#this isn't about forgiving him for being a villain but about him wanting to violate Nodoka's body

[mixmangosmangoverse]

Hello I'm randomly thinking about Healin Good PreCure for the first time in years and looking back at how wildly people misunderstood the point and expected every other season to follow a plot point that's very specific to it

[burst-of-iridescent]

so i just went through your entire anti-lok tag and everything you said in it was SO WELL WRITTEN. i wanted to ask if you might have any analyses or anything (or just good old rants! we love being bryke haters) - about something that i noticed, which is this sort of... ATLA/TLOK dichotomy between how all aang's villains seem to be focused on gaining power/dominating the world or whatever, but the villains in TLOK seem to revolve around very pointed targeting of korra and specifically stripping her of her agency/bodily autonomy, but i don't know how to expand on that point.

(idk just. TLOK has a whole list of scenes that make me VIOLENTLY uncomfortable in a way even the worst of ATLA doesn't? and i thought you might have some input to share about it, if you don't mind me asking)

thank you sm!! i'm glad you enjoy my lok and bryke salt <33

i know what you mean, because it's something that struck me when i was watching lok as well. korra's villains are far more personal to her (particularly in what they do to her, or want from her) than azula or ozai or even zhao ever were to aang, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing (in fact it can often be good to have a personal relationship between your hero and villain; just look at how much more impactful and meaningful zuko and azula's arc was compared to aang and ozai's), there is a way to do it right and that was... not what bryke did.

we didn't need to see korra brutally bloodbent and stripped of her bending, or brutally attacked by unalaq, or brutally tortured by the red lotus or - you got it - brutally beaten up by kuvira (over and over again, might i add). i'm not saying that violence never has its place in storytelling, but it needs to have an actual purpose that's not just shock value. atla, for instance, knew when and how to utilise violence: the sight of gyatso's skeleton in the southern air temple, aang's murder by azula, even katara bloodbending... the violence in all of those scenes was necessary either to communicate vital information to the audience, or drive home the emotive and narrative significance of the moment, or both.

in lok though, bryke hardly, if ever, achieved either of these objectives - especially because it was mainly only ever korra who got the brunt of the violence. no other character is repeatedly targeted and assaulted and violated even half as much as korra is, even when they're facing the same antagonists. tenzin's fight against the red lotus in book 3 gets a tasteful pan to black (one of the few times i think bryke did use violence purposefully; knowing what not to show is just as important as knowing what to show, and leaving the audience with the dread of tenzin's fate was actually sadder and more terrifying than letting us see what happened to him) but korra's agonizing torture at the hands of the red lotus is so long and drawn-out that it begins to veer into torture porn.

imo, this can probably be attributed to two things: 1) bry.ke thinking trauma = character development because they don't know how else to write a good character arc (and they still somehow fucked it up - i will never forgive them for making korra thank zaheer, of all people, for helping her overcome her trauma, like what the absolute fuck bry.ke), and 2) they wanted lok to be "more mature" than atla, which shows both that they fundamentally didn't understand atla, or what constitutes good storytelling, and also that someone desperately needs to tell them that simply upping the violence and hamfistedly handling "complex" topics does not maturity make.

(given the way bryke has written women, i also have to side-eye the fact that the strong-willed, independent, brown female protagonist is beaten and battered and torn down far more than the peaceful, affable light-skinned male protagonist ever is, even during an actual war.)

and of course, contrary to what our dear bryke probably expected, simply brutalizing korra season after season in the name of shock value and development did not, to anyone else's surprise, make lok the better show in the end.

[thestrangestthing89]

Inversion of Tropes - Part 2

The mercy kill trope/trauma porn trope This typically happens just as a character heals from trauma or when they aren't in a romantic relationship because they can't seem to figure out what to do with a character who is single. There will probably be more to say about this next season with regard to El's arc. I suspect she will be going on an independent journey and worrying more about reclaiming her childhood than any adult or teenager appropriate things. She missed a huge part of her life and her recovery from this is an important part of her story. So I don't expect them to suddenly kill her off just as she's getting to the point where she can have the life she wants. It's honestly so awful and frustrating when shows do this. I will probably write more about this post S5. This show has also never been unnecessarily violent. Any of the violence actually serves the plot and none of the characters have ignored any of the trauma they've gone through and pretended it didn't happen. Shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones like to do this. Everything is brutal and excessively violent in the name of "realism" but they never show the aftermath of what it does to the characters. It's trauma porn. It's for people who have become so desensitized to violence that they can't recognize that this isn't actually realistic or sophisticated storytelling. Stranger Things hasn't gone to an extreme with this and they have started to show ways that all of this trauma have impacted everyone - bad grades, attitude problems, etc. They don't unnecessarily torture their characters in the name of entertainment.

