Draco in Leather Pants/Web Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Cain from Starfighter. Even though throughout the series he's behaved consistently like a violent, jealous psychopath, all the comments on any given page seem to treat him as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • In Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire, minor character Lord Siegfried, a.k.a. "Siggy", is noted for his uncontrollable temper, his willingness to substitute convenient scapegoats for his wrath, and his extreme racism against orcs. Despite this, he is very dedicated to his duty as a knight, and as long as he can keep calm, he's polite, well-spoken, and sensible. He is also, conspicuously, one of the most "manly" characters in the series. Probably for those reasons, Siggy's fangirls are easily as devout as those of more traditional Badass types such as Celesto and Jacob, even going so far as to set up websites devoted to Siggy fandom, and posting lengthy defenses of his quality of character against those who malign him for the traits the author clearly uses him (and less frequently his father, Lord Damaske) to represent.
  • Belkar, Redcloack, Miko and Tarquin from Order of the Stick get this kind of treatment. There are those who insists that Belkar, Tarquin and Redcloak aren't evil despite their canonical Evil alignment and there are those that are willing to defend Miko's actions despite the fact that she fell for killing Lord Shojo.
    • When Tarquin had some recently escaped slaves tracked down, crucified and burned alive as a present for his long-lost son, some Tarquin fans tried to insist it "wasn't that bad" on account of "slavery is acceptable in the West Continent's culture" (leaving out that as someone who is at least partially in charge of the realm, is thus partially responsible for perpetuating said culture of slavery) and that his actions fell under Good Is Not Nice. Some even tried to spin the whole thing as Haley being evil for "upsetting the order" and forcing Tarquin to torture and execute them. Note that this goes against the character's unrepentant confession that he's evil.
      • Because, y'see, there's no such thing as Lawful Evil... anymore.
      • That said, what he just did to Ganji and Enor has lost him this status.
      • Part of the reason Tarquin gets this treatment is because, scarily, some people would actually condone his methods. A cursory read through a South American history book would tell you as much.
    • Tsukiko's love for Xykon seems to be an in-universe example and a Take That at this trope
      • However, in the fandom this is averted with Xykon, who people love because he's so deliciously evil
      • Tsukiko herself, being a very cute, very evil Perky Goth, enjoys her own status within this trope. "But she can't be TRULY evil, she's so CUTE!" *swoons* (and so on).
    • Lampshaded for Thog, the Chaotic Evil Cloudcuckoolander barbarian:

Tarquin: It's weird, no matter how many people he kills, the audience still thinks he's lovable.

  • Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater. This is someone who makes casual references to brutally murdering his family and considers stabbing people in the head to be the answer to all problems, yet there are those who give an inordinate amount of focus to a literal handful of scenes where he shows actual human empathy and attempt to portray him as simply a Woobie lashing out at a cruel universe that has designated him to be its Butt Monkey. Do note however that the majority of his fans like him precisely because he bases his existence around killing everything For the Evulz and reject any other view. however, there is also the possibility that other fans believe he is cursed to forget any redeeming thoughts, rather than ignoring them.
  • Luke from Freakangels is a hobo that has trouble locating a pair of pants and mostly uses his psychic powers to manipulate women into sleeping with him, but has gained a little fan following because he's handsome, intelligent and constantly putting himself as the poor innocent victim of his mean, mean friends.
  • Miles from Las Lindas is by far the most unashamedly Jerkass character in the series, and yet he is absolutely adored by over half the fanbase. His huge Kick the Dog moment in the Harvest Festival arc has done nothing to stop the constant fangirl drooling (and, as is typical of this trope, putting all the blame and hatred on the girl he abused).
  • No love for Doc Worth? He's rude, grungy, bluntly mean and all-around sleazy, yet still sustains a surprisingly dedicated fanbase.
    • The comic is young yet. Give it time.
  • Geisha in Last Res0rt has been pretty heavily implied as both a rapist and serial killer in the name of art, but is athletic, well-spoken, and curiously nonchalant about his position on the show. As a result, some... pretty interesting pairings tend to show up in the fandom...
  • The whole main cast from Draken fall into this, maybe some to a lesser extent, but all are without a doubt evil and still loved by fandom.
  • Richard of Looking for Group fits the bill. He's basically a scaled-up Belkar (physically, anyway. Even Richard doesn't top Belkar in attitude, or murdering capacity). He murders wantonly, does unspeakably horrible (but incredibly amusing) things with the corpses afterwards, and even got put on trial once by a court of demons because some of his wanton murder inadvertently eliminated what would, in the future, become a ruthless invasion force, and thus the net effect was ultimately good. But he's funny, so we'll let him off lightly.
  • Rob Ten Pas' Gogo Bomango is antisocial, unhygienic, aggressive, and legally insane. But since we can't smell her, she's funny, and she's smokin' hot (if you can get past the fact that she's not human to the point that she can reproduce by budding and can survive by eating electrical wiring if necessary), she's a hilarious heroine instead of the rotten bitch she'd be despised as in real life. Rob's hung a lampshade on this in his Deviant ART journal at least twice.
