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I'm almost surprised it took so long for the slash slapfight to get to the subtopic of "I don't write female characters because I am totally unable to identify with my own gender/if you dislike any female characters you're the one at fault" (with a side branch of "okay, but you're obligated to search through the find them")
It's always kind of weird viewing this from a mostly OC fandom, where you don't have to worry about canon women if you don't want to.
Anyway, what I find interesting about this is that some people are trying to point out how if characters are lame they're called lame and if they're competent they're called sues, which is a valiant effort that misses an important point: it's often true.
I mean, take Sakura from Naruto. I first heard about this on fanficrants, where people were endlessly bemoaning how people bash Sakura and why are women such misogynists? And I was all set up to like Sakura. Then I actually saw the show and dear god, Sakura sucks. Her bits in the fight scenes are basically like when they cut to the cheerleaders in Yugioh, only if the cheerleaders were actually taking part in the duels and just stood there like idiots anyway. Then the author tried to make Sakura badass by showing how determined she was, and yeah, it was really badass, but the whole tension amounted to "Sakura sucks so much that with only her to fight they're in real, legitimate danger!" and then it got resolved first by a guy helping her out, and then by another guy beating the shit out of everyone, and Sakura went back to being pathetic. Then finally the author decided to "fix" Sakura, not by actually giving her the traits she'd been claimed to have, which mostly revolved around being very good at the technical skills of ninjaing/tactics, but by saying chakra control = punching very hard, and also she's got super healing abilities. IT IS SO ORIGINAL SEE SHE IS FEMALE BUT ALSO GOOD AT PUNCHING OH MY GOD BEST IDEA. Also she is now a copy of the only other female character given any real screen time.
And then people were all "okay, I admit she used to suck, but now she's a strong character and only misogynists could hate her." No, now she's a sue - she got a random, stupid grab-bag powerup. Because at no point was Sakura ever written as a character. The only female character in the show was Hinata. The rest are female.
And there are a lot of other characters that aren't objectionable in themselves, just not very good, and, like with Sakura, "fixing" = grafting random traits onto them. Like Kairi. Okay, no, she's not a sue because she gets that keyblade for five seconds. It just doesn't address any of the existing Kairi problems (OH HAI I BASICALLY DON'T EXIST FOR THIS STORYLINE) in favor of giving her a bonus trait, and which if you try to develop her character, you now run into the problem of her turning into a sue - she's got a keyblade because, as far as I can tell, "keyblades are kewl". So if we take her seriously as a character, she's better than Sora (keyblade + princess of heart), and if we ignore her abilities she's an even worse character, and that's without even bringing up that Kairi is the only person on the entire island in the game's opening (including the one other girl) who isn't shown fighting so either we ignore that and just say she's skilled or we take that into account and right back at sucking and that's not even getting into that the more people have a keyblade, the less impressive existing keybladers are, and...
Basically, a lot of female characters are not being written well, and therefore exist on a continuum of pathetic/sue. They are at no point actual people. This means that female characters can end up looking, on paper, like they're the same as male ones in terms of backstory and skills and yet be horrible, horrible characters.
I realized this because I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks, mostly fantasy. My realization crystallized with the Bartimeus trilogy and the introduction of Kitty-Sue. Which will be next post, because it will be very long.
It's always kind of weird viewing this from a mostly OC fandom, where you don't have to worry about canon women if you don't want to.
Anyway, what I find interesting about this is that some people are trying to point out how if characters are lame they're called lame and if they're competent they're called sues, which is a valiant effort that misses an important point: it's often true.
I mean, take Sakura from Naruto. I first heard about this on fanficrants, where people were endlessly bemoaning how people bash Sakura and why are women such misogynists? And I was all set up to like Sakura. Then I actually saw the show and dear god, Sakura sucks. Her bits in the fight scenes are basically like when they cut to the cheerleaders in Yugioh, only if the cheerleaders were actually taking part in the duels and just stood there like idiots anyway. Then the author tried to make Sakura badass by showing how determined she was, and yeah, it was really badass, but the whole tension amounted to "Sakura sucks so much that with only her to fight they're in real, legitimate danger!" and then it got resolved first by a guy helping her out, and then by another guy beating the shit out of everyone, and Sakura went back to being pathetic. Then finally the author decided to "fix" Sakura, not by actually giving her the traits she'd been claimed to have, which mostly revolved around being very good at the technical skills of ninjaing/tactics, but by saying chakra control = punching very hard, and also she's got super healing abilities. IT IS SO ORIGINAL SEE SHE IS FEMALE BUT ALSO GOOD AT PUNCHING OH MY GOD BEST IDEA. Also she is now a copy of the only other female character given any real screen time.
And then people were all "okay, I admit she used to suck, but now she's a strong character and only misogynists could hate her." No, now she's a sue - she got a random, stupid grab-bag powerup. Because at no point was Sakura ever written as a character. The only female character in the show was Hinata. The rest are female.
And there are a lot of other characters that aren't objectionable in themselves, just not very good, and, like with Sakura, "fixing" = grafting random traits onto them. Like Kairi. Okay, no, she's not a sue because she gets that keyblade for five seconds. It just doesn't address any of the existing Kairi problems (OH HAI I BASICALLY DON'T EXIST FOR THIS STORYLINE) in favor of giving her a bonus trait, and which if you try to develop her character, you now run into the problem of her turning into a sue - she's got a keyblade because, as far as I can tell, "keyblades are kewl". So if we take her seriously as a character, she's better than Sora (keyblade + princess of heart), and if we ignore her abilities she's an even worse character, and that's without even bringing up that Kairi is the only person on the entire island in the game's opening (including the one other girl) who isn't shown fighting so either we ignore that and just say she's skilled or we take that into account and right back at sucking and that's not even getting into that the more people have a keyblade, the less impressive existing keybladers are, and...
Basically, a lot of female characters are not being written well, and therefore exist on a continuum of pathetic/sue. They are at no point actual people. This means that female characters can end up looking, on paper, like they're the same as male ones in terms of backstory and skills and yet be horrible, horrible characters.
I realized this because I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks, mostly fantasy. My realization crystallized with the Bartimeus trilogy and the introduction of Kitty-Sue. Which will be next post, because it will be very long.
no subject
That's the explanation I hear for slash a lot: The female characters have no personality except to be sissy and/or bitchy and their interaction with the male characters is formulaic and forced and not nearly as interesting as the dynamic the male characters have with each other. I think the least of it is called the Bechdel Test.
no subject
Women are certainly portrayed terribly in a lot of visual media, but what I find even odder is that even in things like books, which are best able to give development to side characters and easily pass Bechdel Test level stuff, the female characters are just not right. It's something almost, but not quite, the whole madonna/whore complex, where the good ones are hanging out on pedestals and the bad ones are caricatures of evil femininity. Male characters can have real traits and flaws, and other characters usually can like/dislike them without it being a barometer of if they're good or evil. I think it ends up tying back to the idea the male character is default - women are either there to make a point about the fact they're female, or the author tries too hard on them, or the author feels women are some rare other species and can't write them properly.
(There are still plenty of good female characters in books - mostly, I find it striking because in bad books, the male characters are just bland while the female ones are terrible, and in a number of decent books, the male characters are fine and the female ones are this sudden, jarring awfulness.)