YMMV / The School for Good and Evil (2022)

• Abandon Shipping: Plenty of people who haven't read the books shipped Agatha and Sophie following the release of this movie, only to stop when they found out that they're literal sisters per book canon.
• Complete Monster: Rafal is the nefarious founder of the evil side of the School for Good and Evil. In the past, before the events of the story, Rafal murdered his kind-hearted twin brother to take his position as leader of the good side of the School for Good and Evil, and used his new position to twist and weaken the forces of good. Rafal runs both schools as a horror show where students are permanently transformed into inanimate objects or monsters if they fail their lessons, often with fatal results. Seducing and corrupting the newest student Sophie into giving him a True Love's Kiss of evil, Rafal plans to gain ultimate power through their kiss and use it to dominate his enemies. Ultimately, Rafal intends to slaughter all the inhabitants of both academies to clear away the competition and allow him to take over and allow true evil to reign across the world.
• Die for Our Ship: Rafal is the Big Bad and wants to destroy both schools (which would kill the students), but that is not why a lot of fans dislike him. Rather, most fans hate on Rafal for getting in the way of the Dovey/Lesso ship. This often ignores the fact that while Lesso is in love with him, Rafal only sees her as a pawn at most. However, to a lot of shippers, that is enough to hate on him, even more than his villainy.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Lady Lesso is not only in charge of the School for Evil and training teenagers to be villains, but she also regularly threatens her students and helps the Big Bad corrupt Sophie in order to allow evil to win. However, fans are quick to forget this or write it off, due to her Freudian Excuse and limit on how far she is willing to go, namely not actually killing the students. It also helps that she is played by the gorgeous Charlize Theron.
• Dry Docked Ship: Surprisingly, a lot of fans walked away from this teen-centric film shipping the Deans of the two schools, Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso, together instead of any of the actual students, mainly due to the chemistry between Charlize Theron (Lesso) and Kerry Washington (Dovey). A lot of fans headcanon that Dovey and Lesso used to date as teens before breaking up and like to write fics where they get back together.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Professor Emma Anemone is only in a handful of scenes and doesn't have much plot relevance. However, she has proven to be incredibly popular among fans and even those who didn't care for the film. It helps that she is played by Michelle Yeoh and gets some of the funniest lines in the film.
  • Gregor Charming. He is a sweet, adorable prince who gets killed off after a bit of genuinely charming screentime. The fact that he's played by RuPaul's Drag Race alumnus Ally Cubb (known as Scaredy Kat on the show, who was then the UK series' youngest-ever contestant at 19, and famously revealed that they weren't gay and had a girlfriend) helped further bring attention to the character. Some people even ship Gregor with Agatha.
• Evil Is Cool: Rafal is the Big Bad, who not only kills his brother, but tries to massacre the students of both schools. However, he is also considered to be a great and cool villain within the fandom due to him being The Chessmaster and his actor Kit Young bringing a lot of charisma to the role.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • A lot of fan works have Professor Anemone be a Shipper on Deck for Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso. This often comes in the form of Anemone being the pair's confidant for their secret feelings for each other and/or coming up with elaborate plans to get them together. However, sometimes this is also just the work having Anemone tease them about how bad they are at hiding it.
  • Following the release of the movie, fics exploring Dovey and Lesso's years at school became very popular. This mainly comes in the form of having the two have unrequited (from their points of view) crushes on each other, or fics with the two dating in their youth.
  • Fics where Dovey learns that Rafal abused Lady Lesso when she was younger and spends an extended period of time comforting her are quite popular in fanfiction.
• Fanon: In the film, Lady Lesso calls Professor Dovey "princess" in one scene and one scene only and it was meant as an insult, but almost any fan content centered around the two will have Lesso referring to Dovey exclusively as "princess" as an Affectionate Nickname. In return, many fans also have Dovey affectionately call Lesso "Nora" (a shortened version of her first name Leonora), despite there being no evidence of that in the film.
• Hollywood Homely: Everyone is supposed to find Agatha ugly in Gavaldon, but she looks like a pretty girl with messy hair. The only difference between her initial appearance and the one she has post princess-makeover is her tamed hair.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of fans (both male and female) who are otherwise uninterested in the standard magical school plot have admitted to only watching the film for one reason because they find Charlize Theron to be attractive and couldn't pass up the opportunity to see her wearing a pantsuit.
• Les Yay: Lady Lesso and Professor Dovey come off to many like an old married couple, what with their playful teasing of each other. Lady Lesso once calls Dovey "princess", which accidentally comes off as flirty. At the end of the movie, they even hug after agreeing to put aside their difference, before awkwardly separating from each other in what many saw as a Not What It Looks Like moment rather than them not actually liking each other.
• Popular with Furries: The wolf-men knights that guard the school of evil really hit it off in the furry community.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Fans of the film who ship Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso together on Tumblr, quickly took to calling them a combination of their last names, "Dovesso".
• Testosterone Brigade: A lot of male fans are only interested in this female-aimed film because the actresses are good looking, particularly Charlize Theron as Lady Lesso.

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