Villains you would join if given the choice between them and the "good guys".

[Shoggoth2588]

I would definitely join up with The Brotherhood, especially over the X-Men. Nothing against the X-Men of course it's just that the humans in the Marvel U are a bunch of flippant jerks. You want ME dead but you fuckers worship Spider-Man!?! YOU DON'T KNOW HE ISN'T A MUTANT!!

I would totally make a deal with Mephisto of the Marvel U too since he seems to be a complete idiot when it comes to making deals. I would miss out on being married...but I'd be a Super Hero! Nobody would know who I am! And I'd end up dating multiple heroines of other Hero teams and even on-again-off-again villainesses! Also my best friend wouldn't be dead anymore!

I would love to be part of The Romulan Empire...not so much Klingon though, no offence but they're a bit too militaristic for me.

I would join up with Team Rocket.

I would love a job at EA. They would probably pay me well and I hate doing customer service things in general.

I wouldn't be a Death Eater, I wouldn't join DA or really show much interest in the Wizarding World in general but I would use my magical abilities to track down and Punisher muggle criminals who deserve it...guess that wouldn't count so much...I'll just leave it here for now then.

One More! The mages from Dragon Age. Their turn-to-evil in Dragon Age 2 was idiotic but they're still leagues more sympathetic than any other group or faction in the series...from what I remember anyway.

 

[Ryu-Kage]

The Decepticons of Michael Bay's Transformers movies. I'm usually not one for genocide, but in a world heavily populated by some of the most annoying, motormouthed screechers I've ever heard in a film, I'd be up for sacrificing the sun for Energon if that was the only way to shut them up.

Might be fun to work with Bowser, too. He's a leader so driven to achieve is goal of world domination / royal kidnapping, situations which ought to kill him about 100 times over do not phase him. Plus, though Mario's / Peach's side has lots of cool plants to give you new powers and weapons, Bowser's side has legions of various walks of life prepared to die for their king (who also grants some of them the powers of the aforementioned magic plants). In a way, Bowser has done an amazing job bringing Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Chain Chomps, Bloopers, and many other monsters in Mario's world for the sake of a single cause; he must be doing something right to command their respect and loyalty. Maybe with a proper military advisor (Kamek's doing kind of a crappy job at it), Bowser might succeed for longer than one game.

Also, I'm gonna concur with the Star Wars people: what's wrong about having the Sith in charge? The Jedi basically sat around and debated all day, talking about how they must bring balance to the force despite how there supposedly were not Sith for a thousand years before Phantom Menace, meaning light was overwhelmingly dominant over darkness. In a way, the Sith DID bring balance to the force: light had its dominance for a long time, now it's dark's turn to be in charge for a while.

 

[Terminal Blue]

For me I can think of a few. For Star Wars there's the CIS in the Clone Wars and the Galactic Empire in the originals. The reason is simple: for he clone wars the CIS was a state which seceded because of the fact that the Republic was just to corrupt and ineffective, and instead of listening to their grievances they simple ignored them. And then what happened? They got invaded. As for he Empire, well, come on. Apart from the blowing up of a planet, they didn't do anything wrong, and even then it was justified since it was a bastion for an armed royalist rebellion that was threatening the peace.

I'm not sure where this tendency to try and claw back some shades of grey in Star Wars comes from, but in this case it really doesn't work so well.

Princess Leia: No! Alderaan is peaceful! We have no weapons, you can't possibly...
Governor Tarkin: [impatiently] You would prefer another target, a military target? Then name the system! I grow tired of asking this so it will be the last time: *Where* is the rebel base?
Princess Leia: ...Dantooine. They're on Dantooine.
Governor Tarkin: There. You see, Lord Vader, she can be reasonable. Continue with the operation; you may fire when ready.
Princess Leia: WHAT?
Governor Tarkin: You're far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration - but don't worry; we will deal with your rebel friends soon enough.

Tarkin knows that Alderran has no military value. He blows it up purely to send a message.

The CIS is a little greyer.. until you realize it's dominated a bunch of brutal autocratic governments (Geonosis, Zygerria), racial-nationalist movements (Quarren Isolation League) and incredibly ruthless mega-corporations (Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Banking Clan, Techno-Union). While the expanded universe does fill in the blanks and show there are good people working on either side, the bulk of the CIS's concerns are less with corruption and ineffectiveness and more with the taxation of trade routes and the implementation of humanitarian laws.

Also, I'm gonna concur with the Star Wars people: what's wrong about having the Sith in charge?

The same reason we don't tend to let psychotic crack-addicts run governments here on Earth.

