Talk:Fandom responses to the presentation of the ideology of antagonists

Content to add

I was watching Kay and Skittles' most recent video The Ideology Of Falcon And The Winter Soldier, and it brought up this trope and an essay that refers to it as 'The Swerve'. Could be an interesting point to add to the page? -- OfMonstersAndWerewolves (talk) 14:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Avoiding creation of TV Tropes style page names

I've seen a few "tropes and genres" pages recently that seem modeled on TV Tropes, and I'm wondering how other Fanlore editors feel about that? When creating a page about a topic that doesn't have a fannish term for it, my preference is that we not give it a cutesy TV Tropes style page name. I think this creates confusion; cutesy page names on Fanlore are generally glossary terms that are actually used in fandom, and we don't want to imply that something we made up is a real term we are documenting. If we have trouble coming up with a name for the page, it should be stated at the top of the page that the title of the page isn't a fannish term and we just needed to call it something.

Another issue with this page is that it isn't clearly stated whether the trope it is describing occurs in canon or in fanworks or both. My initial assumption was that it's about villains in canon a la Buffy's Evil Gift of Character Insight (I forget what that phenomenon was actually called), but the meta discussion section doesn't seem to be about that. We could rework this into a broader Villains in Fandom page that covers fan discussion of canon villains and whether they were right/whether the canon narrative undermines the villain's legitimate grievance, along with fannish interest in villains generally, including Villain Big Bang, mentions of enemyslash.... other villain stuff? I've heard there's tumblr discourse about whether it's ok to like evil characters. There's an Enemy disambiguation page, but no Villain or Antagonist page, and lots of fans stan villains (not necessarily because they think the villain is right), so it would be good to have a place for all this to live.--aethel (talk) 18:21, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

There has unfortunately always been discourse about whether it is right to like or ship villains. (The shipping part is pretty well covered on our Enemies to Lovers page.) And there's also been specific controversy around the popularity of villains in fanworks.

Its always tricky naming pages, and trying to find a page name that encompasses the issue when you're looking at something that's pan-fandom. I agree with Aethel that we could expand this page to look at more meta discussions related to villains/antagonists/enemies in canon and fandom. And villain is right discussions would be part of that. There were definitely conversations like that following Black Panther, with Killmonger viewed as a sympathetic villain. If that's something people want to do, we could move the page to Villains in Fandom (keeping Villain is Right as a redirect) and tweak the intro to reflect the expanded scope of the page? --Auntags (talk) 00:02, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

OK, any objections to Villains in Fandom (or Villains and Fandom), with links out to Enemies to Lovers, etc.?--aethel (talk) 21:48, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good. — PictoChatCyberBully (talk) 22:37, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I want to discuss it further before it gets changed, but I also need to go to bed, so I'll reply back tomorrow about it if you could wait until I get back to you -- OfMonstersAndWerewolves (talk) 22:46, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I'm here, right, ok. So. The reason why I wanted to discuss it before changing is because I think there are multiple ideas here being conflated a little. On the one hand, you have the more general discussions that have been around for ages now about how the villain is actually right - which have encompassed everyone from Scar from The Lion King to Thanos from the MCU - and on the other, a very specific trope, mentioned in the 'Meta and discussion' section, that's raised it's head in canon works lately in which a radical individual or group, with fairly radical politics, will randomly do a Bad Thing - like murdering civilians for no reason - not because it fits any kind of ideology they live by, but purely so the media text can then portray them as 'meaning well, but too radical, too dangerous, too naive, and actually this neo-liberal policy is actually a lot better, even though often it doesn't even work that way in the context of the text itself'. Usually in a way that makes the actual 'good guys' look unintentionally hypocritical (think 'Violence is Bad, but not when the state military does it'). Karli Morgenthau & the Flag Smashers, Erik Killmonger, Daenerys Targaryen, Zaheer from The Legend of Korra, I've also heard The Batman has this with the Riddler (though I haven't seen it to confirm). I'm probably forgetting some too.

Though the trope mentioned above is one more prominant in canon rather than fanworks, the response from fandom is what makes it interesting in that fans have really started to notice it, point it out, and critique it in recent years when it shows up. And inevitably it affects the fanworks: fics, memes etc produced. The only problem is that the trope doesn't have one single fandom name that's caught on. The link I've included up top calls it The Swerve. The example on the page calls it Pulling an MCU Villain. There's a comment by MadameTamma on this video that calls it Flag Smashing named after the TFAWS example. But nothing's really stuck. I've also seen it referred to simply as 'they've done the thing again' followed by the example.

There definitely does need to be a Villains in Fandom/Villains and Fandom page that perhaps could include a general 'The Villain is Right' section, but I think this specific trope in particular needs its own page. -- OfMonstersAndWerewolves (talk) 12:04, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Hm, ok, so perhaps start a new general Villains and Fandom page, link back here, move the non villain-is-right content there, and add a section here about the various names for it and lack of consensus?--aethel (talk) 17:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

My personal suggestion is Fandom responses to the ideology of antagonists. It's a bit clunky, but by using descriptive language, it avoids putting a specific name on the trope, since there is no general consensus.

(As an aside, I'd like to to suggest the name of this talk section be Avoiding creation of TV Tropes style page names to be more clear what the subject of discussion is.) Pinky G Rocket (talk) 17:33, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Proposal

I've rewrote the intro but wanted to flag other changes here before going any further. I'm planning to

• Move this page to Villains in Fandom
• Delete the section on Fictional villains labelled as right by a notable fan following, because the list doesn't make a lot of sense if we're giving the page a broader scope.
• Delete Resources section, as they're just TV tropes links
• Add sections on Smpathetic villains, Redemption Arcs and (maybe?) Woobieification of Villains.

Anyone want to suggest something different? --Auntags (talk) 22:21, 19 February 2024 (UTC)