The Villains

[Darrin]

Does anyone else notice that all the major villains in these books all turn out to be male? Even the ones that appear female at first turn out to be males in disguise?

Is there a gender bias here? Women good, Men Evil?

Just a random thought for discussion.

PS - I am looking at Other Places and Alternate Places, with a little Keeley included for my analysis.

[MarciaA]

I think Disney has the lead on female bad people, all those evil queens.....

I'll have to think on it to see if I remember any bad ones from any of Dales stories.... other than Lois in the Dead End series. SHE did not want to give up...

[David]

Hmmm. gray was a pretty major villain in YA. The crazy chick from Afrak... Ummm...

The main villain in the Christmas book was a woman...

I'm thinking....

There were a lot of women villains in YA, just not sure they could be considered major.

Anyway, they don't get a pass in the Gwen series, major villain there was the woman right?

But yeah, comparing to real life the major villains are men, not that women can't be bad, just not usually on a global scale.

The major villains in alternate seem to be sexless so far. Beings etc...

[Darrin]

I am just taking about the two series with Zack, the only ones i have read.

[David]

Sorry about any spoilers, hope I was vague enough, anyway the main villains seemed to be those entities, not male or female as far as I could tell. Even the demons are kind of evil spirits. I imagine the bad guys there chose being male because it's harder to rape without certain equipment.

The third book had that lady as the head bad guy in her snuff film gang.

But yeah, I know most of them were male. However Dale is not pigeonholed into that script, maybe I didn't notice because I read all his other stuff first.

It's also possibly because it's a harem story line type book so a lot of the surrounding females were "good", it's almost a requirement. Perhaps that further skewed Things?

There were also good males though, the bear shifter, Vaun, Dan, Master Li, etc...

I don't see anything saying male bad, female good. Perhaps a comment that due to the nature of sex trafficking and children, and world domination type schemes, a man IS more likely to be the culprit.

[PS Power]

Dead End: Lois and Burt. Side (mini-bosses) are often female.
The Infected: The first "Big Bad" Braid. Mrs. Moore.
Keeley Thomson: The Gatherer, Ma'at, Several others in supporting villain roles.
Gwen Farris: Doctor Professor Erin Debussey. Katherine Vernor.
Young Ancients: Gray. Lilith Degray. Countess Allan.

Thinking about it, this holds true for most of the books, except the ones that the OP was talking about. There are certainly male and non-gendered bad guys as well. I can't tell what the skew is on it. Probably more men than women. Also, more male heroes than women. I try to include both, but the stories come to me and I write them...