I always feel a bit gaslit by these questions of “why do you find this morally bankrupt character, played by an increasingly talented and charismatic actor, so appealing?”

Maybe ask why these characters are presented this way and maybe, I don’t know do some critical analysis. https://twitter.com/io9/status/1387557761605455872

Also, super tired of adult critics completely ignoring the tropes and themes of YA media while analyzing it.

Target audience is a huge factor in what a piece of media is attempting to accomplish and how it does so, through casting and the character archetypes it uses.

Part of the love triangle tropes is that each potential partner represents an aspects of the protagonist’s personality and possible life they could have.

One of those potential partners being beautiful but morally corrupt says something about the protagonist.

This storytelling device of the subtext of the romantic relationships being an examination of the protagonist the is especially prominent in YA Romance, because it’s targeting an audience who are currently exploring who they are and who the want to be.

The character archetype of the seductive but monstrous man, who’s nursing a wounded psyche dude to past trauma, is as old literature itself (Google ‘Byronic heroes’). He’s not just appealing to women, he is a masculine ideal tainted at the root by toxic masculinity.

I’m getting sick and tired of the tone of these types of articles and “analysis” that frames these characters’ popularity as a fault an audience, implied to be mostly women, who find them romantic or sexually appealing when it is goes so much deeper than that.