Simplifying Villainy

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characters, colorblind, connor rawleigh, novels, villains, writing

Related to, and continuing from, this post.

Sometimes, you can’t even show the villain’s true Intent of Evil, because it’s simply too dark and unpleasant to think about. You know what the villain really means, whether it’s genocide or betrayal or something else entirely, but it’s too horrific to simply come out and bluntly say it. What to do?

You show your characters’ reaction to the potential evil to show how Very Bad it really is. Even when it’s unclear who the villain is, you can still hint at their villainy by having some character have a strong negative reaction to them… (No, Connor, your bad feeling about a certain gentleman is totally unjustified. Honest!)

And sometimes, just showing the reactions and not the event that evoked them can be more impactful than any amount of gruesome detail. (People have very active imaginations.)

When all else fails, in a well-scripted and acted movie, watch the eyes. You can generally guess what a character is thinking. It’s sort of the same thing here. By watching the characters’ reactions, you can guess at the true horror of the villain’s misdeeds.

It’s like that scene where the bad guy shoots someone, but we only see him as he makes the shot, not the grisly results.

Thanks for reading, and God Bless!

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“Big Hero Six” Review!

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big hero six, character development, disney, heroes, marvel, reviews, the avengers, the incredibles, villains, world building

Last week on Sunday, I saw Big Hero Six for the first time. And while it didn’t completely blow me away, instantaneously, like some other films I’ve seen, I thought it was a pretty good movie.

And then, I was sick on Monday and for most of the week. And while I was sick I re-watched it, and went WOW!

Okay, from now on, there will be SPOILERS, so if you have not seen it yet, consider yourself warned.

Sometimes, it seems like Disney movies are always either hit or miss. Sure, they’ve done some movies that are okay, but mostly they either smash or bomb. And just to be kind to Disney, I’m qualifying this as a Disney movie even though technically it’s also Marvel (though it was made by Disney Animation, not Marvel Studios.)

This movie is, first and foremost, a family movie. So much of it is driven by the dynamics of the family, and the movie benefits. Hiro’s relationships with his brother and aunt (Tadashi more than Cass) have lasting impacts on his actions, decisions, and his entire life. This would make it like Disney’s other animated superhero classic, The Incredibles, but the family dynamics in Big Hero Six are different. Rather than being about a more mainstream family that has drifted apart over time and must find out how to come back together, Big Hero Six is about two brothers and an aunt who are very close knit, and then has one member torn from them. As such, it’s somewhat darker and more of a drama than a family comedy.

I had had part of the movie spoiled for me, but I also knew it had to be without receiving any spoilers, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that they didn’t kill off Tadashi almost as soon as they’d introduced him, instead giving him his own hopes and dreams and making him a hero in his own right. More power to you, Big Hero Six.

This movie deals with some pretty heavy stuff for a Disney movie. Personal loss, grief, dark sides, what people are willing to do to other people to get what they want–Hiro is no angel, and at one point his grief drives him to take away what makes Baymax unique, what makes Baymax himself, in order to get back at the villain. However, I was delighted once again–at the end of the movie, Hiro redeems himself, following in his brother’s footsteps to save the daughter of the man who had been trying to kill them.

Now, on to the characters!

I absolutely loved the characters. They were diverse (not just racially), and well-fleshed-out. Wasabi is probably my favorite, though I loved all of them. The filmmakers did an amazing job, especially with Baymax. His almost glitch-y repetition of words and phrases like “Tadashi is here” actually made him seem more human. Also, though his played-for-laughs misunderstandings of metaphor and figures of speech and his expression of the sound of the explosion for a fist bump are funny, they’re even more endearing.

I thought it was amazing, how well Hiro’s grief was expressed by the writers and actors, and the moment when he takes away Baymax’s personality to get what he wants (revenge on Callahan) was gritty and tragic. I am so impressed with how well they did this, and still more impressed by Hiro’s redemptive act, mirroring his brother’s sacrifice earlier in the movie. Too often, people forget to add the necessary balance (aka, adding the redemption to counter the transgression in a hero or keeping a sympathetic villain villainous by having him violate something sacred to the reader), leading to an unbalanced story or an antihero who is completely unlovable, or worse things. Such as a villain who doesn’t drive the story forward because, I don’t know, he’s not really a freaking villain!?! (Sorry, that’s my pet peeve.)

