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jellybellyblimp · 2 years

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I don’t know what’s not clicking with people that this all from LOUIS’ perspective, and therefore all colored by his perception of events. Like I know he explains to Daniel that “this is the more nuanced portrait” of Lestat, but it still is very clearly biased by Louis’ own emotions. This is far from an accurate portrayal of events “it’s an admitted performance” and there are several very clear examples of Louis misinterpreting Lestat’s actions.

The most clear example to me is the opera scene, where Louis is forced to act as Lestat’s valet in public. Louis interprets that moment STILL IN 2022 as manipulation. He sees Lestat expressing his loneliness and desire to be with Louis forever as Lestat preying upon Louis’ emotional weakness at being forced to act below his partner. BUT Sam Reid’s acting in that scene makes in clear that was exactly the opposite of what was happening. Lestat was attempting to comfort Louis. He was attempting to express that he saw them as equal, he was sorry that was happening, he loved him, and they had forever to not always be trapped by these racist social conventions. He wasn’t manipulating Louis, he was expressing his own feelings in an attempt at comfort, but Louis’ own tumultuous emotional states causes him to view that moment as uncharitably as possible. And it’s interesting and sad that even 50 years after the original interview, and having clearly reevaluated much of their initial relationship to try to see Lestat’s perspective of it, he still views moments like that as manipulative.

This isn’t a defense of Lestat necessarily, but this show has gone to great lengths to express, what always should have been obvious, THAT THIS IS NOT AN ACCURATE RETELLING OF EVENTS. This is Louis’ version of the story and we have no way of knowing Lestat’s version of events.

And I think people need to carry this with them as they continue on with the story. Because as much as we joke about Lestat “Baby trapping” Louis, when I initially read the book it was my view that that had never been Lestat’s true motive. Lestat hadn’t turned Claudia to trap Louis or even to have a child, it was because he knew Louis would never be able to live with himself if Claudia had died. Lestat would only lose Louis even more than he had already. It was his version of making the best out of a bad situation. It was still selfish and fucked, but Louis was just as complicit in her fate as Lestat was. It’s only Louis’ recollection that colors Lestat as more villainous. And I know people are going to disagree here, but seriously I am begging you to remember that all of the original Interview with the Vampire Novel is the uncharitable, bitter recollections of LOUIS. And that the more we see of Lestat in the rest of the books, the more obvious it becomes that IWTV was inaccurate portrait.

We already know the Claudia story has been altered. And I know speculation is predicting that Lestat will become violent, and that will prompt Claudia and Louis “killing” him and fleeing to Europe. I’m not personally fond of that if that’s what will happen, but I’m willing to suspend judgment because I was skeptical of some of the other changes and so far have been in love with every one of them. I think aging up Claudia changes her story, but also opens up a lot of new avenues of exploration. And frankly given how well they’ve handled the changes so far, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

So barring it being clear cut domestic abuse. I think we all need to remember that this is Louis’ perspective, and in the novels Claudia was canonically manipulative, (admittedly I feel understandably). Claudia intentionally worsened the wedge between Louis and Lestat. It’s absolutely possible Louis is interpreting any given moment as uncharitably as possible and his perspective of Lestat’s motivations have been skewed.

#never did I think I would be a Lestat apologist #man is still insane #like I’m not saying Lestat is in anyway a rational party #only that I don’t think is the manipulative mastermind Louis thinks he his #he’s actually kinda dumb #iwtv #anne rice #interview with the vampire #iwtv claudia #iwtv lestat #iwtv louis #lestat de lioncourt #louis de pointe du lac #claudia de lioncourt #these bitches toxic

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cosmicjoke · 2 years

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Uggh, Claudia’s diary entry in “Merrick” has got me all messed up.

I mean, first, it’s sad as hell how much she hated Louis, but at the same time loved him, and how she admits she loved Lestat just as much. But this part here:

“Louis will do as I wish, even unto the very destruction of Lestat, which I plan in every detail. Whereas Lestat would never cooperate with my designs upon Louis. So there my loyalty lies, under the guise of love even in my own heart.”