Unnecessary exploitative shots This isn't exactly a trope but it's so prevalent in tv and movies that I thought I'd add it here. Often, with male directors especially, there are so many creepy, lingering shots on the female characters in particular that end up being exploitative. We don't see that here. Even with Nancy in S1 who takes her shirt off. We don't get lingering shots of her in a bra that feel violating. The camera focuses on Steve most of the time and through most of the scene she is shot from the shoulders up. In the hands of a lot of male directors, there would have been more shots of El floating in her bath that could have easily been exploitative and many wouldn't have hesitated even though she's young. The scene that sticks out the most to me is the scene in S4 when she's in the freezer. She is fully covered and even though she's in white it's not see through or cringy in anyway. I am so relieved to see things like this because most directors wouldn't have hesitated to take advantage of her here. It's not just with the female characters either. Steve takes his shirt off and the focus isn't on him or lingering. It's on Nancy, Max, Lucas, and Dustins reactions. And Steve is an adult so it wouldn't have felt as creepy but it still would have been unnecessary. Same with Billy. We mainly see the reactions of the moms at the pool and the camera doesn't stay on him.

1d villain/villian who gets a redemption arch trope Billy, Henry, and Brenner could fit this and none of them are one dimensional. I don't think we are going to see a redemption arc for Henry. We saw one for Billy in S3. He's an abusive, bully but he "redeemed" himself by sacrificing himself for everyone. However S4 flips this around. We see Max's side of things and she doesn't forgive him. That one good act doesn't erase what he did to her. This is where she starts to get closure and heal. Forgiving him isn't forced on her in the name of healing. It's done in a realistic way where she has complex feeling about her relationship with him. We see her re-write their relationship into a more sibling dynamic that wasn't true. But she acknowledges that it wasn't and that it was just the grief talking. El goes through a similar thing with Brenner. She doesn't give him her forgiveness but she gets closure. She is ready to move on from this part of her life. But what he did to her was unforgivable and even though he called it love and called himself her father she knows better now.

The ugly girl turned beauty queen trope Makeovers on this show have been done for character development, particularly with El. But she never gets turned into the "hot girl". The closest they come to this is in S1 when she is wearing the pink dress with the blonde wig. The boys pick this out for her so she can look "normal". She is referred to as "pretty" and this is clearly something she wants - to be like everyone else. But she finds throughout the season that this isn't her. Her dress gets dirty and she loses her wig but she is still reassured the she is "pretty" (I'm pretty sure they use this here to mean normal and not attractive). El also goes through other makeovers to find herself and never once does she get dressed up to be "hot". None of the other female characters do either.

The antagonistic siblings trope For whatever reason this trope is prevalent in a lot of 80s movies. But we see the opposite happening with Will and Jonathan. Jonathan loves Will and takes care of him and supports him. He's never resentful of the role he plays in his life. We do see this trope play out a bit with Mike and Nancy. They have a typical sibling dynamic. The younger brother is annoying and bugs the older sister. Which is why I think they are going to invert this next season. They gave us what's familiar and now they will twist it.

The manic pixie dream girl trope This person is quirky and not like other girls. She is usually one dimensional and there for male character development and doesn't get a story of her own. Robin seems like she will fit this when she's first introduced. But then we see she isn't there for Steve's development and wasn't introduced to be his girlfriend. Instead we see them develop a friendship and she has her own storyline that isn't dependent on Steve - with Vicky and Nancy - and she helps the group out with the supernatural stuff and the Russians. She is smart and useful to the group.

The girls hate each other and are enemies for no reason trope This is usually done because the (usually) male writers can't figure out that girls actually get along IRL. So when we were first presented with this trope in S2, it seems like El and Max will hate each other. But El's jealousy is related to her trauma and isn't random. It was a realistic way to show that this girl was isolated and clingy with Mike. But she gets to know Max and they are BFFs now. They have such a great relationship that is beneficial for both of them. I am so glad they inverted this.

