Spoiler for like, any book existing.
I think mine has to be the villain in Mirror Man. Idk, he wasn’t intimidating, he wasn’t interesting. He was meh.
Also the villains from The Chain. Dear God they weren’t sympathetic in the slightest. The book tries to act like they were atleast pitiful but FROM THEIR INCEPTION, they were just evil assholes who enjoyed causing pain. The book itself wasn’t all that great anyways.
You must log in or register to comment.
Iago from Othello. He did so much damage and it’s not even clear why. I love hating him.
Because he felt slighted by the attention Othello was receiving.
He’s an awesome, relatable villain. Excellent choice!
I worry if you find Iago relatable… he’s pretty damn irredeemable in pretty much every way.
Isn’t he simply envious and jealous, probably because he feels inferior to Othello? No great ambition, no wrong done against him, simply basic hateful feelings getting the best of him because he perceives himself to be less worth.
That’s what is so great about him, it is very real life-like, I’ve known people like this or have been told about them from other people’s experiences.
Isn’t he simply envious and jealous, probably because he feels inferior to Othello?
He never actually explains his true motivation, which is why he’s such a great villain. His last line:
“Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word.“
Jealousy is a common interpretation. But there are also hints he might be sexually attracted to Othello. Or hated him because he was a Moor. Or maybe he just did it because he’s a sociopath and he wanted to.
Torments will ope his lips.
Bruh that boy/man who chopped/used/reduced his giving tree to a goddamn STUMP is an underrated villain. What an asshole.
I hated that book
Ahh, the Shel Silverstein classic, ‘The Taking Kid’.
That tree really needed to learn to say ‘No’.
For both the case of most evil and poorly written I have to go with Deloris Umbridge. She is such a bad stain on an otherwise entertaining series. She is so dumb, and the plot of her book so infuriatingly terrible that on rereads of the Harry Potter series I generally skip OotP.
You’ll get downvoted, but its true. OOTP is a terrible book, and in large part because of that flatly written character.
Yeah, I can see the see the down votes pouring in all ready.
For both most evil and least deserving of any sympathetic character arc it’s Snape
The guy was a teacher and a disgusting bully to little kids, became a nazi when he couldn’t get the girl he wanted was terrible to a little kid who lost both of his parents,and SO MUCH MORE, but Rowling still gave him his sympathetic villain arc at the end as if it excused any of the awful shit he did early on
Don’t you have it backwards? The guy became antifa because he couldn’t get the girl.
Judge Holden from Blood Meridian. Nasty fellow.
“Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
Like Prince Andrew with the whole no sweating thing
He lives rent free in my head
Let’s hang the turd!!!
On the money
Agreed. He’s the only character that truly disturbed me.
He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
The most disturbing thing about his whole philosophy on war is that it kinda seems like he’s right. Certainly no other character is able to articulate any kind of substantive objection.
of course they can. the kid looks him straight in the fucking face and tells him “you ain’t nothin”. what else is there to say?
Uh, I don’t consider that a substantive philosophical rebuttal
I disagree completely - it’s the only reasonable rebuttal to the judge.
Straff Venture from Mistborn is a complete bastard.
Shout out to my mans Toriel Saddeas. Man was willing to sacrifice the entire human race just for the sake of his own political power. >! When he revealed his big scheme and Adolin just wastes him, I had to cheer. Some guys you can’t bother with. !<
Oathbringer: >!When his body is found and someone (Sebarial’s mistress?) calls it a solved problem, I just had to laugh. Because they were absolutely right.!<
I’d say Straff and Sadeas are on different planes of evil. The kind of power grabbing and short sided evil Sadeas is very common. Straff on the other hand is a massive sadist who enjoys torment and torture for its own sake. For all that he’s a snake Sadeas never really does anything out of pure malice, it’s just good politics in his head.
Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Just a dead-eyed killer indifferent to any human suffering - even his own.
Protagonist and also a villain, Humbert Humbert from Lolita is just the worst.
I wouldn’t call him a protagonist
Protagonist=/=good guy, just the main character who acts as the lens through which we see the story.
So is Nick the protagonist of gatsby even though it’s really mostly written about his observations of gatsby and others?
Yes, he is the lense, everything we see is through his perspective. And in the end, we learn his take away from all these events.
I had to read that book in college. I fucking hate that book.
There are many absolutely despicable villains in the literary world, but I agree Humbert is one of the absolute worst. I read Lolita ages ago and I’m still repulsed to this day.
It still baffles me how it gets misconstrued as a “love story” in popular culture
Literally no one calls it that, what?
It does?
What did he do
I never liked that guy!
Came here to say this one
Most insufferable character of all time.
I recently read Lolita and disagree. He’s incredibly evil but I think you’d need to be a mass murderer to even be considered for the most evil. He actually backed out of drowning charlotte earlier in the book (although he was for sure involved in her later death) and I don’t think everyone would have that same hesitation. I’m a new reader and struggle to name worse characters but I’d say the wizard from wicked takes it. Or someone like Cthulhu if you want to take that approach. Humbert Humbert is scary because he’s a more grounded and realistic evil but there’s constraints that come with the realism
Julia from Seveneves. Utterly selfish, out of her league, and uses her one skill to corrupt and ruin things for everyone else.
Someone else that enjoyed that book in the wild? Unusual.
Since you mentioned Stephenson, Ala from Anathem. How could she have a Liaison with his best friend immediately after getting evoked 😥
There should be qualifications with this. Some villains are cartoon villains without depth. Also assuming fictional characters. Let me suggest Lilionthel, the Chairmaker, from Use of Weapons.
Good call! I loved all the small hints the protagonist wasn’t who he was trying to make himself be that mostly came echoing back later. That was a DARK Culture novel.
I’m not sure if there’s a single character in literature that I despise more than Joffrey Baratheon. Arrogant, cruel, takes pleasure in other people’s pain.
And he’s fun to hate because he’s so stupid about it! There were so many ways he could have been just as bad, but he was too incompetent to not piss people enough to get murdered, meaning even more suffering for the realms. If you’re a legalist, which I’m not, there’s an argument that even if he ruled with an iron first but competently, the damage would be more limited to those unhappy enough to be around him, more simple opportunistic sadism. There were many crueler characters in ASOIAF, but he’s probably the easiest to loathe.
I thought so too, and then George intruduced Ramsay Bolton and Euron Greyjoy lol
Besides, Gregor does show some tender sides.
Same, he’s just so hateable. Literally no redeeming qualities.
Erebus from the Horus Heresy.
Within the 40k fan base, nothing unites us more than “fuck Erebus”.
Cpt Blicero - Gravity’s Rainbow
Atlas au Raa from the later Red Rising books.
He’s pretty much space Vlad the Impaler but worse.
Every time the fear knight shows up on page you know something absolutely fucked up is gonna happen, like >!taking Tharsus, chopping his hands and feet off in zero g, crushing his bones, putting a bowl over his head to preserve it as a trophy, then throwing him, alive, into a cage to be eaten by a manticore. All without hesitating one second, like it is second nature for him.!< (spoilers Light Bringer)
I came here to say this. Pretty much every atrocity that occurs since the Rising was his doing.
The Fear Knight made me mad, for sure, but fucking Lysander. He’s my answer to this question.
Blue Duck in Lonesome Dove