did somebody say villains

[kradeelav]

queenlua  'cause i know you'll see this soon - (aka in reply to your 'fictional villain recs that loom large despite not affecting Plot much' q) 

• Sephiroth kinda still strikes me as an OG one that holds up fairly well? Sure he stabs Aeris, but he generally has Cloud chase after him with the meat of the fucky brain trauma done in flashbacks and stuff.  For such a long game he kind of doesn't directly interact much?
• Abhorsen (#3 in the Abhorsen Trilogy) has a big bad that still lingers in my dreams sometimes, if that is worth anything; was an amazingly evocative YA book series. (Big Bad is quite literally imprisoned for the entire series minus one scene and the fear is palpable in the third book to apocalyptic levels, so I think it qualifies. really good worldbuilding. I'm a little intentionally vague with this one in particular since the mere existence of the guy is kind of a giant spoiler in itself, if that's also the vibe you're going for.) 
• okay, i have to, Hellsing actually does a damn good job of this with the Major in the back-half and then some. i kind of consider hellsing a villain connoisseur's series as there's a lot of subtle deconstruction of 'what makes one' whether in a protagonist role, serving the protagonist and the various stages of what it takes to oppose them .... except the Major is firmly the exact evil mastermind trope without outright being a caricature of himself. it's kind of like heath ledger's joker in terms of the ... not quite "acting" being too real at times, but a sense of implacable... presence. (my gf and i may or may not still quote lines of his infamous War speech at each other LMAO). Given he's in a blimp basically the entire time of the plot, seems to qualify the technicalities of your ask. It's only a 10-ep OVA, so not a terribly long investment that WAS free to watch on youtube grumble grumble i can totally find you links if needed. : P 

Comments

[queenlua]

hgaileh;gaeg of COURSE this post would fire the krad-signal, bless :P

sephiroth is a really good one; no idea why i didn't think of it on my own, but, yes good

(side ramble: as i was stewing over this last night, it occurred to me one of the main ways to make a villain scary without much work is to make their effect on the protag really palpable—if the hero's usually plucky and unflappable, but they get out-of-their-mind terrified after a brief encounter with the villain, then, yeah, that's scary! way moreso than just having the villain looming as a vague ominous force a lá Sauron in LotR, since it localizes it so well—this dude is scary and we know it because look what their presence does to our hero etc. sephiroth is amazing for this. first we just know he's this presence that looms in Cloud's imagination, then we get into weird mind-fuckery shit, etc etc... every encounter ramps up that tension/horror in a crazy-efficient way)

i've read book one of abhorsen! and enjoyed it, so i may well just barrel through the rest :P

and wrt hellsing, i'll let you know if my own "sources" prove inadequate to the episode-finding task ;)

(tyty for all this!)

[mucky]

I love the Major far, far more than I have any right to. What a ham.

I even roleplayed him for a spell, but that's neither here nor there...

[kradeelav]

[ fistbumps for roleplaying-asshole-villains-solidarity :D ]

he's so much fun tho - larger than life, one of those love-to-hate/hate-to-love kind of characters that actually carves out a good chunk of the stage even with Hellsing's already hammy-cast. And I love how he's genuinely consistent in terms of mindset and a worthy opponent of Integra and Alucard. (Don't even get me started on the interesting as hell dynamics that Millennium had.. there's a few fucked as hell ships i wish there'd be more fic for.)

[kradeelav]

ahahahah LMAO YOU KNOW IT >:3

and yeah, agreed to that palpable effect on the protag! anything that knocks them wildly OOC usually is a strong trauma indicator, and there's nothing like a villain that knows how to play mindgames on them like a fiddle. Cloud's kind of an unusual case on a lot of levels, but there's no question that that dynamic was brutally efficient in making FF7 more like a horror game in some aspects. God, I love that vibe.

Emotional 'weaknesses' is another tangent i'd think about, too - if the protag has loved ones, or has a dream to attain to very badly, or is a pawn of more abstract institutional forces (Evangelion is an excellent example of the latter where basically the entire cast is fundamentally broken by abstract forces) and the villain has a way of holding that hostage ... there's your effectiveness with distance.