Sometimes an author has questions, and the best person to answer them is YOU. I am eager to hear your thoughts through the poll and comments below!
There are many different types of villains, and we want to know which type is your favorite.
The Question:
Which is your favorite type of villain/antagonist?
Loki, the one that’s so bad yet so funny.
Sauron, the purely evil.
Gold (from Once upon a time) who keeps you guessing which side he’s on.
Professor Snape, the mysterious and anti-hero-ish.
(These are just a few examples, but feel free to add your favorites in the comments section and why you like them.)
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E.E. Rawls Writes 
That is actually a really hard question. I can’t decide! I think it really depends on the type of story, to tell the truth. A Loki wouldn’t work in Middle-Earth… and if your main villain is Snape without a Voldemort/Sauron type of villain your story is generally going to need a very different type of story arc or just be more of a tragedy (imagine Snape without Voldemort or Darth Vader without the Emperor… neither one would have ended up as a villain of any import…) Personally, Darth Vader is my all-time favorite villain, so I guess I’d have to go with the mysterious anti-hero-ish character… but with the caveat that there also needs to be a villain who is pure evil in the same story that they are either working for or competing against in some way.
Fun and thought-provoking question!
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I really like your answer, Jenelle! The story plot is key as to which villain will work best, I agree with you. I can’t imagine Snape without Voldemort or Drath Vader without the Emperor, it just…wouldn’t be the same at all. And I certainly couldn’t picture Loki in a tale of pure tragedy, lol. 😀
Darth Vader is one cool villain that can never be forgotten! (he’s probably mad that I failed to add him to the list, oops.)
With so many different types of villains in stories nowadays, I thought it’d be fun to ask and see what people think. 🙂 Thank you for participating!
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I like Loki (I mean he’s the god of chaos 🙂 ) but my second choice would have been Ruber from Quest for Camelot. He was so magnificently corrupt.
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A little bit of Loki will make any boring day suddenly exciting! (He was my favorite character in the Thor movies. Favorite scene: when he morphed into Captain America saying “God bless America!” LOL.)
Ruber has a scary face, imo, perfect for a villain.
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I struggled to decide on this one. But I think I like to be kept guessing, so I chose Gold. Even though I don’t really know who he is because I can’t get the channel that Once Upon A Time is shown on in the UK, :X
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Gold is a tricky one. He’s gone from bad to good to bad so many times. Maybe they have the show on Hulu or Netflix?
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Not sure. But finances don’t stretch to Netflix at the moment. I wish. Sigh.
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Here Netflix doesn’t have as much as it used to. It seems Hulu is the new thing here. But yes, too much for my budget.
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About to show my age: I miss the days when the good shows made it to terrestrial TV here in the UK. Now, there’s barely anything.
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We used to get a few extra channels with the TV antenna too, but since television in America all went to digital we lost a few.
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I didn’t know America had gone digital as well. Although, thinking about it, I suppose it makes sense. Digital’s not always great.
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Our digital signal keeps breaking up lately, and I’ve no idea why. I don’t know enough about digital signals or what could interfere with it. *sigh*
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A TV aerial guy once told us that trees can be a problem with digital signals, or any tall building/thing. Apparently they’re very sensitive. We don’t get a very good signal, which is why I just watch on demand these days.
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That’s interesting. There are a lot of trees in our area and hills too, so maybe that’s affecting it.
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Maybe. I like trees. But they do get in the way sometimes. 🙂
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I like having trees, especially when they turn pretty colors in the fall. I’m always sad when one has to go.
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I hate seeing them being cut down. Or even the branches trimmed.
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In Italy, our Italian land lords cut our pine tree in half and topped it with tar. It’s something they did a lot around our neighborhood, and we could never figure out why. They cut off the tops of so many trees.
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You lived in Italy?
Poor trees. Maybe they were in the way of someone’s view? Or maybe diseased? Or blocking a signal? There are so many reasons. But it’s always sad to hurt the trees. 😦
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Yep. 🙂 I wrote a One Lovely Blog post about it several years ago, if you’re interested.
No, many of the trees were along walks and parks. There was no reason to cut them except I think they believed it would keep them short. But cutting a tree like that can kill it. The trees in our yard died when the landowners did that. 😦
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I’ll have to find that blog post. 🙂
Poor trees. I wonder if there’s a fashion thing in it – like it’s fashionable for the trees to look short?
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My parents think so. It’s possible they consider it fashionable. 🙂
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Well, if it is, it’s not a nice fashion. I don’t think, anyway.
