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.