If your fics don't improve on a canon's issues, don't fucking raise your nose at it
By which I mean: it's all well and good that you think the canon is problematic. Congrats on realizing it's sexist!
But here it is: you don't get to take the moral high ground if you don't do better in your fic.
For instance:
- don't give all the glamorous, dangerous jobs to male characters - including male OCs. If, for whatever reason, you don't think the existing female characters would be interested in these jobs (and that's already applying a double-standard, given that about half those male characters you chose didn't show any interest in it and would be terribly suited for the task), but you need OCs to pad the ranks, make some of these OCs female.
Do not do this and complain that all the girls in canon are healers, or on the sidelines, when you are doing. the. exact. same. thing.
- don't have your sympathetic male characters go "your woman turned you into a woman" and "excuse me ladies for disturbing the gossip session" and "you fight like a girl", especially to other males. Especially when canon showed that "fighting like a girl"= massive, non-comedic property damage!
Especially when canon never once had anyone say to anyone else this kind of thing!
- if you decide to include a one-night stand between your main character and a female sex worker. GIVE HER A NAME. Even if she does end up giving him back his money, and her phone number, because he was ~just that good. Remember that comment you were making about female characters in canon being "a pair of tits"? Takes a guess what you're doing.
- if your canon has a female character in a position of power and the only comments on her leadership in your fic are about the size of her boobs, several times, from sympathetic characters-- just don't. Don't do that and then pretend you're improving on canon.
In the same manner: I agree it's problematic that so many of the canon's female characters are involved in the same traditionally female domains. Do I ever agree. But the opposite "female characters need to kick butt otherwise they're clearly passive wimps" is JUST AS BAD!!!!
Yeah yeah, it's not you, it's the characters. If no-one, at no point, comments on this bullshit coming out of the mouth of your sympathetic characters, then the narrative is fucking well endorsing it.
IN CONCLUSION: YOUR OWN PREJUDICES. EXAMINE THEM IF YOU WANT TO BE PERTINENT.
This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/136731.html. There are
comments there.
But here it is: you don't get to take the moral high ground if you don't do better in your fic.
For instance:
- don't give all the glamorous, dangerous jobs to male characters - including male OCs. If, for whatever reason, you don't think the existing female characters would be interested in these jobs (and that's already applying a double-standard, given that about half those male characters you chose didn't show any interest in it and would be terribly suited for the task), but you need OCs to pad the ranks, make some of these OCs female.
Do not do this and complain that all the girls in canon are healers, or on the sidelines, when you are doing. the. exact. same. thing.
- don't have your sympathetic male characters go "your woman turned you into a woman" and "excuse me ladies for disturbing the gossip session" and "you fight like a girl", especially to other males. Especially when canon showed that "fighting like a girl"= massive, non-comedic property damage!
Especially when canon never once had anyone say to anyone else this kind of thing!
- if you decide to include a one-night stand between your main character and a female sex worker. GIVE HER A NAME. Even if she does end up giving him back his money, and her phone number, because he was ~just that good. Remember that comment you were making about female characters in canon being "a pair of tits"? Takes a guess what you're doing.
- if your canon has a female character in a position of power and the only comments on her leadership in your fic are about the size of her boobs, several times, from sympathetic characters-- just don't. Don't do that and then pretend you're improving on canon.
In the same manner: I agree it's problematic that so many of the canon's female characters are involved in the same traditionally female domains. Do I ever agree. But the opposite "female characters need to kick butt otherwise they're clearly passive wimps" is JUST AS BAD!!!!
Yeah yeah, it's not you, it's the characters. If no-one, at no point, comments on this bullshit coming out of the mouth of your sympathetic characters, then the narrative is fucking well endorsing it.
IN CONCLUSION: YOUR OWN PREJUDICES. EXAMINE THEM IF YOU WANT TO BE PERTINENT.
This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/136731.html. There are
comments there.