It makes me think of what Lestat said to Louis in “TotBT”, that he would never, ever have let anyone hurt him. Even Claudia knew it back then, and that’s why she targeted Lestat, not out of some unique hatred for him over Louis, but because she knew Lestat never would have agreed with or allowed her to kill Louis. It’s both beautiful and tragic in what that says about Lestat’s love for Louis, and of course heartbreaking that Claudia felt the need at all to kill one of them and keep the other in thrall to her basically. She chose to keep Louis because she could control him. At the same time, her awareness of her own cruelty and hatred is in itself tragic. She knows what she’s going to do, she wants and needs to do it, and yet she still fears for Louis and Lestat both.

I also found Claudia’s line about Lestat and Louis here really interesting:

“Perhaps in the court of my heart, I hold Louis far more accountable for my present state than ever I could blame my impulsive and simple Lestat.”

One thing about Lestat’s character that I think a lot of people don’t get, maybe because of the new show and how it depicts Lestat as this sort of mastermind manipulator, is that in so many ways, he was and is more like a child than Claudia herself. She calls him impulsive and simple. She knows he never meant to or designed for her to suffer or be in pain. He never planned on things going the way they did, he never tried to control or manipulate her, or hurt her. He was always just too guileless and artless for something like that. And so she can’t hold him entirely responsible for her current state, and indeed might actually blame Louis more for it. And whew, seeing Louis’ reaction to that revelation was a gut punch too. The way he doesn’t even blame Claudia for her vitriolic words about him and his “useless conscience”, and knowing he only wishes to know that her soul is at peace so he can die himself, seeing just how low he is here, it’s rough.

And the above reveal about how Lestat would never go along with or tolerate any harm coming to Louis makes the plan between Louis and David, and Louis’ plans in particular, the way they discuss them in front of Lestat, when Lestat can’t really react or know what they’re saying, all the more awful. If Lestat understood what Louis was planning to do, he would, as David correctly thinks, do everything in his power to stop it.

#Merrick #louis de pointe du lac #David Talbot #Lestat De Lioncourt #Claudia

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irismit · 2 years

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Sooo… am I the only one that doesn’t think Armand masterminded the interview or is brain washing Louis?

Cause they do seem to be staying close to the book plot beats and while Armand is manipulative as hell, when he was with Louis during his first depression (the post-Theater of the vampires one), he mostly just silently stayed with him and hoped he would regain his passion when he was grieving, the only long term manipulation he pulled on him was letting him believe Lestat was dead and while he definitely manipulated EVERYONE in Paris even then he (I believe truthfully) promised Louis that he wouldn’t mentally influence him again cause it would destroy his spirit (aka what he needed him for)

Now obviously it could be that they remove themselves even more from the books and Armand becomes a completely different character, or that they somehow try to replace the “Armand manipulates Daniel” story arc by him being more of that towards Louis but yeah… I don’t think this will be it

#interview with the vampire #amc iwtv #the vampire chronicles #iwtv spoilers

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frevandrest · 4 years

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Review: A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

This book focuses a lot on history (with a magical twist) and it follows late 18th century France, Britain and Haiti. Since I don’t know much about British history of the time, and I feel it is not on me to talk about how representation of Haiti and slavery was done, I will be solely focusing on the French portion of the book, which focused on the Revolution. Impressions while reading: here.

The book hinges on the magical twist, and it is an interesting setup (once you accept that the history unravels identically to our own). Yes, this choice could be questioned (especially in terms of oppression and power), but it allowed for discussions of historical details framed through magic, which I liked.

The review will mainly focus on this intersection of history and magic, or how history and historical personalities were represented in the light of the magical twist in the story.

Warning: Spoilers! (And I mean the most spoilery spoilers, including the ending).

The Magical Twist

In this world, certain people are born with magical abilities, but only aristocrats are allowed to use magic. A lot of the motivation and one of the main reasons behind the French Revolution was that commoners were not allowed to use magic (so, for example, a weather mage could not prevent frost so his village had to suffer from famine). Ironically, Louis XVI is born without magic.

There are different types of magical abilities, but the most important for the plot are mesmerism, vampirism, necromancy and shadowmancy. Mesmerism is easy to understand: influence people (mainly through talking). Robespierre has this, although weakly. Necromancy allows a person to bring someone back to life, but only for a very short time period. Robespierre is the only living necromancer in Europe (and he has to hide it, because this power is not allowed to anyone, including aristocrats; his own mother was killed for it - well, she covered up for child Max, but still). Shadowmancy allows a person to control “shadows”, which are ambiguously/evil entities (ghosts? demons?) that could be trapped in objects. Vampires are blood mages and the main villain (mostly “seen” as a voice in people’s head, typically Robespierre’s) is a vampire.

