female characters

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ultraericthered:

raimispiderman:

raimispiderman:

ot3:

part of the fun of the does it like women polls is that everyone sets their own criteria for what that question actually means to them. and i think it says a lot about how devalued womens’ narratives are that “are the incredibly few women in this narrative written with a baseline level of competence” and “does this narrative avoid being explicitly hostile to its female characters” are enough for people to view something as being actively pro women. its the media equivalent of that phenomenon where men view women as having spoken an equal amount when they have in fact spoken far far less. imagine if we used criteria this nothingburger for gauging literally anything else. youre like ‘does this piece of work like it’s characters’ and someone else says ‘yeah they have character arcs and everything. the narrative doesnt even punish them for existing.’ you just have to be like. okay but is it good though. are those character arcs meaningful? compelling? well executed? thematically resonant? the bar is low people it is loooooow

#also leads to stories that have really interesting and well-written female characters being judged as bad#just because bad things happen to the women in them

never forgiving that blog’s voters for how they judged mary jane watson

Thoughts will not leave me alone – I do take does-it-hate-women and similar blogs/articles/etc rather seriously, to my own detriment. But I think “Is it feminist? Does it hate women?” are questions that answer nothing. Because what’s feminist? What’s hate? What’s it?

What’s feminist? I’m reminded of this very good post which points out that feminism means different things to different people depending on how you were socialized, and what traumas you’ve suffered. One woman might appreciate a fictional rape victim being shown to have a complete messy breakdown after their assault while a different woman might appreciate that a fictional rape victim immediately turns into a stone cold badass and kills her rapist. It depends if you want realism or a power fantasy. Both women are right.

What’s hate? Steven Moffat always got a lot of flak for his female characters (all of whom I love) but has never been accused of harming a real woman. Neil Gaiman was lauded as a feminist, a lover of women and advocate of girls and we now know he’s a rapist. It’s clear from his actions that Joss Whedon hates women, but did he create Buffy Summers or did Sarah Michelle Gellar? Does the love Gellar put in negate the hate Whedon put in?

What’s it? Let’s say the It is a long-running franchise like Batman or Doctor Who that’s been going since the 60s or earlier. Does it hate women? It’s had hundreds of writers, directors and producers, statistics are not on my side here, some of them definitely hated women. You can always point to one panel or scene from 1969 and say, “This is proof that this franchise hates women” but then a female writer or showrunner shows up and attempts to put all that in the past. Do we forgive? Is the It absolved?

Can a TV show be considered feminist if even one woman was harmed in all 60+ years of it, even if the perpetrator is dead?

There’s more! There was a debate once as to whether Pacific Rim was feminist – Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro definitely seemed to love Mako Mori, but she’s the only woman in the film with lines. Then the franchise went to different people and Mako was fridged. When Black Panther came out it was lauded as the MCU’s most feminist film, but Disney are involved, and Disney have mistreated countless real women. But on the other hand, how much creative control do Disney have over the franchises they suck up like leeches? I love the show Gravity Falls and don’t consider it Disney, just something Disney bought, but Disney was dictating what made it into the show while at the same time women who worked at Disneyland were sleeping in their cars.

The subject of this very blog, the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, was directed by Sam Raimi, and Sam Raimi has in the past donated money to the Republican party. What 16-year-old me spent on my movie ticket for Spider-Man 2, some of that could well have gone on preventing teengers just like me from getting abortions.

If I (a woman) love it, is it feminist?

I really want answers.

Tbh this all might just be overthinking. But though it’s unrelated, I’d like to touch upon this one part:

I love the show Gravity Falls and don’t consider it Disney, just something Disney bought

Characterizing Gravity Falls as “something Disney bought” makes it sound as though there was a time the show was not owned and produced by Disney. This isn’t the case. Not only did Alex Hirsch specifically pitch the show to Disney, the show itself was inspired and influenced by the old Disney Afternoon shows that Hirsch enjoyed in his youth. Disney doesn’t merely “own” Gravity Falls, Disney is an essential part of the series’ DNA. To enjoy Gravity Falls is to enjoy what generations of Disney animated storytelling on television paved the way for and formed the foundation of. This would be a mark of shame only to one who views “Disney” as an entirely malicious entity and a bad thing to enjoy and support, but the reality is that Disney has always brought to the tables of art, entertainment, society, culture, and big business capitalism as much good as it has bad. It’s just a messy truth of life we can’t really turn ourselves away from.

(Moving this to my personal blog…) See, that’s a fascinating tidbit I never knew. But Alex Hirsch seems to be so bitterly anti-Disney now that I feel like I need to take sides there, so I took Hirsch’s. I consider him the author of Gravity Falls, not Disney. Disney played an important role but it’s part of Hirsch’s soul I’m looking at when push comes to shove. I suppose that raises another interesting question, what do you do when author and publisher fall out?

I guess I look at it like this: When I was a kid I had some Barbie dolls I loved. They were made by Mattel, who have a long history of unethical labor practices. My beloved Jewel Hair Mermaid Barbie was probably made by, at best, an underpaid person who hated the company and all it stood for. But she was still mine!

