What is most likely to be controlled by evil?

[Lucaski8]

honestly looking deeper then the average joe reveals that darkness does not = evil and ligh = good instead light and dark are factions in there own regard

you can have an evil paladin that is fighting for a god which is in turn evil itself

while you can have a wielder of darkness like a warlock (if talking wow) or a necromancer that is out to rid the world of its evil through the use of darkness!!!

remember elements like death and life and such are not afliated with good or evil by default its the way they are used that makes it so

for instance
"oh im gonna use my power over death to make EVERYONE immortal" this would be a good act
"oh im gonna use my power over light to stop the sun from shining killing everything" this is an evil act

Which of the following would be quicker: using your power over light to shut out the sun and wait for the world to slowly die of starvation, or use your power over death to immediately kill your enemies (because, ya'know, you control death)?

I am well acquainted with the ideas of light not always equalling good and vice versa (*coughrikuofkingdomheartscough*), but the poll asks which is most likely to be controlled by evil. Death in and of itself is not evil, but an evil man with power over death is downright scary. The ability to cause it (to happen to his enemies) or delay it (for himself or his allies) is perhaps the greatest wet-dream of any villain.
Just my two cents.

Just a thought but if you get rid of the sun wouldn't we freeze to death first since the sun is what provides us warmth and frankly is how we see without a lightbulb. Personally though I do imagine evil controlling emotions if it's a true evil IMO.

[Moviedude18.0]

Just a thought but if you get rid of the sun wouldn't we freeze to death first since the sun is what provides us warmth and frankly is how we see without a lightbulb. Personally though I do imagine evil controlling emotions if it's a true evil IMO.

Well yeah, eventually, after the heat trapped in our atmosphere dissipates. Still would take time. And kill the villain that caused it. Unless, you know, he had a spaceship or was immune to space-level cold.

Meh, bigro's got me with villain's having particular inclinations to one power over another. If the villain was smart, I say he'd go with power over Death but a sadistic villain might get more kicks out of controlling emotions. Of course, a sadistic villain could also find ways to make any of those elements (even light) work to despicably mind-raping effect if he applied himself.

[unsteddyPhoenix]

Meh, bigro's got me with villain's having particular inclinations to one power over another. If the villain was smart, I say he'd go with power over Death but a sadistic villain might get more kicks out of controlling emotions.

Well not necessarily. If a villain, for instance, killed a president they would just replace him/her with another one. But if he could control the presidents EMOTIONS then he start wars, nuke countries. Whatever he wanted.

[bigro]

Meh, bigro's got me with villain's having particular inclinations to one power over another. If the villain was smart, I say he'd go with power over Death but a sadistic villain might get more kicks out of controlling emotions.

Well not necessarily. If a villain, for instance, killed a president they would just replace him/her with another one. But if he could control the presidents EMOTIONS then he start wars, nuke countries. Whatever he wanted.

goood example. Although it kinda depends on how powerful the powers are. If he had god level death powers he could just kill ever person on the continent of asia simultaneously if he/she so wished. But with other ones there it only takes a little of that power to wreak untold havoc emotion is the shining one there....I mean, if your powers only could make someone feel annoyed then use them on the president during peace talks with [misc country] a whole lot to do the damage....politically wise. And only just a little more power here (the equivalent in deaths terms of being able to kill one person to being able to kill a room) he/she could just make the leader do something real stoopid and suddenly we have bad things happening. (albeit same could work for most of them here...I mean, kill the right person at the right time and things will happen)

Although this is irrelephant.

THis is about what would be most likely under the influence of evil. (Or maybe what is coolest when evil) So go with fire or something for the coolometer reading to go through the roof (who doesn't like a good firestorm? pretty) or light. Think visual. If your not after visual think audible. So...water, earth, air and maybe time.

And as for something villains want it's the ability to fix their mistakes. So time again


guh, who knew such a simple question could be so complicated?

