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Please tell me who you see as the most interesting Villains in SF/F...


Horatz

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It doesn't matter if they have any cool powers, as long as their (his)story and/or personality was interesting to you.

For me, it is probably Moridin; I mean, how often do you see somebody turn to evil because it has the better philosophical arguments?

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It doesn't matter if they have any cool powers, as long as their (his)story and/or personality was interesting to you.

For me, it is probably Moridin; I mean, how often do you see somebody turn to evil because it has the better philosophical arguments?

The proble with a really good, well written villain is that usually the author can't resist leading them on some kind of redemption arc or just making their perspective so damn sensible they're not really a villain any more. Jordan actually resists this fairly well, that I recall.

Littlefinger is a great villain.

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From stuff I've read recently, I was a big fan of Brandin from Tigana, and despite my complaining elsewhere in this forum I mostly enjoyed

Bayaz

from The First Law trilogy. Random villain that comes to mind...Baron Harkonnen. Gollum is up there in villain pantheon. Also I second Littlefinger.

Datepalm is right though, an interesting villian will often tread the line into not so villainous territory. In a lot of the books I'm thinking through, there often isn't someone I can pick out as a definite villain.

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The first that spring to mind are a couple (or maybe even three?) out of the First Law trilogy, who I can't name cos you spend much of the series thinking they're good guys, and I wish to avoid spoilers. Otherwise, let's see...

Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible has a (proper comicbook) supervillain as the main character, and is accordingly awesome.

Lilith out of Pratchett's Witches Abroad is an interesting idea of Fairy Godmother As Villainess

...damn, there's gotta be more than that...

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...damn, there's gotta be more than that...

Yeah, i'm really stuck. Pratchett has some decent ones - Mr. Teatime comes to mind. The last Culture Book - Surface Detail - had a straight up villain in Veppers, but he wasn't really all that interesting. Um....most Disney villains tend to steal the show - Scar, Frollo, the voodoo guy in Princess and the Frog...

Oh, in The Quntum Thief where the villain turns out to be

the hero himself

was a nice bit, but for the most bit he wasn't much of a presence.

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Banks has some memorable villains, but mostly they are of the cackling cartoon variety (hitting an all-time low with the EV0L AMERICANS in Garbadale). Villains with a bit of nuance or with developed characters are much harder to come by. Saruman, perhaps?

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Banks has some memorable villains, but mostly they are of the cackling cartoon variety (hitting an all-time low with the EV0L AMERICANS in Garbadale). Villains with a bit of nuance or with developed characters are much harder to come by. Saruman, perhaps?

Oh man, I'm reminded of the Use of Weapons. Now that was a great villain.

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Steerpike from Titus Groan and Gormenghast (Not the TV version!). For one thing he's the main protagonist of TG, for another he's quite logical in a world of mad people, and yet despite all this he is still a completely evil person. In particular, for the great scene where he talks to Fuschia about how all men should be equal and free - the words sound fine, but you know if he's saying it there's inevitably something sinister underneath.

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Oh yeah, another: Carcer from Terry Pratchett's Night Watch. Pratchett's villains aren't always as memorable as his protagonists (though when they work they work well - Teatime's been mentioned, and Vorbis is a good one too) but the total smirking bastard that is Carcer is one of the many reasons why Night Watch is my favourite Discworld.

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Definitely Steerpike, he's ruthless, extremely competent, master of manipulation and plotting and also a badass assassin when he had to resort to that. But at least in the first book it's hard for the reader not to be sympathetic to him despite his ruthlessness, given the oppressive regime and the rigid class system he was fighting against, even if this was for his selfish reasons.

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A top ten:

1. Satan (Paradise Lost: John Milton)

2. Lord Foul (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Stephen Donaldson)

3. Lord Gro (The Worm Ouroboros: E.R. Eddison)

4. Smeagol/Gollum (The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien)

5. Steerpike (Gormenghast: Mervyn Peake)

6. Glotka (The First Law: Joe Abercrombie)

7. Ineluki (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: Tad Williams)

8. General Woundwort (Watership Down: Richard Adams)

9. The Mule (Foundation: Isaac Asimov)

10. Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray: Oscar Wilde)

Kellhus (Bakker) is too unclassifiable, and Shakespeare's great villains (Iago, Richard III, Claudius, Lady Macbeth) aren't really "fantasy" (cameos by witches and ghosts notwithstanding).

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6. Glotka (The First Law: Joe Abercrombie)

No way is Glotka a straight up villain. We spend most of the book sympathising with his goals, if not his methods, and at the end he's downright nice.

I wouldn't count the chairmaker in Use of Weapons either,

since it retroactively turns out the whole book was his redemption arc.

Why can't people just stay bad?

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Am I the only one who thinks Pratchett can't write villains for shit? They tend to be incredibly one-dimensional.

Comic book villains I love:

Dr. Doom: He's smart, but so incredibly crippled by his own personal flaws. He's gota badass look that remains iconic, he's petty and vindictive and arrogant as few are, but he still has a twisted sense of honor. And despite being such a despicable human being he's not really a bad ruler...

Magneto: In many ways the opposite of Dr. Doom. While Doom is a person whose bad personality ends up making him act in a way that is almost noble, Magneto is a fundamentally good guy with good goals driven far over the edge by personal experiences. The most triumphant example of the well-intentioned extremist.

Galactus: He's a nigh unstoppable force that operates on a scale ordinary humans cannot comprehend, and yet he is a slave to the most basic of desires: Hunger. He is older than the universe and will destroy everything you love and care for... And despite this he is an integral part of the working of the universe.

From anime:

Orochimaru from Naruto, honestly this guy operates purely based on style. Kishimoto managed to make him just absolutely repulsive. He pukes snakes that pukes swords! There's just no aspect of the guy that isn't repulsive. He's not competent or sympatethic: Just disgusting and we love him for it.

From SF:

The Mule: The man who single-handedly almost derailed the Great Plan. The refutation of psychohistory and the idea that yes, one man can change history. And also a sad, pathethic creature whom you cant help but sympathize with.

From Fantasy:

I can't actually think of many good fantasy villains. I do have a soft spot for Grey Seer Thanquol from the Warhammer seting though, he's utterly despicable, combining boot licking with arrogance, complete untrustworthiness, has no compunctions about sacrificing his allies, and genera sleaziness. He'll betray anyone if he thinks it's to his advantage, and this his selfishness arguably makes him oneof the greatest obstacles to the goals he claims to pursue.

EDIT: And yes, Lord Foul. The only "incarnation of evil" I ever found credible.

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No way is Glotka a straight up villain. We spend most of the book sympathising with his goals, if not his methods, and at the end he's downright nice.

Which is what makes him an awesome villain: the fact that the guy can commit such unpleasant acts and still attract the sympathy of the reader. I briefly considered leaving him out due to him being more of an anti-hero than a villain, but then I realised the same point could be arguably made about Milton's Satan (especially given that Milton's God comes across like a four year old who is annoyed someone else is playing with his toy soldiers).

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Am I the only one who thinks Pratchett can't write villains for shit? They tend to be incredibly one-dimensional.

Agreed. The problem, I think, is that given that with some rare exceptions (the Auditors, the Queen of the Elves, and Lord Rust are the only ones I can think of off-hand), Pratchett villains are generally one-book-wonders: Pratchett's best characters (Death, Granny Weatherwax, Vetinari, etc) take multiple books to develop.

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