Also, I forgot to make this comment on one of your earlier posts, but something I've always hated about how we write women is that we're unable to see how clever some women can be. In anime, when we write the young male protagonist, we write him understanding that he's leagues above the rest of men. We don't write our protagonist like the average man. We understand that this man is fully capable of doing what the supermajority of men cannot. But when we write women, we write the average woman. It's as if most people don't want to see an exceptional woman. And we never write about how clever women can be at bending reality to their will without force.
One of the best examples I've seen is actually in Game of Thrones, in the Tyrell family and even Sansa Stark. The Tyrells show how a family can use charm, intelligence, and ingenuity to advance their own cause. Olenna is as much a kingslayer as Jaime Lannister. Margaery is the only person able to tame the mad king, Joffrey.
I also remember a movie I watched about a woman who married a farmer because she'd had a child out of wedlock, set during World War II. A naive Japanese girl falls in love with a prisoner of war and brings him to the woman's house. If the main character in that moment had been her husband, a man, a fight would have broken out. But she knew she couldn't physically take on a man. So what did she do? She told him to go upstairs and change into her husband's clothes, and while he did that, she drained the extra fuel from their truck. As he drove off, she called the police and told them a prisoner of war had escaped, broken into her husband's house, and stolen his clothes, and that based on how much fuel should be in the car, he'd be in roughly this location. She captured him without capturing him. And if these female characters are unrealistic, most male protagonist are unrealistic as well.
That's what I've always hated about how we write female characters. In movies, they're meant to be far more clever than men, far more conniving, meant to approach a battle in a way men cannot, but we never seem able to write these characters well. And maybe it's because of how lazily we write in general. We fill our movies with action scenes, so we end up writing petite women overcoming ridiculously large men. But in a world where so much can be carried by dialogue, where we can actually inhabit and understand our characters' motivations, I don't know why we can't have intelligent, compelling, unique women navigating the world through their wits. I don't watch Naruto, thinking every man could be Naruto. Most men are Kiba.
And lastly, I think we've lost the plot on archetypal female characters. Take Fairy Tail. You have Erza Scarlet, the archetypal older sister who keeps the entire guild in line. You have Lucy, the archetypal romantic lead, the girl in class with you. And you have Wendy, the archetypal little sister. And in that guild, everyone is actually a family. One of the problems with the way we write characters today is that for a lot of modern audiences, the female character can only truly exist as the romantic lead. Not the big sister who is formidable, authoritative, and guides the entire process the way Erza does. Not the little sister who exists as a kind of emotional framework for the entire story the way Wendy does.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I want to add that the way we treat exceptional women is also problematic. Daenerys Targaryen, exceptional in every way, had to die. Olenna, exceptional in every way, had to die. Margaery, exceptional in every way, had to die. We kill off the exceptional women at every turn, because a woman cannot be more exceptional than a man, and if she is, then the writers have to kill her off.
I’m so tired of women being written as meek and helpless or always hindered in some ridiculous way. The incredible woman with super powers whose abilities wane the second she is pregnant is yet another example. It’s exhausting. Women are so incredible, but we only limit their stories to romance, pregnancy, and sacrifice, which is just a mirror of the expectations we have of them. The male hero gets a castle or an entire country, the female hero gets the male hero and she should just be happy with that. Because that’s all women are and expected to want.
It’s true that we don’t have much wiggle room for other female archetypes outside of romantic lead or sacrificial token. Women are to be bedded and discarded is essentially the gist of modern writing. Maybe this is why women love romance so much. It’s nice to read about an exceptional woman from the start who doesn’t die at the end.
Yup, and I think what is so painful is how little agency they actually give the female characters. The moment a woman has a little bit of agency, as you said, she must be eliminated, especially if the agency is purely for her political advancement. She can be a Cersei Lannister because she is driven by a kind of pathological love for her children. Hence, she is always in the service of the men in her family. I don't even mind that female characters do not get world-shattering representation; I just think I hate how pathetic they are always written. In each of our personal lives, we all know wives who have a certain sway and pull over their husbands: women who can do things in an underhanded way to get the outcomes they want. We are only able to write female cleverness in relation to getting a man. But whenever women are clever with regard to other things, that becomes unrealistic.
