Evility 101 – Chapter 7, Act 4, Strip 76

While the heroes are busy discussing Biff’s grand idea…or, perhaps, just recovering from the shock that she had an idea in the first place…evil!Gregory is putting his goggles to good use again. Good thing that the original Gregory isn’t able to see this, it would drive his frustration sky-high. He was frustrated enough that evil!Gregory got to profit from the goggles basic protective capabilities. If he knew that evil!Gregory can even access advanced, undocumented features of the goggles – features original Gregory was entirely unaware of – he’d go into conniptions.

The rest of the strip is mostly taken up by a philosophical exchange on the nature of evil. Two distinctly different schools of thought on evil clash, let’s call them pragmatical evil and orthodox evil. Evil!Snuka likely has had a somewhat similar upbringing as the original, and is thus firmly within camp pragmatism – a childhood on the streets would have left him little alternative to pragmatism, and it would have easily become a life-long habit. As far as he was concerned, it would have made the most sense to eliminate the heroes for good in their moment of helplessness – a low risk operation with a high gain in ruling out any future problems for good.

The evil!Professor*, however, is more of a proponent of orthodox evil. While he can and will acknowledge the basic rationality of evil!Snuka’s approach, he still feels that Snuka’s bereft upbringing has permanently robbed him of an ability to appreciate the finer things in life. Victory is more than the mathematical result of comparing two scores – it must be savored in order to experience it fully. Therefore, the Professor is deeply opposed to dealing death quickly and at the first opportunity. In order to truly destroy an opponent, they must be broken psychologically as well as physically, so it’s necessary to beat them down several times over, crushing their hopes over and over again, until death can be delivered as a sweet relief to them. That, in the Professor’s opinion, is the grand masterpiece every practitioner of evil should properly aspire to.

Snuka, for his part, has a pretty good counter-argument in the very poor historical track record of this orthodox style of evil…but, I guess, orthodoxy wouldn’t be orthodoxy if it was open to counter-arguments…

More on Monday.

*Assuming there is any other kind.

5 Replies to “Evility 101 – Chapter 7, Act 4, Strip 76”

  1. Leaving a theory here:

    While the narrative necessity of having a “good” version and an “evil” version of the same character fight upon meeting is well documented and clearly established, we’ve gotten past that point now. With Team Evil winning, it’s clear that for Good to have any hope of winning, they’ll have to resort to more unorthodox methods.

    But this is a B-movie, so I’m guessing the “more unorthodox method” is going to be just changing the match-ups. It’s the next most narratively logical option, and appears creative enough that script writers can get away with not having to do something more experimental or fresh.

    So with that in mind, my pairings for Team Good to triumph over Team Evil: (Not necessarily what I think is gonna happen, just what I think would lead to a swift victory):

    (Good!) Biff vs. (Evil!) Professor -> The Professor’s greatest weapon against Biff normally is the ability to fail him. I’m not saying its a weapon Biff cares about, but in this world, grades no longer matter. It’s a whole new ballpark, and the weakness of nerds to athletes is well documented. Biff may be female now, but the Evil Professor is down his most effective weapons.

    (Good!) Snuka vs. (Evil!) Gregory -> The power of paladins to act as a bane to the undead is obvious to any DnD player, and an excellent way for a match to play out for a lazy scriptwriter.

    (Good?Ish?) Mopey vs. (Evil!) Biff -> Mopey was always capable of handling Biff. Giving her a defense against physical blows just removes Biff’s one strength against her from the field. As long as it’s not near 4th of July or New Years, Mopey wins.

    (Good!) Professor vs. (Evil?Ish?) -> Snuka: Barbarian vs. Thief? Any DnD player will tell you the Thief is dead meat in a straight up honest fight… which is why thieves avoid honest fights like the plague.

    (Good!) Gregory vs. (Evil!) Mopey -> Let’s be perfectly honest her. Mopey’s greatest weakness is anything overly happy. Gregory’s stage magic is too positive, too flamboyant, and too cheerful to be anything BUT.

    As for Ki’ip and Siri? Honestly, not sure how to factor them in. We already saw Ki’ip lose against the DM, but I’m sure he’s got a role in the plan somewhere…

    1. Well, I can’t yet comment on your theory too much, in order not to give away upcoming developments…but it is a very, very, very interesting theory, indeed. ;D

    2. So, now that the cat is out of the bag, I can congratulate you more fully on your theory – which was, indeed, absolutely correct! Biff’s big idea was nothing else than switching partners to better play off strengths against weaknesses. And not only did you correctly predict that principle, you also correctly guessed some of the pairings (though not all), like today’s fight between good!Snuka and evil!Gregory – for which you also correctly predicted the mechanism by which Snuka would win. And, yeah, it’s really lazy scriptwriting, but that doesn’t diminish your feat at all. Congrats! =D

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