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part of the reason a lot of mentally-ill people or people dealing with trauma relate to villains is because a lot of the time, esp in mainstream ip content, villains are the only characters allowed to show visible signs of trauma or “ugly” behaviors that some survivors do
and some mentally-ill people do. a lot of heroes technically have heavily traumatic backstories, yeah, but they’re usually written as coping relatively well with that trauma or in some cases tha backstory doesn’t affect their onscreen personality at all, it’s just there
and that’s fine if that’s the kind of fantasy some survivors or mentally-ill people have, characters who went through terrible things but still came out of it untouched is a popular and valid power fantasy too. “all that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind”
but that’s not the experience many survivors or mentally-ill people have and it’s not what they relate to in stories. and a lot of mainstream ips often don’t have heroes getting triggered into rage outbursts or alienating all of their loved ones because of destructive behavior
but villains often have those kinds of behaviors, so when people are like “lol who identifies with a fascist/mass murderer” or “this heroic character went through worse stuff and still came out a good person” to shame villain stans, they’re missing the point by a mile
i can’t speak about everyone, but the reason a lot of mentally-ill people and survivors relate to complex villains and want happy or hopeful endings for them isn’t because they’re “n*zi apologists” or whatever, it’s because they want a hopeful personal redemption story
the point is that you can sink to the lowest lows as a person or have really toxic coping mechanisms and still become a better person and have hope. and the “villains did crimes so it’s good that they die even if they redeem themselves” discourse totally misses that nuance.
