bullet points, I guess. Subject; women heroes.
Whatever essay-writing abilities i ever had, they seem to be gone like a gone away thing.
So, have a little list, instead, for what it’s worth;
- On my home forum, we’ve had a long discussion about archetypes for women. My conclusion is that we don’t have nearly enough of them and we need to create many, many more. Please note; I am not talking about stereotypes, of which we have a god damn plethora.
- Archetypes we are missing; the Femme Vitale, the Not-a-Girl (Ive been told the queer term ‘boi’ is beginning to come into hetero parlance, but it sounds an awful lot like ‘boy’ when spoken out loud, and we don’t have a name for this person. I’m not talking about tomboys here.), the Alpha woman, the Woman who is powerful in her own right, women whom I’ve forgotten, which is a symptom of this bullet-pointing disjointedness.
- We need to see these woman in all kinds of stories and plots. We need them in stories where the plot is about a woman becomeing such, and we need stories where these women simply exist in the context, much as their male counterparts might. We need them to be straight, lesbian queer, multi-racial, rich, poor, protagonists antagonists, and spear-carriers. We need more than one Xena. We need more than twenty Xenas. We need more Buffies, more Faiths, more Teylas, more Girl batmans,more Girl cavemans, more girl monsters. (pimping my favorite cartoonist, huh)
- We need these characters because we haven’t had them. We need them to be treated as facts of life, because in our society, things become facts of life with enough iteration. We need to portray them in fiction and not polemically, because, well, I’ll get into that in the next couple of bullet points.
So that’s one facet. On a similar note, my vampirepr0n hero, lit_gal , has created a new community called charchall and it’s about character prompts. The first one is "aphrodite, or the femme fatale" and I’ve already stomped all over the thread in my big boots…. There will be more, one a month. (and maybe I can use "aphrodite" as a basis for Peach, huh?)
- For some reason, the name of Ursula K. LeGuin has been coming up repeatedly. And I think I can lay some blame on her for reinforcing some of my gender issues. She wrote a book titled "A Wizard Of earthsea" and it’s a strong, deep hero’s journey kinda story. I loved it! But there was so much misogyny that was so innate in it. Women cannot be wizards. Women make weak magic, we are told, or they make wicked magic. (This, despite the main plot point that Ged’s magic spell nearly destroys the world). Women don’t get to sail off in boats, they get to bake journeycake and wave bye-bye on the shore. Hell, they don’t even get to kiss the boy because the boy has to be celibate or he loses his magic Goodness. (that is now chasing after him trying to kill him and destroy the world) At fifteen, I put that book down and cried for days. Got pussy? No hero-ing for you, baby.
- This book was so powerful for me, because Le Guin is such a powerful writer. She was passionate about her hero’s tale, and her passion was very convincing to me. Now, here’s what’s interesting; Le Guin wised up, although not untill her third book was almost finished (will provide citations in a little while I promise) years later, she wrote a fourth book, and it might well be called "A feminist of Earthsea." In it, she preaches that even though women don’t get to be heroes, they are still really important, and strong in their own special way. Some of them however, do get to turn into dragons, especially if they were raped by their fathers. Dragons is good, but– this book about Feminism on Earthsea is cold comfort to the girl who reads heroic adventure. I want a good read, dammit, not political theory!
Some things I want to add to this;
- several posts here on lj, pro and con (Pro being written by a WOC, con being written by a white male, BUT i make no inferences)
- Emily Shore offers a highly relevant rant.
Um. This can’t possibly be all I wanted to say, it’s been occupying my mind for months now. Call it a slow workup to a hard burn, if you will, please, my darlings?
0 Give Kudos?
More and more of those are coming about, hon… and there are some great books out there with female archetypes and more feminist twists on old tales of women, etc.
You should talke to Mal about this shit, she’s big into the archetypal aspects of femininity.
yeah, and I intend to add to those books.
But what are these great books of feminine archetypes you speak of? if you’re talking about Schmidt’s book, I’ve just ordered it– but what people have C&P’d from it strikes me as… Well. Further proof that we won’t find these women in already-existent models. is the nice way to say it.
I would love to talk to Mal, if she wants!
Late in the evening, without looking at my shelves, one book pops to mind immediately — Jiana in Dafyd abHugh’s book Heroing. Actually, she’s the closest thing to a female ANTI-hero I can come up with right now.
More later after I think on it.
One I can think of is Jo Clayton’s Skeen.
She’s the most swashbuckling hero/antihero woman that I can think of– I wish I had read her about thirty years ago! And she lives in a universe where there are other heroic women, too, she doesn’t go heroing in a female void.
And there’s Tamora Price, right?
I love Skeen. Every couple of years I read the books again.
YESSS! *highfives you*
That universe is where my sentient ship Sugarpuss was seeded from…
Although the Creative Writing interjections are somewhat irksome, those books didn’t ought to be out of print.
Tamora Pierce? I have some of her books, but have not read them yet.
And then there are all the urban fantasy heroines, although I haven’t made up my mind about many of them. Dante Valentine is an interesting one (in the Lilith Saintcrow books).
What’s your take on the book?
here’s a peevish review of it that I found on librarythings;
A completely run-of-the-mill fantasy story, Heroing probably isn’t worth your time. I found it annoying to read and only finished it because I forgot to put anything better in my bag. Be warned that I’m not bothering to separate out the spoilers, simply because I don’t care enough. You’re not going to read this book, right?
