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velvet-vox · 19 days ago

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My top 30 favourite female villains of all time (20-11)

<<<<Previous part (30-21)

In case this post just randomly popped up on your suggested feed or your researched tag, this is part 2 of a 3 where I rank my favourite female antagonists of all time.

The word "villain" is just there in the title because it sounds cooler.

You can reach the first part by, you guessed it, clicking on the link up above. I encourage you to do it, since this list is intended to be consumed one entry after the other.

Feel free to disregard this post if you aren't interested in the opinions of a random individual on the internet.

Also, if it still wasn't clear enough, this list is highly subjective.

Number 20: The Beldam (Coraline)

I didn't want to have this villain in the list.

I SO didn't want to have this villain in the list.

But here she is anyway; despite all of my attempts at ignoring her, trying to forget she exists, and excluding her even from the honourable mentions, my better judgement prevailed in the end and I forced myself to include her anyway.

To be perfectly clear: I don't hate the Other Mother.

Hatred isn't the reason why I was avoiding her so desperately; though love and admiration aren't the reasons why I ended up including her either.

You see,

I AM DEEPLY TRAUMATIZED BY HER.

For those of you who don't know, Coraline is an animated stop-motion picture of 2009 produced by Laika Entertainment and directed by Henry Selick.

The story, by pure coincidence, also happens to be based upon a horror book for children that a father wrote to his own two daughters to explain to them the dangers of trusting people you don't know who show you too much kindness and pretend to love you.

The ACTUAL motion picture, also by a random pull of quantum strings, is marketed as a horror movie for children and contains some unsettling visuals and themes.

I, like many other kids, watched Coraline before I had 2 digits of age: this movie was my very first introduction to the horror genre, and despite it being pretty tame by children's standards and my modern tolerance level, at the time of my first watch, IT HAUNTED ME.

Even if it had an apparently happy ending (yes, I did end up watching Coraline's theory videos eventually), this movie left a permanent scar of trauma in my brain, that carried over for the rest of my days in elementary school, and at the time, I had just STARTED my days in elementary school.

I became incredibly paranoid of the dark and small, Coraline sized wooden door of the pan storage under my house's chimney; I became afraid of needles, buttons, and other Coraline themed objects; and of course, at the centre of all of my nightmares, phobias, and anxieties, there she stood above the rest, forever carving an irremovable space in my psyche just for her:

The Other Mother.

Out of all the icons of evil present here, none of them can claim to have inflicted the same level of psychological trauma that The Other Mother has inflicted on me; the Beldam pretty much lives in my head rent free on a subconscious level, and whenever something scary and dangerous comes to mind, her image is the one that I associate with.

And it's easy to understand why: without spoiling much of the story, she's super threatening, always in control of any situation, and acts and speaks in an unnatural manner that doesn't feel human (in particular, her hand's mannerisms fascinate and terrify me at the same time).

But all of her other characteristics and intimidation factors pale in comparison to what is, in my opinion, her best aspect: the character design.

I wholeheartedly consider The Other Mother to have one of the best horror monster designs ever, in any work of fiction. And that's all due to how her design brilliantly weaves together functionality, intimidation, and a stunning aesthetic, with the stop motion animation technique as the cherry on top of this nightmare fest for the eyes.

Other Mother, we may have had our differences, and you might have ruined my childhood forever, but I won't no longer deny the impact that you had on my life just because of how much I fear you.

Number 19: Root (Person Of Interest)

And now we arrive at what might be the most controversial entry on this list (it really isn't), as Samantha Groves went such a long way from her villainous roots while basically remaining the exact same character that you might even start to question if she ever was a villain in the first place.

Then you see her casually telling a guy in a stolen car's hood that she kidnapped from the airport and replaced herself with to chill out, as she is about to have a long flight because of what the voice in her ear is saying to her, all the while Harold stands there speechless, and you suddenly remember "Oh yeah, this isn't even the most psychotic thing she has done this season".