(Yes. The dark side is basically crack. You start using it and it feels great, in fact the more evil shit you do the more powerful you feel. Then, over time it gets to the point where you need it in order to do anything, and suddenly you're the dark side's *****. That's why dark side force users, despite often having very interesting and subtle philosophies, ultimately come down to acting like cackling lunatics all the time. They're not running the show any more.)

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I would join the Marines/stereotypical evil corporate guys from "Avatar" over the Na'avi any day of the week. Mostly I just hated that movie and found the Na'avi incredibly irritating, so I was cheering for them to lose at the end.

I'd totally join the Helghast over the CSA or whatever they were called. Cooler uniforms and weapons, and I wouldn't trust the CSA Soldiers with a potato gun, their entire Military operating procedure seems to be "everyone just do whatever you want".

I'd fight against the Samurai in "The Last Samurai". The movie obviously glossed over a lot of this, but the Samurai were not all wondrous and great, and they were basically fighting to maintain a system in Japan where Samurai were permitted to murder peasants if they felt 'disrespected'.

And if this were the 'Command and Conquer' Universe, I'd definitely join the Brotherhood of NOD. All hail Kane!!

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'd be seriously tempted, as the recruit, to join up with the Uber Ethereal (although I'm somewhat aware that "join up" in this context could be extremely literal).

Still, if they were willing to enslave and modify entire species out of fear of "what lies ahead", I'd kind of be interested to know what that is, especially given that (this being X-Com) it's extremely likely that the council will have pretty much shut down and confiscated all the research you did in Enemy Unknown and we'll be back to conventional troops with assault rifles.

Plus, whatever the big bad turns out to be, having some Mutons backing you up seems like a good idea.

 

[otakon17]

"Apart from the blowing up of a planet didn't do anything wrong"

Yeah if you excuse this mass genocide on a ridiculously huge level where billions of people died they were pretty cool dudes.

I don't think you read and/or think through your own sentences OP...

You have a point, but what do we really know about Alderaan? Apart from the fact they have a royal family and are the main hub for support for the rebellion, nothing. It could be a heavily populated world, or a barely populated one. And in either event one must weigh the numbers. That world plus Yaven 4 where two locations that, if destroyed with one fowl swoop, would end the rebellion. Given the scale of the rebellion it could potentially have cost fewer lives to end it there then to have the conflict become drawn out (which is exactly what happened because of the survival of their main base of operations). In pure numbers, the action is justifiable, especially when in the end it was shown to be the right one in hindsight. So a few million or billion civilians where lost, if the Empire had stood Coruscant alone would have lost fewer people then that during the galaxy-wide invasion.

Did you miss out the "Millions of voices cried out in terror and then were silenced" bit from Obi-Wan? If The Sith Lords is any indication, mass genocide of that scale is VERY bad not only in terms of lives lost but the ripple it sends through the Force at the same time.

OT: Hmmmmm.... That's a tough one to be honest. I don't think I would in any media really.

 

[ThreeWords]

Doctor Doom.

Seriously, he's the one genius in the Marvel Universe that not only invents useful tech but SHARES IT WITH HIS PEOPLE. The people of Latveria are all well fed, 100% employment and probably all have free fiber optic internet on their quantum computers. Yeah, there is a distinct lack of "Freedom", but freedom to do what exactly? All of their basic needs are being met, and if a person is healthy and fed, then every other problem falls by the wayside.

Seriously, think on this. In the US we have massive income inequality, pollution, corruption, unemployment, starvation and shitty healthcare. In a land like that, you want Freedom of Speech to ***** about your life. But if you live in a place with NONE of that....what is there to complain about? Plus, you know crime in Latveria has got to be REALLY low.

This is my favourite thing about Doom. He's a megalomaniac super villain, but he's shown to be a benevolent ruler, and it's implied that under his rule the word would be a safer, more prosperous and equal place. I'd actually like to be a Latverian citizen.

Captcha: "one way street"

 

[EternallyBored]

The same reason we don't tend to let psychotic crack-addicts run governments here on Earth.

(Yes. The dark side is basically crack. You start using it and it feels great, in fact the more evil shit you do the more powerful you feel. Then, over time it gets to the point where you need it in order to do anything, and suddenly you're the dark side's *****. That's why dark side force users, despite often having very interesting and subtle philosophies, ultimately come down to acting like cackling lunatics all the time. They're not running the show any more.)

People seem to keep forgetting that Lucas intended the dark side of the force to be an aberration to justify the good vs. evil motif of the movies. The dark side isn't like some kind of yin-yang concept where the balance lies somewhere between the two, when Obi Wan talked about Anakin bringing balance to the force, he was talking about wiping out the dark side completely.

