Women In SFF Trope Fridays – Good VS Evil
For this year’s Women in SFF, we thought we’d create our usual recommendation posts in-line with our Photo Challenge over on Instagram, and so bring you Trope Fridays!
Every Friday throughout the month, we’ll be looking at a different popular trope in SFF. You can catch up on previous posts here:
This week, we’ll be looking at Good VS Evil: whether that’s our favourite villains, heroes… or both!
Beth: I know we’re all supposed to love heroes, but I find villains much more interesting, especially if they’re complex and you can occasionally see their point of view. A great example of this is Eliza Chan’s sea-witch villain Cordelia from her debut novel Fathomfolk. Cordelia traps people in contracts and pulls a lot of strings behind scenes, she’s scheming and conniving, and has a lot of people in her control. But not all her scheming she does for herself, her story is a little more complicated than that!
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Nils: I could choose so many here but I’m actually going to pick a recent read which was Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan. This is a novel which completely flips the hero/villain trope on its head and shapes it in such fun ways! My favourite villain here has to be Key, who I can only describe as rather unhinged! He’s a character who is quick to kill and needs very little reason to do it. My favourite hero from this book would be Lady Lia, who isn’t quite as angelic as everyone makes out, but I think that’s what makes her character interesting, the imperfect hero. I want to also pick Rae as my favourite hero because although she’s meant to be the villain, her strength and endurance to survive anything thrown at her makes her a hero in my eyes.
Kat: The first book that jumps to mind is Graceling by Kristen Cashore which boasts a truly insidious villain. His powers (which I won’t spoil) make him into the worst sort of villain – the kind that everybody else will endlessly defend while he commits atrocities and no one is willing to stop him. Except for our hero Katsa. She is still discovering the boundaries of her own powers but she has such a strong sense of justice and a solid moral compass and you can’t help but rally behind her in every chapter.
Cat: This was actually quite difficult for me. Initially The Vampire Lestat leapt to mind, but he’s the hero of his own story, so maybe not! Most recently, my favourite ‘baddie’ is Esek Nightfoot from These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs. Villainous in terms of utterly, coldly pragmatic, she has her goals and will let nothing stand in her way. Empathy is not important. She learned to be hard, cruel and focused, and as such is a terrifying threat. Seeing how her mind works and the reason for her actions made witnessing her journey even more compelling.
What’s your favourite Good VS Evil story? Let us know on socials using #WomenInSFF!
