Ladies, Please (Carry On Being Awesome)

[sarahtales]

So I was walking home from the new Star Trek movie, which I have previously indicated I found to be awesome. I was pretty surprised by this, as the Star Trek TV shows had not caught my fancy, and expressed this surprise to my friend, who was a fan of the TV show

Comments

[sarahtales]

Nobody is obligated to love Mae: in fact everyone unanimously liking her would be weird, as she is a flawed person and her traits may get up some people's noses just as much as Jamie's or Nick's might another person's.

I do think that female characters get judged more harshly, especially when they're main characters (more minor characters don't take time away from the guys - like how Uhura in Star Trek was better liked as a minor character in the TV show than a major character in the movie) and are dismissed as 'perfect' more easily.

Naturally the comparison between Mae and Nick's not a perfect comparison, since, yes, they're very different people.

Mae had both boys at her feet, top of the love pyramid. Nick had one girl after him, and a boy who sent him a single glance and recognized him as attractive.

Mae for one might be surprised to hear she had Nick at her feet? She's the one who makes moves on Nick, mostly, so Nick has two girls who make no bones about fancying him. Plus Liannan, plus Cassie from his London school. Plus more than a single glance from Jamie. So I still think Nick wins by attractive!maths.

Sure, she's overconfident in her abilities -- but the second she falls from the rope, I felt like you immediately distracted from it and handwaved it with the next revelation.

Well - yes - plot moves on. Mae's overconfident, so she falls off a roof! And then something else happens. Alan's willing to torture people, and then Nick actually does torture someone! One thing doesn't invalidate the other. I didn't intend to handwave Mae's responsibility for her fall any more than I did Alan's capacity for violence. Mae's over-confident, she's bossy, she's pushy, and yes, on a lighter level, she's messy and she can't cook any more than Jamie can.

Jamie, who's a wuss and physically weak and not all that geeky

Is not all that geeky a flaw? I grant you, Nick and Alan are hugely screwed up, for lots of reasons - Mae's certainly less flawed than they are, as she and Jamie have had a much more normal upbringing. But Jamie is the kindest of them all, the banteriest of them all, the one with the spoiler, and the natural blond while his sister the basic brunette dyes her hair: I just don't see that Jamie's wussiness is any more (or less!) of a flaw than Mae's over-confidence.

The Crawfords' flaws in fact deliberately balance each other out, as siblings' flaws do - as Alan has developed really excellent verbal skills - too good, given the compulsive liardom - in tandem with Nick's lousy ones.

I realise Mae is the only female character who gets the same screen time as Nick, Alan and Jamie, and that's on me. And let me stress, I am totally unbothered by people not liking Mae. Some people don't like Mae, some people don't like Nick, some people don't like Alan or Jamie. Mae may simply be not your kind of girl!

So - I don't think you're a girl hater, and feel totally free to dislike Mae! But I do think that there is a prevailing attitude of dismissing the ladies that influences us all - me included! - and which is something we should all think about.

That said, I am much pleased you liked Sin, and I am in full, full agreement that ladies should have lady friends. (Oh, and I hope you like the vampire collection. :))

[iamintroversion]

Thank you so much for your reply. I do have to think about it, and I may have jumped the gun a bit, and there were things I had forgotten about (the other wimminz) or not thought of -- Mae and Jamie's traits balancing each other out, for one -- but I certainly hadn't seen Mae as kinder, but I read it twice quickly and then kept it changing hands pretty constantly since then. ;] So I'll think about it, but one thing I had to respond to RIGHT AWAY OMG:

ROFL yes being less geeky is a turn off for me. I kept thinking, Jamie would be the perfect boyfriend if only he would put on SOME SPECS YUM and pull out some Kipling. :]

Just like (and I didn't do very much defending her in my post because it was about the things I didn't like, obviously, and you know what her good qualities are, but I did want to say that I did find myself a bit fond of her at times) her being sort of geeky endeared me to her a little. For instance, her having a Bookshop Guy (I'll sure most everyone who is the type of person to frequent a writers blog can identify, or WISHES they could identify!) and her Romeo and Juliet shirt, because, OMG YES.

It was only that I kind of felt that she was the posterchild for onlygirl!feminist. Like, there was no room in the cast for other awesome ladies, so you had to have her channel all of their traits into her.

But, I know that in the second book, she'll have girlfriends (One of which I hope to death will be Sin) which I'm stoked about, because I do love your ideas on girlfriends and trust you to Make Everything Alright. I hope Shadow Magic doesn't disappoint in that regard, because that was one of the major problems I had with that book. Like, even the space for mother figures was occupied by harpies and *gasp* whores. >_____> but (and I might have said this in my first post) I'm ready to pee myself just thinking of the third.

Theonly thing I'm sad about is that, of course, I'll have to see Alan in a drastically darker light, and probably like Nick much less, obviously seeing his actions stand alone without his thoughts to make you cringe but still love him. Hey, maybe with that, coupled with girlfriends and being in her head to see her flaws, she'll graduate to the favorite.

PS. Now that you mention it, maybe Jamie is less flawed, and I don't complain about him. Maybe I'll have to shut it about Mae now. ;]

Thanks again for your comment, and I'm sure I'll adore your vampire story, even though I'm not fond of their place in literature right now, because it sounds like its tongue is right where it needs to be -- planted in its cheek.

Have a lovely evening <3

[sarahtales]

I kind of felt that she was the posterchild for onlygirl!feminist. Like, there was no room in the cast for other awesome ladies, so you had to have her channel all of their traits into her.

Well - Olivia and Liannan and Sin and Merris are all there, even though they don't get as much pagetime as Mae, and I think they all have their awesome (and not-so-awesome) aspects, so I didn't see Mae as having to do all the awesome spadework by herself. They were in the cast too.

I mean - yes, the second book will have more about girls and girlfriends in it, because it's told from the point of view of a girl with friends, and will pass the Bechdel Test because I don't see how a book told from a girl's point of view couldn't (though I know it is done!) But I dunno if it will Make Everything All Right.

Thank you for reading, and for debating with me! And well, Alan has good points that his brother doesn't take note of as well as bad. ;) I promise he will at least be geeky, as he always is. (Even Jamie and Nick are a little geekier in the sequel - well, it's their GCSE year, and they have to study...)