Despicable

[Pure]

Despicable qualities in female protagonist? Shortcomings?

(looking at the case of women characters first)

We all know that the 'porn' or 'erotica' female protagonist is of formidable sexual appetite, easily aroused, etc. 'lustful' or 'lusty' if you will. So she may 'stray,' perhaps, or undertake a passionate affair, though married.

BUT, is your female protagonist ever despicable or bad in some way? (leaving aside all issues of sexual [overindulgence] and marital conduct [adultery])
Or, one might say, leaving aside sex, is she ever immoral in other ways or spheres?

In moral terms, is she ever flawed? or have obvious shortcomings or faults of character that are more than minor annoyances?

 

[Recidiva]

All my characters tend to have a deep flaw of sorts. Or they wouldn't be interesting at all.

 

[Pure]

examples, please!

 

[Recidiva]

Examples of flaws...

Homicidal

Horrible taste in the opposite gender

Dense

Arrogant

Flawless is no fun at all.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Flawed? Yes. Despicable? No.

I tend to go for the schmaltzy line - the bitchy woman who's saved through love and passion.

One other place I could see it is in the despicable heroine getting her comeuppance through sex. I've never really done it (come close), but it's a common BDSM theme I've seen other places, and quite a lot. A Taming of the Shrew kind of thing - a very common male fantasy, I think.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Plenty of flawed and EVIL chicks. Not necessarily the same women. I never use the sex as a case of immorality, unless I am showing a cheating spouse or one who deprives her partner.

Had a mother who betrayed her daughter. There were some major consequences for her.

A woman who murdered her cheating hubby and his lover.

A stripper who was a bit snooty and paid for that.

 

[Penelope Street]

BUT, is your female protagonist ever despicable or bad in some way? (leaving aside all issues of sexual and marital conduct)
Or, one might say, leaving aside sex, is she ever immoral in other ways or spheres?

In moral terms, is she ever flawed? or have obvious shortcomings or faults of character that are more than minor annoyances?

My heroines have been selfish, conceited, angry, and dishonest. But outright bad? I never thought so, but a few readers have had a decidely different reaction.

 

[Penelope Street]

One other place I could see it is in the despicable heroine getting her comeuppance through sex. I've never really done it (come close), but it's a common BDSM theme I've seen other places, and quite a lot. A Taming of the Shrew kind of thing - a very common male fantasy, I think.

I think this fantasy crosses gender lines. Consider all the stories in which a bandit or pirate abandons his wicked ways for the love of a lady.

 

[rgraham666]

Done it twice now.

The central character in The Tease loved using her beauty to tease and control other people. She was very arrogant about it too.

And the female protagonist in Abyss was not a pleasant person to be around. Again, her power had gone to her head.

A couple of secondary female characters in other pieces were flawed, but not outright despicable.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Done it twice now.

The central character in The Tease loved using her beauty to tease and control other people. She was very arrogant about it too.

And the female protagonist in Abyss was not a pleasant person to be around. Again, her power had gone to her head.

A couple of secondary female characters in other pieces were flawed, but not outright despicable.

Got to object, RG, The female protagnist of the Abyss was the villain, as I recall, so of course she was despicable.

What made that story so great was that despicable streak in your hero, though.

 

[cherries_on_snow]

Examples of flaws...

Homicidal

Horrible taste in the opposite gender

Dense

Arrogant

Flawless is no fun at all.

I'm partial to the sin of hubris myself. :-D (call me a classisist)
*hums Lou Reed's the trouble with classisists*

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I think this fantasy crosses gender lines. Consider all the stories in which a bandit or pirate abandons his wicked ways for the love of a lady.

There's a whole subgenre of romance writing based on the Beauty & the Beast archetype in which a woman charms a wild or untameable man. In the trade they're known as "Bad Boy" romances.

The male counterpart follows the Sleeping Beauty myth, in which the man's sexuality brings the woman to life. A lot of male-oriented porn follows this pattern, and I've written a lot myself before I noticed the pattern.

Nothing wrong with either of them. It's just kind of interesting what the tw myths say about the way men and women approach the idea of love and sex.

This topic also brings to mind the phenomenon of women who love rotten guys. Used to happen a lot in high school, as I recall.