Speaking of villains, while I pretty much predicted who the villain was going to be about halfway between the beginning and the big reveal, I still think Callahan is one of the most compelling villains I have ever seen. Think Inigo Montoya gone badly wrong, out for revenge for his daughter rather than his dad, and you have Callahan. It’s one of the best motivations for a good man gone bad that I can think of, and is compellingly done. One of the quotes, though, was disappointing to me; when talking about Tadashi’s death, Callahan exclaims “Then that was his fault!” or something like that. I thought he cared about Tadashi and would have been more satisfied if Callahan had showed that he, too, felt guilty about Tadashi’s death. Maybe he blamed Krei for that, too? It seems like a waste of potential for character development.

When I first heard about the premise of this movie, I thought it sounded a lot like Iron Man. However, it’s not like Iron Man at all. While the premises (making bionic suits to fight villains) are very similar, the execution is different, and Big Hero Six is entirely innovative. Microbots? Tony Stark has nothing on them. Also, aren’t you glad they didn’t make any Jericho jokes? (Because the Jericho missile played the same role in Iron Man that the microbots did in Big Hero Six.) While there are parallels between the movies, Big Hero Six doesn’t feel like an Iron Man ripoff. In my opinion, Big Hero Six has even more heart (though, about the same amount of style) as Iron Man.

The visuals of this movie are incredible, with a more sleek feel than Iron Man, and the team dynamics are similar, though distinct from, The Avengers. It really feels like a near future sci-fi story, but is realistic enough that you can believe it could happen any day. The setting, San Fransokyo, is actually in California, but it takes place in an alternate history where, after the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco was largely rebuilt by Japanese immigrants, creating a unique, streamlined, Asian-American, city-of-the-future culture. It is so beautiful and believable, you’ll want to take your next vacation there and then be surprised to hear that it’s not a real place.

However, I do have a few issues with elements in this movie. For instance, how did Callahan live after his presumed death? Did he have a separate bank account set up to allow him to lay low after faking his death? In which case, does that mean that the fire was set by Callahan, or was it just a “lucky” accident? Also, Callahan’s use of the microbots seemed a little lackadaisical–if he’s such a robotics genius, why doesn’t he innovate something new to use with them, or figure out a new way to use them, or play around with them a little more?

For another thing, I would have loved to see more of the titular team… you know, acting as a team. Mostly, we just see them operating on their own, coordinating their attacks, but otherwise just working alone, which was sad for me. The teamwork in Avengers was what elevated it above all other movies of its genre, in my opinion, but Big Hero Six is, out of necessity, different. While Avengers always was a team movie, with an equal focus on each character–it was essentially a journey with six equal protagonists–Hiro Hamada is clearly the main focus of Big Hero Six. All his teammates are supporting characters, and while they are autonomous, they aren’t given equal screen time, like the Avengers were. Still, that doesn’t mean that all the characters couldn’t have done more team stuff. (I did like it, when early in the movie, they ended out cancelling out each others’ work because they weren’t being a team. Way to go, Disney, showing that teamwork is necessary!)

Other than that, I did see the Big Plot Twist coming from a mile away, but maybe that’s just because I’m an author and I write Big Plot Twists. Good grief, I’m practically the unchallenged queen of Big Plot Twists! Still, Disney, you’re getting predictable, and I like to be surprised.

Overall, though, my experience was all positive, though, due to the issues I mentioned, I can’t give it five out of five. So I’ll settle for giving it four and a half out of five stars.

(On a side note, if you must cross your crossovers, forget the Big Four (also known as the Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons); I want to see Rise of the Guardians, How to Train Your Dragon, and Big Hero Six crossovers!!!)

Big Hero Six, ladies and gentlemen–the best animated superhero movie since The Incredibles.

