[ SECRET POST #2088 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2088 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 021 secrets from Secret Submission Post #298.
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)]

I shall give you the benefit of the doubt and say you aren't trolling.

I have written two original novel-length stories. The first one had a cast that was almost all women. The second had a cast that was primary male.

Why? Because the world I designed had a system where two people would bond their souls into one in order to become more powerful. The mechanics of the bonding made it fairly likely that the two people had to be similar psychologically, and have to be utterly comfortable in one another's presence.

Most of the characters bond for the first time, sometimes for life, when they are teenagers. I have not met very many teenagers who were completely comfortable around the opposite sex, thanks to social pressures, etc. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not common. Therefore 90%+ of the bonds are of the same sex.

The story has a male protagonist. He is bonded. To another male, because making him bonded to a female would have placed him as a special snowflake and I was trying to avoid making him a Stu. So there are two males. Then there is his best friend. Also bonded to another male. So that's four. The main character is a prince and warrior. Surrounding him with more males.

The females I do have, although few in number, I feel are perfectly well representing womanhood. There are two of them. One is the personal retainer of the man who is basically the pope of the main character's religion. Said pope is very, very ill with a congenital disorder and requires intensive care both magically and physically. She was chosen because she was the best, and she damn well earned it in her backstory.

The other ultimately becomes the wife of the protagonist's best friend. She is a warrior-princess, speaks her mind, and ultimately dies in battle alongside two dozen other individuals of mixed gender trying to save a group of children and infirm adults from an invasion of monsters they had barely any chance of defeating alone. But they held them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive. She was one of the great heroes of the war. The reason I chose her to die was because a loss of one of the other characters would have collapsed the narrative. Those who oppose the protagonists went after the best friend. He was their thrall. They went after him because of who he was. I couldn't kill him because the story would have ended there. I couldn't kill the protagonist, but I do kill the man he's bonded to. The pope is basically manipulating the entire situation in order to end a war that's been going on for centuries, and killing either him or the woman keeping him alive would have ended the story right there. It's unfortunate, but Kan had to die by process of elimination. A male character dies only a few pages later. He is murdered by a thrall, who used to be the man he was bonded to, and who tortured him emotionally and physically for the duration. The two deaths together, along with the manipulative pope, are the reason the protagonist takes action and does what he needs to do to end the war.

In a cast of 12, 5 of whom are dead by the end of the story, I have 2 women. But they are hardly weeping violets and I would certainly be friends with the warrior princess in an instant. Due to what would be extreme political differences I probably wouldn't be friends with the pope's assistant, but that doesn't make her a lesser woman, just a woman with a different worldview.

TL;DR: Quality > quantity, and context of the story rather matters.