Female Characters

[Comshaw]

Interesting. After reading through this thread the only comments I'd like to make on writing female characters is this: 1) There are 7.8 billion people on earth. Approximately half are female, that's 3.9 billion individual persons. I doubt very much if any two are exactly the same. Anyone that claims females (or males) have to be portrayed in writing in such and such a way, ignore the fact of those 3.9 BILLION distinctly individual and different people. 2) There are males and females. They are biologically different, no argument there. But under that, more than that, they are both human. To understand what that mean's you need to understand my first point, that all humans are different, distinct individuals. As such, they can be, personality wise, any which way and are not tied to a certain formula because nature tagged them with a penis or vagina.

As far as Star Wars, other movies and how females are depicted in the medium, I'll leave that to ya'll to hammer out. 2001 a Space Odyssey was a great Sci-fi movie, but for my money, one with a lot less special effects and much more substance was "Soylent Green".


Comshaw

 

[AlinaX]

I'm going to talk about Rey, but before I do, I want to say that Finn is far worse of a character. He contributes almost nothing. In the third movie, for the most part he follows Rey around and occasionally shouts, "Hey, Rey!" You can justify Rey knowing how to do the stuff she does with "The Force!", but there's no justification for Finn suddenly becoming a great horse-thingy rider when he's probably never before been around an animal bigger than a bug. As Rey is this raw talent, Finn should have been a mentor who could teach Rey the ropes. In the original, you had Obi-Wan and Han Solo teaching Luke from two very different perspectives. I think the trilogy would have been much better if Finn would have been replaced by a female bounty hunter, who mentors Rey while trading barbs with Poe Dameron.

Now on Rey - I think she's this terrible bait-and-switch character in that she's suppose to be the strong, female hero when in actually Ben Solo is the hero of the trilogy, and Rey's main role is to lure him from the dark side to the light side with her hotness. We spend 2 3/4 movies waiting for Kylo Ren to say, "I've got to have that women - time to switch to the light side." Once he does, then the forces of good can finally attack the forces of evil. So much of the first movie was spent showing her life as a scavenger living in severe poverty, and then all that background never got used.

Oh dear. Why do you do this to me.

1. Finn is a terrible character because the producers bowed to pressure and sidelined him. He had this potential arc of stormtrooper to Jedi, fighting side-by-side with Rey, possibly even a romance between them (although, no thank you; Poe+Finn and an aro/ace Rey, pretty please).

2. The second film changed direction, and I could complain about the stupidity of the plot, but whatever. There was a lot to love about the film, including the abandonment of Jedi bloodlines. Rey was not the child of a Skywalker or any dynasty, she just was. The boy at the end of the film was another nobody with a chance at destiny.

3. The third film lost the plot completely. Like, WTF. It made Rey a Palpatine - entirely unnecessarily - and, worse, went full steam ahead on the extremely problematic trope of Love Redeems. I can see Rey sensing a good side to Kylo/Ben and feeling some compassion, but I can't see her falling in love with him. That is utterly absurd. It ignores years of monstrous cruelty. When Vader turned good at the end of Return of the Jedi, that didn't make him a hero; why pretend that Kylo/Ben should be one?

The point of this rant? You can't talk about Finn and Rey as character arcs across the three films, because Finn's character was fundamentally betrayed even before the second film, and Rey's was betrayed by the third. Indeed, since watching the third film in the cinema, mostly in a state of disbelief at the absurdity of it, I haven't been able to watch any Star Wars at all.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

In the search for common ground - would people agree that I shouldn't bother seeing the sequel trilogy of Star Wars? I did see Phantom Menace, fell asleep in Clone Wars and never saw the third. Actually I never enjoyed the first three films much, either.

I enjoyed Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman much more than I expected to, but I hear the sequel to that is shit, too?

 

[Bramblethorn]

But what about gay romances?
I read MM romances and erotic stories, I also write gay-male stories myself and I do not feel the need to include woman characters just for... I don't even know what for. If It's a capsule, one-on-one romance plot-line.
I'm totally new here, 2 days ago published my first story, that is still pending moderation, It's a story about two men falling in love. Does it really is a lack of imagination if I can't find the reason to force woman character into my story?
I just simply like to read and write about men. I hope I didn't misinterpret your comment.

If GM is your preference, yes, you're naturally going to be reading male-focussed stories. If that's your preference and you're willing to own it, fine. My beef is more with people who want male-focussed stories but instead of owning that, keep coming up with excuses for why they can't find room for female characters.

Beyond that, it depends a bit on the size of the story.

I've written two novel-length stories here (~100k words each). Both are focussed on female-female relationships. But among the supporting cast there are plenty of male characters - fathers, stepfathers, brothers, exes, friends, co-workers, housemates, and the old gay couple who run a B&B. I didn't have to force those male characters in. It would be weird if everybody in my protagonists' lives was the same gender.

For shorter stories with only a couple of characters, sure, it might be quite reasonable to write a single-gender piece. Been there, done that.

