Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Top Ten Fictional Villains I Feel Sorry For by Brett Armstrong, Author of Day Moon

Please help me welcome my fellow Clean Reads author, Brett Armstrong, to the blog today. His new YA urban sci-fi novel, Day Moon, looks fantastic!!


While I can’t say I’m in the following character’s camps or agree with any of their ethos, these are the:

Top Ten Fictional Villains I Feel Sorry For…
by Brett Armstrong

10.  Mr. Freeze (Batman the Animated Series|TV) – Victor Fries was just a scientist trying to cure his wife of a terminal illness when a greedy industrialist made him permanently seek the cold and lose his wife in the process.  Mr. Freeze can be cruel, but as a grieving husband whose life-work was ruined, he’s a bit more easy to sympathize with than a lot of villains.

9. Captain Hook (Peter Pan|Play) – Peter Pan cut off his hand and fed it to a crocodile which is determined to finish him off… and we cheer for Peter Pan?  It’s really interesting because JM Barrie’s initial portrayal of Peter Pan makes him seem like the villain and Captain Hook as “not wholly unheroic”.

8. Bowser (Mario|Video Games) – Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach, a rival dictator, and a plumber from Brooklyn (Mario) shows up and starts taking out Bowser’s children one by one. 

7. Cato (The Hunger Games| Book/Movie) – From birth he was raised to fight in the Hunger Games and when he got there, it was too late when he realized he wasn’t the prized champion he thought.  If he had thought it through, maybe he would have released Peeta and could have stood in defiance too.  Either way he had one of the most horrific deaths in a story.

6. Smeagol (The Lord of the Rings| Books/Movies) – He accidentally found the One Ring, killed his best friend, and then turned into a pale, hunched skeleton of his former self who ate fish raw and had a terrible cough.  Oh, and he went insane and didn’t remember what potatoes are…

5. Robert Fischer (Inception|Movie) – The entire premise of the movie is that one businessman fears what will happen when the son of a rival inherits the family business and wants to have him break up his company through dream coercion.  But Robert never reveals any evil plans along the way, so we don’t really know if he was ever going to be so malevolent in the first place.

4. Imhotep (The Mummy| Movies) – So messing around with Pharoah’s wife was a bad idea all around, but the idea that Imhotep suffered a lot of horrible things and was doing everything he did for love makes him seem a little less monstrous than some of the classic movie monsters.

3. Magneto (X-Men | Movies/Comics) – Magneto’s backstory is pretty tragic.  He was a Holocaust victim and once he had grown up and reintegrated into society, his wife and child were killed in front of him because he was a mutant.  Most of his schemes do not begin involving extreme violence against normal people (ex. Asteroid-M) and he often espouses a separatist policy… it just rarely works out that neatly.

2. Cats in General (Various| TV, Movies, etc.) – Pete, Sylvester, Tom, Meowth, Shere Khan…

1. Macbeth (Macbeth| Play) – It may be my Scottish ancestry rising up, or the fact that there was a real Macbeth whose rule wasn’t characterized as bad by historians, or the fact that evil witches and an ambitious wife awoke the worst in man who begins the play as otherwise honorable.

Wow! I am never going to look at Mario games the same. I think that many villains have extraordinary backstories. While we can't condone their actions, we certainly relate to the feelings. Perhaps that's why we all love a good villain so much. They get their revenge rather than waiting for karma to catch up. Cats though... I love cats, and they do get a bad rap!
~Kimber


Day Moon
Tomorrow's Edge Trilogy One

Brett Armstrong

YA Urban Sci-Fi
Clean Reads
March 2017


The year is 2039, and 17-year-old computer prodigy Elliott is assigned to work on a global software initiative his deceased grandfather helped found.

Project Alexandria is intended to provide the entire world secure and equal access to all accumulated human knowledge. All forms of print are destroyed in good faith, to ensure everyone has equal footing, and Elliott knows he must soon part with his final treasure:  a book of Shakespeare’s complete works gifted him by his grandfather. Before it is destroyed, Elliott notices something is amiss with the book, or rather Project Alexandria. The two do not match, including an extra sonnet titled “Day Moon.” When Elliott investigates, he uncovers far more than he bargained for. There are sinister forces backing Project Alexandria who have no intention of using it for its public purpose.

Elliott soon finds himself on the run from federal authorities and facing betrayals and deceit from those closest to him. Along the way, Elliot questions what is real and about truth, relationships and the meaning of freedom and security.

Following clues left by his grandfather, with agents close at hand, Elliott desperately hopes to find a way to stop Project Alexandria. All of history past and yet to be depend on it.



New Novel by Brett Armstrong Eerily Taps into Today’s Anxieties of What is Real
“Day Moon” follows a teen’s discovery of a sinister plot that threatens the world’s reality 


Charleston, WV, March 28, 2017 – West Virginia author Brett Armstrong raises a timely warning in his dystopian thriller, “Day Moon,” about where current trends could lead if left unchecked. 

“’Day Moon’ grabs the reader by the imagination and doesn't let go! I daresay it's a classic in the making.” – Robert Walker, author of “Random Violence, Killer Instinct”


About the Author

Brett Armstrong is an award-winning author of Destitutio Quod Remissio, a story about the struggles of a Christian Roman senator. All profits from sales of the book were donated to charity. The author lives in St. Albans, West Virginia, with his wife and 2-year-old son.

3 comments:

  1. I think Tolkien himself suggested that Smeagol/Gollum was worthy of sympathy.

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    Replies
    1. It's really hard not to feel for him. Isildur and Frodo both failed to varying degrees as well when it came to the ring. And especially in the movie with the rangers roughing him up. He just wanted to go fishing!

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