How to be a Villain in One Easy Step

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characters, creative writing, story dynamics, villains, writing

I know I’ve already posted on villains, multiple times, but the subject begged just one more treatment. And it probably will, yet again.

When you’re writing a villain–a very evil, nonredeemable villain–there is another good, surefire way, other than having the villain mistreat a helpless person, of getting the villain to seem like a total psychopath and garner hate for him in every corner.

You take something the audience holds as sacred, and then have your villain desecrate it. The more depraved, the better–unless you have to censor it for young audiences. (I may write a post on writing specifically for children later on.)

You may have to build up the one thing that the audience holds as sacred, however; especially if you can not count that they hold similar beliefs as you. It’s better to establish that this is the morality of the novel first before having the villains violate something that is key to it. It’s better to build things up well before trying to use them, I find.

Hope you all enjoyed this post. 🙂 Thanks for reading, and God Bless!

(Oh, and one quick note. I may be a bit remiss in posting for a while, until I get used to the new college campus. Please forgive me if I’m a bit more absent than usual. That’s all.)

Teens Can Write, Too!: Accidental Self-Insertion?

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a wrinkle in time, baroness emma orczy, bbc merlin, bbc sherlock, c.s. forester, characters, doctor who, dreamworks, horatio hornblower, how to train your dragon, j.r.r. tolkien, john flanagan, kung fu panda, kung fu panda 2, long rants, lord of the rings, madeleine l'engle, oh my what a long post, ranger's apprentice, rise of the guardians, star wars, teens can write too blog chain, the clone wars, the scarlet pimpernel, time quintet, villains, writer, writing

Hello, everyone! I’m taking part in the Teens Can Write, Too! Blog Chain once again. Why? Because it’s fun to connect with other bloggers, that’s why!

This month’s prompt is, “Which characters are you most like?” Well, that’s easy. The calculating, logical ones who don’t really “get” emotions. (Yes, really.) It’s seriously freaky, because people like Obi-Wan and Sherlock could be my alter egos. For some reason, though, girls like this are rare… it’s almost like there’s a stereotype that keeps people from writing girls like this. Unequal representation, I say!

More and more, though, I keep finding that the people I’m really most like (at least in my own work) are the villains. Don’t get me wrong, my own personal goals could not be farther from the villains I love to write. I don’t go around in my spare time planning world domination, or plotting how to turn my friends to the Dark Side (nope, no Palpatine for me, thanks!), or just randomly bumping people off. That’s not me.

I think it’s easiest to identify with people like us, which is why there is such variety in character types (put the Doctor, Obi-Wan, Jack Frost, Sherlock, Anakin, and Doctor Watson in a room together and what do you see?). But more and more, I find that my heroes tend to share only facets of my personality and develop minds and personalities all their own. I think that there must be something of the actor in a writer, something that allows them to take on the role of these characters and play them to the best advantage. It’s a rare ability–and perhaps, becoming rarer–to step into somebody else’s shoes, know how they think and act, and then walk a mile in those shoes. But I believe it can be developed–in the interest of compassion, people should take up creative writing as a hobby!

Villains, though, though painful to write, can be frighteningly easy to portray… basically, all you have to do for a villain is to summon up your selfish side, think of the times you hurt someone, and then transfer your self-hate to the villain on your paper. Though villains are characters too, they are mostly characters who slip where the heroes hold firm, and though we hate them for it, it makes them so horribly, frighteningly human, that sometimes it’s hard not to try to make your villain too sympathetic… (Forgive the rambling. I have the flu at the moment.)

I think that we can write because we are both the heroes and the villains of our own stories. It depends on the point of view of the outsider watching, really.

But as to the prompt itself (sorry for the long ramble that you didn’t ask for and probably didn’t want to read), the characters I think I’m most like (apart from the villains), would have to be the ones whom no one sees or can quite understand without some kind of shared intuition, also the ones who are unusually intelligent (though I don’t think I am myself; my IQ test came back as just “gifted”, nothing more. I just know better ways of thought, I guess?) Thus, I identify very closely with characters who tend to be more intelligent, or think differently than the people around them. Characters like Charles Wallace Murry…

If only we could still call on Asa Butterfield for this one. Gah. I HEREBY DISOWN THIS MOVIE AND DESIRE FOR A BETTER ONE TO BE MADE.