The cool guy gets the girl and wins trope I'm obviously talking about Steve. He isn't getting the girl at the end of this. I think this makes people angry because they don't know what to do with his character. I see a lot of criticisms directed at the writers for sidelining him or treating him badly but they aren't. He just simply isn't the star of the show. And that's ok. It's not his story. But people are so used to the straight, white, conventionally attractive male being the center of the narrative that they often place him here when he doesn't belong. (I wrote about his here). His role is as a secondary character. He is there for support and this doesn't mean that he's being sidelined. The audience gets resentful about it because they've never seen someone like him not be the center of attention so they fixate on him and complain he's being mistreated when he isn't. It's not his role to play the hero here. But it's not surprising that the part of the audience that doesn't relate to the nerds ends up fixating on him. They are used to being the lead and they think that's where someone like him/them belongs. So they overinflated his relationships and role within the group (he is not a mentor or a goddamn babysitter). It's hard for people to see something different. So they lash out at the writing and make HC's "correcting" things. But the actual narrative isn't going to change here. He's not the hero of this story.

I honestly wasn't expecting this to be so long. My point is this - this show has always, always done the unexpected thing. They give you what you what's familiar and then flip it upside down. So when I see people saying things like "they'll never break up Mike and El" it's entirely based on those people being so used to that narrative they don't know what other story to expect. It's the one that we are "supposed" to get. But they won't give this trope for the same reason they haven't given any of the others. This isn't a superficial story. It's not meant as casual, escapist tv. They are calling out storytelling as we've seen it. They are flipping the script and giving us something new.

[vadersaber]

also not to mention melissa barrera got fired from scream for her support of palestinians!! she got fired almost instantly, and noah scharmoot gets to just be "kept an eye on". this goes to show that they literally only care about white folk. i'm willing to bet that if pedro spoke up about half the things that are actually on his mind, they'd crucify him fr

YEAH THIS

also forgive me for wheezing whenever I read noah scharmoot lkgjlfkjgf

but yeah, this is definitely something. and honestly after everything that's been going on in the Pedro fandom this year, I do not blame this man for being lowkey one bit. he has to play the hollywood game like one of my mutuals has said, but he isn't radio silent. the sad thing is that people have been criticizing and pointing fingers at him for the stupidest fucking reasons, and it's always after or during them doing the most out of pocket, insane and violating shit. remember when that chick flew across the world to stalk him on a beach and then tried to paint him as the villain for being caught off guard? or when someone made a deep fake of him in bed with another man? or when "fans" swarmed Lux's live asking about Pedro when she was talking about her identity and her journey as a trans woman? or when also "fans" swarmed Lux's graduation to take pictures with Pedro and she got fed up and had to drag him out of there, just to spend some time with him, her brother? and then they had the AUDACITY to complain that he isn't on social media like he used to. gee, what a mystery indeed.

there are many other examples, but I don't wanna make a huge ass post about it. I'm just amazed that I don't see people harassing Oscar Isaac in the same way, like he doesn't have social media, why not complain about his silence too?

I understand wanting the people you look up to to be worth looking up to, but sometimes y'all blow it waaaaay out of proportion. the problem isn't Pedro's comments being turned off or him not posting every hour about this situation. THE PROBLEM IS THE ONGOING GENOCIDE. PLEASE GET A GRIP. these so called fans focus so much on crucifying him or idk who for not doing the most for palestinians when this isn't the issue at hand!!

the main idea is, he's made his stance clear and just because he doesn't flaunt this online, doesn't mean he isn't aware or doesn't care.

[wackus-bonkus-maximus]

WACKUS YOU HAD ME TERRIFIED. I have to applaud you on the way you wrote LB attacking Gabriel - the constant reminders of his age, fragility, and powerlessness in the face of her murderous wrath. Is it weird that I feel like I can forgive Gabe now? I used to think I didn’t want him to die for Adrien’s sake but I didn’t really care what happened to him otherwise. But seeing the way he thought of his son to the end made me relent. It was worse because of the dramatic irony that we all knew he wasn’t Monarque - though he definitely did deserve some of that beating. But maybe that’s why I feel like can forgive him now? Because he got the beating he deserved and more, and because he still thought of his son. And his son, still, despite it all, despite holding his father responsible for everything, doesn’t want his father to die.

