I saw someone romanticizing Cardan from The Cruel Prince and it pissed me off so badly because up until the 3rd book Holly Black did not even attempt to make Cardan in any way redeemable. In fact, half the draw of the character and his relationship with Jude was the fact that it was fucked up and the author wasnāt trying to romanticize it. It was ugly and toxic and the utter appeal of it was just the incredible chemistry between them. You were supposed to like them because they were good characters, not because they were good.Ā
And then fandom comes in and fucks it all up trying to make them good, but the thing is you can like these characters without redeeming them. Let them be shitty. Stop being all uwu Cardan did nothing wrong in his life, heās just a broken boy in need of love and he didnāt mean it cause he loves Jude. No, Cardan is an absolute nightmare of a romantic interest, heās toxicity personified. AND THATāS FINE. That doesnāt mean you canāt like him. He doesnāt have to be good for you to like him, or even to ship him with Jude.Ā
People did the same thing with Loki and Sherlock, acting like they were above any criticism and thatās how we ended up with characters like Kylo Ren that was given to us completely unironically and told hereās your love interest, you donāt mind that heās potentially guilty of genocide and is a Nazi stand-in right? You all seem to like shit like that. And guess what, they were right!! I just wish youād all let bad people be bad people in fiction without pretending that theyāre anything but bad, let villains be villains. Thatās all I ask.Ā