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Shut up, Alanis. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP.
Fuck, I hate the 'Ironic' song. I keep trying to blast it out with Born Slippy, but it's not working--I could not sleep last night, I made lists in my head. I wrote meta. I had Travis voiced by Clive Owen telling Cally and Jenna that they were blown and then Soolin and Dayna joined them as they ran in heels for the car and piled in. Breaking Monte Carlo might not be so easy.
1. The next person to say "There are no interesting female characters" is getting punched in the face. (this is not a result of someone actually saying it, ftr)
2. I need to sit down and spill out my thought about why a woman is not anymore interesting when she's 'breaking gender roles' and that this idea is so fucked up and is WHY so many female characters are boring. The issues isn't breaking them, it's variety, dammit. It's not limiting women to babies, victims, love interests, little sisters and hookers.
3. I had a thought about the gritty realities and dark underbellies of society and how Blake's 7 was doing that before anyone else and Twin Peaks did it (with more emphasis on "WOMEN ARE VICTIMS" but it was brutal and harsh) and how Dollhouse is now doing it with titillation and "aren't women pretty dolls while they're being raped?" And how none of that is going to change, because the media likes its victimized women, and the trope is never going away and that is possibly the most depressing thing ever. (this is not a condemnation of people liking any of those shows, it's just frustration)
4. Thank god for winamp.
5. I am making a list. I am going to make a goddamn list and talk about how the shows and the fandoms are crap at this, that and the other thing, but HERE ARE THOSE WOMEN YOU CLAIM DON'T EXIST. Here is the original list.
6. I should maybe eat breakfast.
7. Incidentally, Crossfade is the Shinedown of 200....er, 4, wasn't it?
1. The next person to say "There are no interesting female characters" is getting punched in the face. (this is not a result of someone actually saying it, ftr)
2. I need to sit down and spill out my thought about why a woman is not anymore interesting when she's 'breaking gender roles' and that this idea is so fucked up and is WHY so many female characters are boring. The issues isn't breaking them, it's variety, dammit. It's not limiting women to babies, victims, love interests, little sisters and hookers.
3. I had a thought about the gritty realities and dark underbellies of society and how Blake's 7 was doing that before anyone else and Twin Peaks did it (with more emphasis on "WOMEN ARE VICTIMS" but it was brutal and harsh) and how Dollhouse is now doing it with titillation and "aren't women pretty dolls while they're being raped?" And how none of that is going to change, because the media likes its victimized women, and the trope is never going away and that is possibly the most depressing thing ever. (this is not a condemnation of people liking any of those shows, it's just frustration)
4. Thank god for winamp.
5. I am making a list. I am going to make a goddamn list and talk about how the shows and the fandoms are crap at this, that and the other thing, but HERE ARE THOSE WOMEN YOU CLAIM DON'T EXIST. Here is the original list.
6. I should maybe eat breakfast.
7. Incidentally, Crossfade is the Shinedown of 200....er, 4, wasn't it?
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Yes. Please. *sits up and begs*
Because this whole conversation/debate/meta series is making me furious. Now, apparently, women are only interesting when they're not being traditional so that traditional is, by definition, always bad? I just ... I don't even know where to start.
5. I am making a list. I am going to make a goddamn list and talk about how the shows and the fandoms are crap at this, that and the other thing, but HERE ARE THOSE WOMEN YOU CLAIM DON'T EXIST.
Wants it, Preciousssss. Wants it, I do. :-)
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And that list may kill me. I want to have thoughts on each show (like, NCIS, love it though I do, is atrocious at saying "sexism is bad" it's excellent at saying, "sexism! exists!" but not on the former part).
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*giggle* No disowning, because if we were going that route, you'd have disowned me long ago for not watching a 1/3 of the shows you watch and write about regularly. Trainspotting is challenging, honestly. The book more so than the movie. But they are both also hilarious and disturbing and thought provoking and entertaining all at the same time. Most of all, the movie has a frakking awesome soundtrack!
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3. I know. I think my biggest issue is the way shows are portraying it as exciting/enticing (SVU is really bad about that, too)
5. I don't actually even care if they ARE awesome. If they exist? They go on a list. If fucking bit part male characters can get reams of fic about them, so should the bit-part women.
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The author of the source material was uninterested in these women and there's no reason we should care either.
