Question of the week: favorite fictional villain?
Welcome to Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics.
This week’s question: what is your favorite fictional villain?
The inspiration for this question was that I saw a writer complaining about how hard it is to write a book without a villain. It’s not impossible, of course – the conflict of the story might be Man Vs. Nature or two people competing in a sporting event on equal footing – but it is easier to write a book with a villain. And, of course, really memorable villains often become popular characters.
For myself, I think my favorite fictional villain would be Grand Admiral Thrawn from the HEIR TO THE EMPIRE trilogy. He’s an interesting contrast to Darth Vader and the Emperor from the original movies – he’s just as capable of being ruthless as they are, but it’s not his first choice the way it is with someone like Darth Vader. The Emperor and Vader relied on the Force, but Thrawn uses logic and deduction. What he usually does is studies his opponent’s artwork or the style of artwork they favor, deduce their psychological blind spots from that study, and then builds attacks around those blind spots that his opponents will not (indeed, cannot) see coming. He takes the remnants of the Empire from the brink of defeat to the verge of total victory during the trilogy.
I think it works because while HEIR TO THE EMPIRE is still STAR WARS, Thrawn is a completely different kind of villain than Darth Vader & the Emperor, while nonetheless being just as formidable. One way to make your characters more sympathetic is to have them go up against a strong, competent villain.
-JM
King Haggard in The Last Unicorn Evil, unfathomable, and dangerous. I can believe he adopted a foundling, at that.
If I have to limit it to one I would have to go with Megatron, you have to be an iconic villain to still be the main bad guy after 40 years.
Honorable mention to Scorpius from Farscape, he was only supposed to be in a few episodes at the end of season 1 but was so good he became the main villain.
Voldemort.
I like villains to be simple: the embodiment of evil, evil from the moment they were born, never wavering from evil and with no chance for redemption.
But I prefer “the villain” to be “the system” and/or “human nature.” For example, in your Ghost Exile book 1, there are some bad guys, but since it’s not known at that point that there’s a supervillain behind the scenes (Callatas), Caina is fighting the system (corruption, slavery, etc. of Istarinmul) and the bad guys are bad because of human nature and the system. And that’s a great book, one of my favorites!
I am a big fan of Marvel comic books and they have both of my favorite villains, Doctor Doom and Magneto because they are both well written personalities and are perfect examples of people with power who will do whatever evil thing it takes to rectify evil conditions in their lives that they have personally survived.
I like Magneto best in his heroic mode. In Chris Claremont’s hands.
Loki! Knew from the first scene alone that I was gonna love him. He’s complex, well-layered, unpredictable, funny and charismatic — everything I love in a villain. The show makes him a hero by the end, but I’ve loved Loki in every form — villain, anti-hero and hero.
Jumping back from your superhero question:
Harley Quinn in „Birds of Prey – The Emancipation of Harley Quinn”.
If you don’t watch the whole movie AND like female fronted metal bands:
Watch: “Beyond The Black – Some Kind of Monster” on YouTube