The first three were focused on some of the more relevant issues leading up to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but that tragedy has come and gone, J.K. Rowling assassinating her world and its remaining viable characters in its wake.

Some interesting information concerning this:

- If Deathly Hallows was put under review for the Library (as someone actually tried to do), it would receive a rating of 2.85 (3 Stars), placing it in The Recycling Bin.

• 32.95% of Reviewers gave it a 4 or 5.
• 29.50% of Reviewers gave it a 3.
• 37.55% of Reviewers gave it a 1 or 2.
• 261 members reviewed, five of which are now banned.

- Luna Scamander née Lovegood, wife of Rolf Scamander has twins, one of which is named Lysander Scamander.

• If that wasn't enough, Lily Potter (daughter) is given the middle-name "Luna", proving Rowling is not just crazy but batshit insane.

- J.K. Rowling essentially validates the thoughts of those who hated DH's reliance on deus ex machina by publishing on her site: "It is important to state that I always saw these kinds of magic (the very deepest life and death issues) as essentially un-scientific; in other words, there is no 'Elder Wand + Lily’s Blood = Assured Survival' formula."

- Seventeen of the sixty Potter Laws were broken in Deathly Hallows; disregarding new ones, only twelve were broken.

- Emma Watson says of the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2008): "I think the next one is going to be more of a romantic comedy. So that should be great." More sneakpeaks confirm the return of Quidditch, the moving of the OoTP Ron Weasley-Quidditch subplot to HBP and a focus on the courtships of R/Hr and H/G. The only good piece of news is that scenes focused on Tom Riddle through the Pensieve (in essence, thinly-veiled, shitty flashbacks) will be reduced.

• As Emma Watson's eighteenth birthday approaches, more and more haters seem to be switching towards either liking Emma Watson or liking Hermione Granger, even on DLP.net. BioPlague/Saruman does not approve of the confusion of the two - a mediocre actor and an awesome character - but as usual, no one cares.

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Moving onto the main purpose of this open thread, I set the stage for talking about villainy.

vil·lain·y /ˈvɪləni/
1. the actions or conduct of a villain; outrageous wickedness[source].​

To the lament of me and most of the members on this forum, the Harry Potter series provides very lame villainy. The actions of the antagonists of the story against the protagonists can best be summed up as sophomoric and after Order of the Phoenix: boring.

Sorcerer's Stone is decent in the context of a one or two or three book series, but as we plod along (and especially after OOTP) we see through the invention of portkeys, silent spellcasting and various other advanced bits of magic, that the acts of Lord Voldemort (nevermind the defenses of the Sorecer's Stone) barely fit. I'm surprised little retconning has been utilized here by Rowling but from her recent chat with The-Leaky-Cauldron, I can see she's too busy trying to figure out what Dumbledore was doing in the twenty-four hours after Voldemort failed to kill Harry and how Dumbledore or Hagrid were even able to find out about it (see the already revamped Fidelius Charm that will need further revamping).

That will likely be explained in the "encyclopedia" slash eighth book that Rowling will create to generate more media attention (she is an attention whore, ya know).

But despite that, that's excusable. Though she will lie and say she had all of the books in her mind "sort of" (the George Lucas defense), it's not that big of a deal. Harry's young, the cast is young and we can always say Voldemort was too weak to contact supporters that mattered (aka didn't exist).

But Voldemort does not improve. In Goblet of Fire we see the first examples of the major, gaping plot holes that will afflict this series. We see the invention of portkeys and an elaborate scheme that will somehow tie Horcruxes, Lily's sacrifice, the brother wands and the antagonist and protagonist in Deathly Hallows. That's all fine and dandy (and cheap) and would probably be ignored by people who don't go for what's popular just for the sake of being hip or chic, but Voldemort is inept.

His minions are inept - one of them, the greatest of them, dies to Molly Weasley - and if I had to venture a guess, this was due to the disdain piled onto her (Molly) by people who hate the old-fashioned housewife. And lets face it: that's an archetypal role that some stories have. HP had it but Rowling decided to ignore that and basically make the good guys invincible. She wanted to show that housewives can somehow stop evil despite their naive, backwards thinking that no one should encourage in a Post-Modern society.

Stay-at-home moms who want to interfere with their sons and daughters futures by enforcing idiotic world-views like "settling down and having children is the only good and acceptable ambition", "reproducing beyond your means is not only great but will lead to happiness" and "you're a child, you can't do anything meaningful despite your adult maturity."

It's cute, it's childish and would fit in a children's story but Rowling wants to parade behind the "this is a children's story that is an adult story that isn't" card that George Lucas and other idiots use to defend their work when it gets shit-canned. It's a difficult shield to breakthrough, because all of her lemmings and followers will subscribe and reinforce it, ignoring the blatant contradiction.

