The most popular opinion in slash fandom;
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telesilla remarks that
Disliking a female character in a show does not necessarily mean you’re a misogynist or a bad feminist. Particularly if you dislike her because of what male writers did to her character...
is an unpopular opinion.
Raise your hand if you dislike only one female character in a show.
Raise your hand if you dislike a female character in only one show.
Only three shows? All except three shows?
If the women in these shows are written so badly that we can’t get a handle on them, why do we not feel that the men are written equally badly?
What I have seen is that statement above, repeated for fandom after fandom. So we dislike the women on each show, separately. Case by case. Until we realise just how many separate cases there are, and how they’ve added up to pretty much every female character…
How can we separate the issue of our own misogyny from the mostly misogynist material that forms the basis of fan fiction?
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My rule of thumb is that if I find a character of any gender badly written, to do my damnedest to write them better than the show did.
See- that fixit impulse is so great and has generated some of the best AUs and alternate storylines!
And how many women write fixits on some poorly written male, but still scorn the female characters? Many, I think.
This is something I’ve wondered about as well. I’m SO frickin’ tired of hearing other women say they “hate” X character because she’s badly written by male writers and that doesn’t make her a misogynist. Maybe not. Except that I hear it OVER AND OVER AND OVER as a justification for bashing women in fanfic, turning them into 3D bitches because — they say — the SHOW justifies it.
Er, really.
Don’t buy it. Women perpetuate misogynist as much if not more than men because *we buy into that shit* and continue it in our OWN fiction.
This isn’t to say women can’t be “bad guys,” but let’s make them 3D, shall we?
So just … yeah.
yeah. it’s that ‘one at a time’ thing– until you realise that someone has one at a timed the entire panoply.
No, disliking the way a woman is written doesn’t make one misogynist, it makes one discerning. Disliking the *character* but excusing the writers– that’s shooting the messenger.
This is exactly why I really liked it when ‘ started up that femgenficathon challenge for HP fandom, and the quotes she chose for it as prompts. She’s always been about the underdogs and some very subversive stuff anyway–all the ostensibly heroic characters make her spit in disgust for very good reasons–and she has much greater interest in and respect for the side characters, the women who get ignored, in it, the ones where people never remember their names.
Far more interesting stories, too, as a result.
I’m not sure we could separate it.
The misogyny and abusive violence soaked through our entire culture is reflected in us, too, both as perpetrators and as the oppressed. (Very much like colonialism does.)
Now I find myself uneasy when I see no women I like in a show, let alone ones I can identify with, but back in the day of original Trek, for instance, it always used to be like that.
Back thenI just assumed that men were the plotline drivers for the show’s writers, the women were pretty much just cardboard props, and that was just how it was. When I wrote, I tended to write male characters, to identify with male activities in a plotline, and to wince from all the power inequality issues that challenging that significantly would cause. Writing side girls who were kickass was pretty challenging by itself. But I did see what genfic writers had to grapple with if they were doing a halfway decent job. I’ve heard many fanfic writers say the same things.
It’s only recently that I’ve felt I have a calmer handle in talking about all the political and power issues tangled in writing women characters at all. The POM story has been a big help on that, BTW.
I’ve heard people say thaqt our standards for men and women as friends are really different. WE demand a lot out of our women friends, but nto so much from the men. It’s possible this is true for characters too.
Switch some of those doofus jerk type men characters into women, and would you be pleased to be another character working with them?
I think not.
Hell, as a woman in that environment I wouldn’t want to deal with them.
So are we cutting the male characters more slack, or do we just not care enough to bother, we’d never become that close a friends with them anyway, whereas we really want to know and like the women at a lot more levels?
And why do we want to write men?
Now, I know some of us just like visualizing the pretteh pretteh men, unrepetently het chicks that we are. Identifying *as* the butch kickass protagonist could explain some of the lesbian slash writers.
I think in generational terms it’s a pretty recent understanding from shows like Buffy and a lot of the anime that pink, frilly, cheerful, and kick-ass is also possible, and indeed very hawt in its own right, as well as far more difficult for a character to carry off. It takes courage to be femmie in this culture, a lot more than to butch up in zippers and black leather.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t go all grumpy old skool when I endure anime with shrill-voiced little schoolgirls squealing a lot as they save the world. Wince.
Emma has been a wonderful inspiration!
She likes her pink clothes, and she is so strong– emotionally, morally, physically– and she’ll kick ass and then have the shakes afterwards. And her back hurts. She cusses like a mule driver, and she wears silk wrap around dresses. She can be underneath a man or over two of them, neither situation is at odds with her sense of who she is….
