saw the term "over-villainification" today in reference to a character who is by all means a villain in the narrative, but who is demonized even further by the fandom for the sole purpose of Blorbo Angst.
in particular it was about Volo from pokemon legends arceus, and how the fandom/fanon version of him tends to be WAY more heinously evil in fanwork exclusively because the fandom loves the train guys so much and wants to angst them harder. i never beat PLA, but i think we need to adopt over-villainification into the fandom lexicon. if there isn't already, like, a fandom term for it. it's like... the opposite of woobification? the counterpart to it?
over in my fandom i really like this shitty evil murder bastard. he's super fucked up. he did at least one murder, maybe two. but he's also a dad. so for pretty much no fucking reason at all, the fandom decided that he abuses his kids. even though looking at canon it kinda makes no fucking sense for that to be the case, it's just a headcanon like anything else.
but see, his kids are the fandom darlings, or at the very least his surrogate son is, i don't think anyone besides the lesbians care abt his daughter. but he's got this fruity little son who is everything coded (gay, trans, autistic, the works) and canonically has PTSD (from a tangentially related thing) so naturally the fandom has latched onto this guy because anyone can project on him. and they have just chosen. to make his weird notdad an abusive monster. to beat up Blorbo.
it's kind of frustrating? it's kind of shit, really. this character i like is a pretty run of the mill villain. he has about 900 works featuring him on AO3, but if i filter out all the known child abuse tags (as well as a custom tag the fandom has for him being abusive specifically) the number drops down to 700. i guess this practice is harmless, really, but there's still people posting hate in his tag nonstop and calling me an abuse apologist for liking him. which is weird, cause again, he... didn't even abuse anyone. he did some murders, but child abuse is just a headcanon.
anyways, petition to make a word for this so its easier to roll our eyes at. "over-villainification" is so many syllables. maybe we can call it volofication, in honour of he blonde bitch from hisui.
