.
This is why I think Emperor Palpatine is one of the greatest "pure evil" movie villains. Yeah, he is a dark lord but he tends to avoid many of these problems since we see his progression through politics, his rise to power, and also his personality alone was a huge challenge for Luke and he was killed by his lackey in a huge moment that completed Vader's arc. Now Snoke on the other hand.... *looks at this video*
Snoke had a huge potential, they could've done anything with him. Is he Darth Plagues? Darth Vitiate? The guy who taught Plagueis how to save others from Death? First Sith? First Dark Sider?
Nope, Snoke is dead TA-DA SUBVERSION! They completely wasted his character for the sake of cheap and meaningless shock value plot twist.
Except everything we know about Palpatine comes from the prequels. In the OT we know nothing about him. He fits the dark lord mold entirely. Which is fine because Vader is the focus. Same with the new trilogy, Kylo Ren is the focus.
Palpatine was more or less a side character in the OT rather than being the main villain. The prequels brought him more into focus so a backstory was fitting there.
Snoke needed a backstory because he is in a SEQUEL.
Speaking of RotJ, how much better would Vader's redemption have been if Luke ceased upon the mention of the name "Anakin" bringing Vader up short to get a number of barbs in forcing the "Dark Lord" to realize how he has become a mockery of all he once believed in?
It's JJ's fault for creating a bunch of mysteries and not actually having a plan to solve them.
Here is an idea, drawn from this video, that I will never write, but someone should. So go ahead and steal this:
A classic fantasy dark lord awakens... In a sci-fi futuristic world already ruled by some other evil.
And so he sets out to conquer the world, by siding with the rebels, and using ancient magics against futuristic technology.
Maybe he turns some degree of good in the end, maybe he doesn't, I dunno, there's plenty of directions for something like this.
Maybe he creates Magitech.
Maybe he teaches the rebellion, who lack modern weaponry or ammunition, how to wield magic to level the playing the field.
Maybe, given how people's views on things have changed over the thousands of years of slumber, necromancy becomes seen as less "totally evil" and more "Really useful as a source of untiring labour" or "A great honour for a slain rebel, to continue in battle".
Maybe the story switches to a new main character who's not on either side, who's trying to just make things right.
Go wild!
That is in fact quite decent idea. Though you need to be careful to avoid obvious contradictions.
Play it as a plot twist!
The ancient "mage" awakens from a thousand-year slumber and offers aid to the rebels and teaches them magic and stuff, THEN once we see him lead the "heroes" pretty far we find out he was a traditional, sealed-away "dark lord" just trying to take the evil throne for himself. Our rebel protagonists feel manipulated and betrayed, but don't entirely want to give up the magitech he invented for them either, since it's more efficient then conventional weapons.
Mr. now-revealed-Dark-Lord admits that seizing power from the other evil was indeed his original plan, but he insists that he's since put all that behind him and changed his ways, the rebels helped him see the light, and he doesn't want to rule the world anymore. Those claims certainly sound like the close friend and ally the rebels grew to love, follow, and respect- but _can they entirely trust someone with such a dark past that he kept from them for so long?_
@ChaosRayZero
Neh, it is bit too cheesy. You don't stop be evil for no good reason and you didn't provide one. Also that "plot-twist" is way more overused then you think. Straight up Dark Lord on good side for mutually convenient reasons is way more interesting thing to play.
If you wanted the dark lord to not be evil, why not have it be that he was never really evil? No-one is just evil for evil's sake. Maybe he was just the loser of the war. Maybe do something like the horde from WoW, where he sided with the races people just didn't like for whatever reason, and then after he was defeated, history was written by the victors.
Suddenly it makes total sense for the dark lord to be on the side of the rebels: They remind him of the orcs or whatever.
