Female Villains

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here's an interesting discussion of female villains.

I don't actually write a lot of villains, per se. More often, I write about life challenges or characters just getting in each other's way. Let's see what I've got, though ...


Janardana is the female dragon in "The Janardanakavita," intelligent and utterly ruthless. Dragons in this setting aren't obligated to be evil. It's just what most of them choose because they have so much power that the other races can't stand against them effectively.

There's a very traditional hag in "Faith as a Grain."

I love Agleca, a high priestess of Shaeth, formerly God of Evil -- and also his baby-mama. She first appears in "Blood Will Tell." Agleca is such a badass.

The Kirigami Mage appears throughout The Origami Mage, carrying on a tremendous rivalry.

Bodil, an evil paladin of Gorrein is first introduced in "Follow Your Heart." She appears in several later poems as well, another badass woman.

Polychrome Heroics offers several females who are considered villains, at least by some people. Dr. Infanta from "Lifeyears" has done some horrific things, but she has also saved a lot of lives over the centuries. She isn't evil per se, but she is quite ruthless and in some ways subversive. The Sculptress from "Throwing Souls Like So Much Clay" is another subversive. Then of course there is Farce, introduced in "Weaving Damask," a delightful tragicomic villain. She just wants to jerk people around the way the world has jerked her around.

Then of course there is Midge, a nosy bitch of a reporter who plagues Schrodinger's Heroes. She's not evil -- well, core!Midge isn't, there's an evil!Midge too, which ... yikes. I really had fun writing "Forfeiture," (NSFW) in which Kay gets even.

Comments

re: Female Evils

[(Anonymous)]

This is Kasan Soulblade from AO3... I don't have a livejournal account and honestly don't have the time to juggle another social median... so pseudo anonymity it is...

Hmm After reading this article I decided to do some backtracking through my own collection of books. I own a multitude of books, most being scifi, sword/sorcery and horror works inter spaced with what science texts I can get my claws on... but I digress.. I did a sweep of nearly everything I own and found very few female antagonists.

There were very few female villains, and even less female villains that weren't firmly of the miniboss/warm up boss variety. Few had a big impact upon the tale, setting, or characters, were delegated to delusional obstacles that were soundly trounced by the protagonists with little effort and then the real tale moved along.

The exceptions were RA Salvatore's "Legend of Drizzt series" where the basis of the main characters culture is a matriarchal sadistic female ran religion. There were a multitude of female antagonists. Baenre, Malice, Veirrna,Brizza, you could rattle off most of the female characters in power that hales from Menzoberanzan and find a flock of villainous females that not only had an impact on the characters life but were actual powers in their own sphere. They also were rather varied, and it was a treat to watch them move against each other with their own agendas before the hero accidentally served as a catalyst for unifying them.

The only other example (from the earliest of my collection) was David Edding's the Mallorean series. The cast was filled with men, the powers that be were male, and well the fact that the antagonist was actually a female was a massive plot twist since Eddings was very historically accurate in the roles of women in those times and most of the females were rather subdued roles. (the only ongoing exceptions were the S.O.'s of the protagonists, and they were often overshadowed by their husbands... sigh.. Eddings could write but some of the things he wrote... never mind... tangent) Zandramadas, the villain of the Mallorean was later relieved to be a front to a force of nature that was part of the Apocalypse (the child of Dark to quote the series), and though evil was rather made impotent when stripped of that status.

Past those two examples I literally had no one else to talk about female villain wise. Some of my video games offered more variety but a lot of them were just eye candy for the male audience and more often fronts for a Dark Lord/King set up... I'd say the only exceptions were the evil mother A.I. Morgona Mod Gone from the dot hack series and possibly Legretta from Tales of the Abyss (who though a front for Van, had incredibly good reasons for it, she was literally forced to be so by prophecy she was aiming to destroy and admitted that once free would likely pull the trigger and kill Van the second she could).

Personally as a writer I find men easier to write than women. Odd considering my gender. So I tend not to use female villains //or// protagonists. Also considering I write canon heavy pieces there are few opportunists for me to actually use a female villain since so many of the series I draw from have mainly male casts.

My exceptions vary, but Noir from my TOA pieces, while portrayed as a protagonist when she's narrating, when she isn't she's described as a crook, petty, malicious, and manipulative by her //friends//. She's got a case, a good one, but she's so ruthless and a murderess that she can't take the title of hero and even anit-hero really pushes things.

Flipping through the rest of my works... I'd say Shard's interpretation of the PalmaCosta's boss fight of Killia would count. She's more Eldridge abomination and genderless by the final confrontation, but she utterly wrecks the lives of the family she infiltrates and nearly brings a government to it's knees and though a minor part in the game I made her more of an important encounter in my fanfic since I felt she had a ton of potential and went with it.

Re: Female Evils

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> This is Kasan Soulblade from AO3... I don't have a livejournal account and honestly don't have the time to juggle another social median... so pseudo anonymity it is... <<

Welcome! This is fine.

I did a sweep of nearly everything I own and found very few female antagonists. <<

I might be able to turn up a few more, because I favor gender studies stuff, but the slant is still there.

*ponder* Black Jewels setting runs to female villains, again because of matriarchal elements.

>> The exceptions were RA Salvatore's "Legend of Drizzt series" where the basis of the main characters culture is a matriarchal sadistic female ran religion. <<

Oh yeah, Bob writes scary bitches.

>> The only other example (from the earliest of my collection) was David Edding's the Mallorean series. <<

I remember that one too.

>> Past those two examples I literally had no one else to talk about female villain wise. <<

Bummer.

Only a few of my examples are really world-class boss caliber, but more than one. Frex, the dragons have gender parity in A Conflagration of Dragons, where half the city wreckers are hens and half are drakes. Dr. Infanta is a BAMF supervillain. Huh, I should write more about her, she's cool.

A lot of times, my female villains are smaller scale. *ponder* But they're well matched to their opponents: the Origami Mage and the Kirigami Mage have similar power levels, Bodil and Shahana are both paladins, etc.