[ SECRET POST #6519 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6519 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #932.
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

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/vDQr15P.png

[(Anonymous)]

I'm mostly with you but I don't mind if the patient and soft female character who has gone through so much is the warrior-knight-leader type who has crushed enemies and made hard choices but remained gentle and nice when the steel isn't needed.

It's more the constant victim poor little innocent woobie angelblob who only knows how to love and cry thing that bores me to death.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm. I don't like that type of female character either, but I think that's my personal baggage. It feeds too much into the general (and sexist) expectation society has of women - to suffer and sacrifice for others, but still remain sweet and feminine and saintly. It really, really rubs me the wrong way.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, agreed. Sweet, nice female characters are a dime a dozen and so they're just boring to me now UNLESS it's a case where the sweetness is a cover to hide how damaged they are or something like that.

[(Anonymous)]

I have complicated feelings about this.

On the one hand, I'm with you. I prefer cold and angry female characters -- or, at the very least, "not nice" female characters.

On the other hand... "Nice" female characters get hate for feeding into stereotypes about femininity; and "not nice" female characters get hate for, well, being not nice! Female characters that fall somewhere in the middle tend to get dragged by fanon into one extreme or the other, which then gets used as justification for fans' hatred of them.

So, here's how I feel. People, in general, hold female characters to higher standards than they hold male ones; and all things being equal, would rather an MC be male. They'll tie themselves in knots explaining how the issue they have with all female characters definitely isn't their femaleness, and how it's actually very feminist to prefer all male casts. But ultimately, they're fooling themselves. The simple truth is that neither men nor women like women.

[(Anonymous)]

OP seems to just like characters that subvert expectations. Nice female characters are boring because women are supposed to be nice, angry male characters are boring because men are expected to be angry. I agree with OP. It's fine and good that nice women exist, and like most people I prefer niceness over anger in my IRL acquaintances. Nice female characters are still too much the norm to be interesting. Sorry society's expectations influencing writing tropes made me a misogynist I guess?

[(Anonymous)]

da and yes, this is exactly it for me. Nice female characters are boring because that's the default. Stoic, aloof male characters are boring because that's also largely the default.

But give me stoic, aloof female characters and kind, nurturing male characters any day.

[(Anonymous)]

DA
Yes, this exactly.

Also nice kind character can be interesting if written right. Her struggle, her active choice, her occasional pettiness and frustration. But you can rarely see it

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but the issue is that overall, people don't like female characters who subvert expectations any more than they like the ones who meet them. Whether a given character is nice or not nice; emotional or stoic; warm or cold, she will be hated, with the latter type likely to be called, "a boy with boobs," or lambasted for not being kind and supportive enough to the male MC. The number of times I've seen women opine that a not-nice female character in a leadership role is a bitch for "bossing around" the men...

I fully accept that I am old and bitter about this.

[(Anonymous)]

So far all of the comments have been about female characters, which I understand. We could talk for pages about how badly female characters are written and treated by the fans, mostly because they wind up in the position where they have to somehow represent and speak for their entire gender.

It's why even though I adored the Wonder Woman movie, I felt Black Panther was even more innovative in its female characters. Wonder Woman is great but it still had one woman in a sea of dudes, whereas Black Panther had several wonderful female characters. By virtue of :gasp: having more than one female character, the women of Black Panther are able to breathe a little and demonstrate more personality, since they're not burdened with having to represent half the population.

And of course, Birds of Prey was even better in that the women had top billing and didn't have to share with a man. I just remember walking out of the theater after seeing that movie, feeling so pumped, like I could do anything, found myself wondering if this was how guys felt all the time.

Though seriously, that's what leads to good representation: more of it. Just keep flooding the market with marginalized characters. Stuff franchises to the bursting with people of all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, and orientations. That's how we get better representation, simply by creating more content. It's why when a male hero fails, no one really bats an eye because there are dozens upon dozens of other characters for guys to choose from. If we get to that point with marginalized groups, it'd be great. No one would have to throw a hissy over terrible representation for this marginalized group, because there would be many many more for members of said marginalized group to choose from.

Though for all the faults of Tolkien, Lord of the Rings is like the best when it comes to male characters. Whenever anyone talks about toxic masculinity, rightwingers have two responses: 1) that we accuse all men of being toxic and 2) Okay, so what is positive masculinity anyway? Whenever anyone asks that second question, you can point them towards LOTR. Nearly every male character, save for evil or corrupted ones, is an exemplar of positive masculinity: brave and loyal, but also kind and caring, willing to cry and admit to their fears/weaknesses.

[(Anonymous)]

I roll my eyes at praise for any character because they went through x y z awful things and remained nice and soft and loving. That's not a hard thing to do when you're not real. It's easy to write a character like that, but's hard to be a person like that.

I can like characters like that if we can see the exact process of how they go through awful things and stay nice, but the writing must make me buy that it's possible and show them struggle to do it. If the hardships are all just backstory we don't witness and all we see is the soft nice person they are now, get your praise outta here.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh man, I think you just nailed why I love one of my current favorite characters so much. He's genuinely sweet and kind but we SEE how much shit he's been through and we see him actively struggling with trying to deal with it and reconcile the horrible things he's done with the person he wants to be. That's what makes his kindness all the more impressive, IMO.

[(Anonymous)]

Now I'm really curious to know who this character is.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the fact that it's hard to be a person like that is why some fans enjoy it. It's pure wish fulfillment.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. I think people like it for the same reason they like, say, the fantasy of a girl as delicate and vulnerable and needing a man's protection. That particular strain of gender essentialism is iddy to them.

[(Anonymous)]

I sometimes struggle with female characters who are cold and flawed and not-so-nice. I think they can sometimes fall under the "Not Like Other Girls" trope and that's almost the same undervalue of a character as the nice female character who remained soft and kind and patient despite their hardships.

I agree with an upthread comment that in general we need more female representation so we don't cherry pick every female character apart and instead see a wide variety of characters with varying personalities.