Now, the most plot-relevant thing is that two magicians (a necromancer + shadowmancer) can make an undead army or warriors by bringing a person back from the dead and trapping a shadow inside of the body. Camille Desmoulins is a shadowmancer and so is Saint-Just.

Characters

Robespierre (mesmerizer/necromancer): I felt Max’s characterization was fine; you can feel his wish to do good, and you feel his insecurities and frustrations. He is not villainized. He is presented as making harder and harder choices, which was a good development. The trouble is, there’s the main villain (who communicates with Max telepathically) and the whole thing is that Max strikes a deal with him to help him “save France”, and it goes just about as horribly as you can imagine. Basically, the evil dude helps Max and pushes him to do things (increasingly more evil). The whole plot is about the villain manipulating Max (and everyone else). This strips Max from some of his agency and responsibility. The book does a good effort in balancing this - Max still has his own free will to make choices and mistakes, so it’s not like he’s a puppet, but it kind of puts emphasis on being manipulated - what happens in the book is the result of the villain’s machinations.

Camille (shadowmancer/fire magic): I liked this Camille a lot. I felt he was given a larger role (one of the revolutionaries who pushed for most changes and was hugely influential), but he was complex. He’s described as passionate, impulsive, zealous and sassy. I felt that this description was much more interesting than the usual uwu cinnamon roll naive infantilized Camille. He is all over the place, but at least he does something, and he makes mistakes, and is allowed not to be perfect. The fallout between Max and Camille is explained through the magical twist (in part, at least - Camille is warned about someone manipulating Max and he even felt it in Max’s head and wishes to stop what they are doing).

Saint-Just (shadowmancer): There was not much SJ, but at least he was not demonized or portrayed as depraved, which is, frankly, more than what 90% representations typically give him. He is still cold (described as ice, to the opposite of Camille’s fire), and handsome, but it’s not presented as eeeevil! He felt dignified, so that was not bad. But he’s a prop to Max’s activities, mainly, and not a full character. He does get a good sendoff (see below).

Danton (no magic): There was not much Danton in the book; his role was in line with history (although often presented as being magically ~influenced by Robespierre, which was... ugh), but also not important for the main conflicts. He’s mainly there to take Camille away from Robespierre, which is an interesting narrative choice (because it’s typically framed as SJ taking Robespierre away from Camille).

Others: Charlotte Robespierre was strict and a bit mean (and she’s also the most prominent female character in the French part of the book). The main villain was a secret mastermind behind all three narratives and I understand the narrative choice, but he was a bit stereotypical (which is not bad per se; it’s just that I feel I’d prefer if he wasn’t there at all). Marat was there for maybe two scenes, which was a shame - I wanted more.

Plot

The plot follows our history almost identically. So, there are a lot of meetings and talks and Convention scenes, which were exciting to me. Robespierre (with the help of his “benefactor”) uses his mesmerism to be taken seriously and listened. Camille leads people to storm the magical Bastille (and Robespierre is also there). The main point of conflict between the Girondins and Montagnards is that almost none of the Girondins are magicians so they are not really interested in fighting for magician rights.

The most interesting parts of the French Revolution plot are the Terror and Thermidor (who is surprised?) I suppose I am in a minority when I say that I wished those parts were longer. The book takes a lot of time to establish its setting (it starts in the 1780s); the storming of the Bastille happens around 160 pages in. But when we get to Terror, it unravels quickly, and I wanted more.

The Terror

Ok, so here’s the key thing (that will be relevant for the sequel, I assume - yes, there is a sequel, focused on Naps). In order to win the war against foreign armies, the French need soldiers. And the villain convinces Max that ordinary soldiers are not enough - they need to make an undead army. This is where necromancer + shadowmancer thing becomes important. Basically, Max turns all the guillotined people into undead soldiers, first with Camille, and then, when he refuses, with SJ. For a moment, I hoped this would tie brilliantly to the history of SJ as a representative on a mission (to command the army), but nah. Apparently, once created, the undead are simply given a command to fight, and off they go.