~also I hope you’re happy because the fact that you had Lila playing her usually I’ll tell Adrien what Gabriel won’t game and that Adrien actually believes her and on some level feels grateful for it had me feeling as sick as a cat on a ship. It’s absolutely chilling to see her plan to get in his good graces by using Gabriel as the villain and herself as the one on his side has actually WORKED even if only to a tiny, microscopic extent. I feel sick and violated~

Also loved the brief glimpse of Felix, my love ;-; I felt so bad for him after he snapped at Adrien not to tell him 😂 but also 😭.

I’m so tense now that LB knows —BUT SO RELIEVED Adrien dropped that line about only Lila being on his side so LB hopefully is less murderous against feligami my beloved— I don’t know how im going to wait a week seriouslt I feel all hyped up on adrenaline 😫

hehe thank you anon 🙏🏼💖 my intention with gabriel isn't for you guys to feel sorry for him, per se. it's just to show that he's old and pathetic now, and everything that he was afraid of happening to him/the people he loves has already happened. so, when ladybug shows up to kick him while he's down...we don't get a lot of satisfaction from it because ladybug's beatdown has nothing to add.

and yes, you're right about adrien's love for his father! it's a broken kind of love, because adrien is a broken man. just like how gabriel is a broken man who gave adrien only broken love. but it's still real and it's still love, and adrien was literally made from love to give love. he's the best kind of person out there, so we are not surprised to see his tenuous relationship with his father being so strained, yet the love so apparent anyway.

i'm glad you liked seeing lila's manipulation working on adrien 😈 she's only kept gabriel alive as her scapegoat/ red herring for moments like these, where she can shift the blame or the brunt of adrien's anger to gabriel rather than herself. of course adrien falls for it! he doesn't know any better! sick and violated are great words for it bestie, the desired effect has been reached 💖💖💖💖

oh felix, poor felix 😂 he's crying in the club right now. you're right though, at least ladybug's righteous fury isn't directed at him, for the moment!

thank you so much i'm so happy you liked this chapter ❤️

[mikaila-orchard]

...I was tempted to ignore this, but you chose to put this in the Sylvanas tag despite confessing that this post isn't for Sylvanas fans, so idk what you were expecting.

How do you make a satisfying villain arc for Sylvanas? You can't. Because at this point one cannot escape what wanting a character like Sylvanas a villain arc says about oneself as a creator.

Sylvanas' character arc was deliberately sabotaged in BFA by Alex Afrasiabi, an actual sexual predator. BFA was supposed to take Sylvanas in a very different direction, but then Chris Metzen left WoW and Afrasiabi pivoted super hard because he was pissed that Garrosh was villain batted instead of Sylvanas in MoP.

And it's not surprising that Alex hated Sylvanas, given his track record. Sylvanas' death and undeath reads to many as sexual violence, considering how Arthas went out of his way to violate her soul and even tells her it was her fault for denying him. Hers is among the most explicit, most recognized case of sexual violence in WoW's, second only to Alexstasza who was ACTUALLY a rape survivor. And in case you think she was treated any better by the narrative, in War Crimes, Christie Golden wrote it so Baine strong armed Alexstrazsa into forgiving the orcs who violated her.

Back to Sylvanas, her undeath is literally the only claim she has to possibly being a villain. Canonically. Alliance characters all talk about how the 'brave and heroic Ranger General died against the Scourge and the Banshee Queen is just a cruel mockery and we are right about this and totally don't just hate the Forsaken cuz they're gross. We promise!' Before BFA, there was no real claim for Sylvanas to be a villain. The Wrathgate wasn't her fault, every Forsaken she raises is given a choice to serve her or not, invading Gilneas was ordered by Garrosh, the Blighting of Southshore was meant to mirror the Alliance burning down Turajo (which the Alliance got a pass on, thanks again to Golden), and she called for a retreat on the Broken Shore because they were already losing, making the idea that she betrayed the Alliance completely ludicrous. The story had to twist itself in knots and break itself in half to even begin to paint Sylvanas as a villain. But Afrasiabi and others think that Sylvanas being an angry woman who suffered insane trauma is enough cause for her to have a villain arc because framing traumatized women as villains is just what Blizzard does (Kerrigan, Widowmaker, Jaina etc)

"Oh but she's always been a ruthless, amoral, complex character." Well that probably wasn't helped by the fact that different quests and story events featuring Sylvanas were all written by different people who clearly did not communicate with each other at all. Seriously. From the authors of books to fucking quest designers can just write what they want and are not obligated to listen to the on staff lore experts when they point out a mistake in their writing. And keep in mind, Blizzard is already a very misogynistic work environment up to its neck in SA allegations to this day.

