Internet Is Celebrating the Fictional Villains Who Commit Atrocities but Are Somehow More Progressive Than the Heroes

A Reddit thread celebrating fictional villains who are morally reprehensible in every way except their progressive attitudes toward gender and race has drawn significant attention.

The most discussed character on the thread was Shan-Yu, the Hun warlord and antagonist of Disney's Mulan (1998). When Mulan revealed she was the soldier who decimated his army, Shan-Yu only calls her "the soldier from the mountains." He thus acknowledges her by her military achievement rather than her gender.

Reddit users note that he is the only major character in the film who is not embarrassed by the idea of being defeated by a woman. One commenter wrote Shan-Yu only cared that she had "single-handedly killed a majority of my army," not that she was a woman.

Multiple users that Mongolian steppe cultures (from which the Huns' heritage in the movie had been inspired) used to train women in combat so that they could defend camps while men launched campaigns. Shan-Yu's indifference to gender, thus, may be historically accurate.

The thread also admired the Fire Nation from Avatar: The Last Airbender. This aggressor in the series was responsible for genocide and a century of global war. Nonetheless, their women are engaged in both combat and command roles without anyone raising an eyebrow. Fans said that the first culture the audience meets (the Water Tribe) is far more restrictive toward women than the imperial enemy that supposedly represents everything wrong with the world.

the thread also highlighted the ethnic diversity of Captain Barbossa's crew in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl — a multicultural group operating in the early 18th-century Caribbean.

As several commenters pointed out, this is less unbelievable than it sounds. Pirate ships of the era had some of the most diverse crews, which broke down the barriers that polite society on land had.

"When you're at sea for weeks or months and the only people you can trust not to kill you are crewmates, you move past things like ethnicity and nationality pretty quickly," one Reddit user noted.

The thread also mentions Mandalorians across the Star Wars franchise. while their culture, terrorist organization, or militaristic theocracy, depending on the timeline, anyone who wears the armor and swears the Creed is Mandalorian.

According to the expanded lore, the Mandalorians' original species — the Taung — recognized that a single species could not sustain a galaxy-conquering force and opened their ranks to others, eventually developing a tradition of adopting war orphans that became one of the culture's most valued practices.

Other examples in the thread include Noxus from League of Legends and Kaido from One Piece.

The trope has drawn some gentle teasing like: "Yes, we commit genocides and atrocities, but we happily let women and people of color join us hand-in-hand." That tension, it seems, is part of what makes it work.