This is an interesting idea (especially since it includes Danton and Camille being turned into undead soldiers) but it was kind of short. It also meant that Max had to be there for all the executions, and basically watch Camille die.

Thermidor

The background for Thermidor was ok done - what Max was (mainly) accused of was that he used magic (mesmerism) on others to influence them, and they didn’t like it. (I suppose I failed to mention this, but until he revealed himself as a necromancer, nobody knew Max had magic). In reality, the main villain turned against Max and influenced the Convention to do the same. The villain’s goal was to get an undead army and he needed a necromancer for that. Once it was done, he had no use of Max anymore, and that was it.

The Hôtel de Ville scene was interesting, although I wanted more. It was also one of the most heartbreaking moments in the book, because of Le Bas. What happens is that the soldiers are coming and they have nothing to defend themselves, except SJ’s shadows (who can kill people but can also be killed). So Le Bas is all: well, if you had an undead soldier, that would make it better. So he offers to kill himself and that Max and SJ make him into an undead. 😭 But that goes nowhere, and the events happen as they did in history (more or less).

I said SJ gets a good sendoff - before the soldiers arrive, he makes a shadow to fight them, and it is described as his act of free magic, because this is what they did - they made magic free for everyone. And that even those who are coming to arrest them are part of that same Revolution (which I felt was too poetic - real SJ did not think that those people were part of his Revolution). Max takes a pistol to get rid of the voice from his head, but one of the soldiers who arrive has magic to manipulate metal and he makes the bullet hit Max in the jaw. On their way to the scaffold, the villain in Max’s head tells him that he fulfilled his purpose of making the army but that the Republic will die, to be replaced by an Empire. I felt it was nice that it was acknowledged the importance of Max & co for the Republic.

I typically have concluding thoughts to share, but I am not sure what to say here. I enjoyed the blending of history and magic, and I wished the book fully focused on the Revolution. But I am not sure how I feel about the core villain plot about Max and everyone else being manipulated. On the other hand, there was this very interesting Camille, and nobody was demonized, so that was good.

#a declaration of the rights of magicians #h.g. parry #books #frev #french revolution #tw: suicide #Jacobin Fiction Convention

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harryfeatgaga · 6 years

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This is the tea: people on twitter, and in this fandom, believe they can throw around words like sociopathy about harry because they believe his entire career, and life, has been masterfully planned and executed. They think Harry masterminded 1D’s demise and he’s the reason they broke up (forgetting Zayn left first and Harry finished his contract). They believe that Jeff has been around since 2013 as Harry’s puppet master, whispering things into his ear, to try and get him to hate the boys+++

+++and Harry listened, and therefore he pretended they all got along but secretly he hated them and was planning his solo career post 1D since 2013 (despite the fact that Niall and Louis both relaxed solo singles before Harry, but anyway). They think Harry, along with the azoffs, have some kind of control, and hold, over the music industry, and therefore Harry gets special treatment that the other boys don’t get. And they think that’s unfair.

They think Harry’s entire stage persona is an act and he’s manipulating his fans into thinking he’s a good person, but really he’s a misogynistic, racist, homophone who only cares about money. That’s why he only uses social media for promo, they say. He just wants his fans money. And he doesn’t care about them otherwise. And they think he’s a Machiavellian genius who only cares about profits and fucking over the other boys and using his fans. This is literally what they think. And it’s why they’re too stupid to know he isn’t a sociopath.

this is fucking wild like I knew all of this but like seeing it all together like this im???? people are………..fucked

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victoriagloverstuff · 6 years

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40 of the Best Villains in Literature

Villains are the best. We may not love them in our lives, but they’re often the best part of our literature—on account of their clear power, their refusal of social norms, and most importantly, their ability to make stories happen. After all, if everyone was always nice and good and honest all the time, literature probably wouldn’t even exist.

To that end, below are a few of my favorites from the wide world of literary villainy. But what exactly does “best” mean when it comes to bad guys (and gals)? Well, it might mean any number of things here: most actually terrifying, or most compelling, or most well-written, or most secretly beloved by readers who know they are supposed to be rooting for the white hats but just can’t help it. It simply depends on the villain. Think of these as noteworthy villains, if it clarifies things.