@calemr
But again, it isn't anything original (from hand I can mention anime Overlord). Also you make a huge mistake regard the WoW orcs. They invade and slaughter many and no one really frame them. It wasn't about paty racism though but what did justify them is that they fight for survival flying from dying world and simply didn't know better as they were manipulated by evil. Orcs during W3 and especially WoW are complete different generations raised in camps, who commonly know Alliance language or even have education. When they rebelled recreating the Horde they even didn't fight with humans (outside those who attack them because all that salt) seeking new place to settle over time allying with the local races for protection. Generally current (WoW) relation between horde and alliance is more or less neutral. Over time Blizzard shaken up stuff to make whole thing more neutral including for example humanoid Blood Elves and Forsaken to Horde and demi-human Wargen and Draenei to Alliance.
Now I just really want to write a Dark Lord that hugs puppies and plots mass conquest in unicorn pajamas. 😄 I love these videos.
for some reason watching a video entitled "Dark Lords" gives me nothing but children's cartoons as recommended videos.
thelordelric I thought I was the only one who saw that!
thelordelric Me too! WTF
I was just about to comment on that!
Same!
thelordelric SAME
STOP
KILLING
MINIONS
Maybe they screwed up. But they'll learn from that. They sure as fuck won't screw up again.
Asmodean Underscore only if you are a necromancer ;)
Asmodean Underscore but you're 100% sure they won't screw up again if they're DEAD :D
Agreed. I mean it works in some cases like Vader killed Ozzel because Ozzel fucked up way more than once. Some villains on the other hand just kill their best minions because they brought their coffee a little too cold.
People need to follow the Evil Overlords List.
Look Bob, you're my most loyal henchman and all, and you have fought at my side and done all I asked, but you see, I just got this new deadly dark superpower I really want to try, and there aren't any innocent puppies around, so....
Having read your honest thoughts on the subject, one thing comes to mind.
I really wanna see a Dark Lord actually stumble into a meeting between the good guys, drunk as hell, and start rambling about his coming age of darkness and spraying every pretty flower with weedkiller and suchlike. And then after he sobers up later, they have this awkward conversation where they all agree to just... forget that ever happened.
Why don't they kill or capture him while he's vulnerable? Honor code?
@@kimifw58 He's obviously having a hard day, it'd just be rude to nab him now.
"I'm terribly sorry you had to see that. I was... well, blind drunk."
How about my villain is evil and power hungry because he's incredibly insecure, wearing that armour because he finds himself ugly and controlling people so they all love him?
Congratulations your character have characterization, just don't make him invincible and you're be on the right track on make a villain.
His weakness being having his cool dark lord helmet taken off?
Then realizing that people can see what he percieve to be his horrible appearance he flees?
sounds a bit like Doctor Doom to me, not an exact match, but the insecurity is there.
Yunus Gunday the dark lords are the only good type of villain.
Lord Hater is kind of like that. He only want people to like him and he thinks taking over planets will get him what he wants.
I wait for these like a plant waits for the sun
By staying still and doing nothing?
PRAISE THE SUN !
Unconsciously?
You mean like Tiberium. Come to think of it, Tiberium is the perfect villain. Tiberium not only kills everything around it but it represents power and wealth and it makes people fight and kill each other for it. It spreads until it covers the majority of the entire planet and mutating or killing most carbon-based life.
ManaPeerfr \[T]/
Dark lord removes helmet: *Jp's face emerges*
Because that hasn't been done before!
Cliches AND love triangles?! Not even a Deus Ex Machina can protect us from THAT!!
But a Mary Sue can!
Fool! Even the might of the Sue is powerless against the combined forces of the two plot killers! Only the HIGH GROUND can save us now!
Unless it turns out that Mary Sue is the hapless cover identity of God Mode Sue! Nothing, not even the love triangle, can withstand her plot-breaker powers!
The heroes of a medieval story seals away the dark lord for a millennia
And after a millennia the dark lord wakes up to a sci fi story..... that would be fun
Eatin sum Faggotinni zucchini villains sealed away for a millennium never make sense, because if they can survive a lack of food, air, water and motion for a thousand years, there's not a whole lot you can do to stop them, other than just seal them again. so every year, go seal them again, then they never escape.