Actually, some of the story is interesting in concept, like the Jiana/Jianabel split personality, but the execution is horrid. The characterization is particularly bad; I had a difficult time believing in any of the major characters, especially in the professed love between Jiana and Dida.
And the afterward reveals that the author had a pro-feminist goal for the book (which was published in 1987). Good books with political or social subtexts are fine–such things can enhance a well-written volume. Bad fiction written to advance a particular viewpoint is often among the worst writing around.
Yikes!
Mileage varies. I found it a hard headed, engaging book with a protagonist I didn’t want to slap as often as usual with female protagonists.
It gets a 3.40 out of 5.00 on Goodreads with 5 ratings and no reviews available. I may have to reread it and write a review.
yeah, that would be a noble endeavor!
The problem that this dude’s review points up, of course, is that anything less than stellar writing, in support of a position the reader doesn’t care about, reads as bad fiction to that writer.
I mean.. to that reader…
When in doubt, check for yourself
Betcha you can find a used copy.
Oh, god, I am struggling with this on an epic level right now. I keep reading the thread on Lit over and over again, but I find myself unable to add to the conversation. I’m thinking and thinking, but it’s all kinda sub-language right now. It’s like my unconscious is shifting around, roiling, but nothing is coming out of my hindbrain to be expressed as words. So I’m left with something *important* to say, but no words to say it with. *sigh*
I’m mulling the concept of a Femme Vitale. I like it. Lots. I’m also trying to articulate — or maybe validate — some of my characters’ choices.
One of my oldest chars, Valeria is in a sword and sorcery setting, and she’s very powerful, but expresses almost no feminine characteristics whatsoever. She’s like a male warrior with breasts. There’s a pitfall right there.
And then there’s Dia. She’s not what *you’d* call a Femme Vitale, but I need her to bring something of value to her romantic relationship; she needs to be more than a pretty face and a spare set of hands. Is there room in all this for women who aren’t the “dominant” partner in a relationship, yet are more than mere pawns?
I dunno, Tina, I might call her a femme vitale. I can see that she’s not getting to be the complete submissive you keep envisioning her as– hell, the very first thing she says to Hal is “Don’t you dare turn into a rabbit!” And that Hal’s needs are going to entail a different kind of service than anything she was prepared for, one that includes custodial responsibilities and priveledges.
And so seriously, we need “Male warriors with breasts” too. That’s probably what I would have wanted to read back when I was struggling with my male-warrior-wannabe brain and the breasts my body was growing…
re: Dia — That’s one of the first things she says to Hal, but she teases him quite a bit about being a king before the rabbit bit. *lol* Maybe I ought to give up my vision of what I want her to be and just go with the flow…
I think that a sub who has to be *in Charge* of her owner– in ownership, even, at times– makes for some very sexy dynamics!
Yeah, I keep thinking of hawt equestrian pr0n. Now *that’s* control!
exackly! And burningly romantic, too…
You have hal completely sentient as Horse, but– how much understanding does he have as Dog? Is the same, merely an attitude shift? Or did the abuse he lived with as Dog cloud that part of his mind…
Sentient in all forms, I would think. Considering the limits of biology, I think he would lose IQ points in either form, and there would be a massive priority shift. Of all of them, I think Goblin Boy has the most disconnect. That seems to be the part of him that people have problems with.
Maybe, with Dogboy, he’s lucid if he’s having a positive experience, like being played with or petted, but he shuts down when negative things happen. That happens with abused people, so it doesn’t seem that far-fetched.
(I’ve started a thread about some of this stuff on POM.)
Have you read gehayi’s s? A lot of the folks who post stories there do a great job, specifically addressing the woman in Harry Potter to begin with. One of her initial kickoff posts addressed the heroine’s journey in terms very much like this–she wanted to se women doing things that a traditionally the property of the male hero only.
So much yes on the needing more female archetypes. I’m not sure I have much to add at the moment but I really like the examples you’ve brought up.
oh, good– i feel like I’m off to a good start then, thanks!
Have you tried Terry Pratchett’s books? I’d just about given up on the idea of male writers being able to write female characters that were *people*, but he gets it.
The Witch sub-series of Discworld does a lot with the Maiden, Mother and Crone archetypes. They are, and then, they are three dimensional. And the Watch sub-series has Cheery and Angua, who are more Feminist archetypes than mythological archetypes. Angua is a Trailblazing Career Woman, the first female in the City Watch. Cheery is about GrrlPower, coming from a background where men and women seem exactly alike (dwarves can’t tell each other’s sex; after a few dates, they have to ask some awkward questions to find out), but choosing to bring lipstick and high heels into her life while maintaining her professional spirit.
Cheery is about GrrlPower, coming from a background where men and women seem exactly alike (dwarves can’t tell each other’s sex; after a few dates, they have to ask some awkward questions to find out), but choosing to bring lipstick and high heels into her life while maintaining her professional spirit.
I would say that Cheery is transgendered in some senses. (Or maybe genderqueer.) After all, she “comes out” as female in a social context where everyone assumes she is male.
Good point.
Pterry is one person who has kept me sane and hopeful, for sure.
Now, I want all of that plus explicit sex… Not from Pterry, of course, but out of those genres that like to include explicit sex. And I want these women to appear in so many other genres, as well.
You’re very right about the shortage of female archetypes. Not only this, but male lit crit types are no help at all. I don’t know if you’ve read my rant about Christopher Booker, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I point you there rather than commenting further here:
link to emily-shore.livejournal.com
(I have a Yuletide story to write today… or I would say more…)
Oh, man.
What an ignorant ass.
