Discussion: Villain Love Interests

With the recent release of A Court of Mist and Fury and all the mentions of villains on Twitter recently with the Nefarious Tales blog tour hosted by Mishma at Chasing Faerytales, I have been thinking a lot about villains being the love interest.

I am personally not one to root for the villain to get the girl. I am generally Team Good Guy because that's just the way that I think the world should work.

Anyway, seeing all this villain talk has made me realize that I would actually like to see a villain love interest in a book! But that being said, I haven't seen a villain yet that I think deserves the girl.

So since I need to give this post some meat, I'm going to talk about three villains that I think a lot of people want/wanted to get the girl and why I disagree and then talk about what I want to see in a villain love interest.

I mentioned the recent release of ACOMAF because with that I have seen a lot from the Rhysand fans! I am 1000% not one of them. I thought that his actions in ACOTAR were disgusting and it makes me sad that he could be an honest love interest in this series.

Because dragging a girl to your nasty Fae parties in clothes that are basically see through that she isn't comfortable in and drugging the crap out of her isn't sexy. That oath wasn't cool, either.

It's a no from me.

Another popular villain type character that ends up getting the girl is Warner from Shatter Me. I honestly don't even remember what all he does to Juliette that made me hate him. I stopped reading this series after Destroy Me because 1) I could see that he was going to end up being the one and 2) I looked up spoilers for everything after that and saw that I was right.

I see everyone raving about this series to the point that I'm SO curious to see what happens, but I refuse because on principle, I don't want to even be tempted to end up liking Warner even a little bit. I don't care if he changed, he was awful in the beginning and there isn't any excuse for that.

The final villain that I want to talk about is The Darkling. I think there are some people out there who shipped him with Alina. I know I did for awhile! But alas, I don't think that he was good enough for her because he only liked her for her power. Which isn't a good reason!

I never even realized until recently that a villain love interest is something that I would like to see! There's not even that much that I would look for in a villain love interest! I really and truly just want him to be good to her! I want him to like her for her, not what she can do or how she could advance his evil plans.

I don't want to see a villain love interest that starts off as being abusive or manipulative or any of that. Villains don't have to meet girls by first being horrible to them. Like for real, I don't care who they're awful to or why. Be evil. Be the evilest of the evil just for the sake of being evil. I just don't care. Just don't be awful to the girl, like ever.

Because like even if they're just a little bit mean to the girl, I'm already not Team Them.

Are you one who roots for the villain? Do you know of any good villain love interests? Or are you like me and are Team Good Guy?