Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

I think it depends. Luke Cage had all the central characters be black but it wasn't exactly lacking in verisimilitude, it was just showing a very specific part of the american experience that isn't given a lot of attention in mainstream media.

That may be, but your statement sounded like you were suggesting a one size fits all solution there.

You're right, I should have honestly been more clear.

I think it probably is the easiest solution, but not really the one you would want to use all the time.

@ inanodderway many good villains of today are relatable to some extent so I feel the argument has merit. And being a role model and being flawed are not mutually exclusive. Not that the article is arguing for the Femizons to be role models at all.

I don't think a good villain has to be relatable, unless it's an Anti-Villain, or a Grey-and-Gray Morality story. Most of the time they need to have understandable motives, though.

While a bit offtopic, the only black main villain I can remember is Kingpin from the Daredevil film. But they're surprisingly rare.

Female villains, on the other hand, are more frequent. They should probably be more frequent, though. Especially the completely evil, irredeemable kind. And main heroes as flawed as male main characters often are. And mooks and red shirts. Mainly just more of them, outside the usual secondary roles and getting away from that embassy effect. They need to be shown in all kinds of roles, good and bad, clean and ugly.

On a note mentioned several pages back, now I've seen maybe half of the game so far, but I really like the protagonist of Horizon Zero Dawn.

Check out my fanfiction!

You really do need to watch Luke Cage, then. You'll love the cast. Also, damn good story with a couple of well-aimed anvils.

The issue is that Luke cage is pretty much a black show about black chararters so it is given but most of the time a cast that should me multicultural have to include a large cast only to use a minority villian and said "see, this dont represent us" which is not necesary for white people, even them a white chararter can do evil deals without representing a entire population, again Alex the large rape a woman while dancing and singing, imagine that with Alex as black guy and suddenly it get more unconfortable even when doing the same thing.

You know, something It figure out in antman is that Scott being white manage to the deflect the blame hank really have by not letting is daughter use the suit as he decide to risk someone else life instead and yet people barely talk about that

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Pretty much, yeah. No one would take a white villain as representative of all white people because there are so many white characters, but with minority villains, unless they're balanced out by protags of the same race, come rife with Unfortunate Implications since they act like a representative of their whole race. I mean, I would love to see more Indian villains, for instance, but if they're the only characters that are Indians, I'm gonna be a bit uncomfortable with the implications. (For context, I am Indian, that's why I specified that.)

Trust you? The only person I can trust is myself.

I always find villains to be interesting characters since the way they are written usually says something about what traits the writers, producers and/or executives think are "villain" traits (or what they believe their audience expects of villains). And that can definitely veer into Unfortunate Implications when writing villains who happen to be female and/or any other minority.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Writers also have more liberties to write villains than they have with heroes.

Essentially, aside from Anti-Heroes, every hero has a mold of what is acceptable and what is not. Villains have no such constrains. As long as they do something evil they are free to do anything they want with the characters.

There are a few evil villains with capital E, like the Red Skull and the Joker, both complete psychopaths who are in it for their own amusement and to inflict as much misery as they like to.

But you have the Doctor Doom that depending of the writer is hellbent in conquest and world domination but is a fair and efficient leader to those who don't oppose them. Same for Lex Luthor who suffers from an inferiority complex towards Supes and does everything he can to beat the Man of Steel.

You also have the Penguim who also suffers from a very fragile low self-esteem even though he created a crime empire, which there is a story line where he falls in love but his lack of self esteem has him ruin the lives of everyone he thinks that made fun of him. Which I can attest is something quite a few people have problems with.

Dr Freeze who can be heroic or a villain is motivated to find a cure for his wife and is willing to take an entire city hostage for that, but has no problems with working with the Bats because the current threat is also threatening him or his wife.

Magneto, which is by far one of the most complex Villains, since he can do and did a lot of good but is also believes that Genocide is the only solution for his and the Mutants survival even though he is a holocaust survivor, has been a failure of a father and husband, suffers from not being able to protect the few people he loved but also pushed away the people he loved with his obsession to create a mutant utopia.

Garth Ennis also makes good villains but the heroes aren't that much better either. Barracuda was an exception though, he is not relatable unless you're complete psycho with a Freudian Excuse due to the childhood abuse he went through, but damn, as a character he is fun.

Kingpin is also another gem depending of the characterization.

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Kingpin was always supposed to be black, but Stan Lee decided against it because he was worried of cries of racism.

Side note: I honestly think Magneto's stuck in the Heel–Face Revolving Door on the villain side because, well, he's got some Story-Breaker Power with his Magnetism Manipulation.

It's also in part because he acts as a Foil to Professor X. Note that Magneto has been more or less a good guy whenever Xavier isn't around. It also helps that there's been enough Power Creep in the Marvel Universe that there are plenty of characters who are powerful enough to challenge or even curbstomp Magneto.

