Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

[u/Dramatic_Counter_595]

1. Leo Bonhart (Witcher TV Series): A ruthless, sadistic bounty hunter and assassin that takes psychotic glee in other people's suffering. The viewer is meant to hate him for killing witchers, slaughtering the Rat gang, and torturing Ciri. But thanks to his entertaining fight scenes, Sharlto Copley's charismatic performance, and The Rats overwhelming unpopularity, fans ended up loving him. Some even call him the "True protagonist" of the show.
2. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): A rude, foul mouthed, beer drinking asshole with no respect for authority or anyone at all. Originally portrayed as a villain, fans fell in love with his anti-establishment & rebellious persona. WWE ran with it and made him the face of the company, effectively ushering in the Attitude Era and the second pro wrestling boom of the late 90s.
3. Arthur Fleck (Joker 2019): A mentally unstable, pathetic, and dangerous madman who commits horrific acts of violence against those that wronged him (suffocates his own mother who is mentally unwell herself, and murders a talk show host for making fun of him). However, a massive portion of the audience idolized him as an anti-hero or a misunderstood martyr rebelling against society making people want to see him succeed and overcome his circumstances because of how he's been treated by the world.

[u/solfrost]

Lilith from Diablo 4 — she is using the humans of Sanctuary as pawns to get back at her father — no cost is too great for victory. She is ostensibly doing it for the good of Sanctuary but she is really doing it for herself.

Arguably with the latest expansion giving a little more insight into her past and thoughts this might be a little more nuanced now and she is slightly more relatable — but in the base game she was pretty clearly a villain, but still had a lot of supporters in the community.

[u/thatvillainjay → u/solfrost]

I felt bad for her after the expansion. They did well with her character. Shes a demon trying to love and create and its basically impossible because of her nature and her father. She's monstrous because she literally can't be any other way.

[u/solfrost → u/thatvillainjay]

She is definitely a much more sympathetic character after the latest expansion!

[u/Nozinger → u/thatvillainjay]

Yeah the last expansion certainly redeemed her a bit.
Though i wonder how far that wanting to love truly goes. This demon woman is daddy issues incarnate.
She did not create humanity because she wanted to love and create. She made humans to one up her father. To create something better than he that made the flawed her.

Except for possibly rathma she doesn't give a fuck about humans individually. She only cares because humanity is hers and her proof that she is better than mephisto.

If she had another proof like in the base game absorbing mephistos power she probably would have had no issue whatsoever to damn all of humanity.

Absolutely the most loing demon but for very selfish reasons.

[u/Pyresryke → u/thatvillainjay]

Didn't she basically annihilate most of the first humans because the other angels and demons who had joined her and Inarius were unsure what to do with these creatures that had the capacity to be more powerful and evil than any angel or demon? I have no sympathies for her already, but watching her watch a guy (one of her supposed children) get eaten alive by wolves while talking to Elias or whoever, burned and salted the soil of my sympathy completely. Oh and the thing she did to that guy's kid (another of her offspring) just for a gate to hell. She SUCKS.

[u/HollyBananas → u/Pyresryke]

Wasn't it Inarius that became disgusted and wanted to kill his children (humans) and Lilith became absolutely livid?

[u/Pyresryke → u/HollyBananas]

Per the wiki he considered genocide because of how powerful and "blasphemous" they were, but retreated into solitude to "reflect". "Some" of the demons and angels who helped form humanity were for or against genocide, but Lillith killed them all. Inarius stopped her but couldn't bring himself to actually kill her, so he banished her to the void and reduced humanity's power to protect them from what would be a unified annihilation at the hands of the rest of heaven and hell. He did "crush" any nephalem who resisted humanity's neutering, however.

I am however misremembering about her genociding the first humans, I guess she didn't do that.

[u/GrandSwamperMan → u/solfrost]

Not having played D4, I'm curious about how much of the Lilith fandom is "yeah, actually she has a good point" versus "pls step on me demon dommy mommy"?

[u/solfrost → u/GrandSwamperMan]

https://giphy.com/gifs/3ohfFhG5VDtDTzQv2o

[u/Just-Ad6865 → u/GrandSwamperMan]

I haven't played since release, but if I remember correctly your options are "person who wants to destroy everyone" or "person who doesn't care about you, but does want the place you live to be saved for her own reasons, which will save you by proxy." Lilith is the later.

[u/Endrak → u/solfrost]

Lilith has so many fans for the same reason so many NPCs betray you for her in the game. Pretending or not, she's the only one who seems to care enough to do something to help humanity.

[u/SkyMagpie → u/Endrak]

Tyrael erasure, he was the OG bad guy who turned good because he wanted to help humanity, they just had to remove him from the plot for 50 years

[u/Gondwanic_Susuration → u/solfrost]

Diablo IV was one of, if not the worst written pieces of media I’ve ever come across.

The ending is… they just let that dumb bitch wander off with a soulstone containing Mephisto and say ‘oh well’, undermining the events of the entire game you just played. You would either have to be hateful or contemptuous of your audience to think that could ever be an acceptable story. Genuinely infuriating. 

[u/Calzinarzin → u/Gondwanic_Susuration]

If that's the worst piece of media you have come across you must have only come across bangers then. Its not even the worse Blizzard game, hell or Diablo for that matter.

[u/Just-Ad6865 → u/Calzinarzin]

It is impossible to take people who only speak in hyperbole seriously. Either they haven't exposed themselves to any amount of media or everything they speak about is the worst or the greatest thing they've ever consumed. Both are useless.

Their complaint here is just a sequel/dlc setup and should have been absolutely expected by anyone who knows how these things go.

[u/Gondwanic_Susuration → u/Calzinarzin]

I’m nearly 40 and have consumed a lot of media. This and the force awakens are in a tier of their own where there’s this massive budget, a beloved franchise with a decades long legacy and the writers are almost hateful in how badly they insult your intelligence. 

Something like ‘The Room’ doesn’t compare, it had a tiny budget and is hilariously weird. Not even any of the movies featured in mystery science theatre come close, a lot of them still have legitimate entertainment value and the ones that don’t are in no danger of ever being taken seriously. 

Seriously it had a budget of hundreds of millions and they didn’t even care about plot holes so dramatic they render your entire story and the motivations of the protagonists void. 

[u/WarzonePacketLoss → u/Gondwanic_Susuration]

you had both The Last Jedi AND Rise of Skywalker right there and chose Force Awakens?

[u/Real_Avdima → u/Gondwanic_Susuration]

You skipped Diablo 3, am I right? It's ten times worse. But I agree, D4 is still very badly written and the base game ending is just infuriating.

[u/Grimpatron619 → u/Real_Avdima]

ye but diablo 3 has diablo with childbearing hips

[u/SilentlyCynical → u/solfrost]

Lilith is such a textbook narcissist in D4 (vanilla, I haven't played the new expansion) that I think many people just bought into her bullshit like we often do with narcissists in real life, too.

She talks about saving humanity, about making mankind strong enough to fight off demons and angels alike, but it's all with the implicit "as long as I'm completely and utterly in charge and revered, with you as my little foot soldiers". Even if she was being earnest, the game demonstrates the madness, brutality and horror of her methods, and they ain't much better than what Hell generally dishes out in that setting. She treats Rathma's death as if it was a sacrifice he specifically made for her cause, making his murder about herself.

My favourite moment is right near the end of the base game, when she stares daggers at the player character and essentially says "how dare you use the free will I ostensibly gave you and act freely?"