Shut up, Alanis. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP.

[lyssie]

Fuck, I hate the 'Ironic' song. I keep trying to blast it out with Born Slippy, but it's not working--I could not sleep last night, I made lists in my head. I wrote meta. I had Travis voiced by Clive Owen telling Cally and Jenna that they were blown and then Soolin and Dayna joined them as they ran in heels for the car and piled in. Breaking Monte

Comments

[blue_crow]

I don't know, 'interesting' is pretty subjective. There are a lot of characters I find uninteresting- to start, the leading majority male. The white boy that comes from advantage and saves the day? Nine out of ten times I can't stand him (Paul Atredis is like the one exception I can think of- but say, Lee Adama does not.) In general I think female characters, when they're uninteresting are uninteresting for the following reason:

The author of the source material was uninterested in these women and there's no reason we should care either.

I think that say, Padme Amidala from the new Star Wars trilogy is the best example of this. She's basically a prop to have Anakin's babies, and while she sort of enacts things like performing in fight scenes or whatever, she doesn't have a lot of character (not the way, say, even Princess Leia does.) By the third movie Lucas forgets he's even supposed to be giving her character and leaves her to stand around a lot and just be tragically pregnant until she dies. If she had any character it was briefly in the second movie, though most of that was being a prop to be romanced at instead of taking any actions of her own. Lucas doesn't understand her, he doesn't really care, he just needs someone to love his darling male character unconditionally for sort of no reason. Some EU fleshes her out more and she has potential, but in the movies?

I think there are a lot of other victims of this in other places. I think there are stretches of BSG where they don't really care about Dee's development and make her into an accessory for Lee and Kara's drama. I think there are certainly other ways to craft an uninteresting character- supporting her awesomeoness almost entirely by the accounts of other people and not backing it up with action is another- Kate from LOST is annoyingly this almost all the time. Pretty much for me it amounts to the writing in the source.

There are some interesting female characters. They're created by authors who actually are interested in what women are like (I guess the same could be made for men- generic male characters are no more interesting than generic female ones.)

[ladielazarus]

OMG. I am so glad that you said this about Padme because I've always been really frustrated with the way that he handled her.

He did such a great job with Leia, and then with Padme he just... forgot or something.

Also, completely yes on the Dee. She lost character ground until eventually she was just annoying if anything, and that made me sad because I really liked her in the beginning.

I think it's really sad that, after all the hard work and effort, women still don't have the right to just exist. We're all individual. Men get that consideration all of the time, and when it comes to us... nothing. Gr.

[lyssie]

I am sorry that you cannot appreciate the awesome that is Anastasia Dualla.

[havocthecat]

I remain uncomprehending about how the awesome that is Anastasia Dualla is not being shouted for the whole world to hear.

[lyssie]

The author of the source material was uninterested in these women and there's no reason we should care either.

...seriously.

Seriously.

SERIOUSLY.

FUCK YOU. If fandom can take ten-second male characters with ONE LINE AND GIVE THEM LOVE, THEN FANDOM CAN FUCKING GIVE MAIN-CAST FEMALE CHARACTERS LOVE.

[blue_crow]

I suppose that didn't quite come out right, and that is my fault. I meant that characters who are prominently positioned, who have entire things built around them but just aren't interesting aren't really worthy of my time, regardless of gender. I tend to like minor characters in general, as they provide good framework for character development- they're a good balance of ideas that the original content had but didn't get time to flesh out. I was really interested in following your journal because you did seem like the champion of a lot of minor females that I thought were interesting, particularly Paulla and Jeanne. I liked that you were doing work with them.

I'm sorry fandom tends towards men. I'm sorry I think most authors are more interested in their male characters- though there are a lot of exceptions and there are plenty of interesting females out there and they're not difficult to find. I just think the notion that every character that happens to be female is worth investing a lot of time into developing far beyond the space the character has to grow is... not for me.

[havocthecat]

You know, that wasn't just a "didn't quite come out right," that was a totally misogynistic fail.

[blue_crow]

Yes, because thinking some fictional women are poorly written has anything to do with actual, real women and the hating thereof.

[havocthecat]

Actually, it does, because people's fictional preferences are informed by their internal viewpoints, and, if their internal viewpoint is misogynistic, their viewing choices - and decisions to write off female characters - may also be misogynistic.

But, wow, bonus points to you for trying to reword the "you're taking this too seriously" derailment in a way that doesn't immediately get you called out on it.

Thanks, though. You've just revealed yourself as a concern troll and not worth my time.

[lyssie]

But you'll develop the male characters, and you don't get why that is wrong? Why that is contributing to the denigration of women in media? Erasing women--even bit ones, even badly-written ones (and do not claim that the prequel men are in any way, shape, or form well-written) does nothing but confirm that women (and men) do not want female characters.

I am fully aware that women are horrifically-written a good 30% of the time (it used to be worse, but, otoh, it HAD been better). But that doesn't stop me from wanting to write them. Hell, I've written Padme fic, I've read meta from aj on her. Just because she's not worth your time does not give you (or anyone) the right to dismiss her.

[blue_crow]

I think that's what 'not being worth my time' means- but okay.

I think there are a lot of deeply rooted issues of why women and men generally fantasize about being men and not women. Societally it isn't really acceptable for men to explore what being a woman is like in too much depth (which I think is a serious issue) which may be why men don't write deep and challenging women as frequently as they do men. I think most women spend so much time stressing over what it means to be a woman that getting to fantasize about being a man is relaxing. So there's sort of a two-sided issue there, as I see it (and certainly plenty of people finding ways around it.)

Wrong? I'm really not sure there are such intense ethics involved in fantasy life and fandom. I've been using fandom to experiment with my own gender and satisfy most of my questions about sexuality- I've been writing slash, mostly roleplay, since I was 14 and I think that was a safe way to self-discover. I think for me it was freeing to play with idealized men because they were further away, not too personal. BSG was actually a big thing for myself and my girlfriend, because while we'd played with the occasional female character before, that was the first time we found ones that we wanted to use regularly. Maybe its just an age thing- most of the slash fans I know started experimenting with women eventually. I generally don't get into calling people's sexual and personal preferences wrong.

[miera_c]

OK so in that response we have:

Female characters aren't written well enough.

I just like slash more/slash is hot.

I feel like writing about women is too self-exposing.

Why don't you just write what you like then and be happy?

Slash is progressive and undermines gender norms and het fic doesn't, so I don't see what your problem is.

You can't force me to write what I don't like.

You're taking it too seriously.

Fanfic exists for different reasons.

It's not fair for you to judge me based on my fannish likes and dislikes.

This isn't my problem.

Impressive.

[blue_crow]

That sort of sums it up, with a few errors. Lots of females are interesting and well written- I pick at a few. Heterosexual relationships can be very undermining of gender norms and I'm always interested when I see one that is. But is it really so wrong for me to bundle several points together? Several of those seem very reasonable to me.

[miera_c]

You're not possessed of much in the way of self-awareness are you? Or comprehension, curiosity, etc. You may want to actually read this and this and this and figure out why everyone is laughing at you. Of course, you clearly didn't read the post here very carefully (I thought the whole "punched in the face thing" was pretty clear) so I'm not going to hold my breath.

[havocthecat]

Why do I feel like we need to write one of those snarky How To Derail A Feminist Conversation In Fandom post? (OH, WAIT, I think that Lyssie already did.)

[miera_c]

Yeah this may be in the running for Most Epic Missing The Point Award for this year. And there's been a lot of that going around lately.