I think it could be a really interesting tale, especially if for their time they were 'progressive' but by the time they're freed everyone thinks of their views as primitive. Hell, imagine if the 'dark lord' was sealed away for fighting on the platform of racial and gender equality, was big on tech and industry, ran their empire as a meritocracy and basically lost because it was easier for the 'hero' of the time to rally people around stopping the Dark Lord's equality reforms then convince anyone the Dark Lord was genuinely evil.
So now you have a Dark Lord waking up to find that everything they wanted happened... just without their input being needed. For bonus contrast, the Dark Lord might have considered anything remotely democratic as 'rule by the mob' and so finds modern governments doing that and succeeding disturbing. Even with so much of what the Dark Lord believed in being proven truly the way to a better future, here is this one thing that they can't accept and get over. Thus you have a hook to get them back into the Dark Lording role if you want, or a personal struggle to overcome even if you don't.
Yal Rathol "can survive a lack of food, air, water and motion for a thousand years" In fantasy settings almost all undead and constructs would be unharmed by that.
First,it will be a huge news in that world as the dark lord is written in their past history,make the dark lord have a small vacation around town then boom it's wartime!
10/10 idea would read
I'm starting to think that the love triangle joke has been used so much in this channel that now to prevent the joke from becoming old, the love triangle will always appear on the background on certain part of the episode without being on the script.
But the whole tormented villain thing has also become a trope that many make use of in a very shallow way
That doesn't mean it still can't be done right.
sure, but tropes are tools. you don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a good story. hell, even a cliche "chosen one vs evil overlord" story can be done well, it's just that it's so often done poorly that we've all forgotten why we liked those stories to begin with.
even worse are stories that just redeem their villains to make them seem 'sympathetic' or 'complex' without doing anything to make those works, such as fairy tail, naruto and my little pony recently.
Kim FW Yal Rathol I agree wholeheartedly, that's what I meant with "use it in a shallow way". You don't have to reinvent the whole thing of course but show that you put some care into writing something instead of using tropes only as shortcuts. You have to do it right.
+Sara Fontanini, indeed for a show that pulled off that idea well with Starlight, the whole redeeming the pony of shadows felt forced and rushed...
actually i honestly thought that season ending as a whole felt rushed
If you are writing a Dark Lord for any japanese media or game be sure to give this dark lord super powerful secret weapon that he somehow doesn't use in the first place or 1-5 bonus forms that make him invicible against anything, but the hero of the story.
Here's an idea:
How making Dark Lords based off Actual Dictators or emperors and how they rose to power. Maybe make him part of a Revolution Party that overthrew another empire due to them having different ideals or they were low-class/poor.
TheCanoxd or making a main hero tries to overthrown the evil regime while in the end the hero becomes the dark lord himself, establishing another different evil regime.
So, Code Geass
@@sydorovich2532 You haven't finished the entirety of Code Geass, have you?
@@theazureknight9399 i finished it, lelouch empire was pretty evil by his own design
@@sydorovich2532 What empire? Lelouch pretty much killed himself at the last episode by his own design and rigged his own empire to stop existing by destroying the Damocles, the Fleijas and putting Nunnaly in charge of Britannia and then joining that United Nations thing they had going on. There is no evil empire at the end of Code Geass, Lelouch's whole plan at the end was to destroy the evil in the empire from within.
Lelouch was a douchebag but his goal was never to attain power for himself or rule the world or that shizz, those were his means and not his ends.
Death Note would be a better example of a main character with a good motive that ends up going bad and creating an "empire" of evil and fear.
What about Light Lords? TELL US ABOUT THE LIGHT LORDS!!!
Uh... you are sarcastic but that might be an actual cliché we never talk about. I wonder...
I'm glad someone _finally_ noticed the results of Lord Killdeath's all protein diet. Cutting out carbs really helped.
Bright lord sounds better
Don't you mean bright Lord?
*KNEEL* before the *Bright Lord* !
The funny thing is the archytipical Dark Lord Sauron actually does have some deeper motivations, for instance his overwhelming fear of death! Or burning desire for revenge, he has the fatal flaw of hubris, (Which is part of how the hobbits got the one ring to mount doom). Yet, he did not need to have any of these motivations as he more or less symbolized an idea.
