Strong Female Characters

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by karldots92, Sep 12, 2016.

  1. karldots92

    karldots92 Active Member

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    In fantasy it is pretty common to have a lot of main characters - Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, GRR Martin's Game of Thrones, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, Feist's Riftwar & Serpentwar sagas.
     
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  2. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    I don't know what you mean be "incorrect", but the wording of "only when feasible" is objectively different to "for it to be feasible"

    That presupposition changes what you are trying to justify.

    Very few characters have been reviewed positively by social justice and even fewer across the board. There is no reason to keep social justice in mind unless you are writing in the feminist genre. If you are trying to send that message. In which case the primary function of the work is to educate.

    Attempting to keep it in mind to avoid criticism is absurd, as you will not avoid criticism.
    Trying to improve your story with it is absurd, as it is not a creative mindset. It's deconstructive. Critical feminists aren't creative.

    How it is a "dramatic strawman composite", whatever the fuck that means, when I never claimed that to be your argument? It's one of the possibilities why one might keep SJ "in mind" and avoid "being mean" (your words). The other possibility is the one you gave, improving your story, which is just as much a losing proposition.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2016
  3. karldots92

    karldots92 Active Member

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    I suppose it comes down to how you define "main" character. For me a main character is one who appears in the majority of the story, drives the plot forward and completes some type of personal growth.
     
  4. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    In prose probably. But main characters don't have to appear the majority of the time in visual media. As long as what time they do have is effective.
     
  5. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Yes. The wording is different, how exactly does it change anything? The first is just more specific about how it becomes feasible. While another references it because it was already detailed. This is not only functiobal it is fairly standard conversational technique. People often put it shorted the second time.
    The composite comment is in reference to your discussion of people's reactions, as I just detailed in that comment. Why point was you were misrepresenting people's reactions by not only generalizing every case but every oerson and ending up with something more negative than the actual average. With a mindset few possess. You really don't understand the people you make all these dramatic statements about.
    I don't know why you think the rest of this is anything but a bunch of unconvincing claims. "It's deconstructive". How? Can you make this a little more real and argued please? Same goes for the rest of the last stuff.
     
  6. Safety Turtle

    Safety Turtle Senior Member

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    I admit that I haven't read through all the answers here, so this may have been already said.
    But is it important that it's a strong FEMALE character and not just a strong character? (when saying strong, I assume is meant wellrounded, realistic character, and not just physically or mentally strong) I don't know what setting your story takes place in, but if there's no great societal difference between the gender I don't think there are specific ways to make strong female characters.
     
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  7. karldots92

    karldots92 Active Member

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    In my world there is no societal difference between males and females I was more thinking about from a reader point of view
     
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  8. Shattered Shields

    Shattered Shields Gratsa!

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    Guys, seriously, take it to the debate room.
     
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  9. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I see Lord of the Rings as always returning to Frodo, though. I don't see it as the same braided watching-a-multi-opponent-tennis-match experience as the others.
     
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  10. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    That's actually how I prefer things--a story for which I can't tell which is THE main character feels "wrong" and I tend not to read them. I did read the first several books of Wheel of Time and a couple of that really long George R. R. Martin thing, but I stopped after a while, primarily for that reason.
     
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  11. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    I actually love ensemble casts :p

    Granted 16 main characters might be pushing it, but maybe 5-6 mains with about a dozen secondary would still work?
     
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  12. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    That's Orphan Black--though obviously television may be different from written fiction.

    Sarah, Cosima, Helena, Allison, and Felix are IMO the mains, with Sarah as the main main though she's not my very favorite. And then there's Art, Mrs. S, Kira, Crystal, Donny, Delphine, Scott, M.K., Kendall, Dizzy...and that's just a subset of the characters that are (1) mostly on the good-guy side and (2) still alive.

    I didn't have much point here, it was just an enjoyable exercise in naming the characters. I'm weird that way.
     
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  13. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    You specifically said:
    "And I deliberately do positive and negative versions of anything I feature enough times for it to be feasible.

    That means if you include it enough times it can become feasible."to be" is future tense.

    Saying changing it to "only when feasible" means you're being selective and picking an choosing when it works."

    You are changing what you said. The former says feasibility is attained through persistence, the latter brings up selectiveness and being discerning.

    My point isn't based on looking at the average. Neither of us know the actual numbers. It's based on looking at how they completely lose their minds over SFC's like this:
    https://storify.com/Astojap/wehdon-twitter-hate

    He shut down his twitter immediately after. Let's assume you're right and they aren't the average. Did them not being the average stop that from happening to him? No. Would it stop it from happening to you or me? No.

    And Whedons an uber feminist, so it's likely he kept social justice mind. Did that stop him from receiving that? No. So making yourself social justice minded, or your SFC's feminist for the purpose of avoiding criticism is no reason to do it.

    As for whether being social justice minded makes your story better, Does it? No.

    A social justice mindset is a mode of thinking that is not creative, but deconstructive. What do I mean by this.

    It's a mindset where one has trained themselves to deconstruct stories into tropes and those tropes into issues, to comment on how those issues harm women.
    That's the opposite mode of thinking to what a creative writer does. A creative writer goes the opposite way.

    Having social justice in mind, is having a deconstructive mindset in mind while trying to be creative, which blocks creativity. As it's not something anyone can just turn off. Anything you create would have to go through the social justice test whether you realise it or not, thus you become more creatvively inhibited. Now some deconstructive thinking is required as a writer. But you don't want to take on more than you have to.

