post of random stuff

[kindkit]

1) Netflix has lowered their subscription prices. When does a company ever lower its prices? I am happy. Also, I discovered the "Watch Now" option--with my subscription I get 18 free hours of online movie-watching per month. This means I can watch my beloved Red Dwarf reruns whenever the mood strikes me. I'd forgotten how witty Rimmer can be. *

Comments

[executrix]

Actually I tend to feel that men by and large ARE inarticulate, emotionally-incompetent lumps of testosterone; the ones that I choose to write about are more interesting than the norm. I often don't write about female media characters, not because I think real women are uninteresting, but because female media characters seldom live up to their real counterparts.

[kindkit]

Well, I think there's a lot of social pressure on men to be like that, just as there's social pressure on women to be silly and to care about nothing but shoes and babies. To be different is to be wrongly gendered.

Both stereotypes need discarding, in my view.

[lord_dingsi]

Well, I think there's a lot of social pressure on men to be like that, just as there's social pressure on women to be silly and to care about nothing but shoes and babies.

Thank you. ♥

[malnpudl]

Thanks for the Michael Nava rec. I've just ordered the first book in the series. Sounds good.

And as for this:

Which isn't to say that every male character would do those things. But men aren't all the same. Some of 'em are real romantic softies. (Love poetry? Pretty much invented by men. Which, yes, happened because writing of any kind was dominated by men until the twentieth century, but still.)

We do a disservice to our characters, and to ourselves as feminists (we are all feminists here, right?) if we reinscribe the stereotype that all men are inarticulate, emotionally-incompetent lumps of testosterone.

Hear, hear! Well said. I've been thinking a lot about this recently, particularly after seeing a spate of dS fic with author notes stating that the characters didn't talk to each other or did it badly "because after all they're still men". Which drives me nuts. Many of the men I've known have been, when it came down to it, both willing and able to express their emotions, both verbally and otherwise, both romantically and

[kindkit]

I hope you enjoy the Nava book. I really love that series--it's well-written and it has great emotional depth. And good politics.

And in my experience, too, most men are no more like the male stereotype than most women are like the female stereotype. I also think the male stereotype, at least in its extreme version (the Homer Simpson/Peter Griffin/sitcom guy version) is kind of new. I don't remember it being around nearly so much when I was a teenager, and that was only back in the 1980s.

[malnpudl]

I've been pondering a poll about it, but hadn't yet figured out how to frame the questions. I find it hard to believe that most people's real life experience of men conforms to the stereotype -- but it's incredibly prevalent in fic to the point that writing men who can and do communicate about their emotions is seen as bad characterization.

[kindkit]

I think that in fic people are often reacting against the opposite problem, which is male characters behaving like stereotypical teenage girls--endlessly weeping, fretting insecurely over their looks and whether they'll ever be loved, listening to Evanescence while writing bad mopey poetry, etc.). I hate that kind of fic and I can understand why writers try to avoid doing that.

But too often, the writers overcompensate and turn male characters into some kind of godawful cross between John Wayne and Adam Sandler.

I just wish people would pay more attention to canon characterization. Ray Kowalski, for instance, is a highly emotional man and not the least bit ashamed of it. And he talks about his feelings all the time.

[sageness]

Isn't Watch Now awesome? And they're adding a pile of new stuff each week, so the options keep getting better. (I love classic movies, but it would be nice to have a better TV selection.)

Yay also on the HP link and the Michael Nava rec. :)

[kindkit]

TV shows seem especially suited for Watch Now, too, since they don't suffer from being watched on a small screen the way movies do.

[shadowvalkyrie]

We do a disservice to our characters, and to ourselves as feminists (we are all feminists here, right?) if we reinscribe the stereotype that all men are inarticulate, emotionally-incompetent lumps of testosterone.

Well, feminist, yes. (In the misanthropic way of saying, women can be just as awful as men, maybe worse.)
But the problem for me is that I usually only write protagonists I can at least partially identify with, and those (or at least one of a couple) are usually emotional icebergs (at least on the outside), so I doubt I've ever written an outright declaration of love in my entire life (except of course between non-protagonist characters, or a to a protagonist from a side-character). *shrugs* I guess that's due to my personal character flaws playing into fiction. See, the first thing I'd do in the unlikely case someone ever declared love to me (male or female, that makes no difference), is gape in shock and ask "Hell, WHY???" If they then ensured me they were not kidding (or ill, or stupid), I'd excuse myself for the

[shadowvalkyrie]

As an afterthought: I don't only do it with male characters, but also with females. It's just that I write male characters more often, because they are usually more interesting. I like females who are just the same, only they are very rare in books/movies/series, so it's hard to write fanfic about them. That's why I still haven't found any fandom I really like to read femslash in. (I used to like "Xena" when I was twelve, but now I think it's way too trashy. ";-P)

[kindkit]

Well, I think what you're saying--that you don't like to write characters being highly emotional--is different from the kind of thing that bugs me, which is people making specifically gendered claims about how men behave. The first is a writing choice that, while it may not always be true to the characters (some male characters will cry at the drop of a hat) at least doesn't try to assert some kind of normative value.

[pinkdormouse]

One thing that makes me happy about writing original fiction, is that the characters -- of whatever gender, sexuality and background -- can act as emotionally or not as I want them to. So long as they act consistently and/or develop with the plot events then there's far less worry from my point of view of whether some reader somewhere will complain about the fact that so-and-so wouldn't do/say that.