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More of villains being played gratingly, please https://twitter.com/alexisthenedd/status/1328187683877908480
Seriously part of our problem at the moment is that there’s this been a decades long push to ~humanise and sympathetically portray genuinely despicable people, both fictional and real. And I acknowledge this as someone who enjoys a sexy villain.
It’s the reason so many K*lo stans can’t understand why he had to die. Because now we’re at the point where some tall man having a sad face is reason enough to overlook genocide and reward him with everything, even things he hasn’t asked for and definitely hasn’t earned.
It’s also why I appreciated what they did in the last Gh*stbusters movie. The villain in that is similar to K*lo in about a million ways but what a difference it makes to strip a character like that of any coolness, competence, edge and looks designed to draw in a fan base.
One of the things I’ve been mulling a lot lately too is that people don’t seem to know the difference between/purposefully conflate portraying a person who seems villainous but actually turns out to be great, and just a flat out villain with a gloss of cool/handsome/sympathy.
Like, a lot of romance heroes have many of the qualities of a villain, or are conceptually villainous, but either truly redeem themselves somehow or subvert expectations in a satisfying fantasy type of way. Darcy, for example.
Happens a lot with rakes, hitmen, alpha types, mobsters, werewolves and vampires etc. With varying degrees of leeway and success.