We see Lucius Malfoy go from someone who seems to be not only a decent villain but a suave one to yet another inept cookie-cutter villain, defeated by six children and then shit on for the remaining two books by a villain who couldn't kill a child but somehow has the gall to pass blame on his most valuable supporter (the one with the money). This is Rowling's fault of course, for ignoring how the world works and that people like Lucius would remain in power regardless of their erring ways because you can't do anything without money. It's also Rowling's fault for taking someone who could be an excellent henchman and a second antagonist for Harry to fight against and turning him into a footnote in The Dark Lord Ascending (great chapter title by the way - it goes downhill from there).

Lucius Malfoy should have been the Cutler Beckett (Pirates of the Caribbean); he should've been the Colonel Tavington (The Patriot). He should've been the suave, well-respected man who sips tea during an execution and is ruthless in achieving what he wants: power.

No character should be introduced into a story that doesn't serve some purpose - whether it be to populate the world your creating or to drive the plot. Lucius Malfoy's purpose however, is dry and, excuse me, bullshit.

Once again, the antagonists are reduced to showcasing how lucky the crew are while providing mild moments of angst for our protagonists. Oh no, Fudge is in the pockets of Malfoy. What an excellent storyline that could've been, if Lucius was more involved in the scheming of this and was furthermore ruthless.

This could've been the area where the Muggle-Born Registration Commission is used for full-effect. Instead, we see moments of "Yeah!" and a lot more "Cue Eye-Roll".

All these "nefarious" schemes are neither nefarious or remotely insidious. Time and time again we hear Rowling saying "I'm going to be giving Voldemort some wiggle room to do evil" or "Oh, I just heap such troubles on my hero". Bullshit.

Sirius Black dies. Hedwig dies. Mad-Eye Moody dies. Albus Dumbledore dies. Those are the "major" characters that we see die in the time-frame of the series and they are either built up poorly (Sirius), irrelevant (Mad-Eye Moody) or done in such a manner as to be rendered free of evil. Rowling couldn't handle Dumbledore dying to someone worth fighting against and hating - no she had to give Dumbledore the last laugh and show once again, Voldemort has everything going against him from the beginning.

The hero-villain relationship is a give and take one. It's either 50-50, giving it to one another, or 100-100, each one doing crazy shit to drive the plot beyond "See Spot Run". That Voldemort scores exactly nothing showcases just how shitty a villain he is and that his villainy is pathetic. Authors can veil having their villains do serious damage by actually building them up to be a serious threat.

They do this by putting them in the shadow, away from the protagonist and mentioning his increasing terror, his acts of injustice, never putting him on screen or in the same room as the hero until the very end - or never at all! Look at J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The title comes from the very brief mention of Sauron being "the Lord of the Rings" and the fact that he is the master of the One Ring, the Seven Dwarven rings and the Nine Human Rings (and the Three Elven ones if he should come to power). Throughout the story we hear the increasing terror, the problems in the west and east fold, his supposed henchman Saruman, an equal player in the bid for the Ring and its power, the injustice and the villainy.

We never see Sauron, however.

Look at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes. He is the classic supervillain. As Sir Doyle meant it originally, it was Moriarty whose defeat would require the sacrifice of Sherlock Holmes and his life. The evils of Moriarty were behind the scenes - he was the power broker who pulled the strings and when he died, it seemed Sherlock Holmes did too.

Voldemort's problem is he's everywhere. He's in the opening chapter, he's in Harry's dreams, he's apart of Harry, he's in the school, he's related to a founder. He's too visible in every book except one - The Prisoner of Azkaban. Surprisingly, it is this book that is viewed by the majority (even the majority of idiots who fellate Rowling despite the banality of HBP and DH) as the premier book in the series. It is in this book where we see what's at stake - we understand the very evil that Voldemort inspires in what appears to be his most trusted henchman. We see the fear of Voldemort returning; we see visibly the strain of the losses of Lily and James and the harkening back to the Marauder and subsequent First Reign era.

We get a story.

From then on out, we get Voldemort, a measly fly who is preventing Rowling from achieving her overall objective: getting Harry and Ginny together to produce as many children as possible - as she describes it, "the good life".

It's my personal view that villains need to be show, not tell, like all good stories require. We need to see the effects of Voldemort, and as people around Harry are effected and we can't get into their mind, we don't experience nearly enough. We don't see first hand what Voldemort is capable of doing because he gets outdone by Harry, Dumbledore, the Sextet and the Elder wand every fucking time. Repeatedly, over and over, he's outclassed and at the end of the day, he's inspired very little and if his second reign is anything to go by, his first one must've sucked.

Rudy Giuliani could spin a more inspiring tale to the masses of idiots that seem to enjoy the storytelling of DH and HBP and probably actually scare the shit out of them.

Rowling fails massively at providing the alpha to the omega, the head to the tail, the villainy to the heroism.

So that brings us to this discussion point:

Discussion Point IV: What do you view as the right type of villainy? What do you look for in an antagonist? Do you view Voldemort as a good antagonist or a bad one?