I’ve added this link into my post, and will get back to you, too!
Here from . It was interesting to read your post and I completely agree that we need more female archetypes and, as you say, to see them in all kinds of stories and plots. I think that’s important. And on a personal note, for as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to read about women heroes and watch them on screen, and been frustrated by the scarcity of them.
And yanno, it really bugs the fuck out of me, when fen claim that they don’t write about women only because there are no women in some canon or another.
yeah, I know. You’re watching fucking SPN for crissakes.
Even SPN has female characters. Ellen, Jo, Bella, Jessica, Sarah and all the other one-shots.
Yes, but those characters kind of aren’t good for anything and I cannot fault anyone for not wanting to write about them.
I love Ellen. Maybe if they brought her back I could be bothered to watch S4.
Although I understand a lot of the reasons people don’t like those characters. As long as it’s not the “gonna get between my boys” reason anyways.
I don’t understand the reason– because I’m kinda a media idiot, and hardly ever watch televison, I think I’ve only ever seen one ep of SPN.
I’ve read some wincest, until I got tired of that trope, and slash writers will, sometimes, make it clear that the female characters are in the way of the mansmex and therefore persona non grata. Are there other reasons to not like the women characters in SPN?
There are complaints about inconsistent writing, bad characterizations, Bella got a lot of shit for being a femme fatale (which I thought was her point-to a point), and some people just didn’t like Jo’s actress. All of which are legitimate reasons to not like someone.
Then there was the huge and scary section of fandom who hated them for having that audacity to be women on the show. Maybe they weren’t such a big portion of fandom as they made themselves out to be, but they sure could shout real loud.
I think they’re really a very small chunk of the fandom, but they made a giant mess of any conversation about women.
They really are the reason I’ve pretty much left SPN fandom and to some extent the show. I still plan on watching S4 at some point.
Yeah. Women characters in SPN are usually sparse, oneshots, damsels, underdeveloped, annoying, irredeemably evil, obnoxiously good, or… otherwise just bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. There’s a famous fanvid using SPN footage called “A woman’s work.” WAtching it should give you an idea.
I’d also like to add that while all the female characters are absolutely horrible, the male ones are often rather shitty as well. SPN has a lot of questionable writing, but a pretty neat concept. There are handful of characters I can understand caring about outside of the brothers. SPN fans get a bad rap, but sometimes I feel that people project their frustration with the sexism of the show onto the fans, who also notice the general uselessness of many of the female characters and express it in a much more negative way.
such a shame… So, what I’m wondering, is it possible to take these women, analyse their lacks to deduce some qualities that we need to portray? Sometimes, the absence of example shows us more than an example would.
’cause it’s so damn easy to complain, I know I will happily bitch all night!
Oh, sure. They lack depth and agency, basically. I actually am quite confident that that covers everything.
SPN is kind of an easy analysis, haha. I tend to attribute SPN’s problems more to silly writers running out of ideas than to malice. House, on the other hand…
uh-oh… Again, I don’t know House, but feel free! *g*
Oh, House. If you don’t know, the concept of House is that House The Misanthropic Doctor Hates Everyone And Everyone Is Subjugated To His Ego. At first this worked, he hated everyone equally and could back up his initially sexist-seeming behaviour with logic that you could swallow, occasionally with a bit of suspension of disbelief.
Then a couple seasons in, apparently someone with some serious woman issues took over the writing for House and used him to soapbox with the most ridiculous bullshit excuses for “logic” you’ve ever heard. The main woman with power on the show was being constantly undercut, the only other women around were in love with House for a while, except for the uppity bitch who naturally got axed before the season was out, in a finale which included a striptease from House’s foil.
It’s been uphill again from there, but I think they were hovering around rock bottom for a while, for many other reasons as well, so there wasn’t really anywhere to go.
And if that’s not what you meant by feel free then I apologize for tl;dring you to death!
yanno, we are so screwed, between producers with serious woman issues and the watchers of these shows, who seem, sometimes, to think that these fuckwads are reflecting real life.
I should go to bed, I’m starting to pottymouth.
If it makes you feel better, I pottymouth all the time!
And I really agree with you… And then there’s the attitudes like the one you get in the other metafandom post.. “You can’t please everybody, so what’s the use in trying?”
yeah. *cough* Trying to find enough women in canon in any fandom, is gotta be a frustrating thing. I’m just as guilty as the next– if I write fanfic, it’s about Jack Sparrow, not about Elizabeth. When I write originalfic, though, it’s more likely to have women doing the do, rather than men.
The sorry truth of it is that men are often more represented or more interesting characters than women. I mean, if you’ve got a big epic you want to write, what are you supposed to do? Write about Elizabeth being a mom or Tia Dalma being a maelstrom? They’re the only women represented and they’ve been mostly closed off. Jack and Will, on the other hand, lend themself well to adventures and both have more to contemplate and reflect on in terms of character studies.
On the other hand, maybe fanfic should be used to fill on those gaps? Still, I don’t feel like writing should be anybody’s responsibility. I’ve taken it upon myself to use fic to call shenanigans in the past, but that was for cathartic purposes more than anything.
Heh, I’ve heard of some of those oneshot names, I think! *G*
*g* I miss Ellen. Jo less so, but I miss Ellen.
I miss Ellen too. She was one of the only interesting side characters. I think the fact taht she wasn’t a love interest went a long way towards that.
I wish more shows would have no love interests. I really prefer it when there’s no romantic sub-plot.
Ellen was utterly awesome and I loved the Road House.
