[ SECRET POST #6659 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6659 ⌋

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


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[Yumejoshi/otome/selfship fandom]
















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 38 secrets from Secret Submission Post #951.
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/drHirl9.png

[(Anonymous)]

S1 Jinx, yes.

S2 Jinx... got a whole lot of character softening, TBH.

Which, not a problem in and of itself, but vis a vis this secret, does kind of point to a trend of "even women who do get to be toxic and fucked up for a while don't get to stay that way."

[philstar22]

Agreed. And even when we do have straight up evil female characters, they have to be softened somehow either in later seasons/episodes/movies or straight up remakes (looking at you Maleficent and Wicked).

[thewakokid]

It stems from the fandom. People are uncomfortable liking villains because they worry it makes them look bad. People having a hard time separating fiction from reality. The fandom gets like this, full up with people saying "Poison Ivy is actually just an environmentalist who loves the planet and that makes her a hero actually" and then SOME of those people become writers.

[philstar22]

But it doesn't happen quite as often with male villains. It still does happen, but not nearly every time the way it does with female villains.

[thewakokid]

Dunno. Women fans primed to accept evil men but to automatically relate to women?

Male fans not willing to goon on the badguy (like the inverse of the Drako thing)?
That one seems less likely, as with how popular Azula is...

My perspective is I tend to prefer female characters over male and I prefer the characters I like not being killed off. Since there's still a bit of a hayes code hangover where badguys who don't become good end up having to face some comeuppance (Alice from Luther springs to mind).

But then again there's the "redemption equals death" thing although that seems to stick to male characters a little better, but it seems like if the writer wants to prove how deep and mature they are there's nothing you can hope for to stop them killing of your favourite character. Maybe the "it will keep them alive and in the story" is a bit of a false lead?

Could be it goes all the way back to Evo psych and people just naturally assuming that women are the default good because of some caveman brain thing of wanting to protect them? I mean my main experience with this is fandom, but you're in law you know how much more effective and pervasive the "But she's good on the inside, she's someone's mother / sister / daughter / wife" mentality is for female defendants over male ones in the real world.

Hell, here in the UK we KEEP trying to float the "lesser sentences / No custodial sentances for women." In fact being a woman is one of the criteria for the recent changes in the PSR guidlines due to come into force on tuesday, so this could just be something inalienable to the human perception of women?

I don't dig it, but it's starting to feel like if you want your favourite female villain to say alive and bad, you gotta hope she never get's too popular (Ah, My sweet Roxy Rocket. You watched Harley Quinn take that bullet for you!)

[turbobeholder]

Women fans primed to accept evil men but to automatically relate to women?

“Primed” is mostly the effect, not cause. Expectations are product of the earlier fiction.
I mean, there are many tropes nonsensical enough that they clearly could not appear from demand, even if after they were dragged around for years audience may expect them.

Male fans not willing to goon on the badguy (like the inverse of the Drako thing)?

Even if this was so, it won’t be a problem. It’s a question of attractiveness, and in any visual medium as a matter of style there’s rarely just this one character who is depicted as hawt, rather almost every woman in that work not blended into crowd background will be hawt. Or none.
Thus in visual medium with “hawt” style there’s going to be much choice. And outside of it this does not matter. The scantily dressed lady on the cover is only there to hold the customer’s gaze for long enough to read the title. Then not only does it not matter who she is, but she may not appear in this game at all (q.v. jokes about Evony).
So no, any anomalies are mainly on the supply side.

[(Anonymous)]

I am not an MCU stan by any definition at all, but I do applaud them for having good evil female villains in the few things I have seen. Dar-Benn in the Marvels was justified, sure, but she went far too far and they did not soften her. And Agatha did not get softened in her own show, on the contrary. No spoilers, but damn, that's an amazing evil villain right there.

[thewakokid]

I liked Jinx. In season 1. I read her as the protagonist and not in any need of the "but just misunderstood softgirl, feel bad for her, she's actually a victim" bullshit she got in season 2. I liked her in season 1 and she didn't need fixing. I prefer her in the game, but she's a terrorist in season 1 and buddy, I support terrorism.

People are ALREADY deep in discourse about how it's sexist that people treat Azula as a villain, with the "she's just as much a misunderstood hero as her brother who everyone accepts" bullshit.

I don't know who the 3rd one is, but let me add my own: Nu!Carmen Sandiego. She was WAY better as a self driven master criminal, and not this "misunderstood secret anti-hero working for her own justice" bullshit from the new cartoon.

[(Anonymous)]

I know shows that do this but they are tbf nearly all Chinese or Korean shows, there are some western shows that go all-out with lady villany but not enough stick their guns to it I think. Some movies have done this I think but I am drawing up a bit of a blank off the top of my head atm.

[(Anonymous)]

It's because fandom reacts poorly to truly unapologetic female villains, despite claiming otherwise, and general audiences kind of hate female characters from the start so female villains that get to stay that way? Pah! As if.

So creators get stuck in this weird place of not being able to let go with their female characters because the percentage of the audience(me) that is going to enjoy it certainly looks very small. I personally say go ham with female villains because if enough people are already going to dislike her for existing then just run with it unapologetically because at least then she'll be fun and not in this weird in-between place.

[(Anonymous)]

Someone once commented about how many new minority characters tend to be played too safe, so they can get a bit boring. I think there's plenty that are interesting, but I kind of agreed with them and think it's what happens with women characters as well.

[turbobeholder]

The real question is the context to which these observations apply.
Obviously, it’s not all fiction from every time everywhere. This leaves much smaller subsets:
A) the particular selection as such (the problem is “how do I switch TV channel?”), or
B) statistics of desirable or undesirable selection over… shall we say, different stalls in the given marketplace (the problem is “my whole cable provider stinks!”, but then sensible follow-up questions are “what other TV providers are available to me?” and “how do I switch those?”). Why, yes, the dullest corners try to suppress any competition of higher quality. But generally this does not work well, and often at all (q.v. preorder onslaught Play-Asia had with Dead or Alive Xtreme 3).