Personally - I think a villain, as aforementioned, needs to be in the shadows, manipulating and empowering the average archetypal villain characters - the crazy Bellatrixes and the snooty, suave Lucius Malfoys of the world. Those henchmen - those secondary villains - need to cause real suffering. They need to give reason for the hero to care, but most of all, they need to give reason for the reader to care.

I don't. I think I found myself wishing Voldemort would score a hit of importance. I thought he may have had one in HBP but that was shallow by A Prince's Tale in DH. By the end of it all, I just wish Voldemort would've won because heh, I view the protagonist just as poorly as the antagonist by HBP.

Furthermore, I think villains need a brain and a scheme that doesn't seem half-baked.

Evil for evil's sake is stupid, no doubt. The B-Grade villains of the world - the cackling Darth Sidiouses and Darth Malaks - who kill kittens and do nothing but meaningless damage that the reader can't get into aren't the villainous acts I'm looking for.

I need substance; I need strife. Most of all, at the end of the day, I think it needs to tie to the protagonist, who has to get just a bit dirty, get just a bit villainous himself and who has to start thinking a bit like the villain to get the job done.

 

Discussion Point IV

I think the best type of villainy is the realistic, believable, too-close-for-comfort, human kind.

Yes, villains like Sauron, looming in the distance, are good, and definitely have a certain epic-ness about them. They make good villains.

But the really great villains are the villains that could just be ordinary people. Ordinary people who commit acts of evil due to fear, greed and lust (especially lust for power). These villains are very effective because they could have easily been just an ordinary person that the reader may have liked - the reader may even identify with them themselves.

They don't do cliched megalomaniac laughs, they don't do the "Bad Guy Reveals His Plots to the Hero, just in Time for the Hero to Escape and Foil Said Plans" thing, they aren't unrealistic, fantastical, or far too..."big" in any way: they're just people, doing evil things. It's hard to describe. When you read Voldemort, never for one moment do you think that he could be a real person in the real world - and not because of the magic. He just reads far too much like a storybook villain. I want to see villains who display the kind of evil in the real world.

If you've ever read A Song of Ice and Fire, you'll know what I mean. We love to hate people like Cersei Lannister because not only of their villainy but because of the very human nature of it.

Reconciling this to the Harry Potter world, you have to take into account magic. You want your villain to be magically powerful, intelligent and so forth, like Voldemort was always made out to be (yet we never saw his supposed brilliance), but you want them to be humanly so. Yes, make them great wizards, but keep them human.

Putting a couple of wizards (Dumbledore and Voldemort) on a completely different level to the others was a big mistake. Yes, have Voldemort be one of the best wizards, if not the best wizard, in the world, but keep his humanity. He's still a person. Don't make him outclass even the best of "normal" wizards so far as to remove all contest.

Post-HBP evil!Snape, I feel, is a good example of this. He's a powerful and skilled wizard, not as skilled as Voldemort, yet he makes a far greater villain. This is because of the humanity of his character.

So the best type of villain is the villain who has elements of the epicness of Sauron, but also is sufficiently human to allow the reader to identify with them, and realise how easy it could have been for the villain not to be a villain at all.

 

When I try to imagine how would it be like to have a duel with someone, using canon Magic, with averagely experienced duellers, the outcome can easily be predicted: no one wins. There's so many variables that can change the outcome of a duel; one could apparate when the curse is about to strike, his latent 'Magic' can save him (If Neville could rebound harmlessly when thrown off a window, so could a Death Eater who is banished into a wall), he could portkey, levitate some furniture into the path of a spell (Killing Curse), etc.

When you think about it that way, every teenage boy or girl with some general knowledge of Magic could survive Voldemort, escape him, or with some luck defeat him (And I bet Fred and George would be the most likely candidates).

The point is that there's no best Wizard. And in the Magical World, true villains don't focus on Power or Skills with Magic.

In a way, there's a good villain in canon (not a good antagonist though). I think JKR didn't do this intentionally however. So, this villain is...

Lucius Malfoy.

He got political power; he could be as powerful as a Squib magically, he still wins in the end.

Lucius Malfoy didn't go to Azkaban after the first fall of Voldemort (Giving money to charity is a good thing after all!). And if I'm not mistaken, he's still free after Voldemort's second fall. His son is still free (who undirectly murdered Dumbledore and permitted to Death Eaters to invade Hogwarts). Anyway, in the end, Malfoy still wins. Like a true villain.

Hmm, I think I diverged from the topic, but well.

Anyway, a good villain isn't necessarly a good antogonist, or vice-versa.

 

From my readings, I think the best villain I've ever read was King Richard in Richard III.

Instead of being the guy who brings down the axe, he's the guy who sets up his enemies to get the axe. He lies to one brother to get the other executed. He convinces his sister-in-law, who hates him by the way, to marry him. He gets the rightful king ousted, then has him murdered. When betrayed, he enacts a well thought-out plan in order to capture the traitor.