I’ve seen all those archetypes.
And making archetypes is always less productive than making characters.
Then again, I’m into plenty of Eastern fandoms.
And making archetypes is always less productive than making characters.
I like that!
And yeah, this might be more of a problem in western tradition– but then, I’ve lived all of my life in Western lands…
So have I – I just mean that I watch a lot of anime, video games, etc. Japanese stuff has its own problems, of course, but it’s also got a whole range of archetypes that you don’t find in Western stuff.
That could be a useful resource, huh? I am afraid to ask for examples, because I will feel totally guilty if I never get around to following up, she said and blushed.
But you’ve just reminded me of a fabulous character that I have seen– Paprika, just omigod.
I really wish there was more back and forth between people who tend to hang in western fandoms and people who like eastern stuff more, as well as people who prefer books to video and animation and games. Trying to talk to fans across spectrums, especially about issues like this, can be very difficult – especially if the people you’re trying to talk to already have a negative impression of fandom feminists because whatever they usually say doesn’t sync with their experiences.
As far as recs go, I would encourage seeing some stuff by Miyazaki. I’d say Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Howl’s Moving Castle or Princess Mononoke. They’re relatively easy to absorb if you’re not familiar with Japanese storytelling syntax, the dubs are good and the animation is gorgeous, so even if you don’t like it overall, I figure there’s nothing much to lose.
As far as recs go, I would encourage seeing some stuff by Miyazaki. I’d say Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Howl’s Moving Castle or Princess Mononoke.
I brought this up once in a thread where they were talking about the lack of good female characters in animated films, they were of course referring to Pixar, or Disney.
I hate it when people say that about Disney. Yes, okay, the princesses can be really shitty role models – but Disney in the 90s was a lot better and I feel as though I’m the only one who noticed. Even if we do need female protagonists still, I thought characters like Meg, Esmeralda, Mulan and even Belle (consider the story she was adapted from!) were pretty fantastic.
And Arial. And even the little girl lion in Lion King.
Belle got a lot of discussion in that forum discussion I linked to in my original post, or at least the idea of a beauty/beast dyad as archetype– a woman more intellectual than her partner, and alpha for that reason. Beast asks her for permission for things, and subordinates his strength to her. NOT because she’s so pretty, but because she’s so smart.
I don’t really care for Ariel, but I can begrudgingly admit that she is certainly daring and well-characterized. Still. “Daddy, no! Not the statue of the guy I just met!” But yeah, both Nala and Kiara are good characters. Those are the Disney characters I grew up with and I loved ‘em to pieces as examples of strong women.
Beast shouts a lot, but Belle wears the proverbial pants. People say it gives the message to young girls that you shouldn’t leave an abusive relationship, but Belle took off right away and dragged him back after he got attacked by wolves, and then proceeded to reprimand him for being so goddamned tempermantal. That’s without even holding up my personal issues with using The Beast as an example of an abusive man… I mean, sure, if you want to go down a checklist and ignore the necessity of plot devices…
I know. I’m married to a man, in fact, and we’ve been partnered for over thirty years now. he has his temperamental tics. I have one friend who cannot tolerate any sort of uneven temperament– insists that he’s being abusive.
She’s never managed to find herself a partner, because her sensibilities are sooo delicate.
And there’s another portrayal we are missing these days– the woman who can tolerate, and who can stand up for herself. who won’t go to pieces when her man acts like an asshole just once, but who will haul his ass back into line. Stella, from Streetcar named desire; and she did walk, when Stanley made it clear that his fucking up was going to occur again and again. If only Blanche hadn’t been such a one-dimensional character, she threw the whole ensemble out of balance.
Yeah, I hate that. I don’t think “ditch the man you love because he isn’t perfect!” is a healthy message to send to girls, either. Having a relationship is already a difficult social decision, I don’t think we’re helping anybody’s self-esteem by setting the bar at perfection.
Argh, I hated everybody in Streetcar, so I can’t really comment on that. Stanley rubbed me exactly the wrong way, Blanche was purposefully annoying and I couldn’t stand her either, and Stella was just… never around, except to be stressed out by Blanche and stanley.
lol! Se, that’s me reading into canon… A very short canon.
::pipes it out of lurkerdom:: Ah, but the movie changed the ending. In Tennessee Williams’ original play, Stella stays. It says the complete opposite of what the movie tries (and fails, imo, since the ending was pretty much tacked on) to say.
I remember reading Tennessee Williams talking about the play. he has originally intended Blanche to be the Delicate Flower Of Womanhood, whose dainty sensibilities had been trampled on by this big oaf. But as the work went forward with the actors, he began to see this other side of the picture– the hypocrisy of the Southern Belle. The fact that Marlon Brando was already playing Stanley had skewed the balance completely, and Blanche became a secondary character.
I am in such an almighty forgiving mood this morning, that I’ll forgive Mr. Williams for letting himself stop there instead of taking Blanche one or two steps further, and perhaps showing us her hypocrisy as the survival mechanism it was…
To be fair, Eric was equally as lovestruck and irrational as Ariel was, and if he’d known she was a mermaid from the start, it may well have been *him* to track down a spell.
Granted, I thought they were both idiots and pretty much for that reason, but they were at least equal in their idiocy.
Actually, I never got much from Eric. Maybe because he didn’t keep a giant statue of Ariel in his bedroom.
It just bugged me. She was fascinated by the human world already and instead of treating Eric like a catalyst, they treat him like a cause. Then again, source material, only so much you can do, yadda yadda.