Patrick Buckley
Exactly! He had some personality but was a ultimately a symbol
Also he was a perfectionist, so his motivation was to conquer the world to make it perfect, in his eyes.
@@swordofstabbingold Yeah, he is basically just the Mythologized Satan (By Proxy as Morgoth is the real Satan analogue). In rebellion against the creator, wants to subvert free will and conform all of reality to his view of perfection. A being who is ironically in rebellion against freedom, and beauty, and in favor of tyranny, and efficiency.
I thought Sauron was immortal?
@@5ynthet1c More like undead really. With his RIng he'd be Immortal (In trhe sense that he could not die from Old Age) but death could still come for him, and unlike other Elves there will be no rebirth.
3:26 That's why all aspiring dark lords should take a cue from Thurston Howell the Third (paraphrased 'cause I'm too lazy to dig up my beloved 'Gilligan's Island' DVDs):
"Take over the world? I'd rather just buy the world and hire someone to run it for me."
Lol I love Gilligan's Island
Then you, my friend, are a person of exquisite taste!
Thanks, you too! Who is your favorite character? (mine is Mary Anne)
Oh, it's hard to pick but probably Thurston Howell (he had the best one-liners). As a kid, I always wanted to be like the Professor because of how he was a literal expert on everything. What's your favorite episode?
Lol those are both great characters. Idk, it's kinda hard to pick tbh. Maybe that one where they did a musical of hamlet? Or the one where the Skipper thought they were all Japanese soldiers lol. They're all good tho. How about you?
Say what you will about the Star Wars prequels, they set up Palatine and his rise to power quite well.
As well as interestingly twisting around the typical "Chosen One" narrative.
"Hey, shouldn't we be a bit concerned about Anakin's actions as of late?"
"What? Of course not! He's the chosen one! What could go wrong? What's he gonna do? Become another darth?"
I think that was probably the best part of the prequels, honestly. They were supposed to be foolish, obviously. It was an effective subversion of the chosen one trope which kind of has a useful and dark lesson against gullibility. Additionally, I'm not sure if other people have noted this, but I love it when stories take dark twists by being literal about foreshadowing. Anakin was prophesized to bring "balance" to the force. Who had by far the most power at that point? The good side of the force. So he ends up counterbalancing that by becoming Darth. Then making it totally balanced when he betrays Palpatine.
I'm not even a star wars fan.
you're not even a rapper
I dunno. He was relying on everybody around him to be really stupid, though.
Palpatine is the king of well-written Dark Lords. Maybe Voldemort too.
*"Deep in the authors creative bancrupcy..."* - this is why watch your channel. Pure comedy gold 😂
How about this for a story idea: Teachers, professors, master-craftsmen, and captains are fearful and superstitious when their wards, or proteges refer to them as mentors or father-figures because of how often they die shortly afterward. Thus it's considered bad luck to say such things like saying good luck before a play.
Tolkien basically invented the trope. But somehow the first Dark Lord in popular literature manages to not come off as cliché. That guy was genius.
Madijeis 43 Yeah, what's also interesting is that Mordor want entirely a hell scape either! That was only around half of it. The southern part was actually fertile farmland which was used to grow the food for his army. We just never saw it.
That might be because Sauron wasn't essentially evil to his standards. Sauron wanted everything to be in order and he set it into his mind that the only way that could happen was with him dominating everyone
Rick Harris, in that case, he'd be far from the only dipshit. There are many people who think that if they were in charge, they could fix everything, or at least make things better.
Melkor / Morgoth was pretty much a carbon copy of Lucifer / Satan. Sauron was merely his understudy.
Nectar Vam no, Satan’s a deceiver type (like Loki)
Anyone imagine that when the dark lord is not on screen in these types of stories, their just constantly panicking about the chosen one
I had a "Dark Lord" villain in a D&D campaign I was running, teased it to the players for the whole time, and just before the players thought that they'd be rolling initiative, a black dragon swooped in, ate who they thought was the BBEG, and then, "Roll Initiative"
I mean was the dragon actually responsible for anything or s random dragon?