[Deaththekat]

honestly looking deeper then the average joe reveals that darkness does not = evil and ligh = good instead light and dark are factions in there own regard

you can have an evil paladin that is fighting for a god which is in turn evil itself

while you can have a wielder of darkness like a warlock (if talking wow) or a necromancer that is out to rid the world of its evil through the use of darkness!!!

remember elements like death and life and such are not afliated with good or evil by default its the way they are used that makes it so

for instance
"oh im gonna use my power over death to make EVERYONE immortal" this would be a good act
"oh im gonna use my power over light to stop the sun from shining killing everything" this is an evil act

Which of the following would be quicker: using your power over light to shut out the sun and wait for the world to slowly die of starvation, or use your power over death to immediately kill your enemies (because, ya'know, you control death)?

I am well acquainted with the ideas of light not always equalling good and vice versa (*coughrikuofkingdomheartscough*), but the poll asks which is most likely to be controlled by evil. Death in and of itself is not evil, but an evil man with power over death is downright scary. The ability to cause it (to happen to his enemies) or delay it (for himself or his allies) is perhaps the greatest wet-dream of any villain.
Just my two cents.

Just a thought but if you get rid of the sun wouldn't we freeze to death first since the sun is what provides us warmth and frankly is how we see without a lightbulb. Personally though I do imagine evil controlling emotions if it's a true evil IMO.

sorry to interject but wouldnt the power of LIFE allow you to take it away and give it, death does the same, just backwards.

[primalcaller ergos]

simple: all of them.

just as all things be corrupted, so can all things be purified.

[Twippit]

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INCOMING
For your conversational enrichment.





What is most likely to be controlled by evil?

That is the question.

Any villain uses whatever resources he's got on hand, however, the question asks which is most likely to be controlled by evil. Most villains don't start out as villains, however. They usually start out as Average Joe with superpowers until something pushes them over the edge emotionally, due to either another person or the fact that they were corrupted by their powers.

So, a new question stands: What is most likely to corrupt a villain?

As a side note, I’m interpreting Life as solely the ability to give life, and Death as solely the ability to take life. Same thing for light and darkness.

Obviously, any one of these could be pushed to the edge by a fellow person. So, tack one point on for all of the eleven choices.

Code: Select all

Fire 1
Water 1
Air 1
Earth 1
Life 1
Light 1
Time 1
Emotion 1
Metal 1
Death 1
Darkness 1

Now, imagine this villain didn’t have complete control over his powers as a child.
Looking at the elemental powers, he could have wreaked havoc on or even killed his friends and family through ‘natural disasters’. +2 for Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.
The worst that could happen to child villain who controls life is he reanimates Grandma at her funeral. Potentially scarring, but not that much, so +1 for Life.
If child villain accidentally blinds his childhood friends with his light powers, again, potentially scarring but not corrupting. +1 for Light.
Depending on how powerful this villain is, he could have transported himself to a completely different era early on in his life using time, growing up in a confusing whirlwind of different times and eras without a family. Let’s be honest- history has not been kind to orphans. +3 for Time.
An unintentional use of emotional powers is likely to go unnoticed by the child villain. +0 for Emotion.
As with the elemental powers, the child villain could seriously hurt a loved one with an unintentional use of metal-based powers. +2 for Metal.
An unintentional use of death powers is seriously traumatic. You didn’t revive Gramma, you killed her! Just like you killed the cat, the schoolyard bully, your best friend, and your mother! +4 for Death.
Accidental use of darkness could be frightening for a child villain, but not corrupting. +1 for Darkness.

