Author: Alex Clark (---.pennswoods.net)
Date: 08-23-2003 23:36
>[The evil genius] sees his struggle with the Hero as an epic duel of >wits, and even provides hints and clues to help the Hero keep up.
There's something else about the evil genius's psychology that's worth taking into account here. In order to be an evil genius, one needs to have a hugely inflated ego. But no matter how it's inflated, the ego is only part of the mind. And the more inflated it gets, the less respect it will have for the unconscious mind. So there is bound to be something in the unconscious mind that wants to restore balance.
One way to try to accomplish this is to have the ego cut down to size by the opposition. So the evil genius is prone to odd lapses that make the hero's job easier. This could be anything from gloating before the victory is secured, to oversleeping as a deadline approaches, to risking getting caught for an unnecessary petty crime on a secret mission. In any case, it should not be anything that is carefully planned for the effect that it actually has. If the lapse is part of the plan, then it will appear to be the least justified part of the plan, the part that the evil genius makes lame excuses for including.
And ideally, such lapses should be quite obviously dangerous and self-defeating once you get past the excuses. The unconscious mind isn't so likely to make the kind of careful and detailed plan that the evil genius is known for. It's going to go for the kind of plan that a wild animal would understand, even though it might slip right under the radar screen of a sophisticated human.
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