Nope, they're unrelated.
Hate Sink is an objective trope about a character designed to be hated. Whether audiences Love to Hate that character, or if they find them cool anyway is an Audience Reaction and completely irrelevant to them being written as hateable. If a Hate Sink winds up being Evil Is Cool it's a good indication that the writers failed (or at least, failed to anticipate how much the fans love bad guys).
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
An additional aspect is that sometimes a character is labeled as Hate Sink subjectively by a troper when it's really more the case of a villain doing despicable things because they are a villain but not so consistently that their entire purpose is for the audience to hate them.
I generally call these examples "I hate what this character did therefore they are a Hate Sink". I admit sometimes it gets subtle and down to personal opinion.
Take, for example, the movie "The Incredibles". Syndrome does some really despicable things in the course of being the villain. He shoots down a defenseless plane that has children on it just to rub Mr. Incredible's nose in it and he is totally willing to gamble with Mirage's life to call Mr. Incredible's bluff and further humiliate him.
But he is also a complex character with layers of back-story lots of cool gadgets and an awesome island lair. So it would be hard to say that his sole purpose as a character is for the audience to hate him.
Contrast with Mr. Huph who is a loathsome corporate executive who is clearly there just to drive Bob crazy and push him further into longing for the glory days.
I guess my point here is that sometimes a villain is inappropriately listed as a Hate Sink when that label is questionable and thus they also appear more appropriately in other categories like Love to Hate or Evil Is Cool.
The fans love villains instead of hating them because they Love Satan hahahha
I've seen some of these villains are catagorized under the Evil Is Cool trope. Since Evil Is Cool is apparently supposed to contrast Hate Sink, should't they all be deleted from this page?
Edited by WretchedDog2 Hide / Show Replies