>The Villain's goal is to demonstrate that the implementation of the law is distorted from the letter of the law, and that both the letter and implementation of the law are a distortion of the spirit of the law. The Villain is undermining the institution of law itself, but only because the law is unjust.
What alignment?
Lawful Neutral.
Lawful dead. He can argue semantics with the worms.
Pedantic discursive
Lawful Something.
Being Lawful doesn't require you to follow unjust laws.
This is why I hate chaotic stupid parties.
Evil and crazy, no alignment needed. People who want to take law into their own hands are almost always wrong and wind up just being criminals.
So every judge, legislator, and investigator is evil and crazy?
>(you)
This is all I can give you.
Obviously Lawful Evil.
Well that depends: how many will he kill and how much does he justify those that he does as innocents, where does he draw that line.
How is he on torture and how many is he willing to let suffer. Does he have basic human empathy and work around it rather than with it? Does he believe in ethics in business?
You forgot the most important aspect of alignment, why?
If he is doing it purely because the law is unjust with no personal gain or motive he is Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good.
Maybe his wife was murdered and justice was not served to the one who did it because of the corruption of the law.
Well I think alignments go something like this:
Does he do it for others less fortunate than him or to simply help them: Good
Does he do it for himself but is unwilling to cause others to suffer needlessly or at all: Neutral
Does he do it for himself and doesn't care about anyone as long as he gets what he wants his way: Evil
Chaotic neutral. A lawful character would rally for changing the laws through legitimate means or else take down the entire society for not having a system of laws that could be changed without violent revolution.
True Neutral.
Willing to break the law, but for the sake of the improvement of law.
Willing to do evil if it leads to good.
Battling injustice by forcing injustice on others.
Neither good nor evil. Neither lawful nor chaotic. They're trying to show that balance is needed, and that makes them a true neutral.
I agree with this. Lawful generally translates as being on the side of order and subverting the law, even an unjust law (unless that law actively encourages a chaotic system) makes him chaotic, or at least neutral. I suppose the distinction here is, did he first try to change things within the system, or was subverting the law his first solution?
This. Who cares, he's the bad guy and I'm about to take his stuff.
>Does he do it for others less fortunate than him or to simply help them
Is it not good to help someone better off than yourself? Like a king?
Or is there always some sort implicit expectation of reward there?
Well then it falls under to simply help them.
The less fortunate part is really an catch all term for those suffering from something you are not.
Man, I loathe these kind of villains. I'm going to stab him where he dies slow.
Chaotic Status Quo
despite everything he's going to end up becoming the Joker again
That's very Kafkaesque. So I would say Chaotic Evil.
Is like the Joker creating criminal laws just to prove a point that they are garbage. Its chaotic.
Actually, it's the Joker becoming sane due to medication and filing suit against Batman and the Gotham Police for gross negligence and unlawful activity.
Lawful Evil. He's still committing evil acts.
I push my fingers into my eyes because it's the only thing that slowly stops them from rolling back into my skull and rattling down my throat hole because that's the fucking dumbest thing I ever heard. HURRDDDURRR I'M SO DEEP BATMAN IS A CRIMINAL THE GOTHAM POLICE ARE COMPLICIT DIS WOULD NEVER WORK IN REAL LIFE MY ANALYSIS IS SO BOLD
jesus fucking christ DC comics would be the dumbest thing in print if not for marvel
It's just a dumb elseworlds thing, calm yourself
True Annoying. Tighten that goal up, ya dingus, gotta keep it TIGHT. We heroes got shit to DO, can't stand around waiting for you to list your overly wordy and fancy goal!
Chaotic Neutral - it's ultimately just high-brow flavor of randumb.
Not him, but if Joker became "sane" he would get thrown into prison and given the death penalty so fucking fast his eyes would spin. If not t hat, half of Gotham's criminal underworld would MURDER him since he's no longer an unpredictable threat
It's AU. Joker is portrayed as being much less evil and Batman is portrayed as being much more unhinged right from the word go.
How is that randumb?
I could see it being part of a four corner antagonist setup.
How does he define "law" anyway? I mean, what the fuck is law other than the enforced ideological standards of whatever authority is in place?
Whoa mama. It's about the distinction between the Rule of Man and the Rule of Law. We're about to take a trip down to Hammurabi.
Also I've long suspected that Johnny Bravo is some kind of autistic guy whose "thing" is picking up some trim.
>The Villain is undermining the institution of law itself
Is he willing to accept the punishment for violating those laws in exposing them as distortions? If so, he is lawful. If not, he is neutral.
>but only because the law is unjust.
Is his motivation to correct this injustice primarily to better himself? If so he is Evil.
Is his motivation to correct this injustice to protect or defend a particular group, a combination of him and others? Then he is neutral.
Is his motivation to correct this justice for society as a whole and as a collection of individuals? Then he is good.
They don't inherently want to take the law into their old hands, they want the law to actually practice what it preaches.
We see this in real life, just look up one of the many US laws that were taken to the Supreme Court because they violated the US Constitution. The laws were all "legal", in that they were passed and enforced by the government. However, despite being legal, they were unlawful, but it still took time and effort for this to be rectified when they never should have been enacted to begin with.
In addition to these questions, ask yourself: Could the villain be lying to himself about his motivations and simply finding reasons to indulge in villainous acts? That can knock you down a few pegs as well.
Could the hero?
Frank sure as hell is.
It's like a robot born with hammers for hands who decides the solution to everybody being shitty is to hammer them. Ted Kaczynski was schizophrenic, he wanted to blow people up because he was sick, but he was a justification junkie because that's how he made himself a hero in his head, thus: the manifesto.
Frank vs White Knight's Napier then.
But only if Napier was out killing people like The Joker, because that's how Frank gives himself permission to angle grind somebody's face off while he ejaculates into his fatigues.
Napier is troubled that he might have killed people in White Knight, but doesn't remember it because of brain fuckery. He accepts moral culpability for it, which is what drives him in his endeavors.
Not gonna make the most compelling villain then. More like a Lupin style antihero. You don't want your sympathetic villain to be so sympathetic that the reader or players feel like assholes.
But the punch is more WHEN they feel like assholes.
Dunno, the "shit I'm actually the villain" twist has been done quite a bit before.
Chaotic good probably or unironically legitimate chaotic neutral.
It’s a noble goal, but one that still throws out the baby of laws withh the bath water of corruption so it is chaotically aligned imo
there's nothing there saying that he's actually following his own code of law or intends to uphold them. just that he wants to dismantle the current system.
not only that, there's no indication of how he's going about this. Is he making hell-pacts? Is he just going around killing cops? weaponizing insurgents? tricking kings into getting their men killed?
he could literally be anything on the spectrum from what you're describing. because you're pushing ideology when Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil are entirely unrelated to intention.
Chaotic good.
>What alignment?
High school autist? I mean for fucks sake, that intent, letter and implementation aren't going to match up perfectly should be blindingly obvious to anyone, it's mere mortals both turning intent into law and law into practice after all.