Sherlock…

Okay, not so much with this one, but I have been known to randomly make deductions about people.

Hornblower…

I just had to pick the one with this expression. D’awwwwwwww!

(For those who do not know Mr. Hornblower [and I pity thee!], he’s a British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars and later, and is known for risky but brilliant strategies. I also identify with him because he consistently self-depreciates in his own mind, and I know just how that feels.)

And last but not least, Obi-Wan (and not just because he’s a misunderstood intellectual–I think I posted about that here… but because of the amount of grief he had to put up with from Anakin and other people besides. He’s sort of the older brother character in Star Wars, and I’m the oldest sibling, and I certainly can relate to all the nonsense he had to put up with.)

Yes, Rosalie, I borrowed your image. MWHAHAHAHAHA.

But there are other characters, too… Merlin, because, well, social awkwardness… need I say more?

Poor Merlin. The Master of Awkward. (Don’t we all feel like this sometimes?!)

Will from Ranger’s Apprentice!

Yes, I know this is certainly someone’s fan art… sawry….

I think I identify with Will because his coming of age story is very much one that we all understand… And I think I have the same sense of humor… Anyone else getting the feeling of deja vu?

No, I couldn’t pick just one. This is awesome fan art. Seriously. (And it doesn’t look like it’s copycatted from Lord of the Rings… wheeeee! ;-P)

Speaking of Lord of the Rings…

Sam is down-to-earth and loyal, and though I’m not really like Sam when it’s the down-to-earth bit, but I try to support my friends the same way he supports Frodo.

Teehee….

The main reason I’m putting this here is because I love the relationship development between Hiccup and his father, but the other reason is because I share Hiccup’s curiosity and eagerness to learn. Maybe not so much his inventiveness and willingness to accept and create new traditions, but still.

Okay, I know I should probably include some girls in here… grrr…

Marguerite Blakeney!

Because! (Actually, this is probably the one female character whom I am most like. She’s bright and intelligent and clever and tries to fix her mistakes and she gets to work with her husband saving lives!!! Okay, I’ll admit it. Percy and Marguerite is my real OTP.)

Ahsoka Tano!!!

“Snips” is the queen of sarcasm, and she’s a teenager who’s a Jedi and growing up in a war and totally gets teenager problems! Seriously. If Marguerite is my grown-up side, then Ahsoka is my teenaged, sassy, warrior-maiden side.

Padme!

Yes, Padme, purple is your color. (I still hate this dress, though.)

Like Obi-Wan, she had to put up with a ridiculous amount of grief, because Anakin is an idiot. (I don’t actually blame her for thinking that she might be able to change that… Whoopsie, unintentional Merlin quote…) I admire Padme because she’s courageous and willing to stand up for things other people don’t stand up for. But like the rest of us, she’s human and makes wrong decisions. And she’s actually a mature person. (Anyone else feel like something was missing from Revenge of the Sith?)

Mary Morstan Watson!!!!

I never did get a good look at this dress…

Talk about strong female characters! Mrs. Watson could quite literally wipe the floor with several of the guys in Sherlock. (I’m not specifying who, though…) Former CIA, assassin… And a lady who makes mistakes, but still tries to rectify them. (Noticing a pattern here?)

And last but not least, Tigress!

Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda II (deliberately taking them as one piece here) was a boon. Not only did it have a better plot than a bunch of other recent movies, it also had female leads (Viper, as well as Tigress) who were strong without overwhelming the male characters (which is a problem, in my opinion, equal to the lack of strong female leads in the first place!), funny without making racy jokes (TAKE THAT, SEXISM!), and, especially in Tigress’ case, had a strong character arc and were good at giving relationship advice, besides! (Added to that, the sequel actually lived up to–and even surpassed–the first movie. Will DreamWorks’ next KFP movie live up to its predecessors? Only time will tell…)

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post!