 

[AlinaX]

In the search for common ground - would people agree that I shouldn't bother seeing the sequel trilogy of Star Wars? I did see Phantom Menace, fell asleep in Clone Wars and never saw the third. Actually I never enjoyed the first three films much, either.

I enjoyed Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman much more than I expected to, but I hear the sequel to that is shit, too?

I actually love the Phantom Menace. It's a nice, innocent adventure, for the most part, and the music is fantastic. (The other two films would have been so much better without Anakin in them.)

And Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is great. Haven't seen the sequel.

 

[Bramblethorn]

So, pushing forward this thread, here's my question: what's your idea of a well-drawn female character in an erotic story or an erotic movie, and why do you think she is a well-drawn character? What's an example of a badly drawn character?

Well drawn (in more ways than one): I know I'm not the only Šejić fan in this thread, so I'll nominate Lisa and Ally from Sunstone.

Šejić's women get to be human beings. They have bodily functions, they tell bad jokes, sometimes they fuck up and have to deal with the consequences. They have supportive relationships outside one another. They have the messiness and beauty of real humans, which is funny given that they started out as an attempt to draw pure fetish art.

Not much erotic content, but for DC fans his Harleen is also worth a look.

My partner nominates Kathleen Turner's character from Body Heat though I haven't seen that one myself.

Bit of both: Phèdre nó Delaunay from Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series. Phèdre is an anguissette - a kind of divine masochist/courtesan. I felt aspects of her character were really well done: Carey understands the difference between a masochist and a doormat, and there's some good handling of monogamy-vs-polyamory complexities. OTOH, I don't think Carey really managed to keep Phèdre's character evolving as the story went on; she ends up as a hero of the land who's saved the kingdom repeatedly and even has her face on the currency and she's still doing the "who, little old me?" bit in a way that, for me, didn't quite ring true.

(Been a long time since I read it so I might be being slightly unfair to the series. I know many of my friends love it, and there are aspects of it that I love, but all in all I felt it worked better as a single novel than as a long series.)

Badly-drawn: oh so many.

Good character: I'm a big fan of the movie Secretary, with Maggie Gyllenhall. I thought her character, Lee, was wonderful. She's a weird, damaged person who enters a submissive relationship with her lawyer boss, played by James Spader. But the movie doesn't apologize for her or try to fix her. They find happiness together in their strangeness, and at the end they are just as strange as at the beginning. It's a rare mainstream movie that affirms, rather than condemns or pathologizes, unusual sexual attitudes and behaviors. It works both as erotica and as romance.

Seconded, for the same reasons. Instead of "curing" them of their kinks, the story's resolved by finding non-destructive ways to live with them.

 

[windar]

Interesting. After reading through this thread the only comments I'd like to make on writing female characters is this: 1) There are 7.8 billion people on earth. Approximately half are female, that's 3.9 billion individual persons. I doubt very much if any two are exactly the same. Anyone that claims females (or males) have to be portrayed in writing in such and such a way, ignore the fact of those 3.9 BILLION distinctly individual and different people. 2) There are males and females. They are biologically different, no argument there. But under that, more than that, they are both human. To understand what that mean's you need to understand my first point, that all humans are different, distinct individuals. As such, they can be, personality wise, any which way and are not tied to a certain formula because nature tagged them with a penis or vagina.

As far as Star Wars, other movies and how females are depicted in the medium, I'll leave that to ya'll to hammer out. 2001 a Space Odyssey was a great Sci-fi movie, but for my money, one with a lot less special effects and much more substance was "Soylent Green".


Comshaw

This is absolutely true. The genders, races, whatever we use to label people are giant bell curves of individuals in which there is substantial overlap. That is to say, there may be AVERAGE male and female characteristics, but many individuals in both groups will lie several sigmas away from the mean and beyond the mean of the opposite group. For example, the average man might beat the average woman at tennis, but there are millions of women who could beat the large majority of men (yours truly, for sure).

I have written many female characters and those who like my stories think they are interesting well-developed characters. Generally, they are smart and competent at whatever they do, whether a detective or a spy or a doctor or a diplomat. If there is sex in the story (there isn't always) they are as likely to initiate it as the male characters (maybe more). I've written many stories with my female co-author and we seem to mesh things together quite seemlessly.

As for Star Wars, I think the only one I saw was one of the middle ones, because my kids wanted to go and I found it boring. So did my kids.

 

[pumpkindice]

I had a massive project deadline this morning, finally able to get back online, thank goodness!

I will stay on topic this time, and won't derail the thread, like before (promise!)

So, let me do a bit of compare and contrast regarding Rey by explaining what I thought was a good female character. In essence, let me show, by way of example, what I wished Rey had been, instead of what she was. I'm a big video game fan, in addition to being an avid writer and reader, mostly because of my upbringing in the tech industry, which is full of gamers.

20 years ago, there was a game called Final Fantasy 10. The game is divisive in the fan community, mostly because it was a radical departure from what had come before, but it was a massive seller, and it was one of the most popular games of the early aughts. The lead protagonist is a female summoner named Yuna. Those of you who have played the game might know that the male lead was Tidus, but it's Yuna's game, she's the main character, and Tidus is the "romantic interest" for her, not the other way around.