The balance of the force lies in between its purest expressions, ideally between emotion and logic, the dark side is a corruption of passion and is often described as a cancer infesting the force, its not the other side of the coin, it is a defect that actively corrupts and drives its users insane. This isn't always made clear, as some of the EU authors have tried to spin the dark side as a natural part of the force, like black and white, with shades of grey in the middle, but the more recent EU and word of God (Lucas) is that the dark side is basically batshit insane evil, and is not an actual natural part of the force itself.

That's why the Sith developed the whole 1 master, 1 apprentice system, because Sith apprecntices had a nasty habit of killing each other off or teaming up to kill their master before turning on each other.

Thusly, while the empire may not have been populated by completely evil people, it was ruled over by an insane despot who intended to rule over an eternal empire as an immortal god, and ultimately would have rather burned the entire thing to the ground around him rather than lose control over it. That's in the EU though, the movies focus mostly on Skywalker and the rebels, so the empires most heinous actions tend to be in the background or in the EU, where you find out that they were pretty damn evil in most places in the galaxy.

 

[EternallyBored]

Doctor Doom.

Seriously, he's the one genius in the Marvel Universe that not only invents useful tech but SHARES IT WITH HIS PEOPLE. The people of Latveria are all well fed, 100% employment and probably all have free fiber optic internet on their quantum computers. Yeah, there is a distinct lack of "Freedom", but freedom to do what exactly? All of their basic needs are being met, and if a person is healthy and fed, then every other problem falls by the wayside.

Seriously, think on this. In the US we have massive income inequality, pollution, corruption, unemployment, starvation and shitty healthcare. In a land like that, you want Freedom of Speech to ***** about your life. But if you live in a place with NONE of that....what is there to complain about? Plus, you know crime in Latveria has got to be REALLY low.

This is my favourite thing about Doom. He's a megalomaniac super villain, but he's shown to be a benevolent ruler, and it's implied that under his rule the word would be a safer, more prosperous and equal place. I'd actually like to be a Latverian citizen.

Captcha: "one way street"

This actually depends on who's writing Doom. In some incarnations you find out that once his megalomania is satisfied, he tends to be a hands off ruler who actually makes the world a better place because his jealousy over Reed Richards is what drives most of his evil plots.

However, in other incarnations, he's a control freak through and through, and you find out the citizens of Latveria are executed for the most minor offenses, and even thought crime becomes illegal.

So a Latverian citizen's quality of life is largely dependent on which Doom we are talking about here. Some incarnations seem to be alright if strict authoritarian rulers, so yeah you get good tech, you just have to put up with living under an all powerful dictator. In other incarnations though, you've got tech sure, but you also have to deal with getting life in prison for jaywalking, and having every aspect of your life monitored and controlled, or even straight up mind control if you get on Doom's nerves, or potentially sacrificed to a demon (people tend to forget that he's a wizard that has used his citizen's in order to summon and control demons from fucking hell in the past).

 

[bz316]

I doubt that I would be qualified to join them, but the Machines in the Matrix were totally in the right. The Animatrix makes it super clear that the humans were responsible for all that happened to them. First, a decadent human civilization had essentially enslaved an intelligent species, then murders all dissenters after their government declares artificial intelligence has no rights. The machines then make the perfectly reasonable decision to peacefully exile themselves and form their own nation, which then becomes the leading economy of the earth because they weren't being ruled by incompetent sociopaths. In order to ease the tensions, they once again act incredibly reasonably by attempting to open diplomatic relations with the humans, who then proceed to kill the ambassadors and launch a war against the machine nation (after blotting out the goddamn SUN I might add). The machines win the ensuing war and then, in an act of supreme mercy, decide not to eradicate all the humans (a mercy, I might add, the humans probably would not have extended to them if the war had gone the other way) and instead place the humans in virtual reality simulation in order to maintain the peace, allowing the humans to live their lives (which, again, they still have) in that world while the machines live their lives in the real world. The Machines' position is so morally superior to the Humans' position its not even funny

 

[bz316]

Sign me up, Mr Ryan. Does citizenship come with a free Adam injection?

"FREE"?! What kind of socialist nonsense are you peddling sir? Andrew Ryan gives nothing but the opportunity to take for yourself

 

[soren7550]

The first that comes to mind is the Military Police in Attack on Titan.