This is why I really truly prefer original fic– even if we write it like fanfic.
One reason why I like Anita Blake is because she needs her stuffed penguin after a really bad day, even though she’s tougher than any man. And unlike the kick-ass boys in most fiction, she sometimes wonders what being kick-ass is doing to her humanity. Yet no one would complain that she’s too girly.
Allow me to invite you to the sprawling original fandom that is “The Principle of Moments”
“Sprawling” is right.
Should the novice reader start with the history or the present, assuming that said reader finds it all too easy to stop reading and go work on her own work-in-progress if what she’s reading doesn’t engage her?
“The Times Before” have many many porn in them. just sayin.’
Baroque Trio is the Opus Lux; “part 1 times 2″ is the more severely edited version, which is moving much, much slower than the rest of the gush of wonderful verbiage.
WTF– you leave reading to write? HOW do you do that!
Thanks for the guidance; I’ll certainly check it out.
WTF– you leave reading to write? HOW do you do that!
Well, I’m not just writing. Making a new adventure for a computer game involves lots of writing (mostly dialogue) but also designing quests, programming, making cutscenes, recoloring costumes, and on and on. I get to do things I’m already good at AND learn lots of new stuff, including things that I thought I could never do. (I’m very verbal but not at all visual, and I would have sworn that making a cutscene of even minimal quality was beyond me.) It’s astonishingly much fun!
How about this– when a male character is badly written, don’t we often shrug it off as a bad episode, a bad writer, a lack of grip on the True Depth of the character by the director?
If people can, for instance, rewrite the Snape, Lupin, or Sirius in their head to fit their fantasy of him, WHY do they hate Ginny for kissing too much or Hermione for being bossy? It would take minor fan-edits to change those things (although I think both girls are fine the way they are. I’m glad Ginny dated other boys instead of pining for Harry constantly. I’m glad Hermione has a strong will and knows when she’s better informed than others, and the rare things she is wrong about make her human)
But I think the blame is equally sharable between audiences for Judging Women By Far Harsher Standards Than Men and the creative folks who write women as “women”, not people who happen to be female. I mean, if a reader hates Terry Pratchett’s women, the reader is misogynist. If they hate Xanth women, they are quite likely feminists who are fucking sick of Piers Anthony and his obsession with teenage girls and their fear of having men look up their skirts. (Not one woman in the whole fucking psuedo-Florida fantasy land ever came up with TROUSERS? Really? Meh, I gave it up after about 5 repetitive books).
And what scares me is that Anthony has several daughters … one hopes that their mother gave them some alternative view of women!
Wrong question, luv. At least for THIS slasher, it has absolutely nothing to do with misogyny or disliking a female character (or liking one, for that matter). It has to do with my personal poison being boys kissing. Kinda like the bar in Dukes of Hazard when Daisy shows up—who’s noticing anyone else? If I see two hotties in a show or movie, esp. if the characters are antithetical (my personal FAVE being opposites attracting), I’m IN! I don’t feel the need to ‘justify’ my particular preference in porn. *G*
no, my question is the right one.
That’s a perfectly wonderful answer to “why do we like slash?” but that’s not the question I asked.
Well, you are predicating the question on a conciousness and an irrefutable fact of misogyny both in the material and in the writing, and I respectfully disagree with the premises. *G*
First, is the material we work from ‘misogynistic’? Depends on the material AND the definition of misogyny. If it’s the definition espoused by those disposed to see all kinds of grand social conspiracies, then I suppose everything except perhaps The Scum Manifesto can be considered ‘misogynistic’. In the case of historical fandoms, writing social reality accurately in gender issues is certainly not an example of a writer’s misogyny. I don’t think anyone would argue that most of Hollywood has issues there both in film and tv but it certainly isn’t what it was 50 years ago. (That isn’t saying there isn’t a lot of room for improvement.) Additionally, I don’t think most folks start writing fanfiction only after massive soul-searching about the social ramifications of the source material. Seriously, did anyone think “Waitaminute! If I like Kirk/Spock, I’m automatically responding to the writers’ focus on male chars and I am a BAD PERSON because I think Nurse Chapel is a ditz!”? Of course not! They said “OH LOOK PRETTEH POINTY EARS! Let’s make them kiss!”
Second, it assumes a state of misogyny in me, which, I can assure you, is not the case, even if I don’t run around wearing sexuality like some kind of political badge. Therefore, I can safely say that I certainly do not write fanfiction from a position of misogyny. I write from the position of a storyteller and most of the stories I choose to tell feature male casts (although I have created OFC’s in stories and am currently working on one in the new Sparrington and I have been sweating over *G*). The question itself assumes things that, at least for me, are neither true nor particularly relevent.