This is not an exhaustive list, of course, and you are more than invited to nominate your own favorite evildoers in the comments section. By the way, for those of you who think that great books can be spoiled—some of them might be below. After all, the most villainous often take quite a few pages to fully reveal themselves.

Mitsuko, Quicksand, Junichiro Tanizaki

The brilliance of Mitsuko (and the brilliance of this novel) is such that, even by the end, you’re not sure how much to despise her. She is such an expert manipulator, such a re-threader of the truth, that she is able to seduce everyone in her path (read: not only Sonoko but Sonoko’s husband) and get them to like it. Including the reader, of course. In the end, Sonoko is still so devoted to her that the grand tragedy of her life is the fact that Mitsu did not allow her to die alongside her.

Mr. Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

Because the very worst villain is . . . get this . . . actually inside you. Also, you just fell asleep one time and when you woke up it was your evil id and not you? We’ve heard that one before. (So has Buffy.)

Infertility, The Children of Men, P. D. James

Sure, Xan is also a villain in this novel. But the real, big-picture villain, the thing that causes everything to dissolve, and people to start christening their kittens and pushing them around in prams, has to be the global disease that left all the men on earth infertile.

The shark, Jaws, Peter Benchley

A villain so villainous that (with the help of Steven Spielberg) it spawned a wave of shark paranoia among beach-goers. In fact, Benchley, who also wrote the screenplay for the film, was so horrified at the cultural response to his work that he became a shark conservationist later in life.

The kid, The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein

Take, take, take. This kid is the actual worst.

Professor Moriarty, “The Final Problem,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A criminal mastermind— “the Napoleon of Crime,” as Holmes puts it—and the only person to ever give the good consulting detective any real trouble (other than himself). Though after countless adaptations, we now think of Moriarty as Holmes’s main enemy, Doyle really only invented him as a means to kill his hero, and he isn’t otherwise prominent in the series. Moriarty has become bigger than Moriarty.

Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

The housekeeper so devoted to her dead ex-mistress that she’s determined to keep her memory alive—by goading her boss’s new wife to jump out of the window to her death. That’s one way to do it, I suppose.

Vanity, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

You could argue that it’s Harry who corrupts Dorian, and James who stalks and tries to murder him, but the real source of all this young hedonist’s problems is his own self-obsession. Sometimes I like to think about what this novel would be like if someone wrote it today, with Dorian as a social media star. . .

Uriah Heep, David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

Few villains are quite so aggressively ugly as Uriah Heep (even the name! Dickens did not go in much for subtlety). When we first meet him, he is described as a “cadaverous” man, “who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand.” Some Dickens scholars apparently think that Heep was based on Hans Christian Andersen, in which case, mega burn—unless Andersen was into heavy metal.

The Grand Witch, The Witches, Roald Dahl

As “the most evil woman in creation,” she is on a mission to torture and kill as many children as possible, and often uses murder as a focusing device in meetings. She’s also kind of brilliant—I mean, murdering children by turning them into animals their parents want to exterminate? I have to say, that’s smart.

Cathy Ames, East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Cathy Ames is cold as ice—a sociopath who had to learn as a child how to mimic feelings to get by—but soon also learns how easy it is to manipulate, destroy lives, and murder people to amuse herself. Apparently all this is available to her because of her remarkable beauty. In the end, she has a single feeling of remorse and promptly kills herself.

Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

That’s right, I said it. Mired in self-pity! Sullen and annoying! Dresses up as a gypsy to mess with Jane’s mind! Keeps his first wife locked in the attic! Thinks he can marry a nice girl like Jane anyway! Gaslights her constantly! Whatever.