Well, he didn’t *have* a giant statue of Ariel.
But he was all moony and obsessive about the mysterious woman…It’s been a while, but wasn’t it said that he was shirking his duties to go off and daydream about her? Or at least implied?
Oh yes, he definitely did. He was still bland as a piece of cardboard, but he was certainly moony and obsessive.
Exactly. Ariel may have been an idiot, but she was at least an idiot with CHARACTER.
Oh yeah– Miyazaki is familiar to me. I have one kid that is all about animation, so I guess I see more anime than I think I have.
I admit that I am very book-centric; reading was always my drug of choice. But I understand that our culture is built upon more than books alone!
So I got here from metafandom and was reading, and then was inspired to look up female tropes on TV Tropes.
I was there a while
I’ve tried to keep it to ones which aren’t completely sexist but there’s no easy line to draw since most are often done in a sexist way even if they have non-sexist potential.
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And now I’m too sleepy to have any intelligent response to your post. I did find it interesting!
Indeed. I don’t understand the pressure writing books give to writing archetypes, because then you’re bending the characters to someone else’s standards and confines.
I go through those “how to write (x type of character)” books and I’m always “…these aren’t my characters at *all*! These are stick figures!”
I think you can do a lot with an archetype. I also think that you can’t ever really explain to somebody else how to do a lot with an archetype. It’s one of those things where you either know it or you don’t.
yeah– at the same time, our society is very influenced by repeated patterns. many people don’t know how to be something, without some kind of… instruction, or model. I know there have been times in my life where some story or film or character gave me the insight I needed to make a step or assume a new role.
Seems strange, but it’s just one more tool in the toolbox for cultural change– not the only one, for sure, but a pretty potent one, in my experience.
I agree with that, but I do think an archetype is fundamentally different from a character and definitionally part of the problem. We need more well-written female characters for people to use as models.
yup– and a really well-written character becomes an archetype. With support, of course– a good agent and publicity campaign. Hee!
Okay, this is me off to beddy-bye, for reals. Thank you for a wonderful convo!
But on the same point, you can take influence from something without taking *everything* that defines it.
Actually, I’m working on something similar with my social worker, to learn social skills (I’m autistic and have some…delays with them). We study my favorite characters and I say what I want to emulate from them and what I want to stay away from. The heck of it is that my absolute favorite character ever is almost entirely in the NO NO NO category.
But I’m picking and choosing from a bunch of them. And heck, even one of the most evil characters I’ve ever encountered yields “I want to have his lack of inhibitions” (which…may cause more problems given that he wears a jester outfit and laughs at everything).
Yes, exactly so. And there’s the benefit of having a bunch to pick and choose from, of being able to take the bits that make sense for you. And the more characters you have available, the more precise you can be in your picking and choosing– you are less hobbled by the *lack* of choices, huh? I mean- your most favorite character, I betcha, has a penis. If you’re anything like me, your role models– even your favorite wrong role models– are men, functioning in a world that was created by men– a world that has very little room for women to function in. I grew up without any sort of female role model for the hero I always wanted to be– but plenty of male ones.
And that’s why I’m asking for more women– as characters and as archetypes.
Thank you for sharing your autism with me, I think that is very brave of you, and I appreciate it.
Well, he’s a man, but he doesn’t function in anyone’s world but his own. That’s part of the reason he’s a gigantic NO, because of his inability to relate to the world around him.
But in the series he’s from, there’s lots of “room for women to function in”. It’s just he concerns himself with unliving things (save for one–a legendary sea beast–and that one thing is his downfall).
My second favorite character is also a man, but has a lot of feminine characteristics. He’s probably the most emotional person in the series (who’s over the age of 12 anyway), he’s obsessive in love (it was implied that he was going to kill himself because his ‘friend’* had died, only he wound up encountering an evil spirit instead), he centers his life around his relationship…and he runs like a giant wuss (seriously, you know how female characatures run? That’s him). He’s a fascinating character and would be no matter what.
(*I say ‘friend’ because it’s never said exactly what kind of love he felt for him. The friend, who’s only shown in flashbacks, seemed to be presented as someone who thought of him as a very dear friend but unromantically, and as much as Oikawa wears his heart on his sleeve, by the time we see him, he’s also been severely messed up by three and a half years of demonic posession and can’t remember some major details of his life)
My third favorite would be the evil bastard I mentioned before, and the world he’s from doesn’t have any problem with functional women. The three world leaders we see in present time are men, but the only issues anyone takes with the female characters in the playable party are unrelated to them being women (one was a biological weapon, one used to work for the bad guys, and one was ten years old…and one may not be a woman *or* a man, it’s hard to tell when they wear full-body robes and a mask).
The game has two main characters, both of whom are women. And while they’re both strong warriors, they’re also polar opposites of each other.
And brave? Forthcoming maybe, but I’m not seeing how it’s brave. It explains why I would be doing such a thing.
Here via metafandom
Reading though this I looked over at my bookshelf and saw how many books I own that have female protagonists. Sure there are a bunch with male protagonist, but those ones usually have strong female back ups. It occurs to me though that these are all Sci-Fi/Fantasy books and I wonder if that has something to do with it.
Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey (yes, even the thinly disguised romance novels), Diane Duane, Terry Pratchett (who has an amusing story about people assuming he was a she after Equal Rites came out), Andre Norton, some of Anne McCaffery, and even some Christopher Pike. Scott Westerfeld does some really interesting female characters as well.