I can see Richard as Voldemort in the DoM. Instead of sending in 12 loyal followers, he sends in only 2 or 3, like his scene with Tyrell. Richard knew that two preteen boys would stand no chance against a trained killer, so he only sends in what is necessary to eliminate the threat. Lucius, Bellatrix, and Rodolphus could have taken out the sextet in about 5 seconds if they had set up an ambush, killed all but Harry, and tied him up and tortured him into submission. That is how I see a true villain doing things. Working behind the shadows until the end.

Even when the villain is defeated, there needs to be a sense of realism. Richard was defeated by Richmond, a character that WS had taken the time to show was a charismatic and powerful individual. JKR took an untrained, pussified wizard and had him beat the wizard that terrorized a whole country for a decade, riiiiiiight.

 

*My* vision of Lucius and of Rookwood is of Strong-Willed, Intelligent men, sophisticated and cynical. They aren't "me-too'ists," they aren't going to jump on the bandwagon that has the most cute cheerleaders. These men Would Not have supported Riddle in any meaningful way (let alone be BRANDED by him) if they didn't *believe* in a cold, rational show-me way, that he could change the world and leave them at the top of the heap.

Bellatrix loved Voldemort's rhetoric, but what we saw of her was a fanatic. Perhaps she started out rational, but she showed her position at her trial. She Never Attempted to deny her connection to Voldemort, even though she was admitting to treason. Crabbe, McNair, and Goyle were simply violent thugs - and advertisements of the evils of inbreeding.

Rookwood was head of the Unspeakables. It was not a political appointment - Fudge complained (somewhere or other) about how they wouldn't provide his bodyguards. JKR showed the Aurors as competent and intelligent, and the Unspeakables were the elite, as I remember. Rookwood *must* have passed numerous loyalty and ethics tests to get and maintain his position, WHILE he was actively trying to overthrow the government.

Realistically, Lucius already had it all. He was mind-numbingly rich, he was the closest thing to nobility that the British Wizarding World offered. He was young, handsome, well-educated. He was as high in the hierarchy as he was going to get until his father died. To gain any more power, he would have to break the world and reassemble it to his liking. That he walked away from the first War with his freedom, let alone his fortune and his marriage, shows intelligence and planning for eventualities.

Riddle Must Have presented them with a viable plan to overthrow the Ministry. I can't see Lucius or Augustus Rookwood being swept away by Riddle's charisma. Karakov and Dolohov were cold, hard men with vicious reputations. They managed to land on their feet as well.

 

I wholly agree with Taure.

Characters that are not hell-bent on world domination or destruction of the world are the most interesting kind of villains.

In The Witcher Saga we have a bounty hunter named Leo Bonhart. He kills a band of murders, thieves and terrorist (which one of the main female characters - Ciri - was member off) without remorse.
He doesn't have problem with throwing an 15-years-old girl into fighting-pit but is disgusted by sadistic bitch that sits next to him during the fight and describe how she and her husband hunt the peasants for their own amusement.

As for the original question.
Voldemort had potential to be a good villain. But the fact that he didn't had any human emotions (except hatred and lust for power) makes him an caricature of true villains.

 

A good villain in my opinion doesnt really stay in the shadows but is to put it simply knows what they are doing. If Voldemort had shown anything resembling a decent grasp of tactics and strategy instead of just lots of power he might have been a good villain. With the element of surprise his sudden return created it would have been the perfect time to start making raids against the Ministry. He could also play off their fears over his resurecction and the lies of the Ministry to cover up his return and completely shatter any faith and trust in the government as well as gaining a support base but all he did was attack the ministry for one damned prophecy and even then only one of his main enemies died and he didnt even do it.

 

For me the perfect villain is the one that does his deeds from the center of society and with their acceptance.

Ellsworth M. Toohey. Now there was a villain that everybody loved. Society adored him, he was the hero. Could do no wrong in the eyes of all. But he was a collector of souls (not literally) who's philosophy best fit in with the dominating etiquette at the time. I hated the man throughout the novel, and that, IMO is what defines a villain for me. When the author is able to channel the protagonists hatred for a man who is purely fictional.

Of course Howard Roark never so much as cared for him, which in retrospect was all the better.

Voldemort was a villain. In the typical sense that he created problems and obstacles for our protagonist. Now I believe that what would be more appropriate to mix Voldemort's character with is a mixture of, well I have no better word for it other than: a 'bad ass'.

Ragnar Danneskjold. One of the most epic characters I have had the privilege of reading about. He is the embodiment of a bad ass in my mind, and the mixture of his character, along with a more cunning Voldemort would have been something of heightened proportions. I won't say that JKR did it right, but given that the villain we were given was bare bones is nothing surprising. As many threads here prove, most of her characters were 2 dimensional and the writing was bi-polar at times.