Even though this was 2 years late we need answers my friend
@@muzankibutsuji622 ah shit I forgot about this comment
turns out all the shit that the players THOUGHT was the "dark lord's machinations" was the work of a draconic cult that some bozo with a shitload of cash was taking credit for
@@ethangriffin3935 lmao
2:23
reminds me of that scene from avatar when aang "tried" a new style. LOL
But does the Dark Lord have a wind sword?
Plot twist, the Dark Lord is always an adorable twelve year old boy! XD
+Dreary i did not get the reference?. I have seen avatar yet.....!?!?
+suresh kumar It is really good! One of the best animated shows ever! ♥
It shows the horrors of war, yet does not get too grim--since it's for kids.
When the kids who made up the first audience grew, we stayed fans. ;w;
I'm just gonna say this here and now...
Melon Lord best villain.
"and that will just get in the way of what's really important for the story"
I was expecting "THE LOVE TRIANGLE!" XD
Yeh.. Dark Lords usually don't fit the word "love" in any way, even if twisted love can be great trope.
You could have a love triangle with the Dark Lord, the "enslaving the world" option and "the destroying it" option !
Watching this just makes me love Sauron so much more
No love triangle? A dark lord must have done it...
The Dark Lord could be the loser in that love triangle, forever bitter and relegated to a lonely, solitary existence, perhaps hating the offspring of his beloved and his rival. Y'know, like Severus Snape on steroids. =^[.]^=
"He loves powers because.. he loves power!" Aw, so pure.
I’m telling you this channel is more than amazing in every way. Such a relief to see a writing channel not full of useless junk, but rather one made to help and grow writers. Bravo!
To Answer your question as to why the shoulder Spike never get caught on anything is because the dark lords build huge fortresses and palaces. It's not like all the time, material and personnel that went into the construction of the dark lord base could be used on actually train any army that can crush the hero or hero's as soon as they become a threat or anything.
The shoulder spikes are holograms, don't tell anyone.
-" My liege the chosen one and his party has entered the castle and we have him cornered up in the small kitchen. It's time for you to end them since all of us minions can't!" ....
"-*Send the ogres* I ...."
" -Sir the ogres don't fit though the hallways and doors...."
>:C "- *I CAN'T FIT THROUGH EITHER* "
" *I'VE BEEN STUCK IN THE THRONE ROOM FOR LIKE A CENTURY* "
Zeliek "I ONLY WANT TO CONQUER THE WORLD SO I CAN FILL THE HOLE IN MY UNSTIMULATED LIFE!"
"Then why don't you break the walls down?"
"Because they're practically invincible and con only be destroyed by the Great Sword of Uhfruhubfh that can only be held by one of pure heart-"
(Heroes break down the wall)
"THANK YOU!"
Obviously we need a dragon serial killer dark lord.
4of92000 so Dark Sun?
4of92000 Named Dave
...Does Galbatorix count?
Wimpyapple Well rider and Dragon are one
4of92000 an alien dragon serial killer dark lord that's part of the love triangle
A great execution of this archetype is Xaltotun from The Hour of the Dragon, by Robert E. Howard. He is an ancient necromancer ressurected by the real antagonists so he can help them conquer Conan's kingdom. He actually asks to see a map of the current world which he then says he doesn't recognize. He helps the villains by winning one battle for them, then plots in the background to betray them for the rest of the story.
REH's style of writing is still so readable today (I just downloaded all the public domain stuff for nothing. Weee). His boxing stories have been meh, but I'm not into boxing so.... I like that Conan started out as a king and REH has him lament his responsbilities, then goes back to his younger days in later stories.
I love that everyone uploads loveydovey stuff on Valentine's Day and you are just here "Let's talk about Dark Lords"
Like many fantasy things, people tend to copy pasta Tolkien without the components that make them interesting.