Person of Interest is the wet, pill sized dream of any fan of 1984. This 2011-2016 TV show takes many of the elements that made George Orwell's stories so captivating and uses them to craft its own narrative; it's a series with a unique identity, one that, in retrospect, was way up ahead of its times, and should have had a longer lasting impact on Pop culture outside of that one meme.

Although the show has an amazing main cast, one of the most obvious standout characters is without a shadow of a doubt Samantha Groves, aka Root, played by Amy Acker, one of the first major antagonists of the series.

The story of Root is a highly unexpected one, full of twists and turns, but to summarise, she starts off hating human kind and preferring computers to it, then she actually falls in love with the Machine, a sentient godlike AI guiding our protagonists, and kidnaps one of the main characters and the father of said Machine in order to meet her.

Shenanigans ensue: the Machine starts to reciprocate Root's feelings, and after Root's arc ends with her depressed and heartbroken, the Machine decides to help Sam reform and leave her misanthropy behind, effectively making her a full time member of the team.

She eventually falls in love and starts a relationship with another member of the team after threatening said team mate with a hot iron as their very first meeting, and in the final episode of the show, she gets immortalised by the Machine in a way that I won't spoil.

This is the hyper synthesized version of the events, one that doesn't even cover much of Root's villainous actions and redemption arc.

I've enjoyed Root both as a villain and both as a hero, and as a villain, she was incredibly solid (and hot).

The best part about Root is that, although she reforms and becomes a hero that cares about others, at her core, she still remains the psychopath the show introduced her as, therefore, she maintains the entertainment value of her villainy well into her redemption, effectively becoming the funniest member of the team by a long shot.

Root was my very first experience with a nuanced, hot, psychotic female antagonist that doesn't get treated as biologically evil by narrative, one that, admittedly, has never been quite matched in terms of consistency and scale, probably making her the most unique character of its archetype.

Her story flows seamlessly when you are watching the series, yet when you take a step back and see the full picture of what actually happened, you realise just how crazy, absurd, and well written all of it was; and although Root's arc has some minor flaws in the later seasons, she's still, without a shadow of a doubt, the best character in the show, at least in my opinion, and I would definitly recommend watching Person Of Interest just for her alone, even if the whole thing is worth looking into.

(Also, the soundtrack of this show slaps, and Root's theme isn't an exception)

Number 18: Jobu Tupaki (EveryThing Everywhere All 👆At👇 🥯Nc€)

Life can get pretty overwhelming.

No other movie captures this feeling better than Everything Everywhere All At Once.

When you have a masterpiece of a movie such as Everything Everywhere All At Once, that manages to convey the overwhelming feeling of life and the weight of each and every single one of our choices through just the 3 hour span of its runtime, the only way to cap off such an amazing experience is with a great villain.

And thankfully, that's exactly what Jobu Tupaki is, but much like the rest of the movie, it's pulled off in an unconventional way.

I can't possibly keep this section coherent for Jobu, so here's some random rambling:

I love how the movie managed to mix in the mother/daughter drama with Jobu's villainy and her desire to collapse the entire multiverse: it's like, Jobu's plan is to commit interdimensional genocide and destroy every reality, yet somehow she manages to come off as one of the most sympathetic female villains and her redemption and reconciliation with her mother at the end of the movie is so impactful and completely believable and I'm just like...

How?!?!?!???!?

How do you pull off such a feat?!?!??!?

The answer is through masterful writing of course, and a lot of other story decisions, that, when added up, create the story that we have now.

Like, Jobu scores relatively low on this list because I'm not as impressed by her as I am with others, but even I do recognise that she's such a storytelling feat:

I vividly remember that when I was watching the movie for the first time, I outright hated Jobu for the great majority of it, which is insane, since I'm usually not the kind of person who despises villains; in retrospect, it probably was because I associated her way too much with XGaster from Underverse, and I conditioned myself into thinking the narrative would go in that direction.