Code: Select all

Fire 3
Water 3
Air 3
Earth 3
Life 2
Light 2
Time 4
Emotion 1
Metal 3
Death 5
Darkness 2

Then the child grows to be a teenager, and has limited control over his powers. Somebody close to his asks him to use his powers for a good purpose. He accepts, but something goes wrong, and he affects the person who was close to him. A low-scale failure.
With the elemental powers, the teenage villain is still scarred by his wrongs as a child.
He was worried about this job, and now he’s burnt down his friend’s house! He may have even killed someone- again! +3 for Fire.
With water, the villain has caused expensive water damage to his friend’s house, or caused perpetual rain over the yard. The villain may feel some remorse, but not corruption- yet. +1 for Water.
Air powers are all about extremes. They either make something huge, like a tornado, or something small, like a breeze. In this case, the villain has, erm, passed wind. You know what, I’ll stop now before I go into a hurricane of puns. +0 for Air.
Earth is similar to air in that this power is all about extremes. A low-scale failure is practically meaningless. +0 for Earth.
The villain of life who screws up with his power is gonna reanimate the cat, or some random dude. The potential negative effects are, again, minimal. At worst, he reanimates a psycho-killer. +1 for Life.
If our villain screws up with light, he’s temporarily blinded his friend. Whoop-de-doo. +0 for Light.
Time is a little more dangerous, but not much. Our villain can control time, but his friend can’t; if the villain loses his friend, the poor chump is stuck. This could be disturbing, but again, not necessarily corrupting. +1 for Time.
Toying with emotions is always dangerous, and if the teenage villain accidentally makes his friend hate him, he could be internally tormented terribly with grief. Also something to consider is the fact that the villain is an emotionally-charged teenager himself. The confusion and regret the villain would feel would be a powerful force for turning him to the ‘dark side’, a-la Anakin Skywalker or Frankenstein’s Monster. Emotional control is a double-edged blade; +3 for Emotion.
Metal is to be reckoned with on the same scale as the elemental powers nowadays; it’s quite nearly as common as any of the other elements. As with fire, if the teenage villain messes up with metal, even on a minor scale, he’s very likely to either destroy something or seriously hurt someone. +3 for Metal.
Death is even worse. The villain killed his friend. Period. End of story. You simply can’t have a minor ‘oops’. The villain’s friend is dead. Worse yet, the villain purposefully used his powers, knowledgeable of the potential side effects, and he knows it’s all his fault. He’s a teenager, for gods’ sake, and he killed his friend! That’s a 100% legit mind rape there. He has to live with this guilt, if he hasn’t already killed himself. +4 for Death.
Darkness is less likely to harm anyone. Seriously? How would you go about seriously hurting someone with darkness- unintentionally, that is? I can’t see how you’d hurt your friend with this. +0 for Darkness.

Code: Select all

Fire 6
Water 4
Air 3
Earth 3
Life 2
Light 2
Time 5
Emotion 4
Metal 6
Death 9
Darkness 2

How about a high-scale failure of power- again, as a teenager, perhaps affecting his town? Remember, we’re talking about a cognizant use of the villain’s power that merely misfired -only this time, on a large scale.
Catching his entire town on fire is serious. The villain should (rightly) feel terrible. Fires are hugely dangerous, and they kill lots of people. The villain still has to live with himself, too. +4 for Fire.
A tsunami or flood is equally detrimental to a town, but mentally I feel it would be even more scarring for the villain because of the way a flood lingers. The survivors, the danger, the constant reminders of life as it once was. If any of the survivors realize that the villain caused the flood, the sheer vitriolic hate he’d receive could potentially send the villain over the edge. +6 for Water.
The villain who controls air and creates a natural disaster is making a tornado, or, worse yet, if the villain lives by a large body of water, a hurricane, which causes floods- and thus, all those effects that the water villain felt, the air villain feels, with the added bonus of more random destruction and an even more dangerous terrain. +6 for Air.
Earth again is quite likely to cause tons of damage on a very large scale. An earthquake could kill thousands easily, and like air, if the villain lives near a large body of water, he’s created a tsunami and flooded his town. +6 for Earth.
A villain who lets his control over life loose could reanimate every dead thing in the town. Every graveyard in town suddenly comes to life. A localized zombie apocalypse, almost. That’s scarring for life. +4 for Life.
Light is, as always, harder to argue. The villain blinded an entire town- that’s not scarring, that’s just weird! Forget this. +1 for Light because he might feel really bad about blinding a large mass of people.
Time is a grey area. The villain messes up and sends his whole town back in time? Eh. Again, sad, scary, a bit disturbing, but not as bad as if he actually killed someone. +3 for Time.
Have you ever read Frankenstein? Notice what happens to the monster emotionally after every single person he meets hates and abhors him. He ends up going on a murderous rampage and being seriously eff’d up in the head. A misfire on a large scale of emotion would be horrendous for the teenage villain’s psyche. +8 for Emotion.
Metal could be as dangerous as fire, I feel. +4 for Metal.
I was thinking about death here, and I came to an interesting conclusion; if this villain kills his whole town, there’s no-one left alive to make him feel bad about what he’d done like with the elemental powers. So while he would feel tons of regret and remorse for what he’s done, he wouldn’t have some survivor rubbing his fallacies in his face all the time like he would if he’d made a natural disaster. +4 for Death.
And finally, darkness. Like light, hard to argue this one. It’s an ‘Oops, I accidentally turned off the light while you were reading’ feel here. Unless his town is burning witches. Then the villain could suffer really big consequences. In all likelihood? Not happening. +1 for Darkness.

