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sorry mate if your only gay character is the villain that's homophobic.

i know a lengthy explanation won't stop many of you, but i didn't spend three years studying creative writing and creative industries and further years still being essentially made to study queer topics to be taken for someone who knows nothing on the subjects.

if your villain is the only black person in the cast, it's racist. if your villain is the only woman in the cast, it's sexist. if your only villain is the only disabled person in the cast, it's ableist. logically the same applies to queer characters; if the only gay character is the villain, the story's probably homophobic. this is not the same as saying solely that if your villain is a black person, a woman, a disabled person, or a queer person, that it's racist/sexist/ableist/lgbtphobic. if you have marginalised characters on both the heroes' side and the villain's side, it's probably not attacking marginalised folks. but when you deliberately portray a marginalised person as a villain and have no representation for those marginalised persons on the heroes' side, it creates the implication that the trait is inherently villainous. black panther has a black villain, but that's because 99% of the cast is black. the lion king, on the other hand, has the villain be the only flamboyant and feminine (at a time when these were heavily gay-coded stereotypes) character (most of the lions also have lighter manes and fur than scar and he was named for a physical disfigurement he has, which Yikes).

the exact same goes for if you've got a bunch of bi/pan/ace characters as part of your main cast, but your villain is exclusively gay/lesbian. that shit's still homophobic; it implies exclusively same-gender attraction is villainous. that's homophobia even if you're saying "oh but it's okay if you're also attracted to the opposite gender/if you don't experience any attraction". and for fuck's sake, don't say "i think it'd be fun to write a gay villain". like it or not that's tying their gayness to their villainy and fetishizing both.

"bbbbut aeris!!! them being gay isn't the reason for their villainy!!!! checkmate!!!!!!!"
yeah no shit, my oc airou didn't murder a girl in cold blood because he was bisexual. but i still had to take care that not all my bi characters were cold-blooded killers without remorse for their actions, because that does create implications about bi people. you see, people do pick up on traits subconsciously, but might not realise they're doing it or can't bring those thoughts from subconscious to conscious. so it remains in subconscious, no critical thinking gets done, and that trait gets applied to bi people subconsciously in future, which contributes to biphobia. being gay rarely is the reason for someone's villainy, but when only the villain is gay and all the heroes are straight/bi/pan/ace, it does make it seem that only being gay could lead you into villainy, even if it's not the sole reason ("being gay will lead you to villainy" is a common homophobic belief, as well as blatantly wrong; people who have experienced hardship are more likely to be compassionate and good, while those who've spent their entire lives in privilege and then get denied something once generally do something horrible; see vast majority of school shooters). ultimately it doesn't matter if it's not the reason your villain is a villain; it contributes to subconscious thoughts in the minds of pretty much anyone who isn't already balls deep in queer theory like i am, which is most people.

"well, what if all your heroes are lgbt+ but your villain is cishet? is that cishetphobic??"
lmao cishetphobia doesn't exist, but we'll entertain the thought it does for a bit in the form it exists online. about the only instance i know of of a story where most of the heroes are LGBT+ while the villain is cishet is my fanfic, Danganronpa S, so we're pretty much forced to use a fanfic from an Australian queer writer who's made no money off of it whatsoever, when we've been able to provide films from a multi-billion dollar megacorporation to exemplify cishet casts against a queer villain. so let's entertain the thought that I somehow got the rights to Danganronpa, made Danganronpa S a canon game in the timeline as you can see this is already pretty outlandish, but maybe possible?) and that a niche puzzle-solving murder mystery visual novel somehow became as popular as Minecraft, Fortnite, Tetris, etc... essentially the Disney Renaissance film equivalent of a video game (and we've entered Impossible territory).
A. The villain is still marginalised; she's a dark-skinned woman. It's not my place to judge if it's racist since I'm white, but there are several good characters who are also dark-skinned.
B. That's still only a single instance of cishetphobia in a sea of cishet heroes vs a cishet villain, or cishet heroes against a queer villain.
C. She's implied heavily to not be the only villain. (EDIT: Now revealed to not be the only villain and essentially be the scapegoat of another villain, who's also cishet)
D. Hooh boy do I have something to tell you about the LGBT+ community's real life villains and what sexuality and gender they usually are.

EDIT: Since some people seem confused, I know, the fact my very clear explanations that transphobes who worship Ben Shitpeero should be able to read and interpret have suddenly caused mysterious issues that fuck with reading comprehension, I'll make an easy to follow guideline.

You have LGBT+ heroes, but all your villains are cishet: Pretty good! You're portraying queer people positively! ✔
You have LGBT+ heroes and LGBT+ villains: Also pretty good! You've got a diverse range of queer people and experiences and acknowledge that while queerness is good, not everyone who's queer is a good person! ✔
You have no LGBT+ characters whatsoever: Ehhh. You might be a straight person still researching queer people's experiences, not confident in writing queer characters. That's fine, I suppose, but I recommend getting into it. It won't sacrifice anything and LGBT+ people will love you if it's not a total garbage fire.
All your heroes are cishet, but you have LGBT+ villains: This is where the issues come in; like, the real issues regarding homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, etc. and where the stamp comes in. You may need to reexamine why exactly your only queer representation is in the villains' side. Like, even Voltron got it better than you at that point and in 2018 it was the definition of bland tokenism. Which I still love despite the trainwreck finale, but come on, if you're competing to get to the front page of r/iamverysmart then the least you can do is try to do better than Voltron.

i'll leave the comments open this time as some sort of fucked up gladiatorial circus ring for lesser clowns than myself to duke it out and see whether they can actually make me laugh or just roll my eyes at shit i've read 100 times before.