Zenia, The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

In Atwood’s retelling of the Grimm fairy tale “The Robber Bridegroom,” an evil temptress named Zenia steals the partners of three women (among many, one presumes). Roz, Charis, and Tony, however, use their mutual hurt and hatred to form a friendship—and unpack the many lies and revisions of herself Zenia has offered to each of them. But I can’t really put it better than Lorrie Moore did in a 1993 review of the novel:

Oddly, for all her inscrutable evil, Zenia is what drives this book: she is impossibly, fantastically bad. She is pure theater, pure plot. She is Richard III with breast implants. She is Iago in a miniskirt. She manipulates and exploits all the vanities and childhood scars of her friends (wounds left by neglectful mothers, an abusive uncle, absent dads); she grabs at intimacies and worms her way into their comfortable lives, then starts swinging a pickax. She mobilizes all the wily and beguiling art of seduction and ingratiation, which she has been able to use on men, and she directs it at women as well. She is an autoimmune disorder. She is viral, self-mutating, opportunistic (the narrative discusses her in conjunction with AIDS, salmonella and warts). She is a “man-eater” run amok. Roz thinks: “Women don’t want all the men eaten up by man-eaters; they want a few left over so they can eat some themselves.”

Becky Sharp, Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

A cynical, manipulative, intelligent beauty with many artistic talents and a premium can-do attitude at her disposal. You’ve never met a more dedicated hustler. By the end, the novel seems to judge her pretty harshly—but I’ve always loved her.

Henry, The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Oh, Henry—brooding, brilliant, bone-tired Henry. Some in the Lit Hub office argued that it was Julian who was the real villain in Donna Tartt’s classic novel of murder and declension, but I give Henry more credit than that. His villainy is in his carefulness, his coldness, his self-preservation at all costs. He is terrifying because we all know him—or someone who could oh-so-easily slide into his long overcoat, one winter’s night.

Hubris, almost all of literature but let’s go with Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

Isn’t it awesome? We can just make dinosaurs! There is no foreseeable problem with this. We can totally handle it.

Arturo, Geek Love, Katherine Dunn

Here’s another novel with multiple candidates for Supreme Villain—should it be the Binewski parents, who purposefully poison themselves and their children in order to populate their freak show? Or should it be Mary Lick, a sort of modern millionaire version of Snow White’s Evil Queen, who pays pretty women to disfigure themselves? I think we have to go with Arturo the Aqua Boy, the beflippered narcissist who grows into a cult leader, encouraging his followers to slowly pare away their body parts in a search for “purity.” (But for the record, it’s all of the above.)

Dr. Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

It’s true that the monster is the murderer in Shelley’s classic novel—and also, you know, a monster—but it’s Dr. Frankenstein who decided he had to play God and build a creature in his own image without thought to the possible ramifications! Shelley treats him as a tragic figure, but that only makes him a much more interesting villain.

Hannibal Lecter, Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, etc., Thomas Harris

Made iconic by Anthony Hopkins, of course, but made brilliant and terrifying—a serial killing psychiatrist cannibal, come on—by Thomas Harris. “They don’t have a name for what he is.” Also, he has six fingers—though they’re on his left hand, so it couldn’t have been him who killed Mr. Montoya. Still, it puts him in rare company.

Captain Ahab, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

Did you think the villain was the whale? The villain is not the whale—it’s the megalomaniac at the helm.

Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, William Shakespeare

The villainess of choice for every man who has ever claimed his wife made him do it. But I’ve always found Lady Macbeth more interesting than Macbeth himself—she’s the brains behind the operation, not to mention the ambition. Her sleepwalking scene is one of the best and most famous of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Even this makes me shiver:

Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

Sand, The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe

It may be the devious villagers who trick the poor etymologist into the sand pit, but it is the sand itself that is the main antagonist in this slim and wonderful novel. The sand that keeps coming, and must be shoveled back. The sand that constantly threatens to swallow everything: first the man, then the woman, then the village—though one assumes the villagers would replace him before that happened. Sand.

Suburban Ennui, Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

In everyone’s favorite horror novel about America in the ’50s, onetime bohemians Frank and April Wheeler move to the ‘burbs, and find it. . . extremely stifling. But it’s not the suburbs exactly but the Wheelers’ inability to understand one another, their fear, their creeping, cumulative despair, that are the forces of destruction here.

“The book was widely read as an antisuburban novel, and that disappointed me,” Yates said in a 1972 interview.

The Wheelers may have thought the suburbs were to blame for all their problems, but I meant it to be implicit in the text that that was their delusion, their problem, not mine. . . I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that—felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit—and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the fifties.

