[ SECRET POST #2651 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2651 ⌋

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

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 051 secrets from Secret Submission Post #379.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. http://i.imgur.com/Ze5NS0b.png

[(Anonymous)]

But that's how most women are tbh

[fleshisyummy]

It's cute how you're trying to start a wank storm.

[vethica]

yawn

[(Anonymous)]

I feel this way about fanfic vs mass-market books, just not for the same reason. If your only beef is badly written women perhaps you're just not reading the right books? If you want to give some new books a try you should start up a recs thread in GC some day. I've gotten some excellent suggestions on books from past F!S book rec threads.

[sarillia]

I say we have a rec thread for books with good female characters. Any suggestions?

[rubbertea]

i get what you're feeling, but mass market fiction isn't just crappy "young adult fiction" books. imo there are a lot of tv shows with interesting female characters, and not even obscure ones. but then again i may be biased, because i think that tv is the medium to go to if you want great stories right now.

[dreemyweird]

I'm really not sure why you wrote "mass-market fiction" here. Unless I'm missing something, "mass-market" refers to the size of the edition and the type of cover. Dunno why you would talk about it as if it's a special genre inherently different from, say, trade fiction.

Advice: go read some actual good literature. Nothing wrong with reading fanfic and webcomics, but that's really not the only place good female characters are found in.

[fleshisyummy]

I find it hilarious that you think some of the best female characters are found in webcomics and fanfiction.

[(Anonymous)]

You think maybe you are reading the wrong stuff? I seem to have no problem finding books with great female characters.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm finding it hard to find this an example of a 'bad' woman. From the excerpt she's upset because the guy she's (in love with? fallen in with?) whatever, has had his house burned down based off of some sort of dangerous situation, and she feels unsafe.

I'd be pretty freaking upset too if I thought my life was in danger just from being around someone and they didn't seem to be taking it seriously...

Are there poorly written female characters? Of course. There are poorly written characters in general in a lot of fiction (popular and otherwise), but that doesn't mean there aren't well written ones out there.

And I've seen a lot more poorly written women in fanfic than in published novels, personally.

[dethtoll]

Don't read Philip K. Dick then. I dunno if he came off a bad breakup or what but most of the major female characters in his books are fucked up.

[merkuria]

Or you could try Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Rose Tremain. Good stuff all round.

[blitzwing]

That example doesn't show me that Pamela is "shrill" or "overly sexualized". It shows that Patrick is a douchebag. Like really, she's hysterical, what with not wanting to be burned alive and all.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't read crappy romance novels and you won't come across characters like this.

[gondremark]

Regardless of gender, I can't read drivel like that because the writing is just so terrible. (but you're right, that kind of terrible writing can get even worse when it's trying to portray women).

[(Anonymous)]

Some people might scoff at the idea you find more realistic women in webcomics and fanfiction. I don't think it's a problem with mass market fiction (which is not a homogeneous monolith but rather a very large category of books with different subgenres and authors), but the individual books you're reading. There are bad webcomics and fanfiction as well, as I'm sure you know.

[(Anonymous)]

I understand exactly what you mean. My tolerance for that sort of nonsense in fiction has decreased to the point where I basically can't read contemporary mainstream literature at all. I don't like to make generalizations, but I feel pretty comfortable saying it's all shit. So yeah, I'm going to stick to genre fiction and the classics.

You know the current state of literature is fucked up when it's easier to find likeable female characters in novels written a century ago than ones written a year ago.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really have this with most books but I do notice it with erotic stuff. I mean fandom has its strange a/b/o corners but most of it is so much more woman friendly then your average bodice ripper or 50 shades of gray.

[silvereriena]

What is that excerpt even from?

[rbhudson]

Can someone tell me the title of the book? jw

[(Anonymous)]

Welcome to the club.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know about you but I know that sometimes my sensitivity to stereotypical overemotional, hysterical, helpless depictions of female characters made it so that I was hypervigilant about it and I couldn't take sensitivity in female characters, almost completely. Over time, I've become less sensitive to it so that I can understand when a female character exhibits sensitivity or helplessness or hysteria on occasion (not all the time, naturally). But I think that depictions of female characters can often be pretty hackneyed, thoughtless, and stereotypical.

Apologies for TL;DR

[(Anonymous)]

I tend to agree. The web comics and fanfiction I read are mostly by women, or people who are feminists. If they're especially interested in/centered around women (be it f/f or often autobiographical comics), they often make better characters.

While other f!members listed lots of books that look promising, the general publishing process makes it more difficult for female authors (and female centric media) which are more likely to include well-rounded women characters. Seriously, even though I enjoyed quite a few books by male authors I liked this year, not one had a more than okay-ish female character.

Then again you often need to have a canon with some good aspects to get female positive fanwork.

[illiadandoddity]

I find that it's way easier to find books with well-written female characters if you read stuff by female authors. Not that it's a guarantee, but at the very least books written by women are less likely to have the weirdly sexualized stuff going on.