5th – http:// semilegacy.blogspot.com/

6th – http://thelittleenginethatcouldnt.wordpress.com/

7th – http://nasrielsfanfics.wordpress.com/

8th – http://sammitalk.wordpress.com/

9th – http://musingsfromnevillesnavel.wordpress.com/

10th – http://irisbloomsblog.wordpress.com/

11th – http://www.brookeharrison.com/

12th – http://miriamjoywrites.com/

13th – http://uniquelyanonymous.wordpress.com/

14th – https://erinkenobi2893.wordpress.com/

15th – http://novelexemplar.wordpress.com/

16th – http://nutfreenerd.wordpress.com/

17th – http://unikkelyfe.wordpress.com/

18th – http://writers-place-for-you.blogspot.de/

19th – http://roomble.wordpress.com/

20th – https://taratherese.wordpress.com/

21st – http://thependanttrilogy.wordpress.com/

22nd – http://freeasagirlwithwings.wordpress.com/

23rd – http://butterfliesoftheimagination.wordpress.com/

24th – http://theweirdystation.wordpress.com/

25th – http://teenageink.wordpress.com/

26th – http://www.adventuringthroughpages.wordpress.com/

27th – http://randommorbidinsanity.blogspot.com/

28th – http://missalexandrinabrant.wordpress.com/

29th – http://dynamicramblings.wordpress.com/

and http://thelonglifeofalifelongfangirl.wordpress.com/

30th – http://fantasiesofapockethuman.blogspot.com/

and http://www.turtlesinmysoup.blogspot.com/

31st – http://theedfiles.blogspot.com/

and http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com/ (We’ll announce the topic for next month’s chain)

The Random-Guy-Who-Has-Nothing-To-Say

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authors, characters, insanity, jane austen, mrs. bennet, pride and prejudice, villains

If he gets boring, you can just kill him off.

Nah, just kidding.

It seems that every story has one of these dorks. Even unintentional ones. You know the type… people who have absolutely nothing to say and yet won’t stop talking. At. All. He’s a cousin of the guy who is utterly ridiculous (like Mrs. Bennet, blaming other people for things that are all her fault, and being stupid about everything, not being able to be serious and think clearly about anything, and just being obnoxiously empty-headed), and as such, he is far more likely to drive you insane than be boring. This guy is determined to point out the obvious, yell at innocent people for stuff that is most definitely not their fault, and make things even harder–and sometimes even worse–than they should be, by rights. As such, he may become the Unintentional Villain. He is doubtless the one to tell the insecure character (whose fault it really is not) “This is all your fault!” and get a punch in the face from the protective friend who really doesn’t want the insecurities of the other character made worse. This guy is a genius at making things worse. He’s outrageous. He’s ridiculous. He’s completely impossible. (Why am I doing this post, again? :-P)

Is that why people actually like him?

Instant Hate Boxed Mix: Just Add Water

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authors, brian jacques, characters, dave wolverton, jude watson, redwall, star wars, story dynamics, villains

There is one really surefire, patented quick way to create instant hate for a villain in a reader. Now, while there are no formulas in writing, there are still good ideas… and conversely, there are bad ideas.

If you want instant hate, here’s the quick simple way: Have the character who must be hated be cruel or unkind to a harmless and/or helpless character, like a child, an elderly lady, or an animal that can’t defend itself.

There are other ways of doing this, though, but they take time. I suppose you could go the way of hate by association, or use the opinion of a main or more-beloved character to sway that of your readers’, but this is the best way. It’s especially brilliant if the main character starts out rather pathetic and helpless, because then you can kill two birds with one stone; introduce the main conflict AND get the hate started at one time! Jude Watson does this in the Jedi Apprentice books; she has Xanatos sell a young Obi-Wan into slavery in the second book. WHILE HE IS UNCONSCIOUS. Whoa. Instant evil. Instant hate.