Sauron creates a conflict that points to the interesting politics of his peers, mostly Saruman and Gandalf. In the books you get a lot more of a sense that Gandalf himself is waging war against Sauron. Denethor accuses Gandalf of spreading his anti-Sauron counsel as an attempt to gain dominion of the world (much like Sauron and Saruman attempt by different means), which adds on another layer as it is just Denethor projecting his own dark desires. The whole thing really proves Gandalf's dedication to forge a better world, and adds many layers of interest to it. Hell, the ring is a character in itself and adds a ton of interest and conflict that reveals deep character.
Needless to say, that deep, layered interest of middle Earth is one of the big reasons LotR is so loved.
Rick Harris, possibly, though every time I re-read the series I find something interesting that I didn't remember from before. Maybe I end up with a more refined (for better or worse) interpretation or it's something I just didn't comprehend initially because the third book especially is just... hard to read through... one of the weaker points of Tolkien is the will power needed to parse all that is going on in the subtext, and even wtf is going on in the story in the first place.
Or maybe I was high on caffeine and taurine while I was listening to the audio books!
"He loves power because he loves power"
Rational self-interest? Almost any motive that ends up with you in power, good or bad, looks an awful lot like rational self-interest.
“I CANNOT BE DEFEATED”
“Sir, the hero has just stabbed you in the chest”
“OH, THAT IS PROBABLY NOT GOOD”
*dies*
My villain: *jokes on you,i got impaled by 12 feet enchanted long sword and i walked it off,tis but a scratch,also satan shat himself because i was in same room*
I have this idea for my story that, while my heroes are are overcoming their own faults to become better heroes, one of the side villains starts to become the Evil Overlord over time.
I also have his motivation all figured out, and it’s not just ‘I’m evil because I’m evil.’
AvengerGreen cool
Good job
Thanks. I'm also writing my main villain as someone who cares for his allies just as much as the heroes care for their friends. No pointless minion slaughtering here.
my hero academia have something like that with Shigaraki
Horacio pereira fretta I know. He’s one of my major inspiration for writing villains.
See the ideal quote for a Dark Lord below:
"Don´t say another Goddamn word. Up until now, I´ve been polite. But if you say *anything* else - word *one* - I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you, this *fear engine* will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming - as thought from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip trought the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. _I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth._ "
Zalgo?
you seriously didn't make a terrible writing advice on the love triangle on valentine's day??
The love triangle, in its own way, is a dark lord.
Dark lord idea:
Dark lord is actually main character’s friend. They were evil in the past but have changed, and mc sees that. People still think dl will do bad things, even if mc defends them. At some point in time dl finally snaps and goes back to being evil, with the motive of if no one will see or care that i’ve changed, then why change at all?
Mc: bro,i wouldn't even try to stop you this time.
Villain: really?
Mc: yea.
This... oddly relates to how people see me and why I just don't change again.
So, I have a book with not one but two Dark Lord-type antagonists. One is a Force-of-Nature-class world destroyer that's basically the embodiment of entropy/void, was previously defeated many years ago, has huge supplies of monstrous minions to do the fighting for it and whose only known weakness is a MacGuffin. It's defeated halfway/two-thirds of the way through the story by the protagonist using novel non-MacGuffin techniques (the MacGuffin didn't work) and ends up basically forgotten about as all the characters deal with less powerful but arguably more dangerous secondary antagonists picked up throughout the story, while the protagonist slowly but surely slips towards villainy herself. (Strangely enough, there's also a sort of villain-wishes-they-could-have-been-like-the-hero plotine like you mentioned, except said villain then used time travel to MAKE her younger self the hero.)
The second Dark Lord hangs out in his hollowed-out mountain fortress with epic-looking armor, dark magic golems and an economy built on the exploitation of cute magic animals, but he has no interest in harming anyone outside of his little kingdom, and actively assists the protagonist in her fight against the above-mentioned "destroy-the-world" Dark Lord, including loaning her valuable technology and even handing over the MacGuffin in his possession free of charge. In short, he's clearly evil, but he's so damn helpful that the protagonists are under serious temptation to just leave him alone. Him being the only person who gives the protagonist the respect she feels she deserves doesn't help things...
