I Think One Of The Many Reasons I Love Fiyeraba Is That It’s One Of The Few M/f “villain Romances”

I think one of the many reasons I love Fiyeraba is that it’s one of the few m/f “villain romances” I can think of where the woman is the villain.*

I feel like often when there’s a love story (or at least romantic tension) between a “good heroic” character and a more dubious/villainous character, usually the man is the villain. Part of this because lots of women wanna fuck villains. But I also suspect part of this is because we tend to hold fictional female characters to higher standards of likability/morality. So, we don’t as often see the reverse.

Even in the few instances where a hero has romantic tension with a female villain (including my beloved batcat and aeon) it rarely ends in a canonical happy ending with them together. It usually ends in the villain’s defeat or them just leaving because it could never work out.

And Wicked looks at that and goes: Nope. The female villain will get a happy ending with her beloved and she won’t have to change for him.

And as someone who hates “brooding alpha males” in romance fiction and loves female villains/antiheroes, it’s really refreshing to see a story that inverts the tired “good girl fixes the bad boy” plotline.

Instead, they do “good boy runs off with the bad girl” which you just don’t see as often.

*(I know Elphaba is more of an antihero but she’s a villain in the eyes of Oz and she’s based on the villain from The Wizard of Oz so I still think she counts)