But the bad stuff you have personally experienced can also create a sense of… intimacy via familiarity and contribute to the scare factor I mentioned earlier. I’m less likely to fear the things I have no experience with in real life (because they’re more abstract concepts)
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I’m not exactly trying to be scared in my romance though, lol.
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Yeah but I’m speaking for myself.
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I definitely get you there. I suppose my preferred method of engaging in stuff that relates to personal bad experiences I’ve had tends to be a lot more metaphorical. Like, I find monster stories more interesting than reading about sad closeted queer kids because I’ve done one of those things, but the other is a space where I can explore the those feelings on a more dramatised and fantastical level without getting bogged down in specific memories. But nah I see you, was just talking from my perspective! 
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Yeah, I could be misunderstanding your relationship goals, but it seems like the difference between us is you want someone to shove you against the wall and ignore your complaints, while I want to request that someone shove me against the wall.
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Kinda-sorta. By NOT using my option to opt-out, or in other words: By choosing to opt in at one point, I grant permission to be shoved against a wall as long as I don’t change my mind.
Which sounds a bit ridiculous, so to give an example (one we haven’t heard in a long time XD): SoH 4 bad, because I never had a say in wall-shovings. I never opted in and I can’t opt out. Sordwin + Lux = fantastic, because I choose to let Hayden shove me against whatever they want and just KNOWING I can opt out is enough of a safety net for me personally, to never use that option. I absolutely want Hayden to ignore my MC’s complaints, because even if my MC never consents, I as a player have done so by deliberately picking their RO route.
@hellblazest I couldn’t agree more, I’ve been preaching this for a while now!
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Honestly, that’s something I find is such an under-utilised (at least in my experience) use of games and interactive fiction. Like. It’s essentially playing out a scene (in the BDSM sense). Once the consent that matters (the player’s) is given, they have the ability to ‘use their safeword’ by quitting the game at any time. By giving your permission as a player to have something that your character wouldn’t necessarily want, you’re able to explore some really interesting scenarios from a place of safety and control.
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Oh, we’re actually not very different in that respect then. I guess just, I’d prefer to have the option for the character to say no, not just the player by quitting. I still probably wouldn’t say no in most cases. I just feel more comfortable if I can.
Also, this is specifically for ROs for me. If I’m not trying to date them, I don’t actually care about having consent. I wouldn’t expect a non-RO to respect it.
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I actually agree with you on that particular point of always providing an option to say no (in general, not just for ROs, but for any sexual encounter). It can only be for the benefit of more players, even if I personally might not need it anymore after a while. Again, I love how Thom handles this with Hayden. In Sordwin you can opt out of the sex scenes and won’t lose them as RO. In Lux 1 you can STILL opt out of the sex scene and won’t have to quit the game… BUT the “relationship” with Hayden will end. So basically, you’re forced to have sex with them the exact way they want to or else, the game unflags them as your RO.
So you wouldn’t mind if your MC was sexually assaulted by an NPC, as long as they weren’t a RO?
Interesting. For me, that would totally fall into the much hated “SoH 4 category”.
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Correct, from a player standpoint. My MC may or may not like them. But I don’t have a problem with that type of game content. (Or even if they are an RO but not the one I selected.)
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Word of warning im someone who absolutely loves villain romances, the “enemies to lovers” trope and yes even redemption arcs(both for villains and my own characters) so i am biased. With that disclaimer out of the way i agree with a lot of what’s been said here, villain romances do not have to be toxic but often can be/are when handled badly. In my opinion more problematic then the villain romances itself is the mentality that your “fixing” them.
As for redemption arcs it really depends on the character and why they do what they do imo. Take for example Solas from DA:I, over the course of the game we learn who he is as a person and eventually why he did the things he did. We may not agree with them nor the methods he used but we understand he did them for reasons that are not just blind ego, sadism, self serving desire etc. These kinda villains are the easiest to write a satisfying redemption arc for imo. On the other end of the spectrum are characters like the joker who are completely CE, insane and just wants to watch the world burn. These characters are much hard to do the same.
My favourite “villainous” romances are the ones where you alter their/show them a new perspective on things that they did not see or simply disregarded and then they make a conscious choice to change. My number 1 example of this is Viconia from the Baldur’s gate games(yes she’s not a villain but she’s definitely a villainous character). She’s cruel, vindictive, self-serving with little to no regard for others(for the most part),enjoys using others and views things like kindness, mercy and even love as foolish weaknesses; a classic example of the drow values/culture. However if your a good character who hold fast to their values(but not force them on her) you can eventually earn her respect and even love over the course of the 2 games(and all the expansions) with it all cumulating in her changing her alignment right at the end. Lets be clear she does not magically change into a “good” person(its a extremely slow process and she goes from NE to TN) but rather she chooses to not be needlessly evil either, at her core she’s still the same character i grew to love.
An example of this is seen in her dialogue with Imoen(the MC’s half sibling), Imoen expresses scepticism at her changing and concern over her being a bad influence on the MC all this time to which Viconia calls her foolish and says that if anyone has been influenced as a result of this relationship its her since the old her would have had cut out Imoens tongue for bothering her with such inane prattling. She still has all her sharp pointy edges but does not feel the need to coat them with poison, stab you multiple times with them, watch you die and then burn your corpse anymore unless of course you grievously wrong her in which case that’s still on the table.