Ok, so for the most part they're not depicted as 'the bad guys' (the only time being in the most recent chapters of the manga), just corrupt. And aside from one guy [http://shingekinokyojin.wikia.com/wiki/Marlowe_Freudenberg], the whole lot of them are depicted as unsavory. So, why would I join them? Because I don't want to be eaten by a titan! They're pretty much guaranteed to never have to deal with titans, and like Marlowe, I'd want to do good while there.

Also, unicorns:

 

[Kajin]

I might join John Marcone from The Dresden Files. Say what you will about him being a criminal scumbag... But the guy has a strict sense of honor. He never allows harm to come to children from his operations and he hunts down and executes any criminal who would hurt a child. He also takes care of employees that are loyal to him. If someone hurts a person in his employ, he will come for you and make you pay dearly for it. He cuts down on violence wherever possible and generally makes sure his criminal empire hurts as few people as possible.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Purely based off the movies, NOT the comic books, I would join Magneto and his band of mutant renegades. In the first two movies I was sympathetic to his cause, but I didn't care for his methods, kidnapping, extortion, etc, at all. But in the third movie when they made a "cure", I was pushed towards his side. To provide a cure for mutants would mean that it was a disease to begin with, which it is not.

And yes, I know the entire third X-Men movie was a not so subtle gay rights thing and what not. But the idea still stands.

Very much this. These movies really made me hate humanity. First Class especially. They try to kill the very people who just prevented nuclear war?!?! Magneto had every right to be pissed and then he ends up being right about humanity trying to get rid of them. Out of curiosity, is Magneto a lot more evil in the comics?

 

[soren7550]

While I didn't read the fourth book, I would join Galbatorix from the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon books), mostly because Eragon came across as a straight-up sociopath prick and the elves were stuck-up, smug, self-righteous jackasses.

Y'know when I finally get back into the Eragon books again, i'll have to think about Eragon's character in that mindset. Sounds like fun. What about Eragon's brother though? Ro...Something. He went total OP mode because I LOVE MAI WIIIIIIFE!
1VFUCKING50 COME AT ME BROOOOOOOS!

So stupid.

Never finished the last book, how's G-Man in the bits where he actually shows up? I think he doesn't have a single line of dialogue in the first two books because he's just this threat on the horizon "watch the fuck out, he'll destroy us all if he wanted to" guy.

I agree about Rowan (I think that was his name anyway, too lazy to look it up). And you're right about the first three books, he never actually shows up or says/does jack. From what I can remember about the last book, he doesn't show up until pretty much the very end.

Spoiler

Unless you want to count him and his flyby on his dragon to show off, he doesn't appear until pretty much the end of the battle crap, and even then he does about jack shit. He makes Eragon and Murtag fight because the author wanted to rip off Star Wars some more, and Eragon makes a spell to make him fell all the bad he made people feel, which causes him to explode or some shit.

So yeah, really fucking stupid and anti-climatic.

Oh wait, there's one other bit he shows up in.

Spoiler

There's some bit where he has what's her nuts captured, and tortures her so that she'll want to join him or something.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I might join John Marcone from The Dresden Files. Say what you will about him being a criminal scumbag... But the guy has a strict sense of honor. He never allows harm to come to children from his operations and he hunts down and executes any criminal who would hurt a child. He also takes care of employees that are loyal to him. If someone hurts a person in his employ, he will come for you and make you pay dearly for it. He cuts down on violence wherever possible and generally makes sure his criminal empire hurts as few people as possible.

This. Marcone is the one fictitious mafioso I've seen that makes sense, which is ironic considering the setup of the Dresden Files series. Most of everyone else tends to go straight for Goodfellas parodies. Every single time Harry's given an employment offer by John and he turns it down, I'm kind of torn between admiration of his principles and his lack of practicality.

I mean, it's suggested several times that Marcone has enough of a grasp on the arcane world to find ways to have Harry procured with a place that would put up with his arcane emanations. I'm all for being a badass wizard, but having a water heater and actual power feels pretty much essential, in 2014. Plus, some of his cases would probably unfold much faster if he had a working form of Internet access on top of Bob's provided advice.

Back to the topic, though... I'd shack up with the Brotherhood too, assuming I did have any powers. Andrew Ryan feels like another sort I'd be inclined to listen to, but you couldn't pay me to consider Comstock's logic. The Uber Ethereal from XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its expansion is also someone I'd give some attention to.

On the whole, though, my favorite "villains" would have to be the Kindred in general, from the video game iterations of Vampire: The Masquerade. In Bloodlines, at least two NPCs note that the world they live in isn't perfect, and that even though they're not inclined to enjoy their lifestyle, they're forced to do terrible stuff to mortals in order to survive. By all rights, all vampires in that universe are technically "villains", parasites surviving off of a civilization and species that has no real need for them. The nobler types try and mitigate their effects on the mortal world, knowing full well they'll never be able to achieve complete social stealth. The more power-oriented types figure their superiority makes them fit for the task of lording over Mankind.

