proprietary fannish love; or, who "ruined" my female character

[pellucid]

Yesterday I participated in a discussion about what this whole fanfic thing is all about, anyway. Yesterday and today I participated in two different discussions about female characters. I propose that there are some similar principles underlying both sets of discussions.

Comments

[danceswithwords]

I find that it's easier to view female characters through the lens of agency than through fuzzy definitions of strong or weak. Or, rather, that I define strength in female characters in terms of their agency. That agency can come in many forms, from the more badass soldier/kickass model to much more stereotypically feminine focus on relationships.

So, I find that I get really disappointed with the way female characters are written not because of particular storylines themselves (i.e. pregnancy, romantic entanglements, whatever) but because writers seem to have a really hard time writing those storylines for female characters without robbing them of their agency. So, for example, during Season 4 of Farscape, my feelings about Aeryn's pregnancy storyline tend to vary wildly from episode to episode because of the way it affects her agency--which thankfully, ended up not being that much overall, but was a real problem in a few episodes. And the whole Pete Shanihan mess did not have to go the way it did, because I think the writers

[pellucid]

I don't much like the terms "strong" and "weak," no--hence the scare quotes--but decided to adopt them from the discussions I was responding to. I like agency a lot as a lens. I'm not sure it's my primary lens for viewing female characters, but it definitely figures in--and particularly so when it comes to storylines that have to do with romance and pregnancy.

The problem with Aeryn in season 4 was partly inconsistent agency but partly also the loss of her point of view. Everything in s4 became so John-centric (and even John's motivations didn't always make sense), and I think I could have been more okay with the pregnancy if I could see how Aeryn felt about it. And I suppose that is a kind of agency problem--not that Aeryn's agency was always removed but the rationale for her character (the things she was doing and the things being done to her) was obscured. (Someday I may or may not write the fic where Aeryn thinks about becoming a mother through thinking about her own mother and where her notions of motherhood come from. Because