    For example, both Joshua Macintosh and Anita Sarkeesian criticised the strong female character trope as a devaluation of femininity. They had all the time in the world, potential industry contacts, quarter of a million dollars in donations, yet they couldn't come up with a beginning that makes sense, or deviate in any way from the Strong female character. And how do I know, she's an SFC? Well despite waiting for a man to save her for an indefinite period of time (17 days is implied based on the wall backdrop), she grows bored of that and just punches a steel door open with her bare fist and manhandles the guard.



    With the new Supergirl tv show, created by "big feminists" she's just female superman. They take no risks. and with lines like

    Misogynist caricature - "ON MY PLANET FEMALES KNEEL BEFORE MALES!!!

    Supergirl : THIS IS NOT YOUR PLANET!!!

    That's what's known as on the nose dialogue. A basic writing mistake and a clear sign of lacking creativity.

    It exists in Paul Feig's Ghostbusters as well, and beat for beat he ripped off the previous film. But he was still experienced enough to allow the actual creative people - the actresses, to ad lib much of the dialogue.

    And Joss Whedon isn't the proven exception of social justice minded writers. He had an excellent writing partner in David Greenwalt. Without him, Buffy would be unrecognisable, Angel flat out wouldn't exist. And as for his work in film, film is so collaborative - his screenplays get amended by actors, executives and so on, so many people amend these screenplays before production that we can't comment either way on the creative merit or lack thereof of what he's doing or did.

    But moreover I've seen it first hand at my college. The feminist artists relying heavily (exclusively) on appropriation and rearrangement for their social commentary. Skill? Originality? Not even.

    That is what I mean by deconstructive. The learned propensity to take stories tropes and ideas apart instead of create and build. In every writer, the two are in a tug of war. Some writers are so creative they can afford to be more deconstructive than others. Others are not and have to be careful about the sort of messages they're imbibing from these critics. Lest you gradually become them yourself.


    "With a mindset few possess. You really don't understand the people you make all these dramatic statements about."

    Really. Liberal art colleges are full of them and I attend one. So maybe I understand them better than you think.

    Deuces.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2016
  14. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    That's never felt like an issue to me. I love using tropes in my fiction, and my characters feel more real to me when I'm using them to say something about the real world (i.e. should vigilante serial killers be given free reign to exact horrifying vengeance against other villains...)
     
  15. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    Writers use issues to build tropes to build fiction. Activists use tropes as a transitionary point into the issues they want to raise.

    Activists go from Story (eg The Matrix) to trope (Strong female character) to sub-issue (Trinity Syndrome)
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2016
  16. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Would you like to read the Doctor Who fic in my signature to see if the issues I raised got in the way of the story?
     
  17. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    I don't follow Dr Who, so I wouldn't get it. But how much creativity do you really need for a fanfic anyway. No disrespect to fanfic but most of the creative work's already been done for you.
     
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  18. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    We shouldn't continue this.
     
  19. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    The fanfic features mostly original characters and plot anyway. I don't even think the Doctor's in it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2016
  20. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    You read it? I don't remember this coming up before :)

    And yeah, one of the characters in chapter 2 off-handedly mentions running into The Doctor at some earlier point, but it's clear that he had no idea how big a deal The Doctor was.
     
  21. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    I think we talked about the characters.
     
  22. tristan.n

    tristan.n Active Member

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    Lately I've noticed the phrase "strong female character" being applied to female characters who possess more masculine qualities, and the more feminine a character is, the more "groan-worthy" and stereotypical she is. The key is depth. Give the female characters everything you would give your male characters - a history, people in their lives that they care(d) for, events that shaped them as people, opinions, beliefs, goals, senses of humor, emotions, etc. What makes them vulnerable? Why did they choose the life they're living? What regrets do they have? What makes them annoyed/angry/devastated/filled with joy? What are they ashamed of? What are their ideas of a perfect world? What do they like and dislike about themselves?
    8 pages of previous comments later, I hope this helps. :)
     
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  23. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    And also, of course, question what "masculine" and "feminine" really mean, beyond the stereotypes...
     
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  24. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    If it helps, I just finished an assignment from the Great Course "Writing Great Fiction" about picking a character and listing as many of their traits as possible. I picked the villain protagonist that I came up with for the Doctor Who story that just came up, and after 2 and a half pages of bullet points, the final summary that I came up with was:
    • Violent, sadistic, sociopathic, but not psychopathic
    • Cares a great deal about doing the right thing and is completely convinced that she’s doing it
    • Hypersexual
    • Super-powered
    • Para-military training
    • Extremely social, personable, and emotionally sensitive to others
    • Enjoys pop culture
    • Doesn’t like being told what to do
    • Somewhat philosophical
    • Occasionally impulsive, but more generally structured
    A lot of that appears hyper-masculine on paper, but in the story itself I felt that the execution (pun intended) of everything was still more on the feminine side: enjoying the "sweet, coppery fragrance" of a bunch of dead soldiers' blood...

    I don't tend to start with specific traits for a character and then categorize them, I tend to start with a few categories and then come up with specific traits to fill in the blanks, and for my character's Alignment and MyersBriggs type, it was very important to me that she be "thinks she's a Chaotic Good ENFJ, but is actually a Chaotic Evil," so everything "masculine" she did (from aggressively flirting to being in charge of the group to being crazy strong to torturing bad guys to death with her bare hands) was still filtered through the lens of how an ENFJ woman would do it differently from how an ENFJ man or an ISTP woman would do the same thing.

    I'm not sure how well anybody here could agree on an exact technical definition of "feminine" as opposed to "masculine," but this Chaotic Evil ENFJ woman definitely feels feminine to me.
     
  25. karldots92

    karldots92 Active Member

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    Thanks. Yes it does. I really didn't expect it to explode the way it did
     

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