Excellent observations, Devon. I never villain coded much myself as a young man, but a friend of mine in high school was “goth” and satanic before that sort of thing was even mildly popular. I found out years later he was gay. If only I’d known when we were listening to Black Sabbath together in his parents’ grungy basement. ;-)

It strikes me that villain coding is one of the reasons my queer generation fell so hard for Anne Rice. Louis and Lestat (her vampire protagonists) explicitly struggled with the evil at the core of their nature while indulging in all sorts of homoerotic behavior and thoughts.

In the 90s it was almost impossible to walk into a gay dance club anywhere and not find at least a handful of people dressed to emulate one of Rice’s characters.