Have I disliked female characters in my various fandoms? Of course I have. Is it because they’re always ‘badly written by evil male writers’. Not at all. Sometimes, it’s the performance of a particular actress (it took Pride and Prejudice for me to become reconciled with Keira Knightley’s squeak—and her voice still grates on my nerves, depsite my loving her perf. LOL!) Sometimes, I don’t like male chars, either. I’m not going to automatically blame my whims on the writer. Nor do I spend a lot of time wondering why I dislike certain characters. If I dislike them, I write around them as much as possible. (I was never really very fond of Yoda–too much Muppet, silly voice and syntax—– except in parody fic–and it’s perfectly possible to write SW stories without him. And I’ve never yet written a SW story with Jar-Jar Binks in it!)
WHEW! Did I get it this time? LOL!
Yeah, I write slash because ass-fucking gets me hot. *grin*
You say you’ve disliked female characters in your various fandoms. Are there any female characters in your various fandoms that you liked? Not well enough to write porn about them, just– liked them, thought they made a decent showing.
Glad to hear there’s new fic coming from you and Elessil! That’s always a treat
Are there any female characters in your various fandoms that you liked?
In POTC, I thought Tia Dalma was a helluva great character. I also loved Scarlett and Giselle and, of course, the Pearl (who needs to be counted here, I think.*G*) In SW, there were precious few female characters to like or dislike, except for Padme and/or Leia. Leia wasn’t bad (if you got passed Carrie Fisher’s deeply stoned eyes). Mexico had Carolina, but alas, she died in the canon flashback, leaving only Ajedrez (and I really liked Eva Mendes–I thought she was great). I think out of all the various movies and tv shows I’ve seen over the past year, my fave female character is Fiona in Burn Notice. *G* (That and Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth I in both movies. But I could have been watching strictly to ogle Jeremy Irons, in the first movie. Clive Owens rather distracted me in the second. I think I’m hopeless! *giggle*)
We’re really excited about this one—it is shaping up into another good, long read (although not Vindaloo’s length) with lots of action.
whoa yeah!
Ajedrez! omigod, I gotta write about her– I fell like a ton of bricks for Eva Mendez, I was all– Selma who? Ajedrez/Carolina femmeslash, mmm… there’s a yummy thought… Two kinds of badass women.
And Cate Blanchette in anything. Now I want to write her ‘Quinn’ character with the groupie Koko.
Telesilla is the current partner of a friend/ex-lover of mine, Darkrosetiger. Darkrosetiger used to live in Boston but moved to California, darn her, so now I never get to see her.
Can we have a chorus of “It’s a Small World After All”?
It’s certainly a small lj world!
But the thing that makes it a small world is that I’m NOT a part of slash fandom and never quite understood what happened when Harry Potter slash became the most important thing in Darkrosetiger’s world. (Now that I MUST create a new adventure for The Witcher, I understand the obsession a bit better, even if not the object she chose.
) But I met her when we were both dating the same guy*, and I met you on Lit, neither of which is slash fandom.
*It’s kind of a cute story. We were both dating M, and one time when M was visiting me, he was feeling down and said, “I think you’re the only person in the world who actually loves me.” I said, “How about (Darkrosetiger’s real name)? Does she love you?” He said, “Hmm. She might. She sometimes looks at me like she loves me.” I said, “How do you feel about her?” He looked slightly surprised as he said, “I love her.” I said, “Sounds like you and Darkrosetiger need to talk.” We had a nice rest of the visit, and then he went home. A day after he went home, I got a call from Darkrosetiger. “M told me he love me, and he said it was all because of you!”
Not what monogamous folks think two women dating the same man would be like.
it’s an adorable story! i’m screening it, though, not knowing how DRT feels about privacy, in fact i kinda think she’s a bit private?
(but I’m only screening it, i want to keep it all to myself
She wasn’t all that private when I met her, but she may have become more so over the years. It sounds to me like the sort of story that she herself would post, but you’re right that it’s usually wise to err on the side of privacy when there’s a doubt.
It’s also possible that she hasn’t felt as safe or accepted in the slash community as she does/did in the community where I met her. As I said, I’m not part of the slash community, so I don’t know much about it. I do remember hearing that she’s engaged in several heated arguments there, though, so it’s possible that it’s not as safe a space for her as the places where I’m used to seeing her.
Actually one argument i was part of, about two years ago now– was with her, and she was very right, and i learned quite a lot from her veiwpoint!