via Sam Lavy, Flickr Who doesn’t love a good — er, bad villain? Some excellent examples are Prince Regal in The Farseer Trilogy, Norman Bates from Psycho, Commodus* in Gladiator, Professor Umbrage from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Eremus from Mordant’s Need, Arienrhod in The Snow Queen. What makes them so bad we love ‘em and can’t wait to see them brought low? Humanity. Yup, you read right. A villain—or antagonist, adversary—is so much more believable and so much more frightening when he’s not simply evil for the sake of being evil. As author Ben Bova noted, […]