"Oh, but the Forsaken have always had elements of evil to them!" Because devs and writers wanted to just have the Forsaken be an evil race and Christ Metzen, the creator, had to argue them on this for years until he got tired and left. There are devs on staff that just want the Warcraft 1&2 model of 'Horde bad, Alliance good' despite the fact that very little of the actual playerbase wants that. Hell, people to this day still argue that Garrosh shouldn't have been villain batted. The idea since WC3 was that there are no quintessential good guys in Warcraft. It hasn't stuck to that idea consistently because, again, devs and writers just doing what they want, but that is the intended outline left by Metzen (who they recently brought back btw)

"But why does all that matter?" Because you cannot divorce Sylvanas from the canon events in her life and the intention behind them by the writers. Blizzard is a deeply misogynistic company who either has their female characters be arm candy for hunky men or become raid bosses for committing the crime of being traumatized and angry at the aggressors about it. And even then Sylvanas' character arc was an egregious case of sabotage that left everyone unhappy. The Forsaken players who were watching their queen get villain batted, the Nelf players who just lost their starting zone, Horde players who were forced to suffer ANOTHER evil warchief story, and Alliance players who shipped Sylvanas with Jaina. None of them were happy. The only ones that might have been happy were Worgen mains who were itching to live out their 'mind break' fics where their shitty ocs got to rape her.

And even after taking all of that into account, you still want to make Sylvanas a villain, you have to ask yourself why it's so important to you. Cuz off the top of my head, the two possibilities are you just want an uncomplicated evil bitch (which, in that case, Azshara is RIGHT THERE) or... you're a Worgen main.

I asked this question in a discord and really only a couple people answered before the conversation derailed into complaining about the Desolate Council/mostly Calia, but I'm also gonna ask here just for more input.

(Pretty much copy-pasted from what I asked in the server:)

So in the variety of conversations I’ve seen, I’ve seen multiple people say Sylvanas’ fall into villainy “could have made sense.” And, well, I’m curious to know what people think could’ve been a more logical route. I’m just not that familiar with the character, and reading her wiki page will only get me so far. I’m asking because I’ve got an AU where none of Shadowlands happened, but Teldrassil and the Fourth War did. Sylvanas is the main antagonist. The story is gonna follow Cathala and Tarinne tracking her and her loyalists down to kill them. But I want to do Sylvanas as much justice as I can, because she’s a complex character and I can understand why people like(d) her pre-BfA.

I’m not asking so I can steal ideas, don’t worry, I’ve just hit a wall and want to see what other people — who are more familiar with the character — have to say. Or if there's an official novel I should check out (or even an "almost as good as/better than canon" fanfic), you can point me in that direction too.

TL;DR What are some ways I could make Sylvanas' fall into villainy make logical sense, with the stipulation that the Jailer isn't a factor and Teldrassil has to happen by her hand?

(reblogs appreciated because the target audience of this blog is definitely not Sylvanas/Forsaken fans </3)

[reachexceedinggrasp]

What have you been enjoying recently? I really enjoy when you dissect or talk about things that could be better about a lot of media, but thought you might like an ask about something else! I found a new ride-or-die ship to write about recently and I've been having fun doing that, it involves a villainess and a male healer. Do you always strictly like male characters in an antagonistic role and heroines? Hope you have a good day!

:) thanks, anon! Glad to hear you're having fun with a new otp!

