[UA] The Villain Archetype (was: various topics)

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 05:09 PM 12/11/2000 EST, you wrote:
>In a message dated 12/11/2000 3:46:29 PM Central Standard Time, 
>holycrow at mindspring.com writes:
>
>> 
>>  Ehhh... I really shy away from all good or all bad archetypes.  (The Dark
>>  Stalker kind of snuck in under the radar in the early days.  Tricky
>>  bastard.  Maybe if we ever do 2ed I'll write up the GOOD side of the Dark
>>  Stalker...)  
>
>
>Wouldn't the good side of the Dark Stalker be evident in all those shadowy 
>pulp heroes? The Shadow, The Spider (Master of Men!), Captain Midnight to a 
>lesser extent.

And in the real world you've got...?

The rule of thumb I use is "If the examples are all historical, it's an
archetype.  If the examples are all fictional, it's a stereotype."  Keeps
me from getting lazy.  ("'The Large Breasted Chick With The Guns'?  What
the heck, it's in every RPG I've seen, and if I write it up fast I can hit
my quota in time for MST3K!")  

Now, there are plenty of dark-side Dark Stalkers in history.  Jack the
Ripper may have been the original.  Jeffrey Dahmer.  Ed Gein.  But shadowy
vigilantes?  A rarer bunch, for damn sure.  And the argument that "you
never heard of them because they never got caught" doesn't cut it for me.
Dahmer and Gein weren't trying to get caught, and Jack never was.  So our
hypothetical Benevolent Stalker would have (1) had some inept would-be
Avatars* get caught and (2) would have a few clever ones who never got
caught, but whose deeds were historically known.

Ken?  James?  You history nerds wanna take a stab while I got raid the
'fridge?

-G.

*Paging Team Salvation, paging Team Salvation...

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