Yet another female characters thread

King Zeal: I'm supposed to not give a shit that you're pigeonholing me as "might as well be a dude?"

Again I didn't say treat the character as a blank slate in terms of gender, nationality, etc.

I guess, the way I build characters is to pick the focus(es) of their personality and purpose to the story. Then figure out how all the other stuff would effect them.

No you're not. For two reasons:

1. I also said: "If we're going strictly by the criteria I listed, so is my ladyfriend/FWB. However, I didn't touch everything. No real person on earth fits a label exactly." In other words, there is no way in fucking hell I just succinctly summed you up as a person. Even if you fit every criteria I mentioned in that list, I sincerely doubt that's all there is to you. In other words, you're pidgeon-holing yourself. You are not a fictional creation.

2. Even you were a man in every way that matters, who the fuck gives a shit? I'm black and often called "white in every way that matters". Um, okay? Why should that matter? I am who I am. I'm obviously not white, because my skin color says so. And you're obviously not male because your body says so. If every other part of our makeup fits into being white/male, then what the fuck does it matter? Is there supposed to be something wrong with either of those things?

But again, this second part is moot because neither you nor I are fictional characters who exist in a vacuum outside of the traits a writer gives us.

edited 13th Jul '11 5:19:59 PM by KingZeal

Isn't that like a genderflipped version of Ukeification? The tendency of people, when writing a gay couple, to make one act exactly like a stereotypical woman would?

'Men with boobs' seems like the same issue to me, although not to do with relationships.

I guess I think in types. Some types are more likely to be female, some are more likely to be male, and some can easily be written as either. For that matter, it can be interesting to write a character who has reason to be a type normally ascribed to the opposite gender (e.g. a very large, mannish-looking woman who's given up on being considered feminine, and instead decided to be the sort of person nobody would fuck with.)

This has broader applications, of course. It can be very fun to take two characters who're essentially the same type and explore how one change affects their overall characters. This needn't be gender—one story I keep intending to write contains both a Dark Action Girl and a friendly dominatrix, the former of whom never found a healthy outlet for her urges.

edited 13th Jul '11 5:31:55 PM by feotakahari

You said "In every way that matters, she is a guy." No qualifiers. That's pigeonholing.

Also, the generalizing is very inaccurate. Women and men come in all shapes and sizes. Just as there are geeky men and manly men, there ware feminine females and geeky females. Stereotypes only put forth one archetype.

It's like...having a black character who speaks in jive, has an afro, and calls all black people his brother.

Yes, these traits are prominent in many people, but that does not make it ok to use them as defining traits.

Yes, because the character has no other traits but what the author gives them. Does she have Hidden Depths? Does she possess inherent qualities that every woman possesses no matter how masculine? Who knows. They don't exist unless the writer says they do.

For the billionth-and-first time . . . this is not possible with a real human being.

If it's not boobs or a vagina, there are no inherent qualities that all women posess.

And even that's not 100% true. Only, like, 90% true for women.

Ahem... is anyone in this thread actually arguing that a character's gender should be their defining trait?

edited 13th Jul '11 8:21:07 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

Bobby G: No. I'm arguing that writing female characters with generalized details is not a good thing.

I genderflipped one of the major characters in my adaptation. She's a bit different as a woman - more genteel than fatherly in her charm; more icy than belligerent in her threats - but that doesn't really matter deep down.

Gender shouldn't be the defining trait but most of us are raised to acknowledge the cultural norms concerning gender. It is not easy to shake off.

Sure, if that's the way they've been raised. There are plenty of outside influences in their life that could essentially make this true.

Take for example a society with very, very strong gender expectations, to the point of disowning or attacking those who break them. A character in such a situation would probably have their defining trait (as in, most important trait) as their gender.

Unless of course you're arguing that it should be their only trait, which is just silly. How would that even work? "X is a boy," and then X never appears in the story again? "Y had two X chromosomes," and Y is then never mentioned again? That'd be the only way to have their gender as their only trait.

I don't know if I have much to add in the way of the actual prompt, except perhaps that I always try to have clear reasons for my characters strongest traits, or have traits that seem to go together while explaining their role in the story. One of my main characters is female because she's another main character's mother, and that's where I started with her. She killed the guy she loved as part of a deception, so I had to figure out how that could happen. Another character who became interesting enough to warrant her own spinoff story just randomly showed up as a stripper in a strip club (with only female strippers), so of course she was female. Then I had to wonder why someone like her was even working as a stripper, and boom, story. *

edited 14th Jul '11 5:50:42 PM by deathjavu

Watch out with that one, deathjavu!

Well, it's a novel, not a visual medium, so hopefully that's not the case...

...

...

damnit, it's still going to be a problem, isn't it.

Well, according to King Zeal's criteria, I'm a guy too. Not that I particularly mind.

I'm female. My verdict is that female character can have any type of personality that is consistent with their past and formative influences. Same as men.