That first one is almost exactly the plot of PSO2, save the turn to villainy was because of The Corruption than any actual concious desire.
I already ship your protagonist and Dark Lord #2 😂
what book is this?
@@tsm688 It's unfortunately not publicly available. Working on it. Intended title is "Bringer of the Black Dawn" if you ever see that.
This was part of the reason why I loved Avatar so much. The fire lord wasn't just a dark lord, he was dictator who's rise to power was largely through generations of war, propaganda, and indoctrination of the youth through biased history lessons.
That is true. However I dislike how little we see of him compared to other antagonists such as Zuko, Azula, and even Admiral Zhao.
Avatar has the best writing ever.
He works as a dark lord for the storys protagonists zuko and aang and destroys countless lives for his lust of power. And he enrichens their character through their confrontation. He is basically a dark lord.
I'm just gonna be honest here... I hated Ozai as a villain. He was so... Bland. In my opinion, there should have been a plot twist where Azula was the big bad, because she was a pretty well fleshed-out character. Ozai on the other hand is just a plot devise and nothing more.
I love the series too. However Zuko was too weak. I wanted firelord azula.
But, Sauron was elected to the throne of Mordor by the labourers (orcs) there since he promised lower unemployment and more equality. He even succeeded!
Frodo destoyed him though
Truls Skogli Fosshaug Mordor shall bring communism to every creature that can walk on two legs
Truls Skogli Fosshaug Well, I guess Frodo crashed the dark economy.
Gondor is not sending us their best :)
This is best comment.
War! Manflesh! Land that isn't literal ashplains!
dark lords work really well though, if done right
Yes, they do. But the problem is, it's really hard to do them right anymore, at least with the traditional tropes. Tolkien pulled it off because he mostly either invented a lot of those tropes in the first place or incorporated them in very thematic ways after finding them in old mythology and/or the theology of his own Catholic Faith (or even just Christianity in general). But nowadays, the over-use of those tropes has made doing Dark Lords well much more difficult (though in fairness, still not impossible).
What I want to see is a story where the dark lord is sealed for a thousand years, but after someone releases them , they don't want to take over the world; in the time they sent away, they developed a deep resentment or the people who locked them up, so now they wan to go on a quest to find the people responsible, and lock them in the same prison.
Aww man. No wonder the novelization of my 7th grade DnD adventure was rejected.
When you say Dark lord, I immediately think Voldemort, He actually gets called that, Funny how almost none of this applies.
Ah well, at least the intro in creative
A quiet day of surfing the internet at the local library was interrupted when Nazis kicked in the front door.
Terra Mason frowned, glancing up from her seat at a computer next to the geology section to see several armed men wearing Nazi uniforms storm into the library.
She froze as her mind tried to process what she was seeing.
The librarian marched up to the soldiers. She faced one of the taller Nazis and pointed a finger at his face. “Not funny, young man. Go somewhere else for your little reenactment. This is a public library, not a theater.”
The soldier gestured to behind the counter, speaking in a controlled tone. “Aus dem Weg, Fräulein!”
Terra narrowed her gaze as she studied the man. He didn’t seem like a reenactor to her. The only World War II reenactors she had seen were at the neighboring town’s history festival. And most of those were usually middle aged pot-bellied, Americans with bad posture and fake accents. These lean and fit young men moved with a soldier’s discipline.
And...?
You forgot the "or looks ridiculously pretty while being paler than a dead ginger's ass" branch of Dark Lord. Who else is Miss O.C. M. Sue gonna be shipped with?
MercurialSpider 8976 paler than a dead gingers ass 😂
Oh man, I remember the Evil Overlord List. That makes me feel old.
Dammit I thought it was going to be about love triangles
Lmao
Our Glorious Dark Overlord of the Love PentaQuadrangle returns!
The Hochmeister **dodecahaedron*
dunno man, a proper love pentagram is a pretty fun thing to see.
My favourite breakdown of the "dark lord" trope comes from the webcomic Cucumber Quest.