But then, as the story went on, the truth came out, and all the characters developed, I actually started to really sympathise with her, and ended up buying the conclusion to her arc completely.

But honestly, this movie in general just does things that I never thought would have been possible in a story of any medium, let alone an indie budget motion picture.

Jobu's wardrobe is stacked, to say that is award worthy would be an understatement, and the Bagel reveal speech is so good that it almost overshadows the rest of her already amazing introduction scene.

If you think Jobu is unfairly ranked too low, that's totally fine, know that even if I prefer all of the following characters over her, in my mind, I still recognise that Jobu is probably worthy of a top 10, maybe even top 5 Spot to be completely honest, as she really is that compelling.

Number 17: Livewire (DC)

(Don't pay too much attention to the fact that this picture only highlights DC Super Hero Girls version of Livewire, at first I wanted to do a collage of all the different versions of the character, but this project tired me out to no end, and therefore I decided to save time)

My favourite female supervillain from DC is surprisingly not from Batman's rogue's gallery.

Livewire is the female version of what the Riddler means for me, aka a villain who I either forget exists entirely, or one of my favourite villains ever, which is fitting, since they are both from DC.

And while Livewire hasn't bounced back to the status of an all time favourite in a long time, I still really value the joyful memories that she brought to a younger version of me.

Leslie Tompkins is a character who made her first debut in Superman the animated series, and who later made the jump to the comic book pages after the success of said project.

In the show, she's introduced as a self-absorbed radio host, who uses/gained her popularity by spreading her negative opinions of Superman. After the Man of Tomorrow goes to a public event organised by Leslie to warn her and her audience about the dangers of an upcoming storm, Leslie gets mad at him, refuses to collaborate, and subsequently gets hit by the lightning passing through Superman's body into a wire on the ground.

The combination between the lightning and the kriptonian genes make the radio host gain cyan hairs, a pale skin, and electricity themed powers: Leslie Tompkins is no more, and now there's only Livewire, the jock with the shock most powerful that Metropolis has ever seen!

She's the definition of pure, umbrindled fun; her personality is ironically and unironically so energetic that it carries the entire character and could probably write an entire music album on his own; classic comic book Electro wishes to be this interesting of a jerk character.

Much like many other comic book characters, she has a plethora of many different takes on her story, and here I've written down some that I want to highlight the most:

CW Supergirl: I'm starting with the CW Supergirl TV show because... it has the version of Livewire that introduced me to the character.

Yeah, I know what the general consensus about the show's quality is, but I'm not here to talk about that.

This serie's version of Livewire, at least in the first few seasons, because those are the ones that I remember the most, I sincerely thought was really good, or at least good enough to turn me into a long time fan's of her; some time has passed since I first saw this show, but I remember especially enjoying Leslie's rivalry with Supergirl and her ungrateful brat/bully behaviour, she was so mean, and I really bought Supergirl calling Leslie her defacto arch nemesis, so much so that, in fact, although I'd always prefer for Livewire's origins to tie with the Man of Steel, because he needs more female villains even if he has some, eventually, I'd like for her to make the switch to the role of Supergirl's foil whenever given the chance in any continuity, as the two always have a more interesting dynamic in my opinion due to their similar personalities.

Once again, I shall reiterate: I want Livewire to always start as a Superman villain, because those two have a very interesting dynamic in their own right, and Leslie does what all the best Superman villains do and challenges him phisically, morally and psychologically in interesting ways, but I believe that eventually, after Leslie has been in her villain career for a while and Supergirl has gone through her initial arc of learning to accept Earth as her new home, Livewire should get a promotion and become one of Supergirl's greatest enemies, because in my opinion, those two have a lot of chemistry together due to a decent number of reasons that I'm not going to explain right now.

Superman the Animated series: This is the very first on screen debut of the character, and to this day, it remains as solid as it once was, she's not as good of a character as some of the other original creations of the Animated Universe, but she's still really iconic in her own right. However, I feel like the show should have done a better job at evolving her character after her origin episode, because one problem that always seems to consistently pop-up with Livewire is how to further expand on her character after her introduction, it shouldn't be that hard, but comic book writers seem to typically always mess it up.