  • A major chunk of the cast of DMFA arguably gets this treatment, given that most of the characters who would otherwise be clear-cut villains have their violent histories or pasttimes only vaguely alluded to, and when they are acknowledged, it is usually played for dark humor. Meanwhile, they are also pretty much all physically attractive, affable on a one-to-one basis... and held up by some fans as genuinely wonderful people. The only one to draw serious hatred from most of the fandom seems to be Aniz, who stands out by dint of having actually hurt some well-loved major characters on-panel.
    • He has lately been joined by Destania, for similar reasons. (It's like it was meant to be.) However, that still leaves Aaryanna, Kria and Regina, among others.
  • On Deviant ART, humon's popular character Niels often tortures people psychologically before putting bullets through their head, holds children hostage, and targets his enemies' families. However, he's also a pretty, bisexual, blonde Dane who is sweet to his two lover's child Elliott. Humon's watchers often forget all of the horrible things he does in favor of what a hot, funny, well rounded character he is.
    • Which is why every now and then she has to remind her fans that he is a terrible person by drawing scenes of said kidnapping, murder, and torture, especially after receiving praise describing him as a positive example of three way relationships.
      • This may however have changed for quite many fans after he shot and seemingly killed fan-favourite Agent 250.
      • Or not, since 250 survived.
    • He's at least shown as being Affably evil and kind to those he cares about, Peter? Gets this treatment, and has no good about him, except, of course, his looks.
  • Mordecai of Tracy Butler's Lackadaisy. He's a cold, obsessive-compulsive contract killer who kneecapped his former partner and friend just prior to joining a rival establishment, and is more or less completely incapable of love... and yet he's one of the most popular characters, especially with the fangirls.
    • She hangs lampshades on it occasionally. In the most recent instance, she described him as being the cranky lovechild of Seinfeld and Jack the Ripper, who also is a cat for some reason. Then he took a hot iron to her face. Now his socks are never gonna get pressed.
  • Cerise, part of the bad girl trio of witches in Eerie Cuties has quite a following on the fan boards. That said, most of her fans know full well that she's not all that 'misunderstood', but simply have a thing cute redheads.
  • Mike from It's Walky! and Shortpacked - when he made a joke about rape, in private, to another man, purely to make him uncomfortable, a number of his fans complained that this was out of character for someone who'd once kicked a little girl in the head to prove a point.
    • To elaborate, Mike is basically the personification of For the Evulz. His actions are almost completely decided based on how much suffering they will cause. He's basically a Jerkass version of The Joker. About the only 'redeeming' things he's ever seen doing is turning his cruelty on people who deserve it. As compared to his otherwise undirected evil.
  • Eridan Ampora from Homestuck. He's a tool that makes bad decisions and ends up murdering his friends, but searches for his name on sites like Deviant ART will turn up pictures of him that make him look like Casanova. This is justified as, before the previous spoilered scene, he was a mostly sympathetic character that a lot of people could relate to due to his only major scenes being him trying to cope with being friend zoned. Of course, it still applies, since after the previous spoilers, the amount of people that perceived him as a badass suddenly increased even though his actions were unpopular.
    • Gamzee Makara, as well. He's almost always drawn in fanart as a skinny, Troubled but Cute, sympathetic character (usually a gay guy). This is all despite being a psychotic, genocidal, sadomasochistic murderer who kills twice the number of people Eridan does and then paints pictures with their blood. However, he is portrayed sympathetically in the beginning as an Adorkable Erudite Stoner.
    • Vriska could be considered an example. She has a fairly large fanbase despite killing thousands of young trolls to feed her lusus, forcing Tavros off a cliff after taunting him which resulted in him being permanently paralyzed below the waist, mind controlling Sollux to kill Aradia, blinding Terezi, later actually killing Tavros and going off to fight Jack leaving a trail for him to find and kill the other trolls, and generally acting awful to everyone except John. She is portrayed somewhat sympathetically in-comic though. As a result, fans love to argue about how evil she actually is, whether she actually reformed, and whether her death was deserved.
  • Fans objected when the artist of Catena redesigned Bear and gave him an enormous lantern jaw (that had nothing to do with justice), saying it made him less attractive. The artist pointed out that the people who found him attractive to begin with were missing the point.
  • Positive fan reaction to basically anyone from Chimneyspeak. With the exception of the Highlanders, every single major character is an unrepentant criminal. Elgie, the main character, might get points for being better than most of the others, but he's still killed innocent people, and with maybe one exception, doesn't express any regret for this.
    • It doesn't help that most characters (Even the ones trafficking in children) are given sympathetic portrayals. Suka is head of the Russian Mafia in London, but is practically a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Even Chelsea Grinn, an insane mass-murderer has been getting some sympathetic scenes recently.
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