If you look at the new YA books coming out there are a lot of them that have female protagonists as well. So it seems like something that is becoming more and more popular. Even Artemis Fowl has Holly Short and Juliet to back him up (and make sure he succeeds). I really like this new trend and I hope it continues.
And those are my thoughts.
Re: Here via metafandom
I think it’s more enduring than a trend, not to rub my optimism all over the whole thread here. I think people’s view is often too narrow – we look at movies and we look at television and sometimes we look at popular books like Twilight, and you’re missing so many other kinds of media where women and girls are characterized well.
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Yup, and gaming too.
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Of course gaming too!
Personally, I think that Western games are going to start making really kickass female characters before television is. On the other hand, I might be incredibly biased and naive, but… Hey, girls have proven that they like games with stories, characters, and women! Plus, Kreia of KOTOR2 fame always inspires my hope in the industry.
XII fans, represent.
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Sadly, my gaming experience is limited to Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts.
So I wouldn’t know about Western games. (sorry)
It is somewhat amusing at times when a lot of people think of Lara Croft when they think of female gaming character, and not say, Ashe, or Yuna who are far more rounded and three dimensional. (of course, it’s RPG…that’ helps).
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Mmm, with the way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave Lara Croft her integrity back after a while. I don’t like how much of a sex symbol she was made into, but she was still a strong, smart female protagonist – whether or not she jumped the shark later on.
I think a lot of girls who are into games stick to Final Fantasy because for games (and media in general), they’re very woman-friendly stories. Even though the girls are often easily slotted into archetypes (and so are the boys half the time), they’re archetypes that give the characters a lot more depth, credit and humanity than what we’re used to seeing.
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I also get the impression, that Square-Enix does keep the female demographic in mind when producing the stories, there is almost as much fangirl fan service, then fanboy fan service. (or that’s how I interpreted it, especially entire scenes from Advent Children and Crisis Core).
That’s with both male and female characters, and the games do have a strong emphasis on relationships.
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Haha, yeah, almost all fanservice in FF is female-oriented. Especially for the fangirls who are into yaoi! I’d argue that they have a little too much fanservice, especially with regards to FF7, but better not to get into that here.
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One of my flisties was overjoyed with how that worked out.
I was thinking more along the lines of Tifa/Cloud
Not that I’m adverse to yaoi either, and have noticed. But there is also the romanticisation of the warrior bond, romantic friendship, which is popular in Japanese mythology. It works as a close friendship under adversary, brothers in arms, as well as yeah a more yaoi take on that. If you look at Zack/Cloud as an example, I think it works as fan service for the fanboys and the fangirls, depending on your perspective.
Romantic male friendship was more popular in Victorian England as well (not to mention romantic female friendship, Anne of Green Gables springs to mind), but not so much these days.
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Ahhhh… Having been embroiled in the Tifa v. Aeris ship wars, I can tell you that both sides came away with complete conviction that their ship was canon.
I would argue Zack/Cloud has definitely been played up more for girls because they made Cloud into such an adorable uke woobie type. On the other hand, Zack is now a pretty standard shonen hero, so you’re right, it goes both ways.
Romantic male friendship seems more popular everywhere than romantic (or even platonic!) female friendship. Which is weird, given everybody’s completely justified preoccuption with lesbians…
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Romantic male friendship seems more popular everywhere than romantic (or even platonic!) female friendship. Which is weird, given everybody’s completely justified preoccuption with lesbians…
Yeah, and I have my theories about that! *_^
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Tifa v. Aeris ship wars
I didn’t realise there was a ship war, but I guess I could see both. Sadly I lost all interest in Aeris from Crisis Core because of the FREAKING flower wagon drove me INSANE.
/end rant.
However, she’s fine in Advent Children and I think I could love her if I was able to blot out the flower wagon task.
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Tifa v. Aeris was utter hell. It’s the biggest ship war the FF fandom has ever seen, there is still a lot of residual crazy floating around, and being on one said meant you had to hate the other girl a lot of the time. There were hate sites to one or the other all over the internet and most of them were pretty sexist.
Aeris in Crisis Core really isn’t a true or fair representation of her character. She’s one of the biggest reasons I didn’t like the compilation. Slightly better in AC, what with being Planet Jesus and all, but I’d definitely encourage you to pick up the original game (or watch it on youtube!) if you get a chance, if only to see her force Cloud into drag.
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It was interesting seeing the “child genius” in FFVI being a girl, and a very bratty, sarcastic, un-nerdy girl at that.
I’ve never understood why people call Celes weak because of her one moment of weakness on the island (which is optional, no less) and her obsession with Locke, but Locke is obsessive in love too…and how many people gave up hope at that part in the game? And heck, look what Shadow does in the ending–I don’t see anyone calling him weak for that.
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Oh Relm. I don’t like the bratty characters much, but her little scene with Ultros never fails to make me smile… then again, Ultros never fails to make me smile…
People don’t understand Celes, I think. She’s a deconstruction of an archetype. If you think that she’s weak, you’ve probably missed the point. Nobody calls Shadow weak because it isn’t a gender or archetype stereotype for ninja men to do what he did, whereas going from a general to a weak “opera floozy” is often what bad writers do to their female characters.
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The heck of it is that Maria is basically the opposite of Celes. Celes may moon over her missing love, but she goes out there and does something about it. And if two guys were trying to kill each other over her, she wouldn’t just stand there and watch.
And, of course, the hilarity of making her a “kidnap victim” even though it works in her favor and she knows it the entire time.