LEGO DC Super Heroes Villains: Despite her role in the story being rather minor and the fact that she's the only inmate released by complete accident during the prison escape, if you asked me, I'll tell you that Livewire's inclusion in the main storyline of LEGO DC Super Villains improves that part of the game by a lot, actually, and I really love playing as Livewire in this game, they gave her a lot of unique flair and environmental interactions that make her such a blast to use, she's so visually appealing and satisfying to play that I would always switch to her whenever I could.

My Adventures With Superman: I have yet to watch this show unfortunately, but I have heard about the creative decisions that they took for Livewire, and although I didn't think this version of the character was up to a good start, I'm happy that they ended up expanding on her in the following seasons, even if I have yet to see how much the show actually improved her character. More than anything, I'm intrigued by how much different this version of Leslie is from the others, as I feel like many of her comic books fell into the trap of trying to differentiate her while relying too much on her STAS incarnation without adding a whole lot to it.

DC Super Hero Girls: From a somewhat objective standpoint, I believe the DCSHG version of Livewire to be the best current iteration of the character, because it's the only one who updates the character in a meaningful way and combines together most of her previous incarnations, including the ones who hadn't worked as well.

Number 16: Dolores Jane Umbridge (Harry Potter)

Specifically the movie version, she is, no bite at me, the best villain of the entire series.

There's just, something so delightful about Umbridge's ability to strike fear into the heart of everyone around her and hatred into the heart of the watchers that, at least for me, never gets old.

Rowling did such an amazing job conceptualising every single aspect of this character, it feels like every single idea came together to form such an unforgettable package of human awfulness.

All of her quirks and mannerisms just make her that much more unnerving.

The pink wall full of kittens inside small plates?

By the way, when I said that Umbridge is the best villain of the series, I was talking specifically about the movies. Don't worry Voldemort stans, I know that he was characterised differently in the books, though I've a feeling I'd probably prefer her over him even there, since she is more of the type of character I tend to gravitate towards.

Nightmare fuel.

In general, what really gets me about Umbridge as a villain is how she perfectly fits into this uncanny territory, some find her to be cartoonishly evil, but to me, that seems rather inappropriate, as there's absolutely nothing about Umbridge that I would defy as "cartoonish".

I read The Order Of The Phoenix a long time ago, so even if my memory of the character is rather lackluster, I do think her movie adaptation was rather faithful to the source material.

There's admittedly, not much I can say about the book/movie version that hasn't been said already, congratulations Imelda Staunton for bringing such an unforgettably evil character to life in the best/worst way possible.

However... There's still one version of the character I want to talk about, and that version is the STARKID version from A VERY POTTER SEQUEL.

If you haven't seen STARKID's A Very Potter Musical trilogy, I'd highly recomend you doing so: although none of the three stage shows are quite STARKID's very best (Twisted is in my opinion), they are all highly worth the watch, they are all on YouTube for free, and their Umbridge is one of highlight of the second one:

They ramped up on Umbridge's similarities with the Trunchbull and made her ten times more insane and scary as a result of her newfound physical prowess; give it a watch, you won't be disappointed.

These are the links to all three musicals:

A Very Potter Musical

A Very Potter Sequel

A Very Potter Senior Year

Number 15: GLaDOS (Portal series)

GLaDOS is one of the main antagonists of the Portal series.

She is this truly sadistic, intelligent AI with a complicated backstory, who tortures our protagonist by forcing her to complete a seemingly endless number of puzzles, which make up most of the gameplay.

Now it has unfortunately been a while since I've sat through both of the Portal games, so I wasn't sure how much I could say about GLaDOS by going off of pure memory alone, so I watched again various cutscenes from both games and... yeah, she's as good as I remembered her to be.

