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


Horatz

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The guy who did morally ambiguous a long time ago is Glenn Cook. I LOVED the bleak nature of the Black Company novels, and really liked the way he did the 'Ten Who Were Taken.' Even the names were great, the Limper, the Howler.

I have to second this. The Taken made for some really great villains, mostly because their villainitude (it's a word) was sort of tailored to each of them. Soulcatcher was through-and-through evil and manipulative, and wouldn't be outright dangerous to the protagonists as much as use them as pawns in the game. The Limper on the other hand had a deep-seated personal vendetta against the Company, and was thoroughly psychotic to boot so he was scary in an entirely different way. It's a good sign when I, as the reader, go "Oh fuck, it's The Limper" when he appears.

And one of my favourite villains of all time? Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Four stones, four crates, zero stones, ZERO CRATES!.

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You'll need to read Banks's Use of Weapons to find out...

stand alone book or series?

and if we are counting comics the Corinthian from early sandman is scary.

sorry for lack of caps< typing one handed due to sleeping baby.

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Randall Flagg is quite the bastard.

I did like the way that King implied there was this same exuberant force of chaotic evil across all universes and time periods, just waiting for apocalyptic moments like that to gain power. And all with the same initials! Makes me wonder which other R.F. had pissed him off so epically to merit such a cameo :lol:

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Ineluki, the Stormking (Memory, Sorrow & Thorn) - In many ways the anti-Sauron (and that's no coincidence). Here we have a tragic villain whose grudge against humanity actually has a point. Like any self-respecting Big Bad Ineluki is seething with hatred and bent on genocide and destruction, but we can understand where he's coming from. Kudos to Tad Williams for pulling that off.

I atually would have chosen Pyrates over Ineluki. Like you pointed out, the reader can empathize Ineluki, not so much with Pyrates. He is like a much more intelligent and devious Gregor Clegane minus the physical prowes but probably much more dangerous. An early scene involving him and a puppy stuck with me and cemented his place as one of the villians I dislike the most.

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I atually would have chosen Pyrates over Ineluki. Like you pointed out, the reader can empathize Ineluki, not so much with Pyrates. He is like a much more intelligent and devious Gregor Clegane minus the physical prowes but probably much more dangerous. An early scene involving him and a puppy stuck with me and cemented his place as one of the villians I dislike the most.

Oh, Pryrates certainly scores higher in the "love to hate" category. I think he's an excellent villain, in his own way, it's just that I prefer Ineluki's tragic backstory to Pryrates's evil for evil's sake.

And yeah, the puppy scene was brutal. :(

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  • 1 year later...

The most interesting villain? Warmaster Jha'dur, known as Deathwalker, from the series Babylon 5. Why? She relishes in what she has done, and in an attempt to prove everyone has the capacity for evil, has many worlds bidding for the result of her research, a formula for immortality. The catch is The key ingredient in the [serum] cannot be synthesized; it must be taken from living beings. 'For one to live forever, another one must die. You will fall upon one another like wolves. It'll make what we did pale by comparison. The billions who live forever will be a testimony to my work, and the billions who were murdered to buy that immortality will be the continuance of my work. Not like us? You will become us".

ETA: My apologies, I saw the topic title, but failed to note it was in literature instead of entertainment.

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And the House/ darkness thing, from House of Leaves. IDK if it is a villain- but it is definitely the antagonist- the thing that challenges and confronts and threatens the reader. Fear of the unknown at its best.

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Yeah, having read Use of Weapons, the Chairmaker wins the thread.

This thread put Banks on my radar.

That said, Gloka may still top my list.

Edit: Granted, I am only halfway through the second book of the series, but Abraham may have a candidate for this list in his Dagger and Coin series. So far, VERY interesting.

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