(this is the only icon I have with Celes in it)
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I really hope it’s more enduring than a trend. I’ve been following some books series since I was twelve and it’s fun to add other YA books to those. Not to mention it gives current twelve year olds a much larger selection then I had.
There are so many books out there with good characterization. I was talking with someone on my flist a month or so ago about how we both wished Tamora Pierce could get half the publicity that SMeyers got. I think part of it is that people who don’t go to book stores could pick up Twilight because it’s sitting in Target. And with both Harry Potter and Twilight proving that YA books will sell that’s been changing lately. More YA books are being put in Target/Wal-mart/Best Buy (honest). So now I can go to Target and find these new books and it’s fun.
I really like your optimism.
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I’m coming out of the other side, optimism-wise, I can tell you!
I started writing because if I didn’t, I would never get to be Robin Hood, another boy would land the part once again, yanno?
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Female Robin Hood? That sounds awesome.
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Doesn’t it? She’d have to be a trickster type, being smaller then the men around her.
Hmm. *G*
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Isn’t Robin Hood supposed to be a bit of a trickster? *does not actually know much about the actual Robin Hood legend*
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That’s what my bookshelf looks like as well. I actually wouldn’t read books with male protagonists, heh. I just reread Tamora Pierce, Madeleine L’Engle, and Diana Duane when I couldn’t find anything new.
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In my day, that would have been Nancy Drew, and very little else, until L’Engle came onto the scene…
What about Joan North? She wrote a trilogy that began with a book called “The Cloud Forest”– I think. I remember them as very spooky plots, with a female protagonist.
And I’d like to recommend Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories, the bedtime stories he wrote for his daughters, which very often laud the ideal of the tough, lean, and limber prairie girl, growing into strong, tough women.
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There are a number of books series that I love too much to ever decide to do that. They all have wonderful female sidekicks though.
I love my bookshelves.
This is so very well articulated.
I like Lois McMaster Bujold for her ladies…
Oh, CORDELIA.
What I love most about her? She doesn’t turn into a Free Spirit, trying to change everything about the Vor-nobility system. She fights it where she can, she rebels against it without being offensive or in-your-face, and when her husband has his back against the wall, she goes after what she wants, but does it as carefully as she can so he doesn’t lose face in what is, essentially, a game of vicious politics.
(I’ve only managed to get hold of the Cordelia’s Honor duology – my LMB ‘dealer’ had the colossal gall to move to another state, and I can’t seem to find the books in order in my local library.)
I am kinda awed that you mentioned Teyla. And in love. Because she may not have been written to her full potential (or, really, at all), but Teyla was a female character I liked because she was physically strong, emotionally strong, and didn’t need to measure herself against the boys – both in the nature of her people’s social structure and in her own personal worldview.
The Earth-human issues that we expect from Earth women simply don’t apply to her – because she’s not from Earth. And that, immediately, freed up a whole lot of options traditionally not available to female characters from Earth…not one of which the show writers (or most fanfic writers) took.
And yes, we need more women like that: women who are physically and emotionally tough, but who don’t have an inferiority complex that requires them to armwrestle with the boys to show how good they are. They’re good, they know it but they don’t have to show it off, they do what they gotta do, they go home and enjoy life as it is.
I’m even more delighted that you mentioned Faith, because Faith is a product of male-dominated Earth culture who’s been broken and fallen and, yes, jumped into her brokenness and her fallenness, and then decided she wanted out and clawed her way out.
Anyway, LOVE. I just wanted to say that. Because I can’t get into a fandom if there aren’t female characters I can adore, admire, and write for.
I have to admit that I only know most fandoms through fic, I haven’t watched TV much for a very long time…
Out of the fic writers that I respect and adore, those two characters have turned up. used Faith as a major character, albeit mostly offscreen, in her most recent story, “Kin Of The Heart” and I’m hoping she comes back in the sequel.
Litgal’s “Moon Magic” is Faith, and her series kin Of The heart has her featured. You can read them at her her website as well.
Teyla… I have no recs I can think of, actually.
Teyla… I have no recs I can think of, actually.
Oh, well, thanks for the Faith recs, anyway.
First off, you should read The Farthest Shore, in which the wizards’ idiocy is laid bare and a woman is central to saving the world. I cried because the book was amazing.
OK, one more random comment: I remember reading A Wizard of Earthsea in childhood, maybe nine or ten or so, and I don’t remember being affronted by the position of women in the book–even though I was then and am now the type to notice such things. I wonder why…
All right, on the same subject, Garth Nix’ Sabriel. I’ve heard people disparage its female hero using Freudian archetypes, but I disagree with them, I think it shows a female hero’s journey brilliantly, as do its sequels.
Finally getting on to an actual comment: I agree completely. I think this is why in my fiction I have trouble writing male protagonists. They’ve always gotten the books about them before, they don’t need any more, that’s what I say. Also, what’s a boi/Not-a-Girl?
Thanks for the comments, and the Sabriel rec, I’m adding it to the list!
Now I’m wondering which book it was out of the trilogy, that finally made me cry. Whichever one it was, a woman waved goodbye to Ged as he sailed off. She had a pet dragon. Up to that point, the lack of active women hadn’t really come to my notice, I think. And the reason it did at that point, is because Le Guin was such a good writer, and she’d given the girl three dimensions. And then dumped her, the moment the hero had other things to do. (twenty years since I read it!)
I think this is why in my fiction I have trouble writing male protagonists. They’ve always gotten the books about them before, they don’t need any more, that’s what I say.
Word. So very goddamned word.
