Reply #19: This might be more input than you were looking for

[sans qualia]

and if it is I apologize in advance, I'm just thinking. Maybe you could go with an androgynous name for one or both characters? Obviously I don't know the specifics of what you're writing, but gender stuff is so deeply ingrained in most of us that it's sometimes difficult for readers not to turn obviously good or bad characters into lazy gender-based archetypes (righteous hero/scurrilous villain for males, innocent flower/deceitful seductress for females). Maybe making the characters less overtly masculine or feminine would make it easier for them to represent the abstract concepts of Good and Evil instead of the very human figures of Good Guy (or Girl) and Bad Guy.