Thinking about Villain Love Interests in Dating Sims

[alias_sqbr]

I've been thinking recently about the narratives created when a romantic visual novel has a route for a villainous character, because in many ways "love interest" and "villain" fulfil opposing narrative roles and I find the solutions writers come up with to solve this contradiction interesting.

I am not just talking about love interests who do objectively bad things, but a very specific combination of factors:
1) The story contains distinct branches/paths, where each path is a happy romance between the game's protagonist and one of a number of love interests.
2) the plot of one or more of these paths has a villainous antagonist who is presented fairly unsympathetically by the narrative and needs to be overcome to achieve a happy ending.
3) There is a path where this villainous character is the love interest of that path.

And so taken together, we see multiple versions of the same story, where in at least one version the villain love interest is portrayed as a Villain Who Must Be Stopped, but another they are romantic hero who we are happy to see get together with the protagonist.

So! Here's all the examples I can think of and how they work. I'd be very curious to hear about others. I haven't played some of these in a while so my memory is unreliable. These are all games with female protagonists and all but one of the villain love interests is a man.

** Spoilers for: Magical Diary, Hakuoki, Hatoful Boyfriend, Seduce Me, Amnesia: Memories **

Magical Diary:
Damon: a Sexy Bad Boy Demon Everyone Warns You About. If you choose to date him anyway he is very charming right up until the point where he attempts to steal the protagonist's soul and it turns out to have all been a trick. At this point either the protagonist dies, she treats him as her Evil Ex Boyfriend, or she angrily tracks him down and he apologises and they manage to mostly work things out. He turns out to have a tragic backstory that means he had to steal someone's soul to live.

Hakuoki:
Sanan: A mad scientist vampire who is anything from a bit morally ambiguous to unrepentant serial killer on the other paths. He has a tragic backstory where he is being affected by the bloodlust of becoming a vampire, but is always at least partly in control of his own actions. To get onto his path the player has to consistently choose the "trust him and be emotionally supportive" choices, even though he is still sending off a bunch of red flags. There's an indication that having this emotional support helps him push back against his murderous vampire instincts. Halfway through he seems to utterly betray the protagonist, and she finally loses her faith in him, but then she decides she loves him anyway. Then it turns out it was all a trick to stop the real bad guys and he was a good person all along, even though this contradicts his characterisation in other paths.

Kazama: a human-hating demon who repeatedly tries to kidnap the protagonist to be his wife because she is a Rare Full Blooded Demon Woman, and also sadistically wounds and murders several sympathetic human characters on other paths. His mildly tragic backstory is that humans have historically mistreated demons and so he doesn't see them as people. On his path the protagonist pushes back against him constantly and initially doesn't like him. But they end up teaming up to defeat another worse villain, and despite saying a lot of arrogant things about how she will eventually marry him he's quite respectful and helpful in practice. After that villain is defeated he just tags along helping her try to catch up with her friends (who he had previously despised and tried to murder) and eventually admits they're actually worthwhile people. The protagonist slowly comes to connect with him during their adventures together, and so at the end when he's once again all "So we are getting married right?", while actually giving her space to reject him, she grumpily admits that fine, yes, they are.

Hatoful Boyfriend:
(Ok this stretches the definition of "romantic" a bit)
Shuu: A mad scientist serial killer who attempts to murder several other love interests, sometimes successfully. Getting onto his path requires the protagonist to consistently ignore all the obvious red flags and try to hang out with him. Eventually things escalate to the point where he kills her. It ends with her as a head in the jar and him saying "Do you love me?", with all the options being "yes".

Seduce Me:
Diana: She's a secondary villain, and I don't think defeating her is ever the primary arc. She turns out to have a tragic backstory for why she's opposed to the heroes. I can't remember exactly what happens but I think the protagonist ends up tagging along with her while she does morally ambiguous succubus things, and they slowly both realise the other has more good to them than they thought.

Amnesia: Memories
Ukyo: He only ambiguously fulfils the role of villain: On most paths he shows up and mysteriously murders the protagonist for unknown reasons, and I think some happy endings involve him dying and thus no longer being a threat. On his path you learn his tragic and somewhat sympathetic backstory that explains why he keeps murdering her.

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem: This is still in production, and I've only played the early demo which stops just at the point where the protagonist can form the beginnings of a bond with the various villainous love interests but it's not clear how the overall narrative will play out. I'm very curious!

Diabolik Lovers: OK SO APPARENTLY I WAS WRONG ABOUT THIS GAME (see comments). But here's what I thought it was like: all the love interests are unrepentant serial killing vampires, and the line between "love interest behaviour" and "villain behaviour" is sufficiently thin that it's easy for them to act as antagonists on each other's paths. It's presumably easier to switch between "I hope he dies" and "I hope he and the protagonist live happily ever" when the happy endings involve so much of the "hero" murdering innocent people.

Examples from the comments: Love and Legends, Sweet Fuse, Nameless

So, some repeated tropes:

• Massive red flags early on signalling to player and protagonist that This Is A Bad Guy.
  
• Either the protagonist Believes In Them Despite Everything, or they are Feisty and Refuse To Be Pushed Around.
  
• The "good" love interests are still treated sympathetically, even though they generally don't like or trust the villain.
  
• (sometimes very dark) humour at the contrast between romantic lead tropes and villain tropes.
  
• The villain learns to be a better person through the protagonist's influence, generally emotional support and/or constructive criticism.
  
• A tragic backstory that forces the villain to behave this way, often combined with a somewhat selfish, defensive personality that makes them not want to admit they're a victim or have sympathy for the people they hurt.
  
• Even in the end they're at least a little morally ambiguous, but the protagonist accepts it because they make each other happy.
  
• Their motivation/behaviour is not as bad as it seems.
  
• There is an Even Worse Villain that makes this one not seem so bad and works as an antagonist for their path.
  

I have no big conclusion to work towards, I just found it interesting to think about :) I'd be curious to know if there are any love interests like this in games with male protagonists (Doki Doki Literature Club doesn't count because it only pretends to be a dating sim)

Also: I'm not really interested in discussing here why these sorts of love interests are found appealing. That topic has been done to death and is separate to the challenge of how to write them.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you!