Going back to the topic of female villains...one reason I like Steven Universe is because it manages (IMHO) to have flawed heroines and female villains with sympathetic qualities.

edited 6th Mar '17 7:44:02 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

Magneto has mostly floated around the antihero role in recent years. While the adaptations still like to use him as the X-Men's #1 Big Bad, the comics rarely ever play him as a villain anymore.

They have Cyclops for that.

edited 6th Mar '17 7:44:46 AM by TobiasDrake

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That reminds me: Considering Scary Black Man exists, wouldn't a minority villain, at least in the crime boss mold, actually somewhat play up stereotypes for intimidation purposes?

As in "If these morons actually believe shit like this, I can use that to my advantage"?

edited 6th Mar '17 7:45:50 AM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Re: Luke Cage & Diversity: America is a very, very diverse country, probably #1 in the world when it comes to sheer fucktons of cultures either peacefully or forcibly shoved into the pot. However, the diversity of America is not evenly distributed, and I think Luke Cage represents that. We have ethnic groups, and we have ghettos, and we have places where the existence of black people is still a genuine novelty. The idea that every diversely cast work has to have a perfectly representative ratio of ethnic groups and genders is silly, because real life does not work that way in many, many cases. There are some places where it all works out fine and you have wonderful balances of cultures and ideas (a lot of colleges and cities), but that is not the rule in America.

TBH evil for the sake of evil characters are underrated. Everyone loves a good Dr. Freeze story, but ultimately Dr. Freeze as a character doesn't work without his evil deeds, his cold, detached persona. On one hand I think we love villains for how they resemble us, yes, but I think we also love villains for how completely un-like us they are. The things they do, how far they're willing to fall in pursuit of their goals (be they noble, selfish, or nonsensical), and the big bombastic persona they put out. There's a reason why Rooting for the Empire has a page. Because villains aren't bound by what the writers perceive as an acceptable moral code, villains can be wilder, crazier, edgier, and through that can get stronger characterization oftentimes than the heroes themselves. It's why these days writers are jumping over themselves to make Superman evil somehow, or to add even more layers of moral ambiguity to Batman, or to give another reason for Hulk to punch a good guy in the face.

edited 6th Mar '17 8:00:40 AM by InAnOdderWay

Not anymore they don't.

Hmm, I wonder if that might be another reason some people aren't comfortable writing female villains.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Anime has already shown us that if the villain is female and attractive, people will root for her regardless of how amoral or well-written she is.

edited 6th Mar '17 7:55:49 AM by danime91

That's not gender-specific. Loki's shown us the same thing.

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Eh, I'd argue that Loki actually is very well-written, and his character and dialogue are roguishly charming. I'm talking about when the villain is female, a completely flat character and not having interesting motivations or character traits at all, and is still rooted for simply because she's attractive. There's a bit less of that going on with a boring yet pretty male villain.

I see your argument and raise you Kylo Ren.

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I'm just gonna leave open this link to Draco in Leather Pants riiiight here. Not saying that a lot of these characters aren't charismatic and curious in their own right just.... a lot of them are straight up attractive assholes, or even worse bland attractive assholes.

now you just hold on a second mister

edited 6th Mar '17 8:03:14 AM by InAnOdderWay

Draco in Leather Pants is a thing that does exist with Flat Character male villains.

Yaoi fans and slash-fic writers make up a significant portion of the demographic? Yeah, it is a recurring thing for both genders, but the fans of female villains tend to have the weaker arguments defending their choice.

Hmm, now that I think about it, what about the opposite case? How many times do people find themselves rooting for a male villain that is ugly, or at the least not conventionally attractive, compared to the same for a female villain? How may unattractive female villains are there? Are writers trying to avoid some sort of Unfortunate Implications with women, beauty, and moral alignment?

edited 6th Mar '17 8:15:42 AM by danime91

Movie Loki is a bit tragic but his it is all about me tendencies and constantly back stabbing Thor even in moments he really shouldn't, leave the impression that Loki is nothing but an egotistical man child with a god complex.

He gets some good lines but most of the time I think that everyone has a lot of glee when they see his arrogant ass being kicked.

Speaking of Draco, the Harry Potter's Draco is an example of an antagonist that is a woefully despicable pretty boy who fails to deliver and Bellatrix Lestrange is irredeemable and an effective female villain and treated as such.

edited 6th Mar '17 8:13:28 AM by AngelusNox

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Bellatrix Lestrange is less the "beautifully awful" type of villain, and more the "you can definitely tell Rowling has an armory full of axes to grind" type of villain. Which is perfectly fine, don't get me wrong, because there are way too many Bellatrix Lestranges in the real world to ignore. Either way, it's a fantastic showing of a female villain who is unapolegetically awful.

I still like sympathetic female villains, I like lots of sympathetic villains. But I don't like the assumption that a female villain has to be sympathetic by default, that we have to excuse her actions 'somehow', either because we believe women are incapable of being awful or because we don't want people to think that we're implying that women are capable of being awful.