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raimispiderman:

raimispiderman:

ot3:

part of the fun of the does it like women polls is that everyone sets their own criteria for what that question actually means to them. and i think it says a lot about how devalued womens’ narratives are that “are the incredibly few women in this narrative written with a baseline level of competence” and “does this narrative avoid being explicitly hostile to its female characters” are enough for people to view something as being actively pro women. its the media equivalent of that phenomenon where men view women as having spoken an equal amount when they have in fact spoken far far less. imagine if we used criteria this nothingburger for gauging literally anything else. youre like ‘does this piece of work like it’s characters’ and someone else says ‘yeah they have character arcs and everything. the narrative doesnt even punish them for existing.’ you just have to be like. okay but is it good though. are those character arcs meaningful? compelling? well executed? thematically resonant? the bar is low people it is loooooow

#also leads to stories that have really interesting and well-written female characters being judged as bad#just because bad things happen to the women in them

never forgiving that blog’s voters for how they judged mary jane watson

Thoughts will not leave me alone – I do take does-it-hate-women and similar blogs/articles/etc rather seriously, to my own detriment. But I think “Is it feminist? Does it hate women?” are questions that answer nothing. Because what’s feminist? What’s hate? What’s it?

What’s feminist? I’m reminded of this very good post which points out that feminism means different things to different people depending on how you were socialized, and what traumas you’ve suffered. One woman might appreciate a fictional rape victim being shown to have a complete messy breakdown after their assault while a different woman might appreciate that a fictional rape victim immediately turns into a stone cold badass and kills her rapist. It depends if you want realism or a power fantasy. Both women are right.

What’s hate? Steven Moffat always got a lot of flak for his female characters (all of whom I love) but has never been accused of harming a real woman. Neil Gaiman was lauded as a feminist, a lover of women and advocate of girls and we now know he’s a rapist. It’s clear from his actions that Joss Whedon hates women, but did he create Buffy Summers or did Sarah Michelle Gellar? Does the love Gellar put in negate the hate Whedon put in?

What’s it? Let’s say the It is a long-running franchise like Batman or Doctor Who that’s been going since the 60s or earlier. Does it hate women? It’s had hundreds of writers, directors and producers, statistics are not on my side here, some of them definitely hated women. You can always point to one panel or scene from 1969 and say, “This is proof that this franchise hates women” but then a female writer or showrunner shows up and attempts to put all that in the past. Do we forgive? Is the It absolved?

Can a TV show be considered feminist if even one woman was harmed in all 60+ years of it, even if the perpetrator is dead?

There’s more! There was a debate once as to whether Pacific Rim was feminist – Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro definitely seemed to love Mako Mori, but she’s the only woman in the film with lines. Then the franchise went to different people and Mako was fridged. When Black Panther came out it was lauded as the MCU’s most feminist film, but Disney are involved, and Disney have mistreated countless real women. But on the other hand, how much creative control do Disney have over the franchises they suck up like leeches? I love the show Gravity Falls and don’t consider it Disney, just something Disney bought, but Disney was dictating what made it into the show while at the same time women who worked at Disneyland were sleeping in their cars.

The subject of this very blog, the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, was directed by Sam Raimi, and Sam Raimi has in the past donated money to the Republican party. What 16-year-old me spent on my movie ticket for Spider-Man 2, some of that could well have gone on preventing teengers just like me from getting abortions.

If I (a woman) love it, is it feminist?

I really want answers.

, 0 Comments

thirteensfavoritetoy:

chemicalmutt:

In 2024 we are all getting annoying and insane about our favorite girl characters the way people do with their male favs this isn’t a joke you need to be insane about her. More than that. More than that too

Some of us are way ahead of ya

But then I’ll be a shill for the male writer who wrote her and he’ll masturbate to all praise she gets. :(

(this is said out of sorrow rather than anger.)

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rnorningstars:

rnorningstars:

fandom approaches male characters from a watsonian perspective and female characters from a doylist perspective

by virtue of being made up constructs everything about fictional characters only exists as far as what is told about them, and yet underdeveloped male characters are assumed to have rich inner lives that the writer have simply not tapped into – when they actually did not give them any – and it’s therefore up to fans to rescue the character from the writer’s assumed negligence and explore him themselves through headcanon-ing the shit outta them picking up small bits of characterization and expanding from it, whereas female characters are taken at extreme face value: if the writer did not give them an inner life then she doesn’t have one period, even within the universe of the story where everyone is a living breathing person, and it’s not worth exploring. even when the small bits of context and characterization about her insinuate something interesting about inner world and leave room to spin an interesting backstory and motivations there seems to be no interest in fandom to do so.

“I like this character because-”

“Why are you defending the misogynistic man who wrote her?”

“Despicable”

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There are other things going on in the world right now, far more important things. To be talking about some old men having an opinion on some popular films seems like an exercise in futility, and yet…

Francis Ford Coppola’s comments on Marvel movies, and Martin Scorsese’s ones before that, they irritate me no end. Coppola’s especially, because here’s what he apparently said:

When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.

