i’m so sick of people saying hannibal is bad queer representation because he’s a villain.
queer coding villians is a problem because their queerness is written to be the reason they’re evil. it’s an adjective used to make them more lecherous, more sinful. this is a huge problem, but if you conclude that problem by saying ‘villians can never be written as queer and the only good lgbt rep we can have are pure, morally perfect characters’, you’re completely missing the point.
hannibal is a fantastically written queer villian because his queerness has no influence over his sadism. him being evil has absolutely nothing to do with him being queer. he’s evil because he murders, manipulates, and cannibalizes people. he’s queer because he’s in love with a man.
as opposed to classic queer coded villians, hannibal being in love with will is seen as the only truly good part about him - that he’s capable of love, rather than simply violence.
let us have queer villians. queer antiheros. queer morally-gray characters. queerness in fiction being accepted only when it’s in relation to absolutely perfect gold-hearted characters is ridiculous. ‘good queer representation’ isn’t isolated to morally good characters. good queer representation is when a character’s queerness has no hold over their moral compass at all.