TLDR: its not the “badness” that’s the draw for me but the ideological(and sometimes physical) clashes, resultant character interactions/emotions and angst. its the same kinda draw that watching a proverbial train wreck, explosive chemical reaction or a heated debate has.
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You know, in my response, I intending to be more about the fact that their personality has several villainous aspects rather than them being a total villain themselves.
Based on the game’s outcome, I’d say they can at least be quite antagonistic.
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Bad is also a unique attraction for me as a villain, and if the villain ends up merely redeemed, then I feel that the character of the villain has fallen into mediocrity
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Honestly? Just make them hot and you will find enough people who wanna romance them.
(No shade)
Personally a villain being attractive obviously helps with them being “romanceable” but personality i think it helps if you don’t make them evil just for being evil. Lile comically boiling puppies alive evil. Just make them a normal person if they are not currently working on their world domination plans.
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Nah fair play, I think I get you! 
And I definitely agree that they’re a great romance!
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I don’t disagree, but “hot” isn’t the same thing to everyone. If you want to rely on that you may need multiple villains…
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Fair enough, with “hot” i meant conventionally attractive but ofc thats not gonna work on everyone
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Hm, I could be wrong because my tastes definitely aren’t conventional at all, but I’m pretty sure even that ranges from “petite” to “slim” to “toned athletic” to “large and muscular.”
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I don’t think there’s going to be one size, fits all when it comes to writing and romancing villains. What some people find uncomfortable or unforgivable even in fiction, is what others deliberately seek out for catharsis or kicks. And above all, everything hinges on whether the reader buys into the premise or not.
For example, many people were (and rightly so for them) very disturbed by SoH 4 and the Jun/ko arc. They didn’t buy into the premise at all, and felt that their characters and decisions were violated and noped out of the entire series. On the other hand, that is my favorite book of the series, and for one simple reason: I had played my ronin as old lovers to enemies with Jun/ko the entire series and had no interest in any of the other RO’s. Imagine my surprise when my headcanons suddenly became canon. I was already onboard, thus I bought into the story. However, many other people had spent the three previous books having other RO’s, and being invested in starting over, and seeing Jun/ko as a malicious shadow haunting their past. For them, book four was a dealbreaker, since there seems to be very few options to be able to stick to that mindset, and if you did, the book became a whole lot more disturbing.
So, if you are going to write a villain romance, make sure to either frontload with feelings/memories/intentions in the demo so people who don’t want to can nope out, or make sure to provide alternate paths that do NOT have the mc swoon inwardly over the antagonist. You can’t half-ass that, you will only get frustrated readers.
The second thing I would advise is to stop thinking in the terms of “villains”. People have reasons to do bad shit, and the important thing is knowing what those reasons are, and how much (if any) of that you should let the reader find out. A villain is just someone with a different moral code from the protagonist, and a useful catch-all term for things going against the general moral codes of the day. It’s fluid and depends on reasons as much as acts. To quote Megadeth: Kill a man, you’re a murder. Kill many, you’re a conqueror. Kill them all, you’re a god.
Villains are people too. And I think, to write them we as authors must be willing to commit to their villainy. We need to, at least on some level, understand why they are doing these things. No, even more, why do they think they need to do these things. We don’t have to think it’s right, moral, or just, but we need to be able to commit to writing them as if we felt the same thing as the villain. There is nothing worse than villains written by someone clearly thinking they are despicable scum of the earth because they end up being cartoons. And what we, as authors, can cope with writing is very personal.
At times, the smaller evils are harder to write about than the big ones, because they are closer to lived life. And at other times, more personal “evils” feel almost necessary to write about to exorcise them and make them lose their power over you. This is individual, no two people are the same. And, the scale of the “evils” tolerated in your head/fiction is very different from how the laws deal with things in real life. I think most people are more disturbed by animal cruelty in fiction rather than murder, but in real life, what gets the longer jail sentence?
This whole muddled area means that writing villains and villain-focused narratives always opens the author up to criticism, just like other controversial subjects. And, since readers can’t read the author’s mind, it can be hard for them to know the intention. Is the author working out trauma? Fetishizing suffering? Want to provoke and shock? Trying to tell a parable? Discuss morals and choices? Just wanting something that sells? No matter how well or honestly you write something, there will always be people judging you for it.
This means that it is vitally important for the author to know WHY they want to write and explore these kinds of stories and people. There are no right or wrong answers, but self-knowledge is essential. Once you know why, the rest can start falling into place.
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Then sometimes you get both, as a result of differing opinions or shifting culture. Like the Batman cartoon series. It is a cartoon and the villains are supposed to be cartoonishly evil. But they also do have backstories that explain why they think they have to do this, and humanize them. A good example is Poison Ivy, who apparently was intended as a villain. But people nowadays only see her as an anti-villain at worst and often an anti-hero. Because her beliefs actually line up with current society fairly well, even if they didn’t when she was created.
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