Description
sorry mate if your only gay character is the villain that's homophobic.

i know a lengthy explanation won't stop many of you, but i didn't spend three years studying creative writing and creative industries and further years still being essentially made to study queer topics to be taken for someone who knows nothing on the subjects.

if your villain is the only black person in the cast, it's racist. if your villain is the only woman in the cast, it's sexist. if your only villain is the only disabled person in the cast, it's ableist. logically the same applies to queer characters; if the only gay character is the villain, the story's probably homophobic. this is not the same as saying solely that if your villain is a black person, a woman, a disabled person, or a queer person, that it's racist/sexist/ableist/lgbtphobic. if you have marginalised characters on both the heroes' side and the villain's side, it's probably not attacking marginalised folks. but when you deliberately portray a marginalised person as a villain and have no representation for those marginalised persons on the heroes' side, it creates the implication that the trait is inherently villainous. black panther has a black villain, but that's because 99% of the cast is black. the lion king, on the other hand, has the villain be the only flamboyant and feminine (at a time when these were heavily gay-coded stereotypes) character (most of the lions also have lighter manes and fur than scar and he was named for a physical disfigurement he has, which Yikes).

the exact same goes for if you've got a bunch of bi/pan/ace characters as part of your main cast, but your villain is exclusively gay/lesbian. that shit's still homophobic; it implies exclusively same-gender attraction is villainous. that's homophobia even if you're saying "oh but it's okay if you're also attracted to the opposite gender/if you don't experience any attraction". and for fuck's sake, don't say "i think it'd be fun to write a gay villain". like it or not that's tying their gayness to their villainy and fetishizing both.

"bbbbut aeris!!! them being gay isn't the reason for their villainy!!!! checkmate!!!!!!!"
yeah no shit, my oc airou didn't murder a girl in cold blood because he was bisexual. but i still had to take care that not all my bi characters were cold-blooded killers without remorse for their actions, because that does create implications about bi people. you see, people do pick up on traits subconsciously, but might not realise they're doing it or can't bring those thoughts from subconscious to conscious. so it remains in subconscious, no critical thinking gets done, and that trait gets applied to bi people subconsciously in future, which contributes to biphobia. being gay rarely is the reason for someone's villainy, but when only the villain is gay and all the heroes are straight/bi/pan/ace, it does make it seem that only being gay could lead you into villainy, even if it's not the sole reason ("being gay will lead you to villainy" is a common homophobic belief, as well as blatantly wrong; people who have experienced hardship are more likely to be compassionate and good, while those who've spent their entire lives in privilege and then get denied something once generally do something horrible; see vast majority of school shooters). ultimately it doesn't matter if it's not the reason your villain is a villain; it contributes to subconscious thoughts in the minds of pretty much anyone who isn't already balls deep in queer theory like i am, which is most people.

"well, what if all your heroes are lgbt+ but your villain is cishet? is that cishetphobic??"
lmao cishetphobia doesn't exist, but we'll entertain the thought it does for a bit in the form it exists online. about the only instance i know of of a story where most of the heroes are LGBT+ while the villain is cishet is my fanfic, Danganronpa S, so we're pretty much forced to use a fanfic from an Australian queer writer who's made no money off of it whatsoever, when we've been able to provide films from a multi-billion dollar megacorporation to exemplify cishet casts against a queer villain. so let's entertain the thought that I somehow got the rights to Danganronpa, made Danganronpa S a canon game in the timeline as you can see this is already pretty outlandish, but maybe possible?) and that a niche puzzle-solving murder mystery visual novel somehow became as popular as Minecraft, Fortnite, Tetris, etc... essentially the Disney Renaissance film equivalent of a video game (and we've entered Impossible territory).
A. The villain is still marginalised; she's a dark-skinned woman. It's not my place to judge if it's racist since I'm white, but there are several good characters who are also dark-skinned.
B. That's still only a single instance of cishetphobia in a sea of cishet heroes vs a cishet villain, or cishet heroes against a queer villain.
C. She's implied heavily to not be the only villain. (EDIT: Now revealed to not be the only villain and essentially be the scapegoat of another villain, who's also cishet)
D. Hooh boy do I have something to tell you about the LGBT+ community's real life villains and what sexuality and gender they usually are.

EDIT: Since some people seem confused, I know, the fact my very clear explanations that transphobes who worship Ben Shitpeero should be able to read and interpret have suddenly caused mysterious issues that fuck with reading comprehension, I'll make an easy to follow guideline.

You have LGBT+ heroes, but all your villains are cishet: Pretty good! You're portraying queer people positively! ✔
You have LGBT+ heroes and LGBT+ villains: Also pretty good! You've got a diverse range of queer people and experiences and acknowledge that while queerness is good, not everyone who's queer is a good person! ✔
You have no LGBT+ characters whatsoever: Ehhh. You might be a straight person still researching queer people's experiences, not confident in writing queer characters. That's fine, I suppose, but I recommend getting into it. It won't sacrifice anything and LGBT+ people will love you if it's not a total garbage fire.
All your heroes are cishet, but you have LGBT+ villains: This is where the issues come in; like, the real issues regarding homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, etc. and where the stamp comes in. You may need to reexamine why exactly your only queer representation is in the villains' side. Like, even Voltron got it better than you at that point and in 2018 it was the definition of bland tokenism. Which I still love despite the trainwreck finale, but come on, if you're competing to get to the front page of r/iamverysmart then the least you can do is try to do better than Voltron.

i'll leave the comments open this time as some sort of fucked up gladiatorial circus ring for lesser clowns than myself to duke it out and see whether they can actually make me laugh or just roll my eyes at shit i've read 100 times before.