‘Boi’is defined here in wikipedia and that word would have been very useful to me as a teen. There are tomboys, but that has always included an element of being able to beat up the boys– not me. If I had been a boy, other boys would have called me “faggot” all the time! I called myself a not-a-girl. The gender rollercoaster is much more bearable when one knows one has a little company…
If you look at the reviews on amazon, that fourth book comes in for a lot of hate. I never read it, myself, but, in the state I was in? I think I would have hated it, too. It *sounds* as if she’s repudiated heroism. Which is a betrayal, IMO, coming at the end of a heroing series– I wasn’t reading for political theory.
That’s interesting, because in some ways the fourth book is my favorite, but then I like political theory quite a lot. I think all in all the fifth one is the best by a long shot, since it’s a summation of all the others–the synthesis to the thesis of 1-3 and the antithesis of 4. I wouldn’t call 4 a “repudiation,” maybe, but it’s definitely an exploration of maybe what I would call the reverse of heroism (if heroism is the obverse)–the cost that Ged’s adventuring has had on Tenar, and even on him, that the audience and Ged himself couldn’t see in the first three books. The fifth book has more obvious heroism, but it also has more of the heroic endurance that characterizes Tenar, as well as more gender balance in the protagonists and their roles.
This here is one of the biggest reason I’m loving Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles so much. Several female characters to go around, stong capable women that are interesting to watch. The show does a lot with gender roles as well.
Any show that has fully developed female characters are a major plus, but it makes me sad that it’s still so scarce.
I am thinking of my favorite female action heroines, and trying to put archetype names on them.
The Princess Heroic (Aerin Dragon-Killer of The Hero and the Crown; The Paper Bag Princess)?
The Destroyer of Monsters (Faith, Buffy, the heroine of Robin McKinley’s Deerskin)?
Hm. Must think.
One of the participants in that original thread suggested these variants;
The Queen/The Duchess: The woman born to command
The Steel Magnolia: The woman who takes command when the man leaves and holds onto it.
The Sword Sister: The woman trained for command.
Which is a good start along those lines as well…
Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series has representations of all of those.
The Queen/The Duchess is even somewhat subverted in that although she was raised to command she chooses to abdicated to the younger sibs in order to better serve her country. The Mage Winds Trilogy is the one I’m thinking of here.
The other two are both in the Vows and Honor Trilogy.
I remember seeing terminator two for the first time and being uterly fascinated by Sarah Conor. she had a kind of restless energie, a predator aura, like a tiger. that told you at a viscetal level not to get near even though she hadn’t done a thing. I don’t think I had seen a woman that gave of that dangerous vibe before. She was geninely scary.
It’s the reason why I never had any problem axcepting the new actress they have playing her in the serie even though she doesn’t look like the original actress because she give of that vibe too and I never had any doubt she was Sarah.
yes, I remember that as well. Just the toughest woman. I haven’t seen the series, but I’m glad the casting took that energy into account.
I came over first because of your great comments on bradhanon’s post, and second, to read this post (which I remember seeing linked on metafandom, but was too busy grading to read–and now I need to read all the comments)! And I am friending you so I can keep reading!
Oh, thank you for the compliment! I don’t write LOTR fic, but there’s all kinds of stuff tucked away in here if you ever feel like ferreting, she said shamelessly.
Here from metafandom:
There’s one female archetype that i’m not sure has a name, but I’d describe her as “The seeker” or possibly “Nu Pandora” (cos I like the world Nu. Ridiculous I know…). They’re Women who go out into the world looking for something, they may not know what to begin with… and perhaps it doesn’t matter, because the journey is all. They’re defined by their curiosity and resourcefulness. Where curiosity and boundary-pushing ceases to be a bad thing. They could be seeking the truth, or they could be seeking fulfilment, or perhaps some more specific goal.
Alan Moore’s Halo Jones, for example. “She went out” being her tagline.
Lyra in His Dark Materials trilogy (though I’m sure she fits other archetypes too – the trickster archetype which I guess is gender neutral potentially but is usually male).
Rather a shallow one, but Brennan in Bones – a seeker after truth who’s not afraid of breaking the usual rules.
Willow in Buffy – fulfiling some of the traditional Pandoraness, where a quest for knowledge leads to Bad Things, but in the end, her search leads her to better places. Ok, and some new bad places… I wonder if she’s somewhere between a Nu Pandora and Nu…crap, what’s the dude who stole fire from the gods, tip of my tongue…?
Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey – seeks a gothic world and learns about reality in the meantime (though I always wished the gothic would turn out to be true).
OH, nice, thank you! I hadn’t been thinking along those lines at all.
I hope we don’t have to call her Pandora though, because she was a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of *idle*, female curiosity… I take issue with so many of the Classical archetypes in this same way, they are about men, really. Pandora’s only importance was in that she made a nuisance for *men.*
Forgive me, I’m on something of a rampage these days…
Perhaps could stick with “the seeker” then? Though that does make it sound like they’re playing an obscure magical sport.
dammit, literature ruins our fun!
Bad literature. Go to your room!
Sydney Bristow forever.
Thanks! I’ll add her to the list– That’s a whole lot of derring-do…
I don’t have any really deep thoughts, but I’m really starting to think I’ll have to reread Earthsea–I was so young when I read them that I missed an awful lot of subtext re: race and gender. (Unfortunately, I also didn’t like them much, and Tombs of Atuan freaked me the hell out, so I don’t really want to reread them, but they keep coming up in interesting discussions. But I did feel the feminist coda of Tehanu was too little, too late.)