From The Backlist: “Inspired by Evil” by Amanda Arista

 .
It’s backlist time – and what better feature, since Helen Lowe’s post theme for 2024 is the Year of the Villain, than the great Amanda Arista’s “Inspired by Evil”, in which she lists some of her favorite villains!

Amanda Arista

Not all are drawn from the ranks of Fantasy, but they’re all suitably evile and/or villainous – so rock on up, folks, and read on!

Inspired by Evil

by Amanda Arista

...I have to admit. I’m pro-villain. My favorite characters in literature seem to the antagonists, because they usually get the best lines. Good villains are strong, driven, have their own moral codes and usually more motivated than the heroes at the beginning of the stories. They are on their own journeys and, frankly, sometimes I’m routing for them because the heroes just can’t seem to get their acts together faster enough.

So some of my favorites are:

1. Maleficent. Probably the first villain to really institute the adage “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” Powerful woman and sexy as hell. She is the reigning queen of villains in my book, because she almost got exactly what she wanted. In the end, remember, she was just out-manned, not out smarted (those three meddling fairies). Really looking forward to Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of her next summer.

2. Hannibal Lector- I don’t know if you guys have been watching NBC’s Hannibal, but there is something both eerie and alluring about Mads Mikkelsen’s portrayal of the psychiatrist. You know that he’s eating people, but somehow, you’re a little okay with that because you just want to know what he’s going to say next.  

3. The Nothing from The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. Though the Nothing is really a phenomenon that is happening to Fantastica, is still was a powerful source of fear for the main characters, Atreyu and Bastian. And it was creepy, because there was no getting away from it and it drove creatures insane by just looking into it. And, it had the best emissary in the world!

4. Tyler Durden from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Now, technically I don’t know if you can count Tyler Durden as a villain, but I was routing for Project Mayhem the entire time. And I tote a lot of Tyler-isms in my life. There was a surprising amount of truth spoken by that character and yet, he is still the antagonistic force for the narrator.

5. The Joker, all his incarnations ever. Probably the best villain and hero relationship that has ever hit the page or the screen. The perfect juxtaposition of Joker’s love of chaos and Batman’s need for logic defines how heroes and villains are supposed to work together, their harmony are what make the stories good and tension-filled and keep us watching and turning the page.

There are so many more..."

~*~

To read the full post and the comments, click here.

And to discover more about Amanda and her writing, visit her on: AmandaArista