David Melrose, Never Mind, Edward St. Aubyn

Fathers don’t get much worse than David Melrose: cruel, brutal, and snobbish, a man who enjoyed humiliating his wife, who raped his young son, and who seemed to doom all those close to him to a life of pain. You could also argue that the British Aristocracy is the villain in the Patrick Melrose books, but . . . David is definitely worse (if slightly less all-encompassing).

Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

Here’s a villain you can’t help but root for—I mean, sort of. You feel his pain as he tries to insinuate himself into the life of the man he so admires (and perhaps loves), and as he is first welcomed and then pushed away. Less so when he murders his beloved and assumes his identity—but somehow, as you read, you find yourself holding your breath around every corner, hoping he will escape yet again.

Rufus Weylin, Kindred, Octavia Butler

As slaveowners go, Rufus isn’t the worst (his father might rank) but he isn’t the best, either. He’s selfish and ignorant, and (like most men of the time) a brutal racist and misogynist, who doesn’t mind raping women as long as they act like they like it. Actually, the fact that he thinks he’s better than his father actually makes him worse. That said, the real antagonist in this novel might actually be the unknown and unexplained force that keeps transporting Dana from her good life in 1976 California to a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. What’s that about?

Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey

Big Nurse rules the patients of the asylum ward with an iron fist. She is addicted to order and power, and can be quite cruel in commanding it. In comes McMurphy, our hero, who wants to undercut her. He does undercut her, in fact, a number of times—but when he goes too far, she has him lobotomized. The end! I know Ratched is meant to be evil, and it’s supposed to be depressing that she wins, but I can’t help but sort of like the fact that after a man chokes her half to death and rips off her shirt in an attempt to humiliate her (because no one with breasts can have power, you see!), she simply has him put down.

The Prison-industrial complex, The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner

Who is really the villain in Rachel Kushner’s most recent novel? It can’t be Romy; serving a life sentence for killing a man who was stalking her. It can’t be the man himself, who didn’t quite understand what he was doing. It can’t be any of the prisoners, nor any of the guards in particular. Nor is this a book with no villain, because the pulsing sense of injustice is too great. It is the whole thing, every aspect, of the American prison system—meant to catch you and bleed you and keep you and bring you back—that is the true villain in this novel (and often, in real life).

Big Brother, 1984, George Orwell

Of course it’s O’Brien who does most of the dirty work—but it’s Big Brother (be he actual person or nebulous invented concept) that really, um, oversees the evil here.

Patrick Bateman, American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

He’s a shallow, narcissistic, greedy investment banker, and also a racist, a misogynist, an anti-Semite and a homophobe, and also a sadist and a murderer and a cannibal and Huey Lewis devotee. He’s also weirdly pathetic. Can’t really get any worse than that as a person—but as a character, he’s endlessly entertaining.

The General, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez

It’s José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra who is the most bloodthirsty, but the unnamed General (of the Universe) who is the most compelling villain in this novel: an impossibly long-lived tyrant who has borderline-magical control over the populace, and even the landscape, whose roses open early because, tired of darkness, he has declared the time changed; who sells away the sea to the Americans. He is desperately unhappy; he considers himself a god. Luckily, we get to spend almost the entire novel within his twisting brain.

Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

The genius of old Hum is how compelling he is—that is, despite the horrible thing he spends the entire novel doing (kidnapping a young girl whose mother he has murdered, driving her around the country and coaxing her into sexual acts, self-flagellating and self-congratulating in equal measure), you are charmed by him, half-convinced, even, by his grand old speeches about Eros and the power of language. In the end, of course, no amount of fancy prose style is enough to make you forget that he’s a murderer and worse, but for this reader, it’s pure pleasure getting there.

Ridgeway, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

The slave-hunting Ridgeway, Whitehead writes, “was six and a half feet tall, with the square face and thick neck of a hammer. He maintained a serene comportment at all times but generated a threatening atmosphere, like a thunderhead that seems far away but then is suddenly overhead with a loud violence.” He’s a little more interesting and intelligent than a simple brute—in part due to that sidekick of his—which only makes him more frightening as a character. Tom Hardy is a shoo-in for the adaptation.

Annie Wilkes, Misery, Stephen King

Listen: Annie Wilkes is a fan. She’s a big fan. She loves Paul Sheldon’s novels about Misery Chastain, and she is devastated to discover—after rescuing Sheldon from a car wreck—that he has killed off her beloved character. Things do not then go well for Paul, because as it turns out, Annie is already a seasoned serial killer who is very handy (read: murderous) with household objects.

