Can I ask why exactly you like Sauron? You think that he’s a cool villain?

Hey anon, a very good question!

Yeah, you really can boil it down to the fact that I think he's a cool villain. I generally like the villains more in things. I always have, even when I was small. They just always struck me as more fun to read about or watch. Especially the ones with the really overly theatric antics and aesthetic. It makes them fun. (Also, the tendancy, especially in children's media, to have the villains constantly doing some dramatic evil laugh always made it seem to me like they were having more fun than everyone else...). I also always thought they get to be the more interesting things, they get to be the vampires and ghosts and mad scientists. I've never envied a hero being a normal human with a strict moral compas. I have envied villains with wild powers who simply blow up their problems. And of course, without the villain being villanous, would there even be a story? No. Say thank you to the villains for your favourite tales.

As for Sauron specifically, he fits the above. He's dramatic. He looks like he's having fun being awful. I want to be a shapeshifter/vampire/werewolf/necromancer/ruler of all things/demigod goddamnit!

But he also hits on something else that I'm a complete sucker for in stories. I love fall stories. In fact, I love anything that involves a character switching sides, but a fall is always more interesting to me than a redemption. I love to watch someone get worse. I love to watch them get what they wanted and lose it or throw it away. I love a good bit of hubris. Of course, we don't get to see Sauron's fall. It's never described, not even sketched out. But at the same time, whenever you read Tolkien's writings about Morgoth it's always very "and he was always awful, just the worst, terrible guy, probably spits on babies or something". His writing about Sauron always seems to contain a little nugget of "he wasn't always like this, in fact his evils are inspired by what were once his virtues". It invites you to think about his character. There's hidden layers in there that we are free to imagine and explore. And it's made all the more interesting by the fact that our order loving Maia chose to serve chaos and change itself, which is seemingly contradictory, though Tolkien does explain it by his being attracted by the decisiveness and power of Morgoth. It's just fascinating how much there is hiding behind the villain who never really appears on the page very much, even when he is The Big Bad TM.

This isn't even getting into his other kind of falls, meaning his defeats. He's terrifying and powerful but put him in a fist fight or on the beach and he's going to end up disembodied or almost so. He's a bit not that impressive under all that power.

Over all, he has everything that I enjoy in a character and I just think he's fun.