Simply put, she is hilarious, she's the mother of all the funny AI antagonists, and definitely the G.O.A.T. of every one liner machine you can possibly imagine.

I'm honestly going to keep her section extremely short and concise, as I don't have much to say about her that hasn't been said already by bigger Portal fans than me; she is one of the most iconic AI villains of all time after all, so if don't know anything about her already, I encourage you to check out the Portal games by yourself instead of getting spoiled.

Funny, threatening, interesting, mysterious, dynamic, both Portal levels in LEGO Dimensions were some of the best in that game, and she even has a great arc in the second installment of the series.

Here's the link to her villain song in Portal, and Portal 2.

I may update this section in the future if I feel like it, but for now, just know that I think GLaDOS is pretty cool.

I don't have a deep understanding of her like I have with other characters, so I mostly stick to the superficial funny stuff.

Don't worry GLaDOS fans, I also like her over Wheatley.

The deadly neurotoxin does wonders for Valve.

No wonder they haven't produced anything as interesting in a long while.

Number 14: Ashley Graves (The Coffin of Andy and Leyley)

As I've already said in the introduction segment, villain protagonists count too, though, admittedly, there aren't many examples that come to my mind.

Root up there only became a protagonist eventually, and the only other two examples that I know are Homura Akemi (which is a complicated case) and that one character from a TV show that sings "I'm the villain of my own story". (I never saw either show to be clear)

And in the case of Ashley Graves, I've never seen a character as compelling and deceptive as her, she is so misleading and manipulative that she convinced the entire internet of being pure evil.

(It's an over exaggeration, in case it wasn't clear)

At the time of writing this, only two chapters of the full game have been released, therefore, there's a high possibility that everything that I'm about to say on Ashley is going to become obsolete or incorrect once the next chapter comes out.

The narrative and characters of The Coffin Of Andy And Leyley are very complicated ones, and there are a lot of poorly thought out takes going around, but anyway, here's what I like and what fascinates me about Ashley as a character:

I love how Ashley feels like a subversion of the typical demon child trope, she plays a lot into all of the stereotypes associated with these types of character, but when you take a look back to analyse all of her moments, you notice a lot of small details that contradict this idea of Ashley just being an unredeemable monster; little things that add up to make the Burial route all that much more tragic for her.

Oh, by the way, I showed this section to a friend to know their reaction, and they told me that they actually hate Ashley and find her disgusting, and to that I say, it's perfectly valid if you think Ashley is too evil and repulsive to be sympathised with, after all, a part of the game's horror does come from the protagonists messed up actions, and the story does actively try to make you dislike Ashley as much as possible, so, your opinion is completely fair.

If it was up to me, I would put all of these characters on an electric chair, even my top 2 absolute favourites or the ones who don't really deserve it like number 8.

All except Livewire.

It's not because an electric chair wouldn't work on her, the lethal injection still exists, no, I just don't want her to die.

She's funny, I'll give her a pass.

She can commit as many atrocities as she wants to.

It's admittedly impossible to talk about Ashley without also mentioning the deuteragonist of the game, her brother Andrew, who Ashley spends the most amount of time interacting with.

While I don't like Andrew as much as his sister, it's impossible to go on without admitting that their toxic relationship is the highlight of the game, it's just this overly complicated back and forth of a need for closure and a fear of abandonment; desperate people taking desperate actions against each other because of the desperate measures the other person is taking as a result of who they are and what they do.

I absolutely love diving deep into Ashley's messed up Psyche: it's very interesting to see just how realistic her portrayal of a mental illness is, and her sudden fits of rage are something that I relate to immensely.

She also pulls, oh, some small, little crimes here and there, you know...

murder...

cannibalism...

.......

matricide...

Just a tiny bit of tomfoolery here and there, we all did it at some point in our lives. (No)

But yeah, I really don't want to spoil much of the game, but Ashley does commit some truly heinous acts throughout her adventures, it's really hard for me to describe what Ashley's character is truly like without spoiling the story, but I would definitely recommend checking out this game once it's fully completed.

