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[Aria Jenneth]

In the Silas and Nauplius case, I actually think the isolating part has less to do with the villainous actions and more to do with the choice to go specifically blood raider/sani sabik for those actions. They are playing the most extreme version of the Amarr brand, which has the result of the rest of that faction ostracizing them.

Actually, I think even the Blooders look mild as an Imperial splinter group when compared to the Equilibrium of Mankind. Sani Sabik in general seems to be fairly similar to Satanism with as wide a range of expressions.

They're different breeds. EoM are a doomsday cult. I think of the Sani as being more oriented around some of  Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas about "the will to power," etc. There's a certain point beyond which distinction seems important more for taxonomy than hierarchy.

I agree at least somewhat with some of the reasons others have discussed for playing villains. There are aspects of Aria Jenneth's personality (and, especially, appearance) that are descended from a prior, unambiguously evil character I played in the old Neverwinter Nights. It used to be for me that playing villains was a way to explore the margins on my own personality, find out where I was and was not able to bring myself to go. (For the record, I'm capable of vast impersonal harm, but intentional cruelty and generally being a jerk pushes past my limit in a hurry. So I tend to play very nice horrible people.) That game got old a decade or so ago, though.

Coming up with creative reasoning to justify horrible ideas and acts, however, never did get old. Neither did exploring the ways human emotion and motivated reasoning lead to tragic outcomes-- or protect us from them. As a result, I mostly play antiheroes.

[kalaratiri]

Kala is a lovely person working for some very very bad people. 

[Elmund Egivand]

They're different breeds. EoM are a doomsday cult. I think of the Sani as being more oriented around some of  Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas about "the will to power," etc. There's a certain point beyond which distinction seems important more for taxonomy than hierarchy.

I agree at least somewhat with some of the reasons others have discussed for playing villains. There are aspects of Aria Jenneth's personality (and, especially, appearance) that are descended from a prior, unambiguously evil character I played in the old Neverwinter Nights. It used to be for me that playing villains was a way to explore the margins on my own personality, find out where I was and was not able to bring myself to go. (For the record, I'm capable of vast impersonal harm, but intentional cruelty and generally being a jerk pushes past my limit in a hurry. So I tend to play very nice horrible people.) That game got old a decade or so ago, though.

Coming up with creative reasoning to justify horrible ideas and acts, however, never did get old. Neither did exploring the ways human emotion and motivated reasoning lead to tragic outcomes-- or protect us from them. As a result, I mostly play antiheroes.

After playing some RPGs for a while I decided that Elmund is the sort of person who does not justify anything. Explain, maybe, but not justify squat. I thought it would be interesting to be the guy who won't justify any horrendous acts he may or may not have done throughout his active years. The person who will, when accused of having done something horrible, will look at the accuser straight in the eye and say, "Yes, I did, in fact, do that horrible thing and you are welcome to shoot me for it. I will still defend myself, however." In fact, I decided that Elmund is going to be someone who is too sober for his own good.

Of course, I'm not sure if I'm actually successful in playing the guy who thinks justifying anything is being dishonest and incompatible with his personal values.

[Kador Ouryon]

Kala is a lovely person working for some very very bad people.

...... but the eye patch is the mark of true evil isn't it?

[Utari Onzo]

Kala is a lovely person working for some very very bad people.

...... but the eye patch is the mark of true evil isn't it?

Woops, looks like I've been playing Utari wrong. BRB, ransoming some blues in provi.

[kalaratiri]

Kala is a lovely person working for some very very bad people.

...... but the eye patch is the mark of true evil isn't it?

Only if you're wearing one when you don't actually need it.

[Ria Nieyli]

Pirates used to wear eyepatches so one of their eyes would be adjusted to the darkness below the ship's deck.

[kalaratiri]

Pirates used to wear eyepatches so one of their eyes would be adjusted to the darkness below the ship's deck.

Eeeeviiiiiilllllll

[Veiki]

I have only tried to portray Caldari characters whose personal basis of faith is in the ancestor worship of the Supreme Father Mathias Sobaseki. Where the core ideology is one of achieving the ends of Kaalakiota dominance and dominion over the Caldari people through any means necessary, because they are the Good Guys defending the vision and legacy of Sobaseki against foreign subversives and domestic dissidents.

Although for some reason, their reverance of the Caldari equivalent of Stalin or Mao as their own personal God and saviour to a degree of fundamentalism has lead others to describe them on occassion as evil; villains; monsters; or as one person put it: literally Ramsay Bolton from GoT. 

[Jev North]

Well, that, and the things Veiki's done to the interns, yeah.

[The Rook]

We don't do interns anymore.

[Morwen Lagann]

You didn't in the first place.

That was all Veiki.

[Veiki]

The Veikitamo internship program and Veikitamo biomass recycling programs were both fantastic while they simultaneously lasted.

Anyway, I always thought villainy was about the creation of perspective. You know, where others might see them as evil due to their actions but where they themselves operate by their own well defined ideology/motives/beliefs/worldview, that they themselves don't see what they do as evil at all.

Most of the villainy I see in Eve though just seems more like varied forms of cries for attention.

[Aria Jenneth]

The Veikitamo internship program and Veikitamo biomass recycling programs were both fantastic while they simultaneously lasted.

Anyway, I always thought villainy was about the creation of perspective. You know, where others might see them as evil due to their actions but where they themselves operate by their own well defined ideology/motives/beliefs/worldview, that they themselves don't see what they do as evil at all.

Most of the villainy I see in Eve though just seems more like varied forms of cries for attention.

Eh. A lot depends on what you count as "villainy"; I think most Eve characters are pretty compromised, morally-- and therefore exactly the sort of villain you're pointing to. Nearly everybody's a mass-murderer (or an arms dealer selling to mass-murderers).

World be grimdark, yo. It's just a matter of degree. That being the case, one of my pleasures in Eve has been watching different ways of approaching and justifying that situation bounce off each other.

Aria's basic attitude is very "warrior caste": "Mass murder is my fate, station, purpose, and function in society. As long as I serve that function, I don't actually need a reason beyond it being who and what I am. A lot of people went to a ridiculous amount of trouble to create someone like me. It's what I am for. If I don't kill, I'm nothing."

Aldrith Shutaq, her mentor/tormentor, is more of the "knightly" view: "Mass murder is only acceptable if you're doing it for a cause larger than yourself-- ideally for my own cause, but I can still admire people who commit mass murder for other principles. Even if they're wrong, hell, even if I'M wrong, we're still better than mercenary scum like you."

And then you've got Che, who might actually not be a (currently practicing) villain....

(Yes, I'm semi-intentionally stretching the meaning of "villain" in the context of this discussion. I don't find traditional villainy very compelling in a universe staffed by characters with body counts in the hundreds of thousands, but the reasons for those body counts are worth examining. The main difference between Nauplius, et al, and the rest of us is that Naups is very visible and highly theatrical about it all, and delights in cruelty instead of just accepting it as a price of doing business.)

[Samira Kernher]

Samira is an anti-villain. She serves a largely villainous faction, and supports some evil methods, but ultimately she believes in good and right. Just her sense of what is good and right is skewed by her upbringing.

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

I'm not sure I'd call her an out and out villain, but this thread seems to be evolving into a discussion of villainy of all degrees.