I'm working on a self-indulgent one shot about my Clannibal-esque ship from Tell Me What You Saw that I posted a rec about, so I'm still on that show. I kinda love it more the more I watch it because, while it's definitely got some big flaws, it never betrays its themes or its lead characters and has a very satisfying, optimistic ending. It believes its characters can heal. I'll take a sensical, positive emotional arc and my favourite ship dynamic over a tight, realistic mystery story any day. Slightly silly plot twists aren't a dealbreaker for me when the things I care about are done well. Also I'm still trying to get the last couple chapters of my Lokane fix-it fic that I've been writing for aeons done, the guilt is unbearable.

Do you always strictly like male characters in an antagonistic role and heroines?

No... and I actually don't think I would even say I like it more often than not? I guess it heavily depends on how you define 'antagonistic'. I don't often go for what I would consider genuine enemies-to-lovers, liking a ship that fits the strict definition of the term is fairly rare for me. I don't like violence as sexual tension and I don't like romance to have any element of personal hatred. If they hate each other after getting to know each other and/or try to kill each other after they have some kind of connection, I'm not into it. I really, really dislike aggressive rivalry pairings or 'thin line between love and hate' type pairings. I don't like anything that easily fits the 'sexy bad boy' or DFP archetypes at all. No frenemies, no shounen rivals, no 'stupid sexy villain'.

The dynamic that I like is that there is a deep divide which needs to be crossed in order for the characters to connect, but that the divide is caused by not knowing or understanding one another. It's about misjudgement and the need for compassion, to see others as fully human with human motives despite surface level incomprehensibility. If you'd call a purely ideological divide e-t-l, then more of my ships would qualify, but they're not usually characters who are actively at odds. More like characters who share a common goal but have prejudices or moral disagreement or bad behaviour between them to overcome. Beauty has to see past the Beast's monstrousness to his humanity, but once she does she will never see him as a monster again and cannot hate him. She now knows where the monstrous outside comes from and what it conceals. There is fear and tension in the beginning, he can seem like a potential threat, but he isn't actually playing the role of a villain. He's not someone to be defeated, but someone to be understood.

I like stories where people learn that things aren't what they seem and where the writer really has to do the work to get the characters to fall in love. They have to talk and discover the truth about each other in order to find common ground and sympathy. This is why I'm so big into arranged marriage/soulbond/magical trap type plots, where people who would never have voluntarily spent enough time together to ever recognise each other are forced into cooperating and end up realising they're incredibly compatible and/or complementary. I live for that 'you're not who I thought you were' kind of epiphany, for finding beauty where none was suspected to exist. Surface contrast versus deep simpatico. Learning to have empathy and to appreciate hidden strengths, to not assume you know someone's whole story.

I don't consider myself a villain fan. I do enjoy a flat-out villain, they can be very fun characters, but they're not characters I'll spend a tonne of time engaging with. Unless it's ott and kinda camp, evil without conflict or pathos is boring. My only dyed in the wool, no caveats, villain ships are Jareth/Sarah and BTAS Joker/Harley (both very tame). Erik/Christine is villain/heroine in the original novel, but to me primary canon is Susan Kay, in which Erik is the protagonist. The vast majority of my Problematic Favs are characters who are anti-heroes, tragic heroes, or deuteragonists; they cause conflict and may do very bad things but they are not villains in the technical sense.

There's a lot of characters who are borderline or arguable, but that I would still not classify as villains, personally. Like sure, OUaT Rumpelstiltskin is 'a' villain, but he primarily functions as an anti-hero and plays a lot of ambiguous roles in the narrative so it's kinda reductive to call him that. Dr Lecter isn't a villain at all despite pop culture's insistence on calling him one. Bang-won moves from being a mere catalyst to being a deuteragonist to being a tragic hero, but the show was a mess and I don't think that was planned; I think he was such a strong, dynamic presence that he completely outgrew his original role in the story. It's easy to argue about how to define him since the structure he exists within is so sloppy and the lead characters are so weak. Maybe he was intended to become a villain, but I don't think he did. He's comparable in almost every way to Shakespeare's Prince Hal/Henry V and no one would suggest Hal is a villain. These are all sympathetic characters with complex motives who are not primarily figures of opposition for a protagonist to defeat or ideologically overcome. When a character's actual purpose is to oppose the heroes (to which any arc of their own is secondary), I don't usually get into that character.