If you are interested in psychological horror or dark themes, The Coffin Of Andy And Leyley got you covered good.

Number 13: Vesuvia (Totò Sapore and the Magic History of Pizza) (Cartoon of Kinder Ferrero) (Movie of the Italian studio Lanterna Magica) (Based on the book "Il cuoco prigioniero" written by Roberto Piumini)

Despite this only being number 13, the particular obscurity and irrelevance of this piece of media is such to force me to make an entire explanation and analysis in order to do it justice. I didn't think I would end up liking this character as much as I do, but after recently watching this movie for the first time ever, I knew that I had to talk about this baddie in any way, shape or form.

Vesuvia is the main antagonist of an Italian movie made by the studio Lanterna Magica "Totò Sapore e la Magica Storia della Pizza", released in 2003. She is a volcanic sorceress made entirely of lava and fire that lives inside the Vesuvio, a famous Italian volcano.

Every day, Vesuvia spends her time watching over the city of Naples and it's inhabitants through a lava television/pool, and bossing around/abusing his own minion, Vincenzone, an ogre aspiring actor.

Although it was never actually stated in the movie, it's pretty clear that Vesuvia is constantly bored inside her volcanic lair, but can't go out because the rain could potentially kill her, so she is just stuck there being grumpy, only finding relief and amusement through the suffering of the inhabitants of Naples, but even that is threatened by our titular protagonist: Antonio Salvatore "Totò" Sapore, who cheers up the Neapolitans with his inspiring songs.

Growing increasingly frustrated with Antonio's positive influence over the lives of the townsfolk, Vesuvia sets out to destroy the happiness of Totò and ruin is life by making him miserable. There's only one problem with her plan.... Totò is already miserable. He was a destitute orphan with nothing to lose, no talent, no way to achieve his dreams and barely struggling to survive.

And that's where the true messed up nature of this villain comes to shine through: in order to remedy this, Vesuvia decides that she is first gonna give Totò everything, and then she is gonna take that away from him. So, she sends her minion to give him magic pots capable of cooking up any delicious food imaginable, helps Totò find the love of his life, and then, by luring the King, Queen, and Prince of Naples to his newly opened restaurant, gets him nominated to the position of Royal Cook; the downside, to this last one, is that if he refuses the role the Prince is going to cut his head off, and by accepting, he leaves the citizens of Naples without his delicious meals and inspiring songs, bringing the bad mood back in town.

But that's the point in the movie where Vesuvia's plan starts to shift from a simple fit of pettyness to an actual destructive, violent act of war: remember that long range lava pool/television that I mentioned at the beginning? She uses it to update her plan whenever she needs to, and after she learns that the royal family of France is visiting Naples to arrange the marriage between their daughter and the Prince, she decides to fabricate a conflict between the two countries by making Totò serve inedible garbage to the two royal families, which leads to an argument between the two and the eventual declaration of war.

Also, remember that love interest I've mentioned? Well, Vesuvia induces Totò to think that said romantic partner was the one to betray him by swapping out the magic pots with normal ones, and now that Totò has been put in jail for serving garbage to the dinner table and inadvertently starting the war he blames her for his misfortune (Also, while in jail, Vesuvia mocks Totò from a safe distance calling him a zero).

Cut to the end of the movie, Vesuvia, at the peak of her rage, decides that she is going to kill all of our heroes and then destroy the city of Naples with a volcanic eruption. Unfortunately, this is where her plan fails and she is betrayed by her minion who has had enough of her cruelty and decides to help the protagonist.

She eventually dies of a sad, uneventful death, and Totò Sapore manages to stop the war between the two countries by using the flames of the Vesuvio to cook a brand new, never seen before food: the Pizza.

...

So.