Yuna is what I so badly wish Rey had been.

One of the things about this character is that the game devs told her story through the game's mechanics, this is a way of telling a story that only video games can really do. In the beginning of the game, Yuna is your party's weakest character, and she's your weakest by a lot. Her summoning skills are useful in boss fights, but early on, when she only has a few low-level summons, there's a cap on how good they are. You're better off with basically anyone else in your party.

Despite that, Yuna is the kind of character that catches your interest right away. She's the daughter of one of the most famous people in this game's world (the world or Spira), as she's high summoner Braska's daughter. Everywhere you go, Yuna is addressed as "daughter of Braska". Yuna is kind to everyone, she's young and naive though, and she's really inexperienced and unsure of herself at the beginning of the game. She becomes a summoner because, in her words, "summoners are Spira's light, and I want to bring that light to the people, just like my father did."

A big part of the plot is Sin. In the world of Spira, Sin is a physical being, a giant monster, that wrecks havoc across the land. Summoners fight against Sin, and if a Summoner is victorious, sin goes away, for a few years, and a time period known as "the calm" happens in which people are free of the burden of sin, for a little while. The catch, which you find out about halfway through the game, is that defeating Sin costs the summoner's life; Yuna's father died to defeat Sin and bring the calm, that's why he's so famous. There is obvious allegory here.

Unlike Rey, the single biggest point of emphasis in Yuna's character arc is the need to train and that Yuna suffers many setbacks along her path. The party in the game is on a pilgrimage, to visit all the temples of Yevon (Yevon is the world religion in this game) and to pray in the cloister of trials in each temple to the Fayth for a new summon. It's a long, arduous journey, nothing comes easy. Every boss you fight, every hardship you overcome is to increase Yuna's power, that's the point of the game's plot, so that she can become strong enough to fight and defeat Sin. At the end of the game's first act, you meet Belgemine, a summoner who knew Yuna's father, and who offers to train Yuna. Getting the top summons and gear in the game requires beating Belgemine in numerous training sessions.

Earlier, I talked about depicting physical harm on female characters, but Yuna is never misshapen, but her plot has an awesome arc to it. Along the pilgrimage, she receives a marriage proposal from a very high ranking member of the Yevon religion. The party fights him, kills him, and becomes enemies of the state religion and have to on the run. The entire world crumbles around her, and she is eventually forced to take part in a wedding, which she rescues herself from. Former friends turn into enemies and are ordered to hunt Yuna down for heresy.

Along the way, she gains more summons, overcomes more hardships, and grows as a summoner. By the end of the game, Yuna is your most powerful party member, and she's the most powerful party member by A LOT. By the end of the game, Yuna can often take down the game's strongest bosses by herself.

That's why the training point that is always made with Rey is so crucial. It's not that people can't have a lot of inherent power and that some people aren't gifted, it's that without training, and overcoming hardships, nothing ever feels earned, and without it being earned, there is no relatability and without relatability, the plot of your story, game or movie is boring and uninteresting and bland.

Yuna is a female protagonist who had to grind for all of it. We did the work for it, we went to all the temples, we collected all the summons, we grew our skills, we got stronger, we found or acquired better equipment, we trained for so long, we fought, we failed, we tried again, and won. At the end of the game, when Yuna is completely and totally OVERPOWERED, we don't mind it in the slightest because every shred of that power was EARNED by hardship, trials and tests.

One of my favorite scenes in the entire game was after Yuna defeats Belgemine for the last time, and Yuna is very thankful and humble towards her teacher. She says "thank you, perhaps you'll teach me again someday?" Keep in mind the sheer amount of time Yuna has spent training with Belgemine by this point. Belgemine tells Yuna "That's not possible. You have already surpassed your father, there is nothing more I can teach you." (By the way, Yuna and Belgemine clear the Betchel test, because they are student and teacher, and their conversations are about becoming a better summoner).

That is the return to Dagobah scene from Return of the Jedi, when Yoda tells Luke: "no more training do you require, already know that which you need." Belgemine essentially tells Yuna the same thing Yoda told Luke: "you are stronger than your father ever was, you are ready to fight and defeat Sin."

That felt so damn good, and twenty years later, I still remember it, because of how much that moment was EARNED. It was the struggle that made the achievement relatable. It was all that had been overcome to that point that brought that moment of catharsis.

Now, in the late game, when Yuna is completely overpowered, and is wrecking fools by herself, I'm not bored to tears and looking at my watch, like I was with Rey, because I remember the setbacks, I remember what had to be overcome to get that point.

I remember being at the low point, at the bottom of Lake Macalania after the disaster at the temple, when Auron (this game's Obi-wan Kenobi) re-orients everyone by reminding them: "A summoner's power flows form the Fayth, not from the temples, and not from Yevon." There were more struggles, more low points to come, but that was one of the toughest.

That quote is this game's version of "A Jedi's power flows from the force, not from the Jedi Order, and not from the Republic."

