The comments are pretty shite, especially the ones that think they're being nice. Ugh.
Back in my other life when I was in a writing program, nearly all of my guy friends in it would complain to me that it was impossible to 'write women' and would I tell them, since they were stretching so far as to attempt to write a female protagonist, would I tell them what 'a woman' would do/say? Because male characters are individuals, but female characters, like females themselves, all come from a single template.
And these (mostly) weren't bad fellas, and they'd all (mostly) had contact and even relationships with actual individual women...
I dunno. I am part of the problem, because I totally criticise female characters that their creators are trying to do something different with more harshly than male or stereotypical female characters - you should hear my many rants on Buffy. Or not, actually :) I just get angry that, no matter how the character is set up, there's always these sort of 'checkpoints' that establish that underneath the individuality, she's really a 'woman' (ie loves uncomfortable shoes and hates not looking pretty and makes unreasonable demands on men who just want to get along with her), so it's ok. She's still the deviation from the norm no person could expect to understand or identify with.
One way I have seen to draw a gender-neutral audience to a female main, which is sort of distasteful if not part of the original idea, is overt visual sexuality - the Lara Croft / Xena Warrior Princess mold. Which...eh. I'm not saying the sexless polar alternative is better, but to me this just falls back into the Woman = Must Emphasise Boobs At All Time Or Cease To Exist trope referenced above.
My ideal in this sense would be the female protaginist option in Fallout 3, where you can choose to run around in cute Raider armor, but when you get serious about protection, you grab the gender-neutral power armor.
Since this comment is flying all over the place, I'm just going to stop now and find some coffee :)
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Date: 2010-01-31 12:02 pm (UTC)Back in my other life when I was in a writing program, nearly all of my guy friends in it would complain to me that it was impossible to 'write women' and would I tell them, since they were stretching so far as to attempt to write a female protagonist, would I tell them what 'a woman' would do/say? Because male characters are individuals, but female characters, like females themselves, all come from a single template.
And these (mostly) weren't bad fellas, and they'd all (mostly) had contact and even relationships with actual individual women...
I dunno. I am part of the problem, because I totally criticise female characters that their creators are trying to do something different with more harshly than male or stereotypical female characters - you should hear my many rants on Buffy. Or not, actually :) I just get angry that, no matter how the character is set up, there's always these sort of 'checkpoints' that establish that underneath the individuality, she's really a 'woman' (ie loves uncomfortable shoes and hates not looking pretty and makes unreasonable demands on men who just want to get along with her), so it's ok. She's still the deviation from the norm no person could expect to understand or identify with.
One way I have seen to draw a gender-neutral audience to a female main, which is sort of distasteful if not part of the original idea, is overt visual sexuality - the Lara Croft / Xena Warrior Princess mold. Which...eh. I'm not saying the sexless polar alternative is better, but to me this just falls back into the Woman = Must Emphasise Boobs At All Time Or Cease To Exist trope referenced above.
My ideal in this sense would be the female protaginist option in Fallout 3, where you can choose to run around in cute Raider armor, but when you get serious about protection, you grab the gender-neutral power armor.
Since this comment is flying all over the place, I'm just going to stop now and find some coffee :)