It’s definitely not the first time a web series has created a lead character that is a notorious criminal mind placed inside a ridiculously attractive body. In fact, such characters are the suo moto for crime based series or movies where the director wants the audience to fall in love with the negative character and even want him/her to successfully outdo the ‘good guys’. Although from all such series and movies I have seen, such characters are created in a way where they seem rather aloof, arrogant and isolated. The Professor in Money Heist is pretty much all that, minus the arrogance factor.
This criminal mastermind is designed as an extremely down to earth character who’s never arrogant about how intelligent he is. The sapiophiles usually take into consideration the arrogance that comes with such level of intelligence when they fall in love with them. That’s not just true for negative characters – applies for the positive ones as well such as the roles of Sherlock, Mark Zuckerburg, Alan Turing and many such others who have been portrayed to be geniuses with a serious lack of social sense. The arrogance factor, as far as my experience as a sapiophile goes, is an icing on the cake which gives an illusion of exclusiveness and undoubted loyalty when it comes to romantic relationships. Pretty much what every woman wants, right?
But the Professor, here, is not arrogant at all. He’s in fact the exact opposite of it – so much that there’s not a hint of anger or lapse of control even during the worst of consequences. I hadn’t seen a negative character designed this exact way anytime in the past which has worked out to be loved so much. The creation of the most ideal negative character that cares very much about being liked and supported by the public, is so composed you could party in underwear hours before his class and he’ll calmly ask you to go to bed; and is so balanced you could make passes at him and he’ll smile them off.
I don’t assume an unconventional negative character of that sort could come out of borrowed imagination. This character is most likely written by someone who aimed to create a character that could tell the tale without narcissism or overrated sense of self importance. For a story that speaks of a heist so massive and a plan so elaborate, the leading character being this down to earth is a rather bold experimental move. And it has worked so well, I believe the sapiophiles will start seeing arrogance as just an unnatural and unnecessary addition.
ficklesorts 