We don't hate Rey because she's good at things, we hate Rey becomes she's good at things with no reason for being good at them. All characters have strengths and weaknesses, what are Rey's weaknesses? Luke is way better at being a star fighter pilot with his only experience being bulls-eyeing womprats back home, than he has any right to be. We tolerate it, and accept it, because next to Luke's strength, he has so many obvious weaknesses. Luke may have fired the shot that destroyed the death star, but he never would have been in position to do that without Han showing up at the last minute to save his ass from Vader. Luke can't do it himself, yet, he needed Obi-wan, he needed Leia, and he needed Han. His own weaknesses meant he couldn't survive on his own, and those weaknesses are why he can be good at things and still remain relatable.

Luke had Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, Luke had Han saving his butt from Vader at the last minute and Obi-wan sacrificing himself to get him off the death star in the first place. He needed R2 to communicate with the Death Star's computer system, and C3PO to translate for R2.
Luke has talent, sure, but he's also an incredibly dependent character who hasn't reached his potential yet.


Rey never needs anyone. She's all alone as a scavenger, flies the falcon with no training, and beats Kylo Ren in a light saber fight after picking up a light saber for the first time earlier that day.

That is the problem with Rey; she's boring and unrelatable because she doesn't have flaws that balance out her strengths, and she doesn't struggle at anything.

 

[pumpkindice]

Now on Rey - I think she's this terrible bait-and-switch character in that she's suppose to be the strong, female hero when in actually Ben Solo is the hero of the trilogy, and Rey's main role is to lure him from the dark side to the light side with her hotness. We spend 2 3/4 movies waiting for Kylo Ren to say, "I've got to have that women - time to switch to the light side." Once he does, then the forces of good can finally attack the forces of evil. So much of the first movie was spent showing her life as a scavenger living in severe poverty, and then all that background never got used.

I just posted my thoughts on Rey in a very long winded way, but Ben Solo is the reason why the throne room scene in the Last Jedi doesn't work.

Rey is fine in that scene, and Snoke is fine in that scene, it's Kylo Ren that makes it not make sense, from a script point of view.

I'm going to be honest, the issue with Kylo Ren is what Dr. Evil once told his son, Scott: "You're the diet Coke of evil, just one calorie."

Kylo Ren is the margarine of evil, he's the Diet Coke of Evil. He's not evil, but he's cosplaying as someone who is evil. He's a confused, young, edgy shit-lord who thinks he's bad, but is really just impulsive, hot-headed, and impatient. He couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger and kill his mother earlier in the movie.

That's part of the problem: the Disney sequel trilogy doesn't want Kylo Ren to go full Vader, they don't want his redemption to become impossible. When he kills Snoke, he essentially kills off the film's big bad. When you do that, you need one of two things to happen: you either need a new big bad, or the movie needs to end. That's why Palpatine dying in Return of the Jedi made sense, for example. Here, the big bad dies with half the trilogy's run-time left to go. The villain has been overcome, and you can't take Supreme Leader Kylo Ren seriously and you can't say that without laughing. That's why JJ had to bring Palpatine back in the next film, he understood enough about screenwriting and plot to understand why killing snoke was a terrible idea.

Disney management's lack of clarity on who, exactly, Kylo Ren was is what doomed the throne room scene, if you're going to do that, you need a credible new big bad to step in, or the film needs to end. Without an antagonist, there is no longer any wants or needs for the protagonist, there is no longer anything stopping them from getting what they want or need, and the plot is effectively over.

If we're talking about what would have actually happened if Kylo Ren killed Snoke, what would have actually happened is that the first order should have descended into civil war at that point. Generals would meet and say "Snoke is gone, and no one takes Kylo Ren seriously, we need a new leader, come and follow me." Disagreements ensue, and other generals step up and form their own factions.

Kylo Ren's weakness means he can't be supreme leader, others in the first order would absolutely sense his weakness and would challenge his position immediately. If the last Jedi had allowed the natural plot of the first order descending into chaos and civil war, it would have been a far more interesting film.

 

[TheRedChamber]

1. Finn is a terrible character because the producers bowed to pressure and sidelined him. He had this potential arc of stormtrooper to Jedi, fighting side-by-side with Rey, possibly even a romance between them (although, no thank you; Poe+Finn and an aro/ace Rey, pretty please).

Finn is legitimately the biggest waste of a brilliant idea for a character in probably decades of blockbusters. Star Wars is always about black and white and, by having someone kidnapped as a child, raised only to fight and brainwashed with New Order propaganda, and yet the first time he is asked to kill a person he feels instinctively that it's wrong - that should be your pure white character right there - there are then a ton of things you can do with him - pacificst or killing machine, ice-cold or PTSD, Jedi or blaster wielder, love interest or not. Instead...

Kylo Ren is the margarine of evil, he's the Diet Coke of Evil. He's not evil, but he's cosplaying as someone who is evil. He's a confused, young, edgy shit-lord who thinks he's bad, but is really just impulsive, hot-headed, and impatient. He couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger and kill his mother earlier in the movie.