The Republic of Gilead, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

The government that has taken control of America in the world of Atwood’s classic dystopia is a fundamentalist theocracy whose leaders have eliminated the boundary between church and state—and worse, have twisted religious principles and political power in an attempt to utterly subjugate all women, erasing their identities and allowing them to exist only so far as they may be of use to the state. It is super fucked up and exactly what I worry about in a country where fundamentalists have any among of political power.

The Earth, The Broken Earth series, N. K. Jemisin

It’s pretty hard to fight back when the thing you’re fighting is the earth itself, which punishes those who walk upon it with extreme, years-long “seasons” of dramatic and deadly climate change. Ah, Evil Earth!

Iago, Othello, William Shakespeare

The worst villain is the one who knows you best—the one you might even love. The scariest motive is the lack of one—what Coleridge called Iago’s “motiveless malignity.” The most interesting villain is the one who has even more lines than the titular hero. He is a fantastic villain, a dangerous trickster, whose character has stumped (and intrigued) critics for centuries.

Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

Possibly the most terrifying character in modern literature (or any literature?), Glanton’s deputy is over six feet tall and completely hairless. More importantly, despite the fact that he might be a genius, he inflicts senseless and remorseless violence wherever he goes. The man murders (and, it is suggested, rapes) children and throws puppies to their doom. He might actually be the devil—or simply evil itself. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

Slavery, Beloved, Toni Morrison

This entire novel is based on a single idea: that a loving mother might murder her baby daughter to save her from life as a slave. Sure, the slavers are bad (and the schoolteacher is particularly chilling). Sure, you could make an argument that the vengeful spirit Beloved’s presence is destructive, splintering further an already fractured family. But these are only symptoms, in this the Great American Novel, of the Great American Sin.

Satan, The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

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Is Mariah Carey��s Backup Dancer-Boyfriend Her Kevin Federline?

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ALL SHE WANTS

Is Mariah Carey’s Backup Dancer-Boyfriend Her Kevin Federline?

Accused of sexually harassing her former head of security this week, Maria Carey now faces claims she has handed control of her career over to her 34-year-old backup dancer BF.

Tom Sykes

11.10.17 3:03 AM ET

Christmas is a busy time of year to be Mariah Carey, so there will be concern among fans booked for her popular “All I Want For Christmas” tour which kicks off next week that the iconic singer’s career is being mismanaged by her backup-dancer boyfriend, Bryan Tanaka, in what a source describes as “a full-on Britney-and-Kevin Federline situation.”

Carey, who was this week accused of sexually harassing her bodyguard by partially exposing herself to him in a paused draft court action, recently split with her mercurial manager Stella Bulochnikov, according to a report on Page Six this morning.

Bulochnikov engineered her reality show, her just-completed Las Vegas residency, her tour with Lionel Richie and her upcoming Christmas shows, according to Page Six, but was pushed out recently by Tanaka, 34, who has been dating Carey, 47, since her split from Australian billionaire James Packer.

A source tells Page Six: “Bryan is behind the whole split between Mariah and Stella. Bryan believes that he should be the one running Mariah’s day-to-day life, and he’s been orchestrating Stella’s exit for a long time. No one enjoys working with Stella. There’s no secret that some people are happy she’s out of the picture.”

Carey’s career was famously masterminded at the outset by her then-husband Tommy Mottola.

He launched Carey as an artist in 1990, and shepherded Carey to global superstardom.

But the contrast with Tanaka, sources say, could not be greater.

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“The boyfriend backup dancer isn’t the right person to run her career. He’s definitely no Tommy Mottola,” the source told Page Six.

Another source told Page Six: “This is a full-on Britney-and-Kevin Federline situation. Brian is a backup dancer, and knows nothing about managing an iconic artist.”

The paper claims that Carey is paying Tanaka up to $12,000 a week.

“Mariah is in love with Bryan and is like a schoolgirl around him. He has totally manipulated the situation to take over her life and push out everyone else, and Mariah just can’t see it.”

Carey’s spokeswoman denied to Page Six that Tanaka is currently managing Carey’s career, but they also “declined to explain who actually is.”