So like... it is often the case that I like dynamics where the man is in a somewhat antagonistic role and where he is pushing the heroine to growth by challenging her or presenting a spiritual obstacle for her, but he's not The Thing to Be Defeated. He doesn't have malicious intent towards her, or at least doesn't have it for long, and isn't fundamentally opposed to her goals or beliefs. Even in the case of Jareth, who is legitimately the villain to Sarah's hero, he isn't actually hostile to her, just to her mission. It's a game and a seduction to him, he can be callous in pursuit of winning because he's childish and amoral, but he does love her. He does want her to be happy. The power dynamic and moral conflict between them is multifaceted, she's not innocent (she herself created this situation) and he's not just a bully who wants to possess her; their relationship is more complicated than that. Jareth is not evil and the temptation surrendering to his will represents in the labyrinth was about choosing immaturity and rejection of responsibility more than anything else, there's still a place for him in her life after she overcomes her childish selfishness. He doesn't need to be banished, just set within boundaries.

If you compare it to the movie Legend, where Darkness takes a shine to Lily, I don't ship that at all. He revels in darkness, enjoys it, and wants to corrupt her so he can have her for himself. That's real covetous villain with a crush, dark seduction of the ingenue stuff and I do not want her to fall for it. I want her to end up with Jack. I'm into the fairy tale prince and wholesome healing true love, not acrimonious or 'dark' shipping, I just like a super powerful prince who is lonely and tortured and in need of emotional rescue. Angst with a happy ending, basically. I like these characters so much because to me it's obvious they are profoundly sensitive people with highly developed consciousness of justice, but they're suffering under broken worldviews or from blinding fears which lead them to make bad choices. A villain who isn't suffering, who fully understands what they're doing is selfish and feels no guilt or conflict, just isn't appealing to me. Someone who enjoys being bad is not someone I find emotionally compelling. A boy has gotta be soft at heart no matter how much cynicism he's cloaked himself in.

Such as, imo Loki in Thor1 is a tragic hero rather than a villain. The film has three protagonists with equal, intertwining arcs (Thor, Loki, and Jane) and no real villain apart from human frailty. In Avengers he is a villain and that transition has a lot to do with why he's way less interesting to me in that film. A personality transplant wasn't necessary to have him play that role, but that's how Joss did it and the result is a character I would not have been very into and would not want to ship with Jane if this were his first appearance.

If you mean 'what if the sexes are reversed?', I have certainly liked this same dynamic genderswapped before, just less often. Not, I think, solely because it's rarer to find it the other way around, but also because the more straightforwardly heroic character is usually our main pov character and I much prefer a female pov in my reading. When I have male-hero/female-problematic-fav ships, it's usually a tv show or film where the influence of pov is less all-encompassing and if I read fic it's from the female character's pov. And, as I've talked about before, for emotional reasons I really prefer that the monstered character in the B&tB dynamic is always a man.

[ichirukilover]

I am once again in pain to remember that rukia never received that apology from kisuke. She was the one who had her body violated without her consent and awareness, she was used as a scapegoat and almost burned alive because of kisuke's little invention, and he siphoned her reiatsu off with his special gigai so that she became totally helpless, so she deserved the apology more than anybody as the prime victim. Why did ichigo have to even ask him to apologize to her?? But of course kubo didnt want to expose so many plotholes(like why she was chosen as the host in the first place) or make kisuke look like a villain, which he basically is in rukia's side of the story. Ichigo forgiving him so easily was conveniently written off as ichigo being such a kind and good person

We didn't see that because Kub0 showed him asking forgiveness to Ichigo already, I guess, but having Ichigo telling him to aplogize to Rukia does imply he did it even if off panel, also Ichigo telling Kisuke (us) she would say the same as him, also implies she did obvioulsy forgive him.

I do agree they forgive anyone too easily tho .

As for the rest Rukia (we) deserved to know why and when he did all of that to her, did he tell her? Judging from how Renjo wants to ask him things, I don't think so and that's where...it doesn't make sense, because why would't she get told the truth about anything that happened to her? Plot holes and Kub0 changing his mind with how things really happened, me thinks, which are even more glaring when Aizen mindfucks Ichigo later in the fake Karakura fight telling him, he lied to him before or is he lying now? Who knows! Ichigo doesn't! And we don't know too! Because Kisuke apparently didn't tell when or where or why he hid the hogyoku inside Rukia or anything else! LOL Kub0 isn't as great as planning things as anyone says imho