[ SECRET POST #6170 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6170 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Genshin Impact]



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04.
[FFXIV]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #882.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but the fact that it's not the same when it's done to a male character as opposed to a female doesn't mean it's not "whump." "Whump" doesn't mean "sexualized torture porn," and my objection is that your overall point relies on treating it as if it does.

As for the second point, in my experience, women don't like that, especially when there's a male character who's secondary to the female one. Women will lay into the female character, write treatises on how unfair it is that she's the focus rather than the man. They'll argue in favor of what are essentially traditional gender roles (he should be in the lead; she should be supporting him; she shouldn't be talking back to him; etc) while working overtime to couch it in progressive talking points.

I'm at the point where I think that the true power of the Bechdel Test is that it gestures toward a truth about the modern media experience: the only way for women to appreciate female characters is to either have there be more of them than men or to largely isolate them completely from men. As soon as the gender ratio tips in favor of men; and as soon as men have prominent roles, it doesn't matter how well the female characters are written; they'll still all be "terrible" in comparison.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, "there need to be more female characters and they need to not be orbiting men" IS the point of the Bechdel test. It was never a test for quality of feminism, just for the ability (specifically for thr lesbian gaze) to see and connect to more female characters.

[(Anonymous)]

But the issue is that if they're not orbiting men; if the men are, instead, orbiting them, or at least secondary to them, then women don't like it! They object to the men playing second fiddle, and lambast the female characters for putting the male characters in such a position. Which says to me that women themselves have a bias toward men that goes beyond merely being attracted to them, and it's frustrating how difficult it is to have a discussion about that.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

It's the way it's presented. All the "you're just misogynist" people don't seem to want to admit that most of the shows/characters they enjoy are misogynistic caricatures to some degree or other. It's not that we object to men playing second fiddle, we object to the way men are made to play second fiddle. It's almost always condescending to the female character, badly written, unrealistic, or just plain stupid.

You can still enjoy it to your hearts content, but I want something good.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, there are a lot of female characters like that these days. The example that comes to mind most readily is Enola Holmes: her relationship with her love interest in awful, in that the way she demonstrates her "empowerment" is by being an absolute jerk to him, and him nonetheless trailing after her like a puppy.

But at the same time, my experience is that even when a female character is portrayed as strong-willed in a positive way, as having real leadership abilities; when she has flaws, and motivations, and experiences that have shaped her, with reactions and attitudes and behaviors that are grounded in those experiences; even then, she's still awful.

I am not sure what people actually mean when they say they want "good." I people say they want X, Y, and Z, and then reject X, Y, and Z when they're given it, and this often seems to be because it happened in the vicinity of a man.

[(Anonymous)]

I think a lot of the time, it's a disconnect between what the narrative says the female character is like and what the character is actually like. The narrative will say it's a flaw, but it's like a flaw in a job interview. Which then makes her character seem inherently deceptive.

[(Anonymous)]

da but that kind of thing happens with male characters all the time too, and people don't judge them anywhere near as harshly when it does.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's also a matter of frequency. Female characters are only about 40% of the re-occurring characters, and only have 37% of dialogue time. Main female characters are even less. It's much easier to figure out what the issues are when you are less likely to come across something you want but then it doesn't quite work for you. When it happens with male characters, well, we're basically drowning in them, so it's very easy to just move on and never look at it. We don't even bother getting into the fandom, we never think of them again, so of course the people who don't like it aren't going to judge them, there are plenty of other male characters that we do like. Not so with female characters.

[(Anonymous)]

That's sometimes true, but I also see it when the character's flaw has actual narrative consequences. In those cases, the fact that the flaw is real becomes evidence for why she's a bad person. It's a catch-22: window-dressing flaws indicate poor writing; real flaws indicate a moral failing.

[(Anonymous)]

Antis ruin everything. I love women with moral failings that are treated as such by the narrative. They're so goddamned interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly. I've seen a thousand female characters get described as having the flaws of being "too stubborn" and "hot-tempered," and it almost always turns out in the text to mean "She's the only character who has the correct moral values and refuses to compromise them, and she spends her time vocally putting chauvinistic men in their place, go her!"

[(Anonymous)]

Speak for yourself, I live for media where the men could be replaced by a sexy lamp