Code: Select all

Fire 10
Water 10
Air 9
Earth 9
Life 6
Light 3
Time 8
Emotion 12
Metal 10
Death 13
Darkness 3

Finally, let’s say the villain decides to use the power for his own purposes. How warped would that make him?
Fire is dangerous, and it can be used mostly to destroy. +3 for Fire.
Water is often a bringer of life, and only hurts and destroys in large quantities. +1 for Water.
Air is not selfish. Really? When did a little wind ever hurt anyone? Again, only hurts/destroys in large quantities; +1 for Air.
Ditto for earth. +1 for Earth.
Playing with dead things is a bit warped, but it doesn’t hurt anyone. In fact, it does the opposite. Still weird though. +2 for Life.
Light- not even gonna talk about light. I’m done. +0 for Light.
Time travel could be used for so many nefarious purposes. Need to rob a bank? When? Need to win a war in 1932? Use weapons from 2163! Need legal money quick in 2022? Sell an ‘ancient relic’ you picked up in 1846! +4 for Time.
Again, like time, a lot of legally challenged things could be preformed with emotion manipulation. Why kill the duke yourself when his enraged lover does it for you? And isn’t it just so handy when those nice investors decided to give you all their money so you can blow up the world? +3 for Emotion.
Metal is a grey area here, because it can both create and destroy. +2 for Metal.
Using death for your own purposes is a crime. Period. Not to mention that it’s sick and twisted. Cognizant and willing use of this power automatically makes the villain a psychopath serial killer. +4 for Death.
Darkness on command is handy for a few things. Corruptive? Evil? Not so much. +0 for Darkness.

So now we’re left with this:

Code: Select all

Fire 13
Water 11
Air 10
Earth 10
Life 8
Light 3
Time 12
Emotion 15
Metal 12
Death 17
Darkness 3

Disagree with me? Fine. Write up your own wall of text proving me wrong. But I feel Death, Emotion, Fire, Metal, and Time are the most likely powers to corrupt a villain and turn him evil.

[MrFlyingAmoeba]

Remember-just because life is typically associated with benevolence and kindness doesn't mean it isn't evil. After all, the undead are often simply corpses brought back to life in some form.

[Ster Zetanee]

Remember-just because life is typically associated with benevolence and kindness doesn't mean it isn't evil. After all, the undead are often simply corpses brought back to life in some form.

Exactly that's why originally I had only life, because for context of what my group is making, Death is the absence/loss of life. So, they are one in the same.

Also this isn't really about what is evil, but instead What would a truly evil person manipulate to gain power and control.

Going to go edit the first post a little now.