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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Heroes and Villains Blogfest

Huge thanks to our fantastic hosts Jackie and Dani for creating this super fun blogfest.  Make sure you stop by if you haven't already!

Now, trying to come up with my absolute favorite heroes and villains of all time- ever is just an impossible task.  There's waaaaaaayy too many to list.  So for the purposes of this blogfest I've selected the best from books, tv and movies of recent memory rather than the best of all time.  Maybe this blogfest will happen again and I'll get the chance to name more.  But for now, hopefully you'll enjoy these selections.

Best Hero- Bilbo Baggins
Bilbo is a hobbit which means that he is biologically designed to live in a hobbit hole eating many meals a day and being about as laid back as one can be.  Action and adventure are to hobbits what warm and fuzzy are to documentaries about genocide.  I.E. NOT.  And yet this humble hobbit, already well-up in age, is pulled into one of the greatest adventures of all time.  He survives a devastating pantry-raiding by a horde of hungry dwarves, manages to outrun a goblin army, outwits a hungry and sinister Gollum, single-handedly rescues the dwarves from a contingent of giant man-eating spiders (not that much smaller than Shelob- and there's a whole freakin' forest of them!),  plans and executes a dungeon escape from a group of dwarf-hating wood elves, finds the fatal kink in a dragon's armor thus enabling its slaying, and very nearly prevents a war. And, as if all that isn't enough, he manages to safe-guard the single most coveted object in all of middle earth for 60 freakin' years when pretty much every one else who encounters it goes mad with power-hunger within about an hour!  Two words: BAD ASS.  'Nough said.

Best Villain- The Trinity Killer
I'm a big fan of Dexter, a Showtime creation about a serial killer doing a self-serving form of vigilante justice by targeting murders, rapists and other scum of the underworld.  He is the quintessential hunter hunting hunters but much like Batman and Superman he has a public face to hide his secret identity: the every man.  Full-time lab rat and dad he tries desperately to make the relationships in his life as real as the rush he gets from killing.  His greatest adversary, and subsequently the greatest season of the show, was the Trinity Killer aka Arthur Miller played by an astonishingly talented John Lithgow.  The Trinity Killer gets his name from his murders: he kills in threes.  First a young woman bled to death in a bathtub (whom he holds a mirror up to so she can watch the life slip out of her own eyes- so creepy!), next a mother forced to jump from a large height, followed by a father who he bludgeons to death with a hammer.  Later in the series it's discovered that he's actually a quadruple killer as his fourth victim is a ten year old boy buried alive in cement.  He has repeated these murders several times in several states for many, many years and never been caught.  
Like Dexter, he has an identity he uses to hide in plain site: husband, father and (the most screwed-up thing of all) church deacon.  But that's not all!  He's also a mad man holding his family hostage in a prison made of their fear of him, a manipulator able to charm almost everyone he encounters and a deeply, deeply traumatized little boy reliving the horrific deaths of his family of origin by repeating their deaths (his own symbolic in the form of the little boys he buries alive in order to preserve their innocence) over and over again.  It's hard-core evil and yet psychologically sound.  And it made for the best season finale I think a show has ever had.

Bonus! Best Hero AND Villain: Severus Snape
Yes, I know he's not technically a villain but he fakes evil better than most true villains so he earns both titles in my book.  Plus, when it comes down to it, a lot of the unimaginably heroic things he does are, ultimately, selfish.  He loves Lily Potter so damned much that he will go to the ends of the earth and his own life in order to protect her son whom he really can't stand.  It's because he loves Lily- not because he wants to save Harry and, by proxy, all witches and warlocks who would otherwise suffer Voldemort's wrath.  Granted, that kind of devotion in the face of unrequited love seems pretty damned heroic not to mention the countless times he does actually save Harry's life, or his staggering loyalty to Dumbledore, or his sparing of Draco's soul from the unerasable mark of murder.  Plus he is, as Harry points out, "the bravest man I ever knew."  Yeah, hero.  And one who will forever live in my heart.

Well, that's it!  I hope you enjoyed my selections.  Now please check out the list to see more great heroes and villains.

19 comments:

  1. Oh, Severus! I don't watch Dexter and I'm not a Hobbit fan, but I can definitely appreciate your choice of Snape :)

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  2. I'm not familiar with Dexter, but that guy is wicked! So crazy. *gives me chills, it's so horrible!*

    I LOVE Snape and Bilbo Baggins and couldn't agree more with what you said. Yeah, Bilbo is just awesome. ^_^

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  3. Nice choices! I like the way you classified Snape! Very appropriate.

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  4. Lithgow shines in any role he plays.

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  5. Snape was great as Gruber too in Die Hard. Jack Bauer for me.

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  6. great choices! yay for fantasy! and severus was an awesome character!

    ps, for your iwsg post, staring out i posted every day too. the support thru the blogs is tremendous! now that i'm in a different stage, i blog less and want to help others as well as receive! its a wonderful thing!

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  7. I haven't watched Dexter, but I agree with Bilbo. And YES for your choice of Snape. We can't help but like him in the end, even if he did what he did for selfish reasons.

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  8. Bilbo is a true hero, for sure. Always scared, never confident, yet he still trudges on, trying to do what's right and helping others.

    Awesome choice!

    Left and Write

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  9. Bilbo is surely a hobbit of much heroism :) And yes, holding on to that ring for 60 years - that takes a whole lot of characters.

    I haven't watched much Dexter, so I can't comment on your villain there, but nice pick of Snape, because, yes, he's a hero in the end, but he is also nasty to Harry because he wants to be, not a very heroic trait!

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  10. Bilbo in the movie version was even better than I imagined. He was just an ordinary Hobbit trying to do his best for everyone.

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  11. Trinity was great. So evil. Nothing like an evil, sociopathic serial killer to make you root for the good, hmm, other, sociopathic serial killer.

    Bilbo is fantastic. I LOVE the Hobbit.

    Tim
    The Other Side

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  12. Dexter is such an amazing show! The Trinity Killer is a great choice for your villain.
    And I heart Snape. :)
    Thanks for participating in the blogfest!

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  13. I think Bilbo could take Lithgow. Sting glows when jerks are around.

    I still remember you reading The Hobbit in college. I still want to hug you for your enthusiasm towards the bravest little hobbit ever.

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  14. Great choices. Though I have yet to see Dexter. Last I knew they took it off Netflix and that's where I get most of my TV fix. Snape really is something else.

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  15. Great picks for sure!! Snaps is top dollar!! Love him!! Best of both worlds!

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  16. Bilbo is a great hero by accident, which is what I love about him. He was the first hero that made me want to write when we had the book read to us in primary school. Great choice.

    I haven't seen the Trinity Killer in Dexter, I need to catch up with watching it because I only got through s1 and then never got back into it.

    Nice call on Snape :).
    Tasha's Thinkings

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  17. Well, your trios are delicious: a hobbit, a murderer, and one who embodies both of them.

    I love Severus as the villainous hero ;-)

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  18. I think I'm the only person alive to not really know any of these characters, but it was fun reading the descriptions!

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  19. It's a good selection! I haven't seen Dexter, but I'm a Hobbit and Harry Potter fan.

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