Poison used to have some real romance to it. It wasn’t enough to just be a deadly compound, no, no, you need to have collected the plants at midnight and gotten the goddess of witches involved to boot. You couldn’t just take some toxic shit from under the sink – the kind with Mr. Yuck stickers on it- and sneak it into somebody’s drink. No, no, you had to commit to full on villaining – not just to killing someone but to gathering the ingredients under dark signs with dark intent. You had to submit to darker forces – call up the spirits to unsex you or turn their dark eyes toward you to help you toward your darker purposes.
You maybe even had to invest in a black cape that you swirled around you as you moved furtively from one place to another.
Becoming a villain took real commitment back then. At least in stories.