I think that say, Padme Amidala from the new Star Wars trilogy is the best example of this. She's basically a prop to have Anakin's babies, and while she sort of enacts things like performing in fight scenes or whatever, she doesn't have a lot of character (not the way, say, even Princess Leia does.) By the third movie Lucas forgets he's even supposed to be giving her character and leaves her to stand around a lot and just be tragically pregnant until she dies. If she had any character it was briefly in the second movie, though most of that was being a prop to be romanced at instead of taking any actions of her own. Lucas doesn't understand her, he doesn't really care, he just needs someone to love his darling male character unconditionally for sort of no reason. Some EU fleshes her out more and she has potential, but in the movies?
I think there are a lot of other victims of this in other places. I think there are stretches of BSG where they don't really care about Dee's development and make her into an accessory for Lee and Kara's drama. I think there are certainly other ways to craft an uninteresting character- supporting her awesomeoness almost entirely by the accounts of other people and not backing it up with action is another- Kate from LOST is annoyingly this almost all the time. Pretty much for me it amounts to the writing in the source.
There are some interesting female characters. They're created by authors who actually are interested in what women are like (I guess the same could be made for men- generic male characters are no more interesting than generic female ones.)
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He did such a great job with Leia, and then with Padme he just... forgot or something.
Also, completely yes on the Dee. She lost character ground until eventually she was just annoying if anything, and that made me sad because I really liked her in the beginning.
I think it's really sad that, after all the hard work and effort, women still don't have the right to just exist. We're all individual. Men get that consideration all of the time, and when it comes to us... nothing. Gr.
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...seriously.
Seriously.
SERIOUSLY.
FUCK YOU. If fandom can take ten-second male characters with ONE LINE AND GIVE THEM LOVE, THEN FANDOM CAN FUCKING GIVE MAIN-CAST FEMALE CHARACTERS LOVE.
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I'm sorry fandom tends towards men. I'm sorry I think most authors are more interested in their male characters- though there are a lot of exceptions and there are plenty of interesting females out there and they're not difficult to find. I just think the notion that every character that happens to be female is worth investing a lot of time into developing far beyond the space the character has to grow is... not for me.
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But, wow, bonus points to you for trying to reword the "you're taking this too seriously" derailment in a way that doesn't immediately get you called out on it.
Thanks, though. You've just revealed yourself as a concern troll and not worth my time.
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I am fully aware that women are horrifically-written a good 30% of the time (it used to be worse, but, otoh, it HAD been better). But that doesn't stop me from wanting to write them. Hell, I've written Padme fic, I've read meta from
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I think there are a lot of deeply rooted issues of why women and men generally fantasize about being men and not women. Societally it isn't really acceptable for men to explore what being a woman is like in too much depth (which I think is a serious issue) which may be why men don't write deep and challenging women as frequently as they do men. I think most women spend so much time stressing over what it means to be a woman that getting to fantasize about being a man is relaxing. So there's sort of a two-sided issue there, as I see it (and certainly plenty of people finding ways around it.)
Wrong? I'm really not sure there are such intense ethics involved in fantasy life and fandom. I've been using fandom to experiment with my own gender and satisfy most of my questions about sexuality- I've been writing slash, mostly roleplay, since I was 14 and I think that was a safe way to self-discover. I think for me it was freeing to play with idealized men because they were further away, not too personal. BSG was actually a big thing for myself and my girlfriend, because while we'd played with the occasional female character before, that was the first time we found ones that we wanted to use regularly. Maybe its just an age thing- most of the slash fans I know started experimenting with women eventually. I generally don't get into calling people's sexual and personal preferences wrong.
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Female characters aren't written well enough.
I just like slash more/slash is hot.
I feel like writing about women is too self-exposing.
Why don't you just write what you like then and be happy?
Slash is progressive and undermines gender norms and het fic doesn't, so I don't see what your problem is.
You can't force me to write what I don't like.
You're taking it too seriously.
Fanfic exists for different reasons.
It's not fair for you to judge me based on my fannish likes and dislikes.
This isn't my problem.
Impressive.
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Dollhouse has one sole redeeming factor, and that is an excellent cast, most of whom were largely unknown to the US TV audience beforehand. If Dichen Lachman and Evver Gjojak go 5 minutes without new shows, there is no justice. Oh, ick, there's another episode left to air. Depressed again.
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*pats*
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I have only seen 2 eps of s2, and so can delude myself that way.
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I kind of want a Carla Gugino movie and tv show fest now. Just so I can make everyone watch Sea Creature, with its telepathic mermaid fpreg.
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I love that movie.