In short, this is one of the few RPGs I know in which there's no clear "good" or "evil" delineations, and in which you're generally able to play in accordance with your personal conscience.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Chaos Space Marines. Yeah they're evil, but at least they don't make flimsy excuses or try to hide the fact that they are. They're honest about it.

 

[Ishal]

Since Star Wars has been mentioned before. I will gladly throw my lot in with this gentleman.

Spoiler

An empire poised to take the entire galaxy and utterly carve away the Jedi order, yet it's losing because of corrupt bureaucrats along with backwards and dogmatic policies. Racism? Seriously? It's rotting away from antiquated ideals just like he says. Malgus is a Sith with a capital S. He's a damn warrior monk who wants nothing more than to let the dark side work through him. The empire is just a tool, but he believes the tool shouldn't be blunt if it's to be used properly.

Early when the game was first being promoted, I'm talking like a year in advance. The game was being set up by showing heroes that acted in events before all the players entered the timeline. We'd be receiving missions and working with these heroes. In Malgus' description it said his actions inspired an entire generation of Sith warriors. Hmmm... like the players maybe? Bioware you really dropped the ball on this one. Players should have been given the choice to join Malgus' new empire. It was the perfect venue to do something like that, an MMO. A game where a choice like that with long reaching consequences could have played out between content patches. They've done stuff with villains before like letting Teryn Logain join your party in Dragon Age. Such a shame what happened to that game.

 

[Fox12]

In my ongoing attempts to see if anime has anything to offer me, I've been watching Code Geass.

Yeah... the Britannian's are all evil and foppish and stuff, buuuuut I doubt I'd have to put much thought into a choice between Team Cornelia and Team Smug-Overdressed-Overpowered-Little-Shit-Who-Is-Totally-A-Genius-No-Really-We-Said-So.

Don't tell me you're one of those people who can't appreciate ridiculously melodramatic lines, clothing, actions, plot progression and everything inbetween? Stop right now cuz it only gets more ridiculous further in. Yes, Code Geass is still my favourite anime of all time how did you guess? The English dub has JYB voicing Lelouch and I love JYB when he plays an anti-hero.

The anime begins to be a contest to see how badly they can stomp suddenly not OP (or maybe more OP because he thinks a way out of it later?) Lulu into the ground every other episode roundabout the halfway point of Season 1. Especially in Season 2.

Yes, I probably am one of those people. I generally prefer my entertainment to be relatively grounded in tone.

So, why am I several episodes into the second season of a show where I hate the main character and snigger every time someone says his name out loud, hate most of the cast, hate the cheap animation, hate the costume design, hate the way almost everyone is drawn with the proportions of a starvation victim, hate the way they use insufficient foreshadowing as way to depict "genius", hate the way that they keep pulling progressively more OP roller-skating robots out of their arses, hate how the robots look like oversized toys rather than military hardware and hate at least a dozen other things that I can't think of right this minute?

Dunno. Probably because I'm also one of those people who hates to leave books/movies/shows uncompleted.

On the plus side, it does come across as a wee bit more, for lack of a better term, "grown up" than most anime I've encountered. It's relatively complex, shit tends to have consequences and some of the characters manage to be more than one-note.

Oh hey, since you're a fan of the show, I have a few questions:

Spoiler

- Do they ever explain what CC's deal is, and if so, does the explanation make a lick of sense?
- Is Cornelia dead? I think she was the only character I liked.
- Why was Karen so upset when she found out that Zero was L'loosh? Was it just because he's Britannian?
- Is it just the two seasons?

Yeah, this pretty much sums up my opinion of the show. The first season had major problems, but I thought it had potential if they fixed everything. Instead they took everything wrong from the first season and ran with it. Despite how much I came to dislike the series, I couldn't look away. It was like this fascinating train wreck that had to be witnessed to be believed. Concerning your question:

1). Yes, they tell you her origins, and no, nothing in this show makes a lick of sense.
2). Yes, she is no longer with us. Her completely random death is permanent.
3). Because, I don't even fucking know anymore, man, reasons, I quess. Just wait, your approaching the quantum singularity of insanity. Honestly, the writers were watching Evangelion on acid when they wrote the ending. Then they realized what they had done, and had to try to make the last episode make sense.
4). Yes, though I'd love to see where on earth a third season would take us.