Let me get this straight: every single good thing that happened to Totò throughout the entire course of the movie happened because Vesuvia couldn't bear with the fact that he still had a positive outlook on life despite literally being a homeless orphan who struggled to get by and spread positivity in town; she went out of her way to make Totò happy only to then remove said happiness from him, and came up with the idea to start a war and destroy Naples on the fly while she could.

......

THAT IS S+++ B###H BEHAVIOUR.

There are villains who hate for the sake of hating, like your typical high school bully or the as###le rival character, and then there's Vesuvia, who works off her own ass, fabricates overly complicated plans on the fly, spends an insane amount of time, resources and effort to make sure that the person she secretly hates finally obtains the life of his dreams, only to then rip said life away from him, all of this and more, because why?

She hates his music.

She's basically fiery, female Anti-Flash.

Vesuvia is a great foil to Antonio because while they are both miserable individuals stuck in an unfortunate situation, Totò goes out of his way to make other people happy unlike him, while Vesuvia goes out of her way to make other people miserable like her.

She is by far the best part of the movie, and although I can't put her inside the top 10 because she doesn't quite deserve it (at least in my mind) and I can't recommend you to watch the movie because it's only in Italian, I will give the lava witch the respect that she's long overdue by asking you all to check out this video tribute made by Arkham Asylum on YouTube.

Please, look at the Tribute, it's very funny, well edited, and unlike all the other links in this post, you don't even have to leave Tumblr to watch it, just click on the play button and watch it from here.

youtube

However, though, if you are an Italian speaker, or is currently learnering/wants to learn Italian, then here's the link to the movie; it's a pretty fun watch, even if it goes by rather quickly.

Totò Sapore And The Magic History Of Pizza

And here's instead the single video for Vesuvia's villain song, in case you were looking for it. I'd also recommend watching it, even if you can't understand the lyrics, and it might make you more interested in the character.

youtube

Number 12: The Enchantress (Shovel Knight series)

Sometimes I feel like I am the only person on Earth who thinks about The Enchantress as highly as I do; so much so that, whenever I like to play around with the concept of a possible league of Indie Game villains (similar to the Legion of Doom, or the most obvious inspiration, the council of Disney villains from the first Kingdom Hearts), I would always put her as the leader.

And this seems weird, right? (no, not like the rest of your list)

I mean, on a surface level, she is just a Maleficent wannabe, and, to give her credit when credit is due, she pulls it off decently well.

She has stage and off stage presence, she's always serious and threatening, and her design is different enough to not feel as if she's solely a rip off. All of her boss fights are incredibly solid too, even the ones where she's not fighting in directly.

The thing is, despite being a one note pretty simple character, I never find The Enchantress boring.

And I feel like I know why: even if she is in all of the games, the function that she serves in the story is always different and varied, and it works to almost give her dimension, as if she was a product of well made world building.

In Shovel of Hope, she is the physical representation of Shovel Knight's guilt and depression stopping him from being a hero, his source of unhappiness, as well as the embodiment of his rivalry with Black Knight for Shield Knight; in this campaign, the Enchantress is the centre of Shovel and Black Knight's attention, but not just because she's the bad guy the heroes need to take down, but because she's what remains of Shield Knight after the aftermath of the Tower of Fate battle in SoT, she's a constant reminder for both shovel wielding knights of what they have lost, and what they could gain back if they just reached out for it.

In Plague of Shadows, she is relegated as the culmination of Plague Knight desperation and lack of self worth leading him further and further into villainy, but her relevance is portrayed in a different way than the other campaigns;

Her boss fight in this campaign is as cathartic and narratively satisfying as the others, but for different reasons; it's the first time ever where The Enchantress isn't taken seriously.

In all the other campaigns, The Enchantress is played up as the biggest deal ever and the ultimate source of pain and sorrow: she's an emotional, phisical barrier stopping Shovel Knight and Shield Knight from getting back together, carrying along both the wishes and regrets of Shovel Knight and Black Knight alike; she's the constant source of pain and torture of Specter Knight in his campaign, and she is the voice of pride inside King Knight's head pushing him to betray his friends and take the crown.