The problem with Kylo is that we never understand why he is evil. He's given a Darth Vader fetish which doesn't make sense because he seems some how unaware that Vader (his grandfather) turned back to the light side. The criticial event that turned him bad seems to be that Luke sensed the Dark Side in him and reacted badly, but that's circular - why was there already so much dark in him (again we're told Snoke was influencing him, but not why this was effective). Confused, young and edgy could potentially work if we're given a reason for him being unhappy with his parents, life, society.

I actually love the Phantom Menace. It's a nice, innocent adventure, for the most part, and the music is fantastic. (The other two films would have been so much better without Anakin in them.)

And Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is great. Haven't seen the sequel.

WonderWoman 1984 is absolutely terrible but in such a way that needs to be seen to be believed. If you like the Phantom Menace your in for a treat (a tedious, implausible, unfunny and badly-acted treat but a treat nontheless.)

 

[pumpkindice]

The problem with Kylo is that we never understand why he is evil. He's given a Darth Vader fetish which doesn't make sense because he seems some how unaware that Vader (his grandfather) turned back to the light side. The criticial event that turned him bad seems to be that Luke sensed the Dark Side in him and reacted badly, but that's circular - why was there already so much dark in him (again we're told Snoke was influencing him, but not why this was effective). Confused, young and edgy could potentially work if we're given a reason for him being unhappy with his parents, life, society.

I agree that it could work, but the films never put in the work required to make it make sense to the audience. It stretches credibility that the son of Han and Leia and the apprentice of Luke, didn't know how his grandfather ended up. I think the biggest issue with Kylo Ren is that Disney wanted to have a proxy character for Vader, but didn't want to fully commit to going all the way.

This is the inherent weakness of corporate created films and media: there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen and a lot of vested interests. Some top tier actors won't sign up to play the role of the villain. It's the understated reason why DC comics has spent so much time over the last decade retconning the backstory of Black Adam to gradually transition him from a villain to an anti-hero: The Rock wants to play him in a movie, and the Rock doesn't want to be a villain.

In the original trilogy and prequel trilogy, George Lucas made the movies he wanted to make. Whether a character was a good guy or a bad guy, that was George's vision, and if an actor didn't want to sign on to play a villain, or a screen-writer didn't think a character as a villain worked, well, screw them. Lucas had total power on the prequels and majority power on the original trilogy. They were his movies. Now, that comes with a lot of drawbacks, especially the prequels, which augment all of Lucas' strengths and also augment all of Lucas' weaknesses. People have gone on forever about the weaknesses, but prequel fans, like me, wish to remind people Lucas has an awful lot of strengths, and those are also magnified in the prequels.

The one thing about Lucas is that he could commit to what a character was supposed to be. Disney waffled on Kylo Ren, they wanted him to bad, but not evil. Half measures can be used to effectively show nuance and shades of gray in the hands of a competent film maker, but in the case of Kylo Ren, they just made the audience extremely confused. Exactly what are you going for here?

WonderWoman 1984 is absolutely terrible but in such a way that needs to be seen to be believed. If you like the Phantom Menace your in for a treat (a tedious, implausible, unfunny and badly-acted treat but a treat nontheless.)

I haven't seen the film yet either, but I've heard something about the plot of the film, and one thing I will say: the history of an object that grants wishes but in which those wishes always have a huge "monkey's paw" drawback has a long and distinguished history in superhero comics.

Probably the most famous such artifact is the cosmic cube from Marvel comics. My interpretation of the cubs has always been that because it requires a lot of death in order to release the energy to power the cube, the thoughts and feelings of those souls who were killed have a say in how the wish is implemented, which is the reason why it always goes badly.

I have a copy of out of time #1, the marvel comic that features the first appearance of the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier is barely seen in just one panel where all you see is the cybernetic arm, but the plot of the comic is that the red skull obtains a fully powered cosmic cube. In the last panel of the comic, the Winter Soldier shoots the Red Skull through the back of the head while the Skull is holding the cube, and the cube falls to the floor completely depowered. The implication is obvious: in the last split-second of his life, the Skull used the cube and wished for something. What was it?

We spent the next several years figuring it out, and piecing it together, issue by issue, month by month.

By the way, in a look at how intertwined Marvel and DC truly are, if you watch the movie Captain America: the Winter Soldier, a lot of the film is taken straight from the comic. The reason I bought that first issue of out of time, despite never having bought a captain america comic in my life up to that point, was that Ed Brubaker was writing it, and Brubaker was one of my favorite Batman writers from his time at DC.

That's what the Captain America-Winter Solider dynamic really is; the marvel version of the dynamic between Batman and Two-Face. It's no coincidence a Batman writer wrote that story.

I skipped WW84 because everyone told me it was bad, and life is too short to watch bad movies.

 

[Bramblethorn]

In the search for common ground - would people agree that I shouldn't bother seeing the sequel trilogy of Star Wars? I did see Phantom Menace, fell asleep in Clone Wars and never saw the third. Actually I never enjoyed the first three films much, either.