Also, I forgot to make this comment on one of your earlier posts, but something I've always hated about how we write women is that we're unable to see how clever some women can be. In anime, when we write the young male protagonist, we write him understanding that he's leagues above the rest of men. We don't write our protagonist like the average man. We understand that this man is fully capable of doing what the supermajority of men cannot. But when we write women, we write the average woman. It's as if most people don't want to see an exceptional woman. And we never write about how clever women can be at bending reality to their will without force.
One of the best examples I've seen is actually in Game of Thrones, in the Tyrell family and even Sansa Stark. The Tyrells show how a family can use charm, intelligence, and ingenuity to advance their own cause. Olenna is as much a kingslayer as Jaime Lannister. Margaery is the only person able to tame the mad king, Joffrey.
I also remember a movie I watched about a woman who married a farmer because she'd had a child out of wedlock, set during World War II. A naive Japanese girl falls in love with a prisoner of war and brings him to the woman's house. If the main character in that moment had been her husband, a man, a fight would have broken out. But she knew she couldn't physically take on a man. So what did she do? She told him to go upstairs and change into her husband's clothes, and while he did that, she drained the extra fuel from their truck. As he drove off, she called the police and told them a prisoner of war had escaped, broken into her husband's house, and stolen his clothes, and that based on how much fuel should be in the car, he'd be in roughly this location. She captured him without capturing him. And if these female characters are unrealistic, most male protagonist are unrealistic as well.
That's what I've always hated about how we write female characters. In movies, they're meant to be far more clever than men, far more conniving, meant to approach a battle in a way men cannot, but we never seem able to write these characters well. And maybe it's because of how lazily we write in general. We fill our movies with action scenes, so we end up writing petite women overcoming ridiculously large men. But in a world where so much can be carried by dialogue, where we can actually inhabit and understand our characters' motivations, I don't know why we can't have intelligent, compelling, unique women navigating the world through their wits. I don't watch Naruto, thinking every man could be Naruto. Most men are Kiba.
And lastly, I think we've lost the plot on archetypal female characters. Take Fairy Tail. You have Erza Scarlet, the archetypal older sister who keeps the entire guild in line. You have Lucy, the archetypal romantic lead, the girl in class with you. And you have Wendy, the archetypal little sister. And in that guild, everyone is actually a family. One of the problems with the way we write characters today is that for a lot of modern audiences, the female character can only truly exist as the romantic lead. Not the big sister who is formidable, authoritative, and guides the entire process the way Erza does. Not the little sister who exists as a kind of emotional framework for the entire story the way Wendy does.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I want to add that the way we treat exceptional women is also problematic. Daenerys Targaryen, exceptional in every way, had to die. Olenna, exceptional in every way, had to die. Margaery, exceptional in every way, had to die. We kill off the exceptional women at every turn, because a woman cannot be more exceptional than a man, and if she is, then the writers have to kill her off.
I’m so tired of women being written as meek and helpless or always hindered in some ridiculous way. The incredible woman with super powers whose abilities wane the second she is pregnant is yet another example. It’s exhausting. Women are so incredible, but we only limit their stories to romance, pregnancy, and sacrifice, which is just a mirror of the expectations we have of them. The male hero gets a castle or an entire country, the female hero gets the male hero and she should just be happy with that. Because that’s all women are and expected to want.
It’s true that we don’t have much wiggle room for other female archetypes outside of romantic lead or sacrificial token. Women are to be bedded and discarded is essentially the gist of modern writing. Maybe this is why women love romance so much. It’s nice to read about an exceptional woman from the start who doesn’t die at the end.
Yup, and I think what is so painful is how little agency they actually give the female characters. The moment a woman has a little bit of agency, as you said, she must be eliminated, especially if the agency is purely for her political advancement. She can be a Cersei Lannister because she is driven by a kind of pathological love for her children. Hence, she is always in the service of the men in her family. I don't even mind that female characters do not get world-shattering representation; I just think I hate how pathetic they are always written. In each of our personal lives, we all know wives who have a certain sway and pull over their husbands: women who can do things in an underhanded way to get the outcomes they want. We are only able to write female cleverness in relation to getting a man. But whenever women are clever with regard to other things, that becomes unrealistic.