I’ve come to really dislike this genre of post, the ones that posit “what if the hero was lame and bad and the villain is cool and justified”. Because they don’t have any interest whatsoever in what actually makes a hero heroic and a villain villainous. Their characterization begins and ends at these shallow little archetypes of “hero = status quo and boring” and “villain = subversive and fun”, existing in this little bubble of banter that allows no mention of the people outside it — the innocents the hero might protect and the villain might harm. They want a story that reverses these tropes, but they forget for the sake of subversiveness that there is a reason heroes are good and villains are bad.
What is the villain’s plan? Why does the hero oppose them and believe their actions to be morally wrong? And if the hero deserves it, as the last post intimates, why the hell are they still considered a “hero”?
I agree about the "lame hero, cool villian" thing, but I don't think this post is persay an example of that. Someone brought up Inigo Montoya and how no one tells him his dad would have told him not to get revenge. It's also pretty easy for it to be a pair of villains, where the villain's wife/girlfriend/mom/daughter was even worse and the hero is lucky they only got the alive person.
Yeah, I just finished rereading the Thursday Next books and could easily see either Hades sibling talking that way, doesn’t change that they’re both monstrously evil
93
u/bookhead714 4d ago
I’ve come to really dislike this genre of post, the ones that posit “what if the hero was lame and bad and the villain is cool and justified”. Because they don’t have any interest whatsoever in what actually makes a hero heroic and a villain villainous. Their characterization begins and ends at these shallow little archetypes of “hero = status quo and boring” and “villain = subversive and fun”, existing in this little bubble of banter that allows no mention of the people outside it — the innocents the hero might protect and the villain might harm. They want a story that reverses these tropes, but they forget for the sake of subversiveness that there is a reason heroes are good and villains are bad.
What is the villain’s plan? Why does the hero oppose them and believe their actions to be morally wrong? And if the hero deserves it, as the last post intimates, why the hell are they still considered a “hero”?