Dave Wolverton, in the first book of the same series, introduced Bruck Chun differently; I always thought Bruck was redeemable, because instead of pulling the wings off of baby birds, the first time we saw Bruck he was engaged in a semi-serious rivalry against Obi-Wan. And Bruck Chun always struck me as ultimately redeemable. Nota bene: Bruck did not torment a “helpless” creature. We did not hate him, just disliked him. Hence, dislike and perhaps disgust, but not hate. Ultimately redeemable.

But then when Jude Watson came back with the same series, later on, Bruck threatened a young Bant Eerin who was chained to the bottom of a pool and drowning. Extremely helpless. Now, we hate him.

When we see Feragho the Assassin the first time, he’s just murdered the parents of two young badgers, and says “leave them to die.” Evil. The second time we see him: he chops a grasshopper in half and laughs cruelly. Despicable. Instantly hated.

This is harder to do in stories in which we don’t meet the main villain until we’re in the second act of the story, but it’s still possible. An evil minion torments a helpless creature. Voila! Hatred by proxy!

Now, why am I saying this? It’s simple. As authors, part of what we do is we manipulate our readers’ emotions through word choice, slight expressions, other little tricks such as using shorter words to lead up to confrontations, leaving our readers breathless. We put our own twist, our little spin, on simple, objective situations, give them objective meaning. We play around with people’s feelings, and then they thank us for it (though, to be absolutely honest, it’s kind of a love/hate relationship.) We are the masters of how the reader perceives our little worlds, and they only doubt us if we do it poorly, so it’s well worth while to do it right.

Instant Boxed Hate Mix: Just Add Water.

A Good Hero Is… Idiosyncratic

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anti-heroes, bbc sherlock, characters, heroes, j.r.r. tolkien, lord of the rings, madeleine l'engle, sherlock holmes, star wars, story dynamics, villains

Heroes… or protagonists… (yes, we heard you the first time, Sherlock!) must be unique. They must stand apart from the common herd in some way or another. Whether it’s shooting walls, being able to kythe, being able to resist the corruption of a Ring for well over a thousand pages, being an orphan, or the mentor of the Chosen One who is quite the Master in his own right, a hero is distinguished. A hero is idiosyncratic. A hero thinks for himself and doesn’t necessarily care (at least, by the end of the book!) what other people think about him or her.

Now, fellow authors, we are the lucky ones. We don’t have to make our characters look different from other people in the book (though, this can be a bonus at times), because we can use personality, ways of speaking, the thoughts running through their funny little brains, and so forth in millions of different ways to set our characters apart. They may be comparable to other characters and people in real life, but they actually stand alone when it comes down to just sheer feel.  Movie writers don’t have this same advantage. They can’t go inside people’s heads in quite the same way that we can. Acting and television and plays for screen and stage present a very separate set of challenges. They have to set their characters apart visually and auditorily, using things such as hair color, limps, injuries, scars, having one person who’s obviously Irish among a crowd of Germans, having one Caucasian amid a crowd of Arabs, separate languages, and/or accents. These things can be an advantage to us who write books, but we don’t need them as desperately as those who write screenplays.

Sometimes, though, we must be careful of making our characters too unique, or overly powerful, or even the most sad and downtrodden. We’re trying to be realistic, so we really can’t afford to overdo it. This is one of the cases when less really can be more. One or two originalities? That’s good. Two or three? Just fine. But five or ten? That just might be too much.

Sometimes, it can just be enough to have the protagonist have a moral compass, especially if everyone around them is compromising their morals left and right. It may be enough to just have the protagonist be the most passionate when it comes to The Cause. It may be enough to have them love their family.

Even heroes need a reason.

I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for a moment that I am one of them.

–Sherlock

The Moral Compass

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anti-heroes, baroness emma orczy, despicable me, dreamworks, heroes, madeleine l'engle, rise of the guardians, star wars, story dynamics, the scarlet pimpernel, villains

Today I’m writing about what makes a hero a hero. There are two prime qualities that make a hero really a hero: 1) compassion and 2) a strong moral compass. Seek ye first these, and all the others shall be added unto you. You can not be a hero without having these. If you lack one, then you can be a protagonist or anti-hero. And even anti-heroes have their ethical sense.