He did fail in the way that JKR set him up. Early on we hear of a madman that terrorized hordes of the magical population. That Voldemort studied the darkest of magics. And in this figures place, we are given a man who knows nothing other than three spells, suffers from delusions of grandeur, and has the magical ability to fly.

I really should stop drawing comparisons to Rand. But in my mind, she is the most awesome writer at the moment. Since I have recently finished some of her books.

In Atlas Shrugged. We are rarely given information about Ragnar, a character whose presence stretches throughout two pages of the novel at the most. Yet he is one of the most impressionable figures of the novel. The perfect bad ass in a sense. He was an ingenious corporate pirate that was among the first to return the worker's strike against themselves. He stole from those who the classical Robbin Hood stole from. And held an air of elegance while doing it all. In the end he becomes so infamous among the people, that his mere presence was enough to incite havoc.

...back on topic, if I ever truly was on topic. Yes Voldemort was a horrible villain. He fit the role to the minimalist, and did not do much in terms of evil deeds; but it was also bad on our part to have expected more after seeing that many actions in the JKR world were not to be analyzed further than their face value. He did fit the bill but was grossly underwritten, and the times he was written were too few along with poor dialogue.

Dialogue. Nearly forgot that. Every villain should have memorable one liners. Without them, the character just seems off. You know, lines that shall immortalize the villain and give us insight into the inner workings of their mind. Where the line both twists that which is morally acceptable into suiting their actions. Nothing beats a villain putting a moralistic twist on that which is consented by the majority of the population.

/End delusional Ayn Rand Rant mixed with aspects of Harry Potter.

Edited to better clarify something, and attempt to correct grammar.

 

I think the best villain is the one that doesn't appear to be the villain at all and is the ultimate traitor. An appropriate analogy can be made to the Scooby Doo series in which the villain at the end is completely unexpected. The additional feeling of betrayal that accompanies evil makes the reader more passionate about what happens to the villain.

Examples:

Bartemious Crouch in GoF: He was a perfect villain because he operated undetected within the system, managing to manipulate Harry perfectly (until the end, that is) and deceive Dumbledore completely.

Iago from Othello: The fact that Iago is believed to be honest and good makes him all the more detestable as a villain. There is emotional manipulation involved and a ruthless apathy towards the fates of others.

Asriel in the Golden Compass: That Lyra was betrayed by her own father makes her hatred of him and the reader's emotional ambivalence towards him all the more complex. (To clarify: Asriel isn't the 'villain' of the story. The example was chosen for the purpose of illustrating the emotional effect that betrayal has.)

Snape in HBP: His apparent betrayal at the time made him seem like the worst figure in the series. After all, he had murdered the very person who tried to give him a second chance and redeem him. I, personally, disliked Snape at the end of HBP much more than Voldemort because he was 'evil' enough to commit betrayal.



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To address the issue of humanity in the villain, I would argue that it doesn't automatically make the villiain 'better'.

I would define a good villain as one that gets the reader/audience emotionally involved in desiring his/her downfall and leaves little room for pity.

The problem with humanity is that the reader's feelings for the villain may be softened. For instance, in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, the monster had a deep sense of humanity that forced the reader to sympathize with his plight. He doesn't make a very good villain because in the end, the reader doesn't know what to feel towards him: on the one hand, the reader feels his shame and isolation in the world while on the other hand, the reader is digusted by the method that the monster chooses to realize his goal.

I think that a good villain forces the reader to hate him/her unconditionally and become emotionally invested in his downfall. An overdose of humanity inevitably creates ambivalence.

Betrayal, on the other hand, violates the universal ethic of loyalty and almost always deepens a reader's disdain for a character.

 

(In response to Bio's original post)

Interesting. I see what you mean by the need for villains to stay off screen until it's their time to die.

Although, I wouldn't exactly propose Moriarty as a model villain - while he does stay mysterious and unreachable for most of the book, he lacks a bit more defined plans and descriptions of what his crimes and evil schemes actually entail. Instead, we have Holmes who disappears off screen and appears a few days later, dishevelled from his grand fights with his archnemesis, but happy that his obscure and never mentioned schemes had outmanoeuvred Moriarty's equally obtuse efforts. Then we see Holmes and Watson on the run from the super villain's evil organization, but we never actually see much trace of that supposed network - no corrupt police officials, informers, henchmen etc... I guess Doyle pretty much tells us that Moriarty's mind is brilliant, his organization well rooted and ruthless, his plans within plans always keeping him a step away from the hand of the law - but he never actually SHOWS us that.

Thinking about that example, it seems there's a second thing a good villain needs other than obscurity - influence, either through his/hers vast armies (Lord of the Rings) or some special super-henchman (Darth Vader) that can be sent around to act as his/hers proxy.

Going back to HP, I have to say that JKR had put in some effort into building up Voldemort's presence, at least in the earlier books; people fear his name, speak darkly of the time when he reigned free, orphans left and right, his former henchmen in high places of the government, still doing his bidding etc... In my mind, she did a pretty decent job of building up Lord Voldemort's name before the man himself actually came back on the scene.