This comes off as very hypocritical considering his positive comments on the MCU’s big hit Black Panther. Ryan Coolger specifically asked for his opinion and showed him an early cut of the movie. Now it seems he’s changed his mind. What a way to treat someone who looks up to you, don’t cha think?

But I digress…

I love the MCU and superhero movies in general. There’s a few of them I feel like I could say “This movie was made for me.” But, you know, they’re not made for me. The people behind them I feel are fundamentally making them for children, giving children good role models and good lessons. I mean, say what you want about Marvel movies as cinema, but they do generally contain the sort of thing you’d want your children to learn, you know? “Bad people should be stood up to” “Respect your friends even when they’re having problems” “Seek help whenever you need it”… yeah?

Like, take the ending of Black Panther. That’s an amazing scene and frankly I think a lot of real-life world leaders ought to take it on board.

And I think everyone can take something away from “I don’t like bullies, I don’t care where they’re from.”

Morally I don’t think the Marvel movies are despicable, not remotely. Disney as a company… I suppose you could debate til the cows come home about what their morals actually are besides money, but also I think it’s fair to assume that the individual directors of the various MCU movies probably came into the enterprise without any ill intentions. (Or, y’know, hopefully at least.)

Speaking as a former child, I love that more kids are getting the sort of stories I longed for as a 12-year-old… stories with women and girls in leading roles especially. Look at this fabulous list of Marvel heroines, and that’s only a handful of them.

And speaking as an adult, I look very forward to seeing the sort of things a generation raised on MCU movies will create. I suspect only some of them will be to my taste but I know what I’m not gonna label the ones I don’t like.

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@taiey tagged me to list 10 favourite female characters! Okay, here goes, in no order!

  1. Amy Pond (Doctor Who)
  2. Martha Jones (Doctor Who)
  3. Mary Jane Watson (Spider-Man)
  4. Ursula Ditkovich (Spider-Man Trilogy)
  5. Briony Tallis (Atonement)
  6. Eowyn (The Lord of the Rings)
  7. Amy Santiago (Brooklyn 99)
  8. Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones)
  9. Beru Lars (Star Wars)
  10. Marceline (Adventure Time)

I tag anyone who wants to do it!

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hacksign:

male writers writing male characters: This Bruce Killshot. He has over 10000 confirmed kills and is the top leading spy in the Super Hard To Get In Spy Organization Of The World. He is a master of every martial art and can use virtually any weapon with ease. He’s not only a Real Gruff Man but a Ladies man who smokes cigars while Having Sex With Beautiful Women but he never gets attached. He’s a hard Whiskey Drinking Man who once killed an elephant with a toothpick and bottle of glue.

Men: this is so realistic wow such a complex character….

A woman: This is Angela she’s the chosen one of this story and has a natural knack for magic and can-

men: this fucking self insert mary sue this is fucking trash are you kidding me 

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faireladypenumbra:

booklyreads:

sarah531:

I cannot help but notice people only started to mock dystopian novels when women and girls started to write and be featured in them.

People started mocking dystopians when they became formulaic and commercialized, ironically undermining the messages that dystopians had when they were written in an era in which fascism was a very real threat and reality for much of the world.

But if it helps you feel better, Veronica Roth and Suzanne Collins have higher net worths than George Orwell ever had when he was alive.

Also authors like Margaret Atwood and Lois Lowry exist? Hell, even Ayn Rand. They wrote before the era of the crappy Hunger Games rip-off.

Can we please stop defending bad writing/characterization with feminism? Sometimes writing is just bad, and the latest trends with dystopia are, frankly, lazy and based more in making money.

Undoubtedly, but the amount of bad dystopian fiction written by men totals thousands. Go to your local multiplex during blockbuster season and there are what seems like hundreds of Straight White Dude (Who Would Probably Not Be Oppressed At All In Real Life) Challenges Oppressive Dystopian Society movies, written and directed by white dudes. Go to your local bookshop and there probably are literally hundreds of books about the same, and a lot of them are, not to put to fine a point on it, terrible.

Lots of female-centric dystopian fiction is terrible too, of course. I haven’t watched or read Divergent (which is what seems to draw a lot of the ire), it could be awful for all I know, but I’ll be surprised if it’s as boring or derivative as Oblivion. And yet – it was only when the new wave of dystopian fiction that featured teenage girls came in that the genre really started to be mocked and held under a microscope. And most of it was – still is – just the old “Mary Sue!” finger pointing under a different name.

There’s a good post floating around tumblr that goes something like “when teenage boys have dumb,
derivative movies and books made for them, everyone’s fine with it. When the same stuff gets made for teenage girls, suddenly it’s the end of the world.” And I think the same thing goes here.

[This is the same reason I will generally defend Twilight, despite hating it, and the vampire/supernatural craze it spawned. Most paranormal romances are so boring to me I want to gnaw my own arm off. But teenage girls seem to like ‘em, and they’re not exactly a group society goes out of its way to cater for.]

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