But in his campaign, Plague Knight is so wreckless and desperate for approval that The Enchantress becomes an obstacle like any other in his path; she's portrayed as just a nuisance, because nothing matters for Plague Knight except himself, hence why he ends up becoming the actual final boss two times.

In Spectre of Torment, she is the Torment, continuously mocking and belittling Spectre Knight until he forces him to give up his freedom at the end of the story.

But in my opinion, her most interesting role is in the one campaign that she was the least necessary: King of Cards.

In that she is a background, mysterious force that serves the purpose of being King Knight's ever inflating ego and anger towards all these fake allies that value him only for his strength and nothing else; so, when she finally reaches the Tower of Fate and The Enchantress proposes to him her deal, he accepts because she is the only person in his life who doesn't treat him as a child, as an idiot, or as a mere tool and instead as the powerful monarch that he always wanted to be, thus leading him to betray his allies and mother that then abandon him.

The Enchantress is the epitome of simple but effective, and that's why I think so highly of her.

Some of the fans find the fact that she is the main antagonist in all of the games annoying, especially since her amulet even has a cameo in the ending of Dig, but I digress.

The Enchantress is truly an amazing villain, and I'm tired of pretending that she's not.

Number 11: Halojack (Deltarune the Metropolis)

ALRIGHT HEAR ME OUT.

From the very start, I said this list was going to be entirely subjective, I'm sure to have made that point very clear; what I don't think I've made quite as clear up to this point, is that the characters I chose to rank higher are the ones who affected me the most, in spite of where they come from.

Halojack is a Deltarune Secret Boss OC made by @huecycles for her Deltarune chapter 3 AU the Metropolis; she is an ex aspiring worker of the TV industry and was given a magic collar by a mysterious individual (eh ehm ☝︎♋︎⬧︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎ ) that at first, seemed a solution to her problems, but then turned into her own personal hell by..... (look it up on her blog).

The reason why Halojack is here is a particularly personal one, you see.... Halojack is the reason why I started to use Tumblr in the first place. No this is not a joke.

The year was 2022, and I was at the height of my Deltarune hyper fixation phase, craving for content, scavenging anything that I could find on YouTube, when suddenly, thanks to YouTube's insane algorithm, I saw a random post of this weird, yet really cool and interesting Deltarune OC, and I don't know what it was: maybe her nice aesthetic, maybe the animation, maybe what was written in the notes, yet something about her just... clicked with me.

Now curious, I immediately seeked out more informations about this characther on @huecycles Youtube channel.

And that's... when my love began.

Needless to say, I consumed all the Halojack content available on the channel, it was actually insane, the Deltarune hype was so big back then, and Halojack looked so much like a canon Toby Fox character, that I needed to consume MORE.

I just couldn't contain myself, so I downloaded Tumblr, since Huecycles said that they also had a blog here where they posted their stuff, and I NEEDED more of Halojack; and so, that's how I got here today.

I'm not sure how much I can talk freely about Halojack without Hue's consent, this is their character after all, and I'm not sure how much can anyone get invested in her nowadays, as you really needed to be there to get the full experience.

For now, all I'm going to say is, the story and personality that they crafted for the character is so cool and unique; going back to the electric chair joke, I feel like that punishment would be redundant for Halojack, as her life is already a living hell regardless of how much more overstimulation she gets.

Halojack scratches that hinch that I had for complex yet unusual female villains, and I love her for it.

For me, it's going to be very hard when the actual Deltarune Chapter 3 comes out, as Halojack has been ingrained so much in my brain as canon, that I honestly can't see a universe where the actual secret boss of chapter 3 lives up to her hype.

Good job Huecycles, and also Merry Christmas!

Also, here's an analysis of Electro's theme from The Amazing Spider-man 2.

youtube

It's the song that I associate the most with Halojack, and I can't help but think of her when I read the subtitles.

Next part>>>>

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