[ SECRET POST #2181 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2181 ⌋

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

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.


__________________________________________________



13.


__________________________________________________



14.


__________________________________________________



15.


__________________________________________________














Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 100 secrets from Secret Submission Post #312.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 2 (again) - repeat ], [ 4 - trolls ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I'm not the OP, and I generally prefer stories with a pretty even gender balance if there's not a reason for the story to be skewed (WWI army soldiers in the field, etc.). But I have to say an all-male cast and an all-female cast aren't really comparable. For years, when studies came out estimating the proportion of male to female characters in movies, TV shows, books, etc. it'd come out 70% male, 80%, or worse. Considering that half the population is female, that's pretty weird.

Now, webcomics, I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers are much more even than traditional media. Actually, traditional media's finally started to get a lot better, too. But historically, stories have often been filled with men except for a token female love interest, even when there was no reason for it. Now, a cast of all female characters can still be incredibly sexist, obviously (some porn, harem anime), but I'm talking about general trends here.

[bored_bitch]

I am just getting sick of this "battle of the sexes" bullshit, in general.
I don't quite understand why a character has to have super special vagina parts for me to relate to them. I relate to male and female characters based on their personalities.
I think it's shallow and limiting. Like if I could only relate to characters with blue hair because I have blue hair, or blue eyes because I have blue eyes.

I don't even really understand why gender comes so strongly into play.
A character's choices, experiences, and personality can be any amount of things, regardless of the genitals they have.

[ex_mek82]

If I could 'Like' a comment, I'd like this one several times over.

[(Anonymous)]

*tries to find the like button*

[(Anonymous)]

It's not so much about being able to relate to a character. It's just basic diversity. No country in the world is exclusively populated by white males for fuckssakes.

I for one get very happy when I see a female character, or several of them, that AREN'T your token conventionally attractive white young lady love interest with no agency of her own. Because that's the cliché many of them still fall into, and it's bullshit.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not so much a "battle of the sexes" as diversity. You can relate to all the male characters you want, but people (both men and women) should also have some good female characters they can relate to.

[yeahscience]

The problem is that (white, straight) men are treated as the default, with whom anyone should naturally be able to identify. Female characters are generally written off as, "Oh, audience members who aren't women won't be able to identify with them/people who don't like "girly things" or aren't into "women's issues" won't be able to identify with them."

Sure, in theory any character should be identifiable and sympathetic and it shouldn't matter what gender (or race or anything else) they are. But that's simply not how media works right now. There are actual, real life quotes from studio execs who say they won't produce female-led films because there's "no audience" for them. And these attitudes also leech into fandom -- the more poorly-written female characters there are, the more you get young girls saying, "I just like male characters better, what's wrong with that?"

[(Anonymous)]

the more poorly-written female characters there are, the more you get young girls saying, "I just like male characters better, what's wrong with that?"

+1
Exactly. It's like, can't you bother to think for three seconds why you find male characters so much better? If female characters are so icky to you by default, why not go ahead and write them into something that you DO like? Seriously. Not hard.

[(Anonymous)]

this

it bothers me that there are actually people in the audience buying into the skeevy shit the sexist execs and writers and directors and producers believe

[ex_mek82]

You know, you make a really good point.

I used to be all about the female characters when I was a kid because they were girls; (and for a long time, I idolized Lara Croft of the 'Tomb Raider' series), but as I've gotten older, I've been finding it harder to "relate" to female characters in modern media, and I never could figure out why. And that really upsets me sometimes.

On the flipside of the coin, a huge portion of characters I've created on my own for my ideas are all largely female and/or have a fairly balanced female-to-male ratio. Because I "relate" to my own characters and so on.

Kind of sad, now that I think about it. =(

[gabzillaz]

Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

Different Anon

As I understand it, it's not about whether you can "relate" to a particular character, so much as it is how people like you are represented in the media, which acts as a mirror to the culture it comes from. If women are only ever represented as love interests or one-dimensional caricatures, or not represented at all, that both reflects and shapes how people expect to view women. Similarly, if members of a particular race or religion are only ever depicted using certain stereotypes, that's how people start to think of them, especially if they don't have a lot of members of that group in their personal lives.

It's not an absolute (I'm not saying that people are mindless drones that accept what they see on the television blindly), but hey, if TV advertising didn't work, companies wouldn't spend millions making commercials. It affects expectations on a subconscious level.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

this