Afraid of being Misinterpreted

In my work I try to have a fairly even number of males and females who are evil. But the the Big Bad turns out to be a Complete Monster female.

Her father is implied to have also been something of a monster as well. And so is the Toyaka family criminal, arguably (yes he's technically insane but he does gleefully torture and murder people). I have a rather shallow and bitchy distant cousin in the main character's family. But her Foil in the opposing family is a very sweet and loving girl, but with a low self esteem.

Yet I'm still afraid that I will be accused of being 'anti-feminist' and hating women despite having many positive female characters. That's anything but true. I believe women have rights and should be equal to men. But I also believe equal means just that. Equal. Not 'women are always good and kind and whenever they hurt a man the man deserves it'.

edited 19th Nov '10 9:29:33 AM by JewelyJ

Just balance it out.

Also, a female big bad is not a bad thing, it's the portrayal that can be bad.

edited 18th Nov '10 4:26:57 PM by MrAHR

People will always interpret your writing however the hell they feel like. There's nothing to be done about that.

However, what you could do is create a character or situation that acts as an antithesis of what you fear the misinterpretation will amount to. Perhaps create another character who had very similar circumstances to your villain (or even worse ones) who turned out to be a very decent human being. That was done pretty well in Great Teacher Onizuka to me, with one of the major antagonist Woobies being called out on her destructive attitude by introducing her to people who had it worse.

Well I'm planning to do a good/evil count for guys and girls. Also if it helps I try not to outright say 'this person is scum and you should hate them' I eventually reveal background info and let the audience judge for themselves.

My best advice is that first impressions have that most effect when it comes to misinterpretations. It's a trick I learned myself. If you have cool female characters with morals, defy stereotypes whatever, then introduce them earlier than the ones who will get a bad impression from the audience.

You are doing everything you possibly can. Know that people will misinterpret you anyway. Don't stress too much.

I think it's actually great to have a female Big Bad because a Big Bad is a very strong character: She's in control; she has goals; she gets stuff done. For instance, I think Shego is a great character in terms of gender roles.

The real dangers, IMHO, are:

• Tokenism—just having too few female characters
• Female characters who don't do anything—they don't influence the plot, they don't have any goals of their own, or they just seem to orbit around the male characters
• And even the High-Heel–Face Turn: Making female characters seem wishy-washy and directionless, or—even worse—unable to resist the male hero. I'd much rather see a Zira-type who throws herself off a cliff rather than accept help from the good guys.

Yes, if all the bad guys are female and all the good guys are male, you have a problem, but otherwise? You're fine.

^The only one that might seem like the last one is Gretchen but it's explained in the story that she was attracted to power ,which is why she betrayed her friends for Derek , also not realizing that he was actually planning on killing one of them but when it happened she was both too scared and too taken in by Derek at that point. She eventually ends up going back to her ex-friend when she realizes that she's into too deep and Derek doesn't really care about her.

Also there's Anamaria who spends most of her life dealing with verbal abuse from her mother and being ignored and bossed around by the rest of the family. She falls for Duncan who uses her for her powers and then abandons her pregnant. She gets a wake up call from that and eventually gets help and it's implied that she does do some work for the main character's organization.

I sort of balance that out with Timothy , the main character's Wide-Eyed Idealist younger brother. He tries to help the younger Duncan by being his friend and gets himself nearly killed for his bad judge of character. Later the adult Timothy, in the midst of serious civil struggle, gets slipped a love potion. He tries to resist, caves in to the pressure and gets seduced and used by the Big Bad.

and Elliott the protagonists' father who signs on to an arranged marriage to be the good son. Tries to put up with an abusive spouse and falls victim to the love potion trap and used and abused for awhile. He breaks free and tries to get his sister's help but she tells him 'quit making things up'. He eventually leaves his abusive wife (the Big Bad) gets help from his parents to divorce and flees the country. He and his second wife later get murdered by the abusive wife.

Sort of a role reversal with the last two. and no I have quite a few male villains, including a religious zealot who sets Psi on fire.

edited 18th Nov '10 10:02:17 PM by JewelyJ

I must admit that I'm struggling with this in my story. I have a small main cast, but of the five really important female characters (not counting minor characters. My exact definition of minor character is kind of vague but whatever, these are the most important ones.):

• One of them is a Posthumous Character in the form of the protagonist's mother. She never actually appears and her occupation, if any is left vague. She was killed by the antagonist, an alien species, when the protagonist was going to elementary school.
• One of them is a Posthumous Character in the form of the protagonist's girlfriend. She does appear in flashbacks. She was killed by the antagonist, an alien species, when the protagonist was going to high school.
• One of them is a girl that the protagonist once had a crush on but lost. Her most important scene is when she's found in the present day, homeless and disabled because of an attack from the alien species antagonist.
• One of them is a member of the alien species. She is a successful businesswoman, and she killed the protagonist's girlfriend, but she did so when she was a child so she can't remember it. The protagonist has to put up with seeing her at work every day and he does a pretty good job of bottling it up inside, until the end when he goes on an Invasion of the Body Snatchers style rant thorugh the whole town.
• One of them doesn't have a speaking role but is more important than most of the speaking role female characters anyways. She is the only person that does not directly know the protagonist that believes him when he tells everyone about the attack being planned by the alien species' government.

Of course, we have to consider the main male characters too to make a good judgement:

• One of them is the protagonist's father, who mostly exists to give the protagonist a gift at the beginning of the book.
• One of them is the protagonist's best friend, who helps him set up the scheme that leads to the aforementioned insane rant and has various discussions with him.
• One of them is the protagonist's boss, who is a sort of combination of Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher, Pointy-Haired Boss, and Corrupt Corporate Executive. He doesn't really advance the plot and only exists to waste the protagonist's time and fire him when he goes on his insane rant.
• One of them is the protagonist's coworker who is killed by the alien species and is then fired.

...and there aren't really any more. I mean, there are other male characters, just like there are other female characters, but none important enough to be part of the "main cast".

As long as you have a lot of female characters with distinct personalities you should be fine (at least from the sane parts of the audience). Just make sure that your Big Bad doesn't have a stereotypical 'female' motivation (or at least be subtle about it).

And like the others say: some will take it the wrong way. Just look at that woman who attacked Firefly. All you can really do is ignore them and hope they're just a Vocal Minority.

You will pay taxes, you will be misinterpreted (often wildly so) and you will die

That's about as much surety i can give you

There are things you can do to mitigate and minimise the first, there's not an awful lot you can do to avoid the second (and you shouldn't, it's not worth it!) and there are things you can do to delay the third as much as possible