 

[wishfulthinking]

I'v only done one story where the female is 'flawed' in an unlikeable, unsympathic way. She used her beauty to get what she wanted. This wasn't the problem. It's that she didn't care, or was even oblivious to crushing someone's sense of self. And perhaps in a way, she believed that her beauty was all she was. Did any of this come out in the story - not half as well as I liked.

ok - the bit about loving the bad guys in highschool: it wasn't because they were bad, but because they had the confidence to be bad.

 

[Guest]

I've had several stories where my female protagonist is physically imperfect and often sees herself as somewhat worse than she actually is -- the way a lot of women I know see themselves. This can make them rejecting, cold, even cruel sometimes.

I've done the cliche of the good looking woman who uses her looks as a weapon a few times. I've also used the woman who thinks she's really hot and tends to treat other people as less than she is (especially other women).

On the whole, I don't care too much for protagonists who are extremely unlikeable. Even Humbert Humbert was charming...despicable and warped, but charming.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Whoa!

I entered this thread curious.

I felt like a kid in a snake pit I immediately backed out, only to cautiously return. Are we angry?

 

[FallingToFly]

examples, please!

I have two that spring instantly to mind: Sapphyre and Andariel.

They show up in my NonHuman, Non Lit stuff all the time (and occasionally on Lit, the vampire in A Far Cry From Heaven is Sapphyre).

Sapphyre is simply mad. She's ancient, extremely powerful, and desperately, heartbrokenly lonely. Over all her centuries, the betrayals and deaths have added up to make her someone you don't ever want to be caught alone with. She may take you gently under her wing and mother you, or she may devalop talons where her fingernails were and rip your throat out, then stand there and smile as you bleed out, licking your bloody larynx the way a child licks a popsicle. She has whims, and sudden dips where everything must burn. (Oh, you thought that SHERMAN torched Atlanta? HA!) At one point in her long and complicated story, she snapped, and sold every "retainer" and ward of her household to slavers, slaughtered the vampires of her household, and then torched the place before taking off for Africa and joining in the mass killings and genocide there. sapphyre is my very twisted sense of humor and dark impulse. Not the cold anger that will wait for years to work something subtle and devastating in revenge, the part of me that will just drop a match and let the fucker burn to ashes while I roast marshmallows and sing camping songs.

Andariel, on the other hand, is cold where Sapphyre runs hot. She's a professional assassin, has no moral compass whatsoever, and was raised in the Unseelie Court (That's wicked faeries, just fyi). She's a vampire as well, but so methodical it borders on OCD. She carries a demonblade, and will tell you, in detail, the story of how the sword was forged while she casually reclines in a kitchen chair, cleaning it. She will then proceed to slaughter everyone in the house, down to the infant in your arms, and wish you a good night as she walks off. She kills because she can, because it's there, or because it's in her way. She has no feelings for women, children, dumb animals, or victims. Sex is completely irrelevant to her, she has no feelings for it at all, and will not go looking for it. (Sapphyre has a thing for feeding off of young, pretty,, male couples.) Andariel scares me when I write about her. She's the part of me that will look at the bottles on the shelf in the shed, instantly concoct a formula, mix it up, put it in jam, and then give that jam away to the people I detest in the world. (I never have, never will, but I -could.-) She's an organizational freak, and Hell help you if you touch her weapons, because Heaven wouldn't have a prayer of stopping her wrath.

I have other female characters that are freakish in other ways, Laia, who doesn't know what fear is, and is the ultimate manager. Shade, the runaway, the frightened princess who can't handle herself, her magic, her emotions, or, apparently, her man. Salicia, who is masochistic bordering on suicidal, and sadistic enough to put the Marquis to shame. StormTrouble, who was the product of a rape, an outcast from birth, lost her twin, went mad with sorrow and vengance, and closed herself into the heart of a glacier in her grief and rage, after cursing her sister's murderer to see nothing but Death, for as long as he lived. Alahna, who was adopted by a vampire, gave birth to the children forced on her by her stepfather and mother (rape/incest storyline from hell) and was so grounded and determined that she handed her children into the care of unspeakable evil and innocent bravery and told them to run, while her life bled out on a hospital floor.

I don't do perfect, I don't do kind. I do flawed and failing and love that doesn't know what boundaries are. My attempts at fluff are pathetic and pale compared to everything else I write, at least in my eyes. So, yeah, I have a few really twisted female characters...