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I agree, it is not nice. It made me very sad when I was there. I think it was just that town that did this though; I don’t think other towns did.
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That’s good to hear. 🙂
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Honestly, any but Sauron are my type of villain. I was endeared to Loki, Gold and Snape in their respective stories, only because they have so much more depth to them. I think that as long as a villain is more than one dimensional, they’ll make for a decent character. It’s not about how evil they are, it’s about why they’re evil. Though a villain with some moral code (i.e. doesn’t kill innocents, etc.) always makes for a more intriguing character.
Hope that makes sense 🙂
Which is your favourite type of villain?
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I agree, the one dimensional villain can be flat and boring with most stories. I think those types are only good for stories like Lord of the Rings, where they don’t need Sauron to be anything but the great evil. As far as interesting characters go though, I prefer villains with backstory and real emotions. I like how you phrased that, Faith: “It’s not about how evil they are, it’s about why they’re evil.” That’s such a good point you brought up!
Loki and Snape are my favorites. 🙂
Thanks for commenting!
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You know…. I don’t think I have a favorite type of villain. *lol* As long as he or she is believable, sympathetic, and/or has a compelling enough goal, I’ll most likely… well, like him / her as much as I can like an antagonist. That’s all I need, really.
I went back and forth between Loki and Snape on the poll. They’re so different (Loki is arrogant, scheming, and entertaining; Snape is moody and misunderstood), but equally awesome in their own ways. I ended up voting for Snape because I thought he would be an underdog compared to Loki – but right now, they’re tied! 🙂
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I’m tied between those two, as well, even though like you said they’re both so very different. It seems those were the two favorites on the poll too. It’s interesting what will make one villain/antagonist more appealing than another. 🙂
Thanks for joining in the comments!
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Hi Rawls!
I personally really love the bad but funny villains. Loki is one of my favorites. And I think it’s because he’s almost kind of *not* a villain that it makes me like him. Like, he’s human too (or, god, in this case 😛 ), and then you feel kind of sorry for him…I don’t know, that’s my two cents about it. 🙂
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Thanks for commenting, Madeline! I’m divided between Loki and Snape to being my favorites, and I think it’s much for the same reasons you mentioned: Loki is almost not a villain, even if he is prone to doing the wrong thing. He has a likable, funny side and an emotional side which both make him feel more human/realistic. And the last Thor movie had me feeling sorry for him several times. So I get what you mean. I like your two cents about it. 🙂
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I picked Gold, but I prefer villains like Ultron. Logically motivated, very human (or as human as can be), but obviously evil. I don’t like it when villains are too sympathetic if they’re the main villains because sometimes people tend to like them more than the protagonist and that’s a little backwards to me.
storitorigrace.blogspot.com
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That is an interesting point you brought up, Tori. It happens often that we like the villain more than the protagonist (I know I’m guilty), and for me it’s mostly because of sympathy. I think semi villains can get away with it, (Loki, Snape) but I do prefer the main villain of a series to be clearly evil. That’s what I try to do with my stories. I should have added Ultron to the list; nice choice!
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Thank you! This actually inspired a blog post. XD
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Cool! I will go check it out!
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It’s not up yet. Haha. XD
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Oops, Let me know when it is. 😀
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Villains, villains, villains. It really depends on the story for me (and you read my post on the topic, so you know I’ve thought about it a lot).
I love Megamind villains, where they are really silly, almost as much as I love nuanced, more antihero types like Magneto from X-Men. But I strongly agree with Tori here – if I like the villain too much (and that wasn’t the point), it detracts from the story for me. Sympathizing with them is one thing, but rooting for them? That’s a story problem, 90% of the time, unless we’re talking about parodies like Megamind.
In the end, I voted Sauron (I think I’m the only one, lol) because of Tolkien’s whole body of work. Sauron is actually nuanced, attractive, clever, and appears as an angel of light. Of course, it takes a while for his true colors to show. And I like my villains/malefactors to ultimately be someone you would never root for, for obvious reasons.
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Megamind and Magneto, love those baddies! But yeah, those are more parodies where we’re supposed to like them somewhat. But that wouldn’t work for a real hero vs villain type story, so I get what you’re saying. That could detract from the story and from the hero we’re supposed to care about. For that reason I like Sauron types to be the main villain of a story, while Snape types can make good intrigue as partial antagonists. I’m glad someone gave Sauron a vote–he was feeling left out, I’m sure! 😀
Thanks for commenting, Rebekah!
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