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Inspired by a recent thread, I want to pose this question about cultural history, and keeping with AH, wonder if things could have gone the other direction.

Okay, recently, especially with the 1990s, there has been a tendency to cause more, "dark and edgy," heroes, hence, anti-heroes. Now, there were plenty of grey stories before, and some, like LOTR, that are actually grayer than people remember. However, this trend hides something that kind of irks me about people claiming to be grey morally.

To start, usually to make a story grey, people have darker heroes versus villains that are still evil, relatively speaking at least. At worst, this leads to darkness induced apathy with black versus black. But, this brings me to my point.
Namely, why do we not see more anti-villains? And keep in mind, I don't just villains that have a tragic background, or who maybe doesn't cross certain moral lines. I mean antagonists that, in the present, have goals that the audience can sympathize with, and additionally, are more than just hazy concepts.
Why do I bring this up? Because usually what we see with attempts at making grey morality is making the hero darker, rather than the villain lighter. While both have a place, so far there's a huge bias to do doing the former, which misunderstands that.

Now, keep in mind, I'm not saying this trend is never broken. Watchmen, which arguably started the Anti-Hero trend of comics in the late 80s and 90s, had an anti-villain who arguably saved the Earth from the Cold War. And there are other examples I'm sure that I'm not thinking of right now, however the point I'm making here isn't that they don't exist, but they aren't as common. Additionally however, this leads to my second point.

Why did Anti-Heroes become much more common, but not Anti-Villains? I don't think it's because of popular works per say, because the latter featured in many of these, "hallmark," stories, if you will. Although, that theory does hold up in a genre, which actually causes the genre to have its black/white impact.

With Lord of the Rings, quite the important book for fantasy, they do mention Sauron wasn't always evil. However in the original stories, I don't think any further exposition on this is given, and more importantly, the reader never sees Sauron with any redeemable qualities. Yes, I understand later material does cover this, however not the original trilogy with which most are familiar. This I think is actually why LOTR is perceived as being Black and White. Not because of its heroes, which are gray upon closer inspection, but its villains, who have no redeeming qualities within the time within which the book is taking place,(from what I'm aware of at least.)

This, I'd argue, is what causes so much of the fantasy genre to have black and white morality. Not the lack of grey heroes, but a lack of villains that had redeeming qualities right off the bat. Because really, one doesn't have grey morality if the villain is black(morally speaking) in the present. There's less moral conflict, because whatever the heroes do, what the villain will do is inevitably worse. I'm not saying this is always bad, or that there's no moral conflict, however there's significantly less than if you had a truly grey character. Additionally, a completely evil villain causes the heroes to at least appear less morally grey, because whatever they do will not be as evil probably as what the villain does, or plans to do.

Now, this is analysis probably isn't completely accurate I'm sure, and I know there are plenty of exceptions to this within fantasy. I'm talking more about popular perception of a genre, and what's common within that genre. There are always exceptions, some of which prove the rule.

To bring this all to AH, I ask these two questions, as a summary.
1. Why did Anti-Heroes become more common?
2. With the right PODs, can this trend be the other way, or can we have an equal supply of anti-heroes and anti-villains?

Really would like your thoughts on this, and I'll try to elaborate in further posts more on all of this.
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