If you didn't enjoy those, then no, it's unlikely that Episodes 7-9 are going to turn you around.

 

[PennameWombat]

In the search for common ground - would people agree that I shouldn't bother seeing the sequel trilogy of Star Wars? I did see Phantom Menace, fell asleep in Clone Wars and never saw the third. Actually I never enjoyed the first three films much, either.

I enjoyed Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman much more than I expected to, but I hear the sequel to that is shit, too?

I saw the original trilogy when they were originally released, back in the Olden Days, when they still used a candle to generate the light for showing the film. If that fact comes up around younger fans, they ask "did you know that you were watching the greatest movies ever made?" (Or... something to that effect.) Especially if they know I'm a huge SF&F geek.

"No," I usually say, "I saw three reasonably entertaining movies with cheesy special effects and an incredible lack of any understanding of actual science. When the first movie ended, my only thought was 'guess there'll be a sequel...''" A good buddy of mine was one of those people who saw the movies repeatedly when they were in the theatres. I wished him well when he kept inviting me along. Since then, my consumption of anything Star Wars has been passive. I eventually saw the prequel trilogy on cable TV, and have never bothered with the movies that've so consumed this thread and have zero interest in the video games, comics, novels, and all of it.

As to the titular theme of this thread, I thought "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" was amazing. I mean, she was a vampire and all, but, still. Which meant I found Amirpour's "The Bad Batch," well, entertaining. But it didn't quite seem to hold together like the earlier movie.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

It’s too bad there isn’t a thread titled Male Characters to discuss it.

Can always make one. There's much to explore and challenge about the confines of masculinity. Definitely deserves it's own thread. I just don't feel all that qualified to make it myself.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Can always make one. There's much to explore and challenge about the confines of masculinity. Definitely deserves it's own thread. I just don't feel all that qualified to make it myself.

SimonDoom has just opened a thread on this.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/writing-male-characters.1563117/

 

[Bound_Vixen]

I have a really dumb question that I've always wanted to ask, but, why doesn't a topic like this ever discuss the sociological aspect of male and female characters? It's a well-established thing in screen-writing, as an example, but also literature in general, that the male characters work in more situations than female ones do, and that gender is not something that's simply switchable all of the time.

Society, in general, has a lot less patience with violence towards women than it does with violence towards men. In a recent chapter of my current on-going novel, I had a scene where a woman was raped and murdered. I tried my best to shelter the language I used to describe it, I set the plot point in the distant past from the story's present, didn't describe what had happened to the woman, and made it clear that the man involved was basically a super-villain and also a liar. Still, I knew it was a risk.

The issue is that if you want your characters to have an arc, and I assume that you do, you need to be able to beat them down, to some degree, till they reach their lowest point before building them back up. An arc implies a change, and the more radical the change, the stronger the arc is. If the character is a man, for example, you can cut off his arm, then cut off his other arm, and both of his legs, have him suffer severe burns across his entire body, and have his lungs be so badly damaged that he cannot breathe without the help of a machine for the rest of his life, and you do all of that, and you wind up with. . . amongst the most iconic characters in the history of cinema. I try to picture to myself a woman undergoing that kind of injury, pain, and sheer brutalization, and I don't think it would work. I think society would be offended.

I think that's part of what pushes into the Mary Sue problem: I think sometimes, you're wary of those social conditions when you write, and so, your female characters become a Mary Sue just because of the limits you impose on them. In this world, we all want our stories to be read and enjoyed, and pain and harm coming to female characters is hard for a lot of people to stomach, and often, a Mary Sue is the logical end result. Without pain, suffering and some level of harm, it's hard to form a cohesive character arc and it's hard to make your character sympathetic and relatable.

Those are just my own struggles, and I'd be very interested in how people have managed to strike the balance.

Relatable to who?

Sometime a story trusts it's readers to pay attention to the characters. Just because an arc is more obvious in the case of violence doesn't mean it's better.

Outside of the action genre, violence as a means of kicking off a character arc is actually really uncommon. I'd say one of my favorite character arcs in history is from Mean Girls. Which actually has the main character change her style of dress and personality to fit in with a clique, only to recognize the monster she's become later.


Chick Flicks do it all the time. And they're all very compelling stories, especially to their target audience.
If you really wanna dig in and do some critical analysis to see what I mean I recommend watching:

The Duff
Legally Blonde (This one is super campy and cringe but it's got a solid character arc)
Clueless

And if you don't want to sit through a bunch of chick flicks because they're too girly for you:

Howls Moving Castle (Keep an eye on Sophie and the Witch)
Queens Gambit (Beth and Her adoptive mother)
The Tick (2017) (Dot and Ms Lint are solid examples of side characters with their own arcs)

This exactly. My characters arc is about stepping outside herself. Learning to embrace her desires instead of being stifled by insecurity and past mistakes. An arc doesn't have to have violence or physical conflict in order to work. The lowest point at the end of the second act can be an emotional low, or it can be the loss of a meaningful relationship. Shit EVERY Rom-Com I can think of the second act arc ends with a breakup because someone did or said something dumb.