But once that happened, she really needed to up the ante, to build up strong henchmen and give them a bigger presence in the story, either through their large numbers or intelligent and ruethless schemes from within the system (which is more appropriate for the HP setting).

Unfortunately, it seems JKR just didn't know how to do that, so she fiddled with her dark forces endlessly, changing their shape and presence with each new book.

In OOTP, we have Voldemort who is building up his forces off screen, rarely allowing us to catch a glimpse of his operations. His henchmen fall into the obscurity with him. Lucius supposedly plays dirty politics, but we never really see the real connection between Fudge's presence at Hogwarts and Lucius' manipulations (unless by 'evil' you mean helping his kid skirt the rules and show up in front of his little buddies). All the Azkaban escapees are seemingly content to lounge their asses at Hotel Voldemort and stay hidden until their brilliant master wastes an entire year dancing around the stupid Prophecy.

Of course, all this could have ended up well, if the final, decisive strike by the Dark Side was scary enough to justify the wait. But all we've seen was a bunch of idiots who fail to figure out they can hear the prophecy by simply breaking it open, stand dumbly while Harry and his friends take 2 minutes to arrange a plan by whispering to each other a few feet from the DE's faces, and ask politely for the prophecy orb instead of whacking the stupid kid over his head and taking it from him.

Voldemort's presence was decent enough, but that didn't improve the overal impression, since his entire plan turned out ridiculously stupid and pointless. In retrospect, his grand entrance was more like a punchline of a joke than culmination of a brilliant scheme he's been cooking up for the past several months.

Fast forward into the HBP, JKR has supposedly learned her lesson. Death Eaters are now very present and equally active. But due to once again bad plotting, all their evil attacks and schemes are happening to some imaginary people, far away beyond the school walls. All we actually see of Voldemort's second reign is Malfoy's endlessly drawn out and ultimately inept scheme, that turns out to be more of an inside joke in the DE's circles than something anyone actually expected to work.

Apparently, when Voldemort wants to kill his greatest enemy, he doesn't engage his entire army into some brilliant, well orchestrated plan, involving bribed government officials, poisoned stash of lemon drops and kidnapping of a newly revealed gay boyfriend, which is being held suspended above a lava lake, deep within his base inside an inactive volcano. No sir, instead he orders a spoiled 16 year old kid to go and figure it out by himself and spends the rest of his year amusing himself with killing random people, patiently awaiting for the little fucker to maybe deliver a solution. And then, once he finally finds a way into the Hogwarts wards, a place that is the heart of his opposition and where dozens of potential hostages are up for grabs, he sends in a few of his lower henchmen, with orders to make some mess and MAYBE see if they can do something about the greatest wizard in the world, in case he hasn't had breakfast that morning (which, as it conveniently turns out, wasn't far from the truth). Once again, the finale is laughably inept and stupid, giving the bad guys victory only through a string of fantastic circumstances rather their own ingenuity and effort.

Only in DH she got the bad guys right. IMO having the Ministry fall to Voldemort early on was one of the best decisions she made while plotting that crappy book. That she hadn't actually figured out what the good guys are supposed to do in a situation like that (and ended up stealing the core of Tolkien's plot and cramming it awkwardly into her own setting), that's a different story altogether.

Of course, even if she finally figured out how to engineer a proper dark presence around her heroes, she still lacked a proper dark side to carry out the act. Her main villain and his henchmen had only deteriorated further from her early books, turning Lucius into Voldemort's court jester, Bellatrix into an inept hag whose reputation is larger than her actual deeds and Voldemort himself into a idiot who, despite his years of obsessive studying and training, still doesn't understand magic as well as our exploding snap-playing hero does after a five-class crash course.

Meh, I didn't want to go on a rant against JKR and her ruined epic - opinions like this are hardly a novel concept around here. I guess it's just hard to analyse JKR's later books without wanting to smack the living daylight out of her pompous glory-hogging ass.

If I had to chose a setting or a series where villains are well handled, I guess I'd go with the good old classic, Star Wars. Powerful, evil and emotionally involved main villain, his even more evil, shadowy boss, a Nazy-like war machinery, unforgettable memorabilia (storm troopers, tie fighters etc) and fantastic theme music to boot. You can't get better than that.

 

The best type of villain to me, is a villain with attainable goals. None of this world domination tripe, we know how that's going to end. No number of tricky schemes will make this interesting to me.

Most villains seem to want power, the best type of villain strives for power but instead of world domination to just eliminate those who have the power to oppose them giving them a lot of free reign to whatever it is their little heart desires, and attain there other goals, assuming that isn't something like world domination etc. Because to eliminate the threats to attain that they would have to run through a fair few armies.

 

(Responding to the first post)

Quoted for truth.

