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.

  • rensch@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    O’Brein from 1984 comes to mind. He purposely puts Winston Smith further down the path of resistamce by giving him illegal, anti-authoritarian literature, wins his trust, then betrays and tortures him. Then, only when Winston’s spirit is broken and fully remolded into the most perfectly obedient, Big Brother-loving citizen, he grants Winston the mercy of death.

    An absolute piece of shit, but a great and complex villian as well.

    • SpikeVonLipwig@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      An interesting take. It’s one of my favourite books but I’d always considered OBrian as just doing his job. Yes, his job is to be a piece of shit, but there’s no, like, malice to it.

      Have you read Julia btw? It came out last month, 1984 as told from her POV. I really enjoyed some of the world expansion and thought the exploration of Winston’s character was really imaginative