Can you imagine if a Rom-Com had some dude just swoop in in the second act to rape the female lead and leave?

I think violence CAN be a part of an arc, it certainly is in my fantasy novel, and my sci-fi, but it doesn't HAVE to be. There's many other types of conflict beyond the physical to explore as a story teller and they all have the potential to be just as rich and engaging as the next one.

 

[pumpkindice]

This exactly. My characters arc is about stepping outside herself. Learning to embrace her desires instead of being stifled by insecurity and past mistakes. An arc doesn't have to have violence or physical conflict in order to work. The lowest point at the end of the second act can be an emotional low, or it can be the loss of a meaningful relationship. Shit EVERY Rom-Com I can think of the second act arc ends with a breakup because someone did or said something dumb.

Can you imagine if a Rom-Com had some dude just swoop in in the second act to rape the female lead and leave?

I think violence CAN be a part of an arc, it certainly is in my fantasy novel, and my sci-fi, but it doesn't HAVE to be. There's many other types of conflict beyond the physical to explore as a story teller and they all have the potential to be just as rich and engaging as the next one.

I feel like the original point I was trying to make has been missed, and I really don't want to bring it up again because I don't want to derail this thread (again, sigh).

An arc doesn't have to have violence or physical conflict in order to work, but the stories where that does happen tend to be to a male protagonist, and not a female one.

My question was: could you make Anakin Skywalker, in revenge of the sith, a woman? Could you tell that specific story and have those events happen to a woman? Not stories in general, or a Rom-com with rape or whatever. I never received an answer to the question I actually asked.

My point was "society does not like to see female protagonists subject to physical violence, making it hard to tell those stories" and that got inverted to "you can tell stories that don't involve physical violence, you know." which was never a point I argued against.

 

[shakna]

My question was: could you make Anakin Skywalker, in revenge of the sith, a woman? Could you tell that specific story and have those events happen to a woman? Not stories in general, or a Rom-com with rape or whatever. I never received an answer to the question I actually asked.

Yes? Easily?

We've got plenty of tales of strong female leads in our cultural histories (See Artemis for one of my favourites). Warrior queens are not that rare of a trope. A female lead who goes through hell and emerges as a terrifying villainess isn't that much of a stand out.

Here's a little demo:

Annie looked at Padme, and she whispered, "I killed them. I... I killed them all."

She found her voice, steeling herself as she remembered the floor of the temple, "They're dead. Every single one of them."

Padme stared at Annie, as she ploughed right on into her confession, "Not just the men. The women. The children. They were like animals! And I slaughtered them like animals!"

She paused, breathing hard, feeling the confusion and fear in Padme, but Annie was proud of herself. It wasn't that she'd felt nothing. There was mercy in what she had done. She had destroyed something that needed to be destroyed.

"I... Hate them! I hate them all." Annie sneered, chest tightening as the anger burned up inside her and threatened to swallow her whole. She remembered the screams as she turned the temple floor red. As they all ran from her, and she did what should have been done a lifetime ago.

All the same... One small piece of fear refused to die. Refused to let go of her heart. "I... I'm a Jedi. I know I'm... Better than this."

There's no reason Anakin needed to be male or female. Even if they ended up getting char-broiled.

 

[AlinaX]

There are plenty of films with female assassins (Nikita, etc.), and female warriors (Xena, etc.), female vigilantes (Peppermint, etc.), even female serial killers (Monster, etc.), and while rage is a common driver, it's unusual to see (in main female characters) descent into hatred or murder of children. This is why Medea always stands out, a mother sacrificing her own children to spite their father.

Anakin becomes a vile, despicable character, driven by hate to murder children, and yet we're expected still to sympathise with him, knowing he has been manipulated and that one day he will at least 'become good' and kill the emperor, thereby saving his son. It would be like watching an extended Xena origin story and having to watch her in full warlord mode, slaughtering whole families, while knowing that one day she will be revered as a great heroine.

Possible? Yes. Desirable? Not really. Then again, Revenge of the Sith is a painful film to watch, and only the fact that's it's in a trilogy of trilogies brings it an audience.

 

[Djmac1031]

There's no reason Anakin needed to be male or female. Even if they ended up getting char-broiled.

Well, he did kinda need to be male so that Luke & Leia could, you know, be conceived

 

[AlinaX]

Maybe immaculate conception is hereditary.

 

[SimonDoom]

My question was: could you make Anakin Skywalker, in revenge of the sith, a woman? Could you tell that specific story and have those events happen to a woman? Not stories in general, or a Rom-com with rape or whatever. I never received an answer to the question I actually asked.

My point was "society does not like to see female protagonists subject to physical violence, making it hard to tell those stories" and that got inverted to "you can tell stories that don't involve physical violence, you know." which was never a point I argued against.

You couldn't, given the constraints of the first trilogy, and the fact that James Earl Jones provides the voice of Darth Vader, but, putting that constraint aside, sure. Rey is the ultimate badass protagonist in the final trilogy, more so than any of the men, even Kylo Ren, who's been working on his Force powers a lot longer than she has. There's no reason in theory you couldn't make an evil female counterpart and make her a Sith Lord.

