Nasty enough to inhibit MisaimedFandom/DracoInLeatherPants?

So the character's redeeming qualities are that he's superficially charming, a Deapan Snarker, Genre Savvy, and usually smart enough not to cause trouble unless it's in his best interests.

On the other hand, he acts out of mostly selfish motivations, and even when his actions aren't quite purely selfish, his motives are never classically "good" (i.e. "I love her, so I'll kill innocent people to save her"). He likes his counter-terrorism job because he thinks killing people is badass. He's racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally reactionary in his views. And he's open about all of this, simply because he thinks he can get away with it.

I'd be very happy if, once the story was published, he attracted no Misaimed Fandom or Draco in Leather Pants. At the same time, though, he IS supposed to be charming to some degree. Part of the plan is for him to have fangirls in-universe, convincing themselves that he's not serious or that he can be redeemed by the power of love. I want to handle that part in a believable way, and it's possible that making him too nasty would make it totally implausible that he ever, ever, manages to be charming.

So what say the forums?

You are new to this thread, aren't you?

Hey, serial killers like Anders Brevik have fans so...

For that matter, even Pinhead has some fangirls. The question is how many fangirls this guy will get. (I'd like to say that showing fangirls being proven wrong in-universe is a good idea, but Harley Quinn hasn't done anything to stop Joker fangirls.)

edited 1st Aug '11 1:32:01 AM by feotakahari

Do Joker fangirls think he's actually a good person, though, or do they just think Evil Is Sexy?

Yeah, yeah, I know. But I once saw an entry on here about how a particular character suddenly became a whole lot less likeable the second he called someone a "fag." I guess the issue may not be degree of nasty, but the fact that sometimes, a particular flavor of nasty can, for unclear reasons, make a character a hell of a lot less cool.

Is that really true? What would it take? Saying we should turn back the clock on women's rights to before they had the vote or careers? Saying politicians who are insufficiently anti-immigration should be shot for treason? Telling neo-Nazis they shouldn't admire Hitler because Eva Braun was ugly?

Maybe have him call women the C-word. That seems to get a negative reaction from a very wide range of women.

Even a small dose of sympathy or sex appeal can make just about anyone ripe for Misaimed Fandom.

Oh! How about have them deliver a You Suck speech? Whatever medium and/or genre this story is in, have him viciously mock people who watch it for whatever reason. That way you can have him personally offend every single person reading/watching your story.

That seems sorta off to me, piling on ridiculous kick the dog qualities just because you're afraid of fangirls. I say let him act however he needs to according to the plot and if there's fangirls, so be it.

I'm also gonna say, Rorschach is one of the most outwardly misogynistic, homophobic characters out there and he's still very popular with female fans. Ditto for the Comedian, except replace "misogynistic" and "homophobic" with "rapist" and "asshole".

edited 1st Aug '11 10:09:50 AM by melloncollie

Simple.

Don't write the story.

Then no one will fan him.

Or make sure that only a few select people read it.

If you get popular enough to have rabid fangirls, you should just be happy that you've become more successful than 95% of authors.

There's always the possibility that the despite more hateful you make them, the more dedicated fangirls will just make their OCs more hateful to match. These fangirls will more than likely have their OCs say how "weak minded" the in-story fangirls were, and present themselves as a more worthy alternative.

To really decrease the number of fans, have your character be both hateful and unappealing in other ways. I'm thinking have a scene where they're offscreen, pick their nose, and enjoy eating the booger; that'll allow your bad guy to keep up his facade of charm (as he'll be offscreen at the time), whilst making him "uncool," and still not unrealistic.

edited 1st Aug '11 11:17:55 AM by DoctorDiabolical

You could have him realize that he's attractive to women and use it to manipulate and hurt them. That could work.

Too late. Rule 34. Fangirls have already gone out bought three pair of leathers pants because we don't know whether your Draco is fat, thin or medium.

Write it as a meta-story. Chapter one is about Draco's adentures, his in-story fan-girls are depicted as stupid and fat. Chapter 2 is about the Author of the Draco stories gloating that there are no Leather pant on the Interweb. Chapter 3 is more Draco adventures. Chapter 4 is about Author murdering the one and only Draco fan-girl on the Net.

Make the Author a serial killer and the fan-girl will be too busy putting leathers pants on the Author to bother with Draco.

I think it's safe to say that there's nothing you can do. If the character is remotely attractive, they will almost certainly almost have some kind of fandom—if the work is popular, anyhow. Not to insult, but I'm just going by law of averages here. And the "remotely attractive" thing can't even be reliably used as a benchmark, either. I would say that you should just know that you'll spend your time in interviews reminding fans that whatever this character is, he's evil, so quit being stupid. More or less, anyhow. I never worry about it; I know for a fact that if my World War One story gets published and is popular, there will be a Yaoi Fangirl fandom which squees intensely over it, because it's basically all male characters. So what? Can't fix stupid, can't fix fandom. It's just a fact of life.

Evil Is Petty.

For some reasons, a whole lot of people seem to find petty evil deeds - like as mentioned, calling people bigoted names - a whole lot more distasteful than, say, mass murder.

So, name calling, emotional abuse, racism and/or homophobia, hitting his wife/girlfriend. Just petty nastiness for no good reason.

And then the fangirls will whine about all the Character Derailment. You can't win and you shouldn't try to - as I view it, some percentage of fans will be stupid no matter what you do, so just don't try and factor those people into your story. Write for the normal, rational human and don't worry about the rest.

Yeah, I think Evil Is Petty is the way to go, and will probably use Raven's specific suggestion involving the C-word. As for the "have him realize he's attractive" suggestion, that was already part of the plan, but I don't expect it to deter fangirls at all.

Oh, and I finally found the thing I was thinking of in my post #6 above. From Evil Is Petty: "This trope put a damper on the popularity of Silas from Kings. Killing political enemies and manipulating the press? Par for the course for the resident Magnificent Bastard. Publicly dropping a six-letter F-bomb on his own son? Not so much with the magnificent."

The trick to it is to ensure that his Establishing Character Moment, very early on, demonstrates his pettiness. It's not derailment if you ensure that pettiness and cruelty is there from the start.

Just remember not to do it is such a way as to make it seem you are assuming that most people are idiots, because I doubt that to be true.

edited 3rd Aug '11 7:21:07 AM by KSonik

There is no possible way you can stop even parts of a fandom from interpreting the character in a way that is different from how you intended. I suggest that you learn not to care so much about it.

This, pretty much.

Indeed.