I kinda don't want to spoil it but for those who don't want to read through a really long comic only because of the vague reccomendation of some youtube comment:
The main villain of Cucumber Quest a big dark lord character called the "Nightmare Knight" and he's just the full package. He first appeared thousands of years ago, he magically created evil minions to take over and rule the world, he can never be truly killed and just comes back every few hundred years or so when some other evil person summons him to use his power and only the magical sword of legend can banish him again.
But over the course of the story you find out more and more about him as he gets actually developed as a character. It turns out that after several of his attempts to take over the world failed, he eventually had a change of heart and doesn't really want to hurt people anymore. His problem is that all of his magic powers are based on fear and that he needs those magic powers to sustain his "minions" who are the only friends he has.
He doesn't want to conquer the world any longer but he still needs everyone to fear him for him to be able to sustain his friends. Furthermore, he never told his minions about his change of heart because at first he thought they only liked him as a dark lord and he was too afraid to lose them but at this point he's just been lying for so long that he can't even really face them as a friend anymore. He tried reasoning with the legendary heroes that show up to defeat him but they just don't believe him because he is the evil dark lord.
So whenever he inevitably gets summoned again, he basically pretends to try to take over the world but secretly sabotages his minions whenever they get too close to actually succeeding. Meanwhile he just sits in his castle brooding because even though he does all of this for his friends, he's too ashamed and afraid to actually interact with them.
Sorry for this big wall of text. I just really like what this character does with the dark lord trope and I rarely get to talk about him. Hope the people here like reading as much as I would assume they do.
4:00 "Don't operate heavy machinery while on Evil Concentrate"?
That explains so much!
Happy Valentine’s Day to me then
Deity Saturn happy Valentine's day :3
i wish you happy valentine too, now we just need another person for a valentine triangle
Valentine Pentagonal Dodecahedron. Don't ask.
Vyro The Virus I want part of this love-fest!
Happy Valentine’s Day to you and you and you and especially but not you you suck and to you too
But, but, where’s the love triangle!
Maybe you can have a story where the hero is very attracted to the villain physically and must overcome their lust and the Dark Overlords increasing attempts to seduce them, mentally and carnally, to the dark side. You can also have the princess be someone who is not the prettiest looking but can stand as a model of what the hero admires in a person, so they must choose between pleasure or the right thing
Shit. That's a really good idea for a story. Having the protagonist hopelessly enamored with the villain and having to resist the urge to become a villain him/herself creates an interesting dynamic. It inverts to villain lusting after the hero/heroine cliche.
Any video from you or Tierzoo are instant clicks.
FDrybob _ wew! Tierzoo buddies ftw!
Another Tierzoo fan! :D We have good taste in yourube content!
fact.
or doormonster
I've never felt so understood in the UA-cam comment section.
Hello dear friends,
Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Morgoth?
Yes I have a moment, who is this person?
onehalfotaku
Seriously you don't know him what rock have you been under?
@@onehalfofunimportance4954 Sauron's boss
I prefer just sauron he lasted longer (I mean in the world not in life)
Dark Lord: *casts the land in eternal darkness*
Comic relief: *finger guns* ZAPPERS! Things aren’t looking too bright for us, are they?
I think George Lucas may have made some of the best villains and philosophy through the force. Palpatine wasn’t the dark lord just because he is, but it is because he was taught that through the teachings of Plaguis. We all know Anakin too! It also helps that the force is so complicated that the Jedi resist many of the things that make them human (figuratively). It is corruption through over exposure to power. If only we got the backstory to all Sith!
This reminds me of a quote from Abraham Lincoln, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
Although I'm questioning the idea of revealing the Emperor's backstory when he was supposed to be an allegory in the first place... :/
@@Archon3960 An allegory for what? I always saw him as an allegory for fascism and his backstory reveal especially with him being a senator made sense as despite it's bad reception the prequels made a pretty good job of showing how republics can fall to fascism in unexpected ways, mirroring George's views on America, and his originals views on vietnam
@@techissus7449 You just answered my question. x)
Well, that, minus the Emperor being the Dark Side incarnate, evil incarnate, and a reverse Master Yoda.