(Hey, you asked for examples, Pure. )

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

In "Selfish Mom", Debbie Kendall lets the local warlord's regime take custody of her daughter, in order to save her own life from execution by a firing squad. She later comes into the hands of Jane Mensch, an embittered divorcee who is not evil so much as vindictive and taking her wrath out on Debbie in a situation that is more reluctance than NC. Over time, Debbie falls for Jane, but it will take a while for Jane to warm up to Debbie.

In "Angie's An Adult", Charmaine is a wife who has threatened her husband with gang-rape as a way to turn him into a sexually deprived cuckold. That is, until Angie rescues the hubby and helps him turn the tables on her. They become as hard on her as she was on him, dominating her as a couple and team.

Just a couple of examples.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Oh, and Elaine in "How I Became Immortal" shoots her cheating husband and his mistress in cold blood. The latter dies, but the former survives. Some would argue that she was provoked and justified. That's another issue (I don't agree anyway). It was a very human, very flawed, very realistic reaction. She wasn't evil, but she did an evil deed. Same with her husband. They are flawed people. She ends up going to jail, and he is out of the house for the duration of the investigation and trial. Not a despicable woman. Just one who lets her jealousy get ahead of her ethics. Just as her husband lets his lust get ahead of his (not cheating and such).

 

[AchtungNight]

Another interesting thread and great poll I missed out on.

I always try to make my protagonists flawed but likeable. I don't think I've ever used a seriously messed-up female protagonist in an erotic story, although with "The Rendezvous" I did come very close. The flaw I most often use is arrogance, it's easy to develop that and spin off it. A close second would be overeagerness, followed by anger. Deceit has cropped up a lot too.

 

[Darla_Darling]

(looking at the case of women characters first)

We all know that the 'porn' or 'erotica' female protagonist is of formidable sexual appetite, easily aroused, etc. 'lustful' or 'lusty' if you will. So she may 'stray,' perhaps, or undertake a passionate affair, though married.

BUT, is your female protagonist ever despicable or bad in some way? (leaving aside all issues of sexual and marital conduct)
Or, one might say, leaving aside sex, is she ever immoral in other ways or spheres?

In moral terms, is she ever flawed? or have obvious shortcomings or faults of character that are more than minor annoyances?

ALL of my characters, whether male or female or whether I'm writing erotica or any other genre of fiction have flaws, because I want them to be well-rounded human characters. Why would I create perfect characters? That would be boring, and I dare say my stories would lack the fundamental ingredient that all stories must have: conflict.

 

[sweetjain]

I never thought of making erotic characters flawed, though I do that in the other stories I write. Thank you for making me think about that.

 

[Athena_e19]

In one of my "For the Love of Botany" stories the main feminine protagonist takes over the world, kills rebels, and chains up all the men.

I liked her, but I got a surprising amount of feedback (mostly from men) who complained about her violence and imprisonment of male species.

 

[smotp]

Despicable or just an 'Outsider'?

I have a character, Ashae who was a temple prostitute (an honourable calling in her contemporary society) in Sumer (Mesopotamia, present day Iraq) 5,000 years ago.

She was being raped by a Daemon alien who was doing two women at once and she died while the other survived but Ashae's soul/spirit/intelect transferred across at the point of orgasm/death.

5,000 years later (present day) she is still going strong but has to find a new 'host' every few years and transfers across during sex at orgasm. She uses her hosts quite hard and they age more rapidly but are left alive with no memory of the time they were hosts, when she hops again.

Her timeline and historical perspective have moved her away from humanity but she champions them against the Daemons as a leader/organiser of a resistance to their 'farming' of humanity. Her plans now span generations and can be indecipherable to ordinary humans.

Trouble is a lot of humans get to die as part of her plans. She also likes to take risks and get it on with the Daemons who could kill her if she lost control.

Not a do gooding heroine at all but I find her fascinating.

Smot

 

[Otto26]

I haven't voted yet. I've written female characters that have killed (bad people) in defense of their relationship. I've written female characters that suffer from separation anxieties. I've written female characters that use sex to manipulate people. Honestly, only the last one comes close to being something I would define as despicable. I'm not sure how to categorize my vote. As dr_mabeuse said: flawed (even morally) yes, but despicable, no.

 

[mckai777]

Never, and I mean ever, are my female protagonists despicable, or even flawed. They are idealized women, at once beautiful and completely unsullied, and their sexual activity is brought about often only through the tender coercion of a powerful but loving male "antagonist".