But Rowling's failures at creating a credible villain aside, I think her approach was in the right path... in the sense that she wanted an Evil that was, probably, midway between down-to-earth villains and Sauron's type. Let's face it, if she really wanted to go the Sauron way, she wouldn't have used those bloody flashbacks and the diary scenes. She wanted to humanise the evil, to show us from where it had originated. This ended in a heap of epic fail, but at least she tried.

But creating a realistic, believable villain like in ASOAIF - once the series got popular, how could she? To show us that the villains have their human sides - that isn't possible in something like the Harry Potter series, where most (or many) of the readers are kids. Oversimplified, that approach would result in the conclusion that killers can have their reasons... and even if I'm not sure that the kids aren't ready for that kind of knowledge, tell that to the parent community. I suspect that Rowling has had to compromise with herself on this, for the Voldemort we'd started with in SS wasn't the Voldemort we got in HBP. She finally created a villain that killed mercilessly and was more powerful than anybody else, but had little humanity (literally, one-seventh of what he had started with) left. So she could show that doing bad things simply because bad things had been done to you always fails. A kid's fable with a moral... and this ended in the shitty villain that is post-OotP Voldemort.

But leaving all that aside, it's a magical story. A good story, even a magical one, can be told with either type of villains. But I really think the behind-the-scenes Sauron type's the way to go in these type of fics - Tolkien knew what he was writing about. That adds to the mysticism that Fantasy brings (another thing HP sorely lacks).

 

I think defining the 'right type of villainy,' is like defining a 'good story.' Ultimately, there are so many variables the definition doesn't and can't have enough substance to make a very good discussion. A good author can make something you would think would make a bad villain work. The closest thing I can think of is that a villain in a story is the one that causes believable drama, strife, heart-ache. He effects the protagonist in a believable negative way. The story is even better if you care about the person or persons that are effected by the villain. Hal from a Space Odyssey is one of my all time favorite villains.

Voldemort failed as a good villain for three major reasons. 1) He was almost always just a wuss in person and especially in his death. It might have had a bit more impact if we had ever seen him kill anyone other than in Harry's memory of his parents demise. We see Dumbledore take on a room full of witches and wizards in OoTP, where's are show of power from Voldemort. He has his snake kill Snape. He kills nameless people running away from him after the vault breakout. All that screen time and he doesn't kill anyone of note, except in history. The failures of his lackeys and their plans is laughable. All his duels with Harry are laughable. He's built up as this machine of a man, and yet, it's never shown in the books.

2) His impact on Harry is so diluted it didn't have enough effect. JKR put in too much that didn't connect directly or completely to Vodemort. The Dursleys, Snape, Malfoy, Dumbledore, and Umbridge, all had a much larger direct effect on Harry than Voldemort at least until book seven.

She did a nice job of building tension from book 3-5. Book six started with Harry having no problems with Sirius' death and playing at the Burrow. He doesn't have any more visions or scar pains, the whole scariness that was built up from book 3 - 5 evaporated. He spends the most time away from the Dursley's, he goes to the Alley for the first time in years, and he gets a girlfriend, all in in book six. Harry's life is better after Voldemort is resurrected and comes into the open. That makes absolutely no sense if you want to consider Voldemort a real threat. If Frodo lost the ring, would you have expected their life to get better?

Book seven saw a return, or the showing of Voldemort that could have been a cool villain. The problem is, Harry's life is still better than it was in book five, and we are Harry in the books. While on a global scale, life for the wizarding world was worse, for Harry, was it any different? Were the challenges to Harry more challenging? I think this is where the perspective being solely on Harry hurt the story and through extension Voldemort the most. She never showed why loosing the ministry was that bad a thing. Sure the wizarding world suffered, but we're Harry. Taking over the ministry was cool, but they needed to go anyway. Ted Tonks, griphook, etc, walking around the countryside. Who cares? It does a good job of showing what Voldemort did, and gives the most credibility to his competence as a villain, but Harry isn't really a part of magical society and therefore I'm not, so I don't care. How is Harry camping out with Ron and Hermione that different than a normal school year where those two are pretty much Harry's only world. Ron stopped being his friend again and I was back in book four, except this time Ron actually did something to deserve being back. Harry isn't shown to struggle much. He isn't shown to be working out or practicing magic. He's sitting in a tent, reading news clippings. He's moping over Ginny, and while I have no problem with Ginny, there were together for two paragraphs. When he leaves the tent for little jaunts, that's cool, but other than giving him a few more adventures for someone(Hermione) to save him on (can't the boy do anything except through around unforgiveables anymore.) the scale was in no way different than getting around Umbridge or any of the other things that happened to him that weren't caused by Voldemort. Anyway, the point is, the trouble for Harry in book seven is too similar in feel to the troubles in other years, without any upping the ante.