I thought the character of Anakin in the prequel trilogy was botched. He should have started out not as a cute little moppet kid, but a troubled, moody teenager closer in age to Natalie Portman, to make the romance more plausible and to make his transition to the dark side more plausible as well. There should have been more foreshadowing of his potential for evil.

 

[pumpkindice]

Anakin becomes a vile, despicable character, driven by hate to murder children, and yet we're expected still to sympathise with him, knowing he has been manipulated and that one day he will at least 'become good' and kill the emperor, thereby saving his son.

That's kind of the point of the exercise: it's a tragedy, you're not supposed to feel good about it or sympathize with Anakin's struggle, or relate to it in any way. You're supposed to have that feeling of Anakin had all that talent, and the entire thing was wasted.

Then again, Revenge of the Sith is a painful film to watch, and only the fact that's it's in a trilogy of trilogies brings it an audience.

The same thing that makes it painful for some to watch is what a lot of other people like about it, and why many fans consider it certainly the best prequel movie, and probably the second best (and, sometimes, unironically the best overall) Star Wars movie: revenge of the sith is the film where the bad guys unambiguously win. Anakin's story is a tragedy, that dooms not just him, but the entire galaxy, to rule by evil for the next 20 years while they wait for a new hope. The darker the night, the brighter the dawn. That's character arc creation 101.

George Lucas knew what he was doing, it's not just the ground-breaking special effects that has made Star Wars generationally popular.

 

[pumpkindice]

Yes? Easily?

There's no reason Anakin needed to be male or female. Even if they ended up getting char-broiled.

Thank you for answering the question that I actually asked.

Now, here's the follow-up question: could you have a female protagonist have her limbs cut off, and char-broiled, and have that be a thing that mainstream audiences accept? it is, obviously, prima facie true that you could gender-swap Anakin in revenge of the sith and have a story, since it requires acceptance by no one other than the author to simply write it.

Keep in mind, before you answer, that writing something that general audiences will accept is a different thing than simply writing something for an audience of one person or a few people. General audiences have constraints that individuals do not have. It's a big part of the reason why many genres of fiction remain "niche" and never become mainstream: they have elements that small, carefully selected, audiences are fine with, but that mass audiences find icky or disturbing.

I ask these questions because one of the things I find fascinating is what the constraints on a story are. Some of these are simple cultural taboos. Some are based on the mechanics of a screen-play, and the simple physics of writing a story that makes sense.

For example, if you want to know why the ridiculous decision was made to bring Palpatine back in the rise of skywalker, it was because the people who made that film understood more about what a screen-play needed than the people who made the Last Jedi did.

I have felt, for a long time, that if a story involved a woman being disfigured in the way Anakin was in revenge of the sith, and then locked into a giant, black metal suit for the rest of her life, like Anakin was, that mainstream audiences would not accept that kind of thing happening to a woman. I think studio execs believe that notion too, and that it's an unwritten rule of how you write female characters: you have to use kid gloves more often, and there are things you can't do to them.

Luke lost a hand the first time he fought a sith lord, Anakin lost an arm the first time he fought a sith lord. Rey did it and emerged just fine, and unscathed. I don't think this was because the film makers wanted her to emerge just fine (although maybe it was) but also because they didn't think they could get away with Rey losing a hand or something similar in a fight with Kylo Ren.

 

[pumpkindice]

I thought the character of Anakin in the prequel trilogy was botched. He should have started out not as a cute little moppet kid, but a troubled, moody teenager

I used to think this too, then I changed my mind and now I think the way Anakin started was the right call. Five years age difference is no big leap for a romance, and I don't have a problem with that.

A huge part of the Phantom Menace is spent in establishing why this cute little moppet kid will become the moody, troubled teenager and eventually, the galactic face of evil. It's jarring to see that good, innocent little kid grow into the moody teenager, but the reason for that transformation is clearly established: Anakin was a slave for the first nine years of his life, he was born into bondage, and as a result, he is deeply afraid.

Fear is the path to the darkside of the force. It would be like finding a football player who has all the talent in the world, the biggest, the fastest, the strongest, can throw the farthest, can catch everything, and there's only one problem: the guy hates contact and getting hit. In other words, the perfect football player, accept he has a weakness that is the single most fundamental part of being a football player.

Learning to control one's fear is the single most important aspect of being a Jedi, and for all Anakin's talent and gifts, he never does learn that control, which ties it to why he has such a strong attachment to others, he fears losing them in a way that paralyzes him. That's why the Jedi council refused to train him. It was all there in the first movie.

It ties in to why I dislike Rey so much: Anakin was portrayed as not only clearly gifted, but as a good kid who just wanted to help everyone he met, however, beneath the surface, all the personality flaws and character failings that would lead him to fall to the dark side were already there in the Phantom Menace. It's okay to have characters that have talents and strengths, however, they become unrelatable if all the have are talents and strengths and no weaknesses. Anakin, from the start, was a character with huge strengths, but also huge weaknesses.