Still cranky...

[lyssie]

Fandom is why we can't have nice things. Like strong female characters.

Fandom loves cock. Fandom does not like girly bits or women... Fandom claims to like women, and yet, when female characters appear, they're dissected down to their bones and called all sorts of things from 'boring' to 'unrealistic' to 'Mary Sue'.One of the things the recent

Comments

[hergrace]

First I want to say how much I'm enjoying reading the comments you've started generating. The discussion is opening my eyes as a writer as well as a reader. I try to keep all my characters well-rounded. I have a real problem with stereotyped, one-dimensional characters at any time (with the possible exception of the Daleks; though heaven knows they get waaaaaay overused.)

Now den --
It actually stemmed from catching a comment from someone saying Elizabeth in Pirates was a Mary Sue, followed by fandoms hatred of Gwen from Torchwood.

WTF??!! Elizabeth a Mary Sue??? Getoutahere! I *love* Elizabeth. She's a gutsy, brave, headstrong (and I mean that in the best way), and self-assured woman living in a time when women were not supposed to be any of those things. And not only that, she's *gorgeous*. In a film that, with the exception of her, is all-male, it's good to have a strong female character the little girls can identify with. *sheesh*

Are these same people the ones that moan about Hermione Granger? (I'd rather moan about the way Cho Chang is written...but that's just me.) What about Jenny Weasley? I've yet to watch the Torchwood series (though I've got it here on DVD somewhere...) But still...my complaint would be not the quality of female characters we have to choose from, but the quantity.

[lyssie]

Yeah, as Geoff pointed out, really, we just need everyone written well. It's just that there's a dearth of women being written at all in fandom. And when they are, there's a tendency to marginalize them, or stereotype them (I cannot count how many stories out there have Sam Carter as the weeping Heroine who Needs to be Saved) in some way that devalues them as characters.

The Elizabeth is a Mary Sue comment made me froth. I don't even know who originally said it, anymore. I just know I came across it at some point, and wanted to hit things. Seriously. What else do they want? Her tied-up, needing to be saved? Her dead? WHAT?!?

They probably are those same people who complain.

Torchwood is... wacky. They've got a decent cast, and three men to two women is NOT a bad mix. And secondary characters tend to fall out equally, iirc.