i have a theory that grievous was supposed to play into more of the ambiguously bi sexually sadistic villain archetype following his characterization in rots, but that the execs at lucasfilm kind of decided against this for whatever reason (poor reception from audiences, not knowing how to portray this kind of character in children's media following the movies, etc.) and disney completely moved away from this
like there's a reason why he specifically seems to be super popular among queer sw fans when compared to most other sw villains and anti-heroes, why he's always been portrayed as kind of feminine or androgynous in fanart (i.e. grieve-tan), and why a lot of straight male fans (especially younger ones who didn't grow up with the prequels and kind of just see him as a perpetually humiliated coward) tend to prefer other villains (all of this is purely anecdotal and just based off discussions i'm seeing in tiktok comments and on x/twitter)
if they ended up going in this direction i wonder whether this would've impacted his marketability in any way because this archetype has become markedly less popular since the mid-2010s as openly gay/bisexual/trans characters have become more common
i remember in the early 2000s and 2010s a lot of people compared him to grell sutcliff
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