3) The incompetence of the characters, including Harry, just brings down any coolness or scariness of Voldemort. David and Goliath is a nice moral story, but is Goliath a good villain? Even in book seven. We see Dean and Ted Tonks waling around the countryside. He's muggleborn, ever hear of an airplane? Leaving Privet Drive was a cool scene, but really, they couldn't think of a better way. The whole premise of leaving Harry with the Dursleys was convoluted and without adequate reasoning behind. It's hard to have respect for a villain when the people lay down for the slaughter.

 

What kpayne says in his first line I agree with. Often in a story I look for an intriguing villain before a good hero since it gives an indication of how much action and adversity the story will have. A good story needs a good villain. To me, one of the many reasons why DH sucked so much arse was because the villain, after being built up with so much hype, ended up flopping horribly and when you add on the fact that the "hero" came through despite being a mere neophyte compared to Voldemort (the hype) I was left thinking What the Fuck? Villains need to cement they presence within the reader's mind, to make the reader feel as if the villain has their fingers in every pie around.

A good villain in my view should do the things they do observe their enemy, or simply because they can whilst shrouded in mystery. Hannibal Lecter is probably my favourite villain of all time simply because his presence was always felt in the story and since the reasoning behind Lecter's thoughts and actions were always bewildering, that presence was even more intriguing. Iago comes a close second as to me he was the greatest person in the play: absolutely remorseless, driven, supreme self control and successful in his goal even though in the end it cost him his life. Artemis Entreri is another of those favourites with similar qualities, but as I have not finished reading Salvatore's books I can't fully comment on Entreri's awesomeness.

As to Voldemort as a villain, I'm rather ambivalent. Simply because his opponents were so pathetically weak we never saw the power behind his hype. Harry sat around for most of the time or had friends stumble across solutions for him and the wizarding world collapsed before he really had to show any substantial amount of intimidation. His ultimate goal is also very woolly. World domination? Aspiring to be the greatest thing in the world? Pureblood supremacy? A mix of the lot? It was kind of hard to empathise with a villain when we can't see a purpose to his actions, whether to derive amusement or to dominate.

 

I agree: betrayal does make a good villain. But that's partly what I was getting at. For a reader to be betrayed by a character, that character must first have some semblance of humanity. If that character had no humanity, then the reader wouldn't have identified with them in the first place, and the betrayal would not hit that hard.

And when I am talking of humanity, I'm not necessary talking about likable humanity. I'm talking about villains being people, rather than melodramatic caricatures of evil.

 

I think that there is a difference between the main antagonist and the 'villains'.

The main antagonist, in my view, should be a Sauron. Far in the background, they scheme and plot. The protagonist only sees them at the end- or at the very beginning as well. The terror they cause is felt second hand; through the suffering of loved ones or strangers.

Villains are what should have been Lucius Malfoy. They are the up close and personal kind of bad guy that the protagonist has to deal with in order to reach the main antagonist. They are the kind that you can not only hate, but can also get a sense of attachment to. Wormtongue and Saruman are this kind of character. They are the ones you see causing the damage, but behind them you know the 'big bad' awaits.

 

As much as it pains me to admit it, Ron would have made an almost perfect villion in DH. He's shown himself as unreliable at best, and quicksilver and mentally unballanced at the worst.
Think about it, he leaves H&Hr. He goes to his brother in a snit, and gets taken to the dark lord by an Imperio'd percy. Voldimort, instead of torturing or what-not. Either suduces him with promises of power and fame, or else forces a merger with the horcrux that Ron nicked when he left. Either way Ron gets sent back to the duo to betray them just when his help was needed the most. Or perhaps it's revealed that Ron has been Voldimort's informant since the summer after GoF. regardless nobody could really say that they didn't see it coming, but he's sufficiently close to Harry that the betrayal hurts like a kick to the crotch.

...thats just my opinion though...

 

Don't forget the promise of Potter's Mudblood Whore.

I'd have to say my favourite type of villain is Sauron. Yeah, he has his failings, but the amount of fear and power he wields... that's a villain.

 

I have to agree with Taure about a villain needing to have humanity. I've never been impressed with villains who are according to the author "Pure Evil". This description lacks depth, and lessens my reaction to any evil acts they commit. I find it much more interesting when the reader is presented with a character that whose morals have been tainted by some act(Abusive upbringing, betrayal of friends, cast out by society), then a villain who is inherently evil. It allows you to relate to the character, and ponder over what you would have done in their situations. This makes the villain seem even more frightening because you can see how easy it would be to become like him.

 

Um... I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. If you insert abusive relatives/betrayal of friends and nasty trauma - you make reader pity your villain.

What is more interesting - is to give a choice to the reader - is the villain really that bad? Try to give reasons for why he is killing and torturing. Ask the eternal question - does the end justify the mean?

After all - it is not like ten or so people gather and say - "Ok! Let's take banners and write EVIL on them. Lets go and everyone and spread our nasty ways". Lord Voldemort or any other villain who has a cult/group or organization has to have at least some basic ideology and a way to justify why they are doing what they do.