For instance, if you see someone who is not very nice, you won’t like them at all, right? But someone who is perfect is boring. So here’s the happy medium: Someone with strong moral principles (or with at least some moral principles) who doesn’t live up to them all the time.

If you were to write someone who was completely despicable (unlike Gru, who has a lovable side! ;-D), no one would want to hear about it. If you were to write about someone who was far from perfect and could in fact be rather obnoxious and horrid, but tried to be better, then you have a wonderful anti-hero who people would follow, come hell or high water. There must be a redeeming quality; your protagonist must know when to stop (unless, of course, you want them to turn into the villain. And more often than not, the redeeming quality turns out to be some sort of moral code.

Every hero is, in some sense, an anti-hero. A good hero has flaws. For instance, Charles Wallace can be prideful. Obi-Wan Kenobi tends to use his head when he should be using his heart. Sir Percy Blakeney has trust issues. And don’t even start me on Jack Frost. 😛 But you have to add “hero” to the “anti.” And then, when you’ve done that… you’ve made the master stroke.

Enjoy the anti-heroes, people. 😉

The Top Ten: Villains

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baroness emma orczy, bbc merlin, bbc sherlock, brian jacques, c.s. lewis, dreamworks, jane austen, kung fu panda, kung fu panda 2, mattimeo, mossflower, rise of the guardians, robert louis stevenson, sable quean, sense and sensibility, star wars, the last battle, the pearls of lutra, the scarlet pimpernel, top ten, treasure island, villains

Well, while we were on the way to the March for Life, Iris and I made up some lists of the Top Ten Villains. We didn’t make up ones for the heroes, but we have two lists of the Top Ten Villains; one with the theme “Villains Who Deserve a Punch in the Face”, and one with the theme “Villains Who Are Strangely Attractive.” FYI: Xanatos is not on either of these lists for the simple reason that, though he is amazing as a villain, I was recently introduced to good Xanatos by Iris, and Xanatos as a hero far outshines Xanatos as a villain. Now, for the top ten!

Villains Who Deserve a Punch in the Face

10. Tai Lung (Kung Fu Panda)

9. Lucy Steele (Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

8. Zwilt the Shade (Sable Quean [no, not a spelling error!], by Brian Jacques)

7. Tsarmina (Mossflower, by Brian Jacques)

6. Sidious (Star Wars)

5. Slagar the Cruel (Mattimeo, by Brian Jacques)

4. Gabrielle Damien (The Scarlet Pimpernel: Mademoiselle Guillotine)

3. Grand Moff Tarkin (Star Wars)

2. Charles Augustus Magnusson (Sherlock)

1. Shift the Ape (Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis)

I must admit, it was a close run between Magnusson and the Ape for Best of Worst, but the Ape won out. He was just too eeeeeeeevil to pass up!!! And if the characters from Redwall kind of swept the board, what can I say? Brian Jacques is awesome.

Now, to quote Sherlock on all these villains:

You. Repel. Me.

For the Top Ten Villains who had a strange fascination, they had a bit more of a run for their money. It was hard to pick just ten. Most of these villains are more sophisticated, and also are very good at mind games. I love this kind of villain. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the quiet, sophisticated ones always seem more dangerous, because they have less bluster and thus, threaten very effectively; you just know they’re about to do something very bad and very evil. A blusterer is easy to block out, but someone in a deadly calm… that’s another thing altogether.

Now, for the next Top Ten!

Villains Who Are Strangely Attractive

10. Pitch Black (Rise of the Guardians)

9. Lord Shen (Kung Fu Panda 2)

8. Vilaya (The Sable Quean, by Brian Jacques)

7. Darth Maul (Star Wars)

6. Long John Silver (Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

5. Ublaz (The Pearls of Lutra, by Brian Jacques)

4. Nimueh (Merlin)

3. Chauvelin (The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Emma Orczy)

2. Count Dooku (Star Wars)

1. Moriarty (Sherlock)

Again, we have more villains from Redwall than any other book or series… *sigh*

It was easy to compile these guys, but harder to put them in order. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my two lists of the Top Ten! Thanks for reading, and God Bless!