Evil Is Sexy/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A villainous character is portrayed as attractive.

  • Straight: All the villains in the story are sexy, or, at least, most of them.
  • Exaggerated: The heroes are incredibly unattractive, but anyone evil is so incredibly gorgeous that Draco in Leather Pants is more or less the point of the entire fandom.
  • Justified:
    • The members of the villain's alliance or group use some sort of dark magic, expensive cosmetic surgery, or other strategy to enhance their looks - the heroes find these methods too amoral to use.
    • The villains use their sexiness to trick or manipulate their foes
  • Inverted: Evil is absolutely hideous. Beauty Equals Goodness.
  • Subverted:
    • It looks like the main villain is sexy at first, but, later in the story, it turns out that a large portion of the hero's newly-gained allies are even more attractive - in comparison, the Big Bad is nothing special.
    • Or the main villain is beautiful until they go into their One-Winged Angel form.
  • Double Subverted:
    • The main villain appears to be hot, but then we see a lot of good characters introduced that are, in fact, sexier, so the trope isn't in play - but wait, all those attractive so-called 'good guys' were actually evil all along!
    • But it also turns out their One-Winged Angel form wasn't their strongest form, so they bring out the Bishounen Line.
  • Parodied:
    • Emperor Evulz emits copious amounts of sparkles, and is followed everywhere by a horde of screaming Fangirls, much to his frustration, as he tries to convince everyone he is terrifying and will someday rule the world...Stop Squeeing, you nattering fools! I'm trying to scheme here! I am the architect of your doom, not some common boy band rabble for you to fawn over! ...Hey, wait a minute! That sounds a lot like Robert Pattinson in real life, doesn't it? No wonder all those Twilight fangirls give him such a hard time.
    • Women all over the world masturbate furiously to Hitler/Stalin yaoi.
    • Part of a game's Karma Meter is determined by your wardrobe: Evil Is Sexy, while Good covers up more.
    • Dark Chick Alice is heavily sexualized.
    • Several female villains work as strippers when they're not being evil.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Evil is sexy because the world is a plutocratic Dystopia ruled by The Beautiful Elite who pay for all the expensive cosmetics and modification...using the people's money.
    • When you meet the villain, s/he is smoking hot...until it turns out s/he's a Complete Monster who then tortures you for kicks.
    • The presence of beautiful people doing bad things causes a backlash against the concept of beauty and the glorification of ugliness. People with good looks are rebelled against or, worse, killed.
    • The villain's Stripperific Impossibly Cool Clothes is Awesome but Impractical during the battle with the heroes, who wins by at least wearing some protection at the cost of beauty.
  • Reconstructed:
  • Zig Zagged: An escalatingly sexier parade of new cast members, alternating between good and evil.
  • Averted: Evil is, in fact, not sexy, or, at least, no more than good is.
  • Enforced:
    • Good in the story's plot is too 'pure' for the seductive type of characters, but the creators want to put in some Fan Service and Mr. Fanservice somehow, so they give that role to the villains.
    • People who were good-looking were horrible to the plain-to-homely author during his/her school years. He/she begins to equate good looks with a rotten moral foundation and abusive personality.
    • The author wants to show how evil can be manipulative, by making the forces of evil sexy.
  • Lampshaded: "Naturally, I always end up fighting against sexy people. Somehow."
  • Invoked:
    • "I'll make him pay for dumping me! TO VICTORIA'S SECRET!"
    • "Oh dear, I seem to be losing my looks. I better go brutally murder a few children."
  • Defied:
  • Discussed: The heroes have a conversation about how the villains they end up fighting always seem to be so attractive, and their frustration that their side doesn't get to have people like that fighting by their sides.
  • Conversed: The heroes are watching television and wondering why all the villains are sexy and scantily clad in those shows.
  • Played for Laughs: A character starts dressing sexier following a Face Heel Turn, but her idea of "sexy" is Lady Gaga. She shows up for battle wearing a garbage can lid for a hat, a dress made of Steak-Umms, and a pair of wellies covered in glitter glue. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Played for Drama:
    • See Deconstructed 4.
    • See Parodied 4. Because Alice is heavily sexualized, she eventually becomes concerned with looking sexy. In an attempt to please the villainous males more, she starts wearing a very sexy outfit that reveals and enhances most of her figure. However, she's still concerned that the outfit doesn't reveal a lot. Things get worse for another reason: the males, heroic or villainous, all start ogling at her. She realizes this and starts wearing more, calling anybody who ogles at her a "sexist perv".

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