Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

<.< I think the Asari are a bad example because, like Quiet, the explanation for their fanservice is pretty thinly-veiled. They're a conventionally attractive, always female species who are culturally encouraged to have sex with anything that moves. Their maturity cycle has a Stripper Phase that is so long that you will probably die of old-age before your favorite Asari has moved past it. They're Fanservice: The Species.

edited 5th Oct '15 1:58:01 PM by TobiasDrake

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Also they are supposedly powerful and stuff in their armies but if anything they are shown in the story to be nothing but incompetent. In fact it is part of the story to see them fail :P

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

There's that too. We're told that they're the most powerful race in the universe and that their commandos are the ultimate badasses. On very rare occasions, we get to see glimpses of this.

And then it's right back to Asari sexuality, which accounts for approximately 90% of their onscreen presence.

edited 5th Oct '15 1:59:58 PM by TobiasDrake

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It might just be me, but I find that armies or cultures supposed to be badass fall into three categories: villains, who're dangerous and badass; allies who're ultimately ineffective or unavailable because they can't be allowed to outshine the heroes and stop them from performing their heroic feats of heroism; and So Last Season villains and heroes who used to be badass, but didn't keep up. Unless it's the protagonist's army or culture.

I've not played any game involving the Asari, so I can't say where they'd fall, but it kind of sounds like the creators just didn't balance their appearances well enough. Would it be better balanced to more properly reflect what they should've been, or would that mean adding more stuff onto it that wasn't intended in the first place?

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It seen the other element where barely there, with only her sexualit coming on most of the time, falling the problem we already said.

As I explain, the more you integrate sexy moments without obvious fanservice, the better.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

I see that rather often, too. The all female warband being grotesquely inneffective when they are not the protagonists...

Silent Sisters in Dragon Age...

Night Elves in Warcraft...

EDF 2025's Valkyries...

Hyppolita vs Heracles...

The pegasi in Fire Emblem...

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

So they're the large scale version of Faux Action Girl?

"Take your weapon; strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete."

Actually, the Night Elves were extremely effective - until World Of Warcraft happened, that is.

edited 5th Oct '15 4:06:28 PM by DrunkenNordmann

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true there but World of warcraft has more relevance to its story than Warcraft I, II and III at this point.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

It's part of the story to reveal that they're only so advanced because they've been sitting on Precursor Technology the entire time and lied about their development.

Because of course they did. They're an entire race of women. Their role in the story wouldn't be complete without casting their species as liars.

In fiction, female power revolves around trickery and deceit. If a female character is powerful, you can bet she lied, cheated, and stole her way to the top. She's the spy, the rogue, the seductress. She thrives on manipulation, stealth, and her "feminine wiles".

edited 5th Oct '15 4:12:22 PM by TobiasDrake

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Yeah, I know. It's terrible.

edited 5th Oct '15 4:10:28 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Correction.

We are told individual Asari are the most powerfull, and there commandos are the ultimate baddasses, both of which the story shows as well.

We are told overall there military is quite weak, and that is what we see fail.

Supersoilders few in number can not make up for poor combined arms.

edited 5th Oct '15 4:13:16 PM by Imca

Cue the Joker making the infamous "Now the Assari wish they had more soldiers than dancers" near Liara.

The Assair were the diplomatic arm of the Council, whereas the Turian were the military and the Salarians were the scientific one.

The Assari were the sci-fi equivalent of Can't Argue with Elves only to receive the Screw You, Elves! treatment in Mass Effect 3.

Inter arma enim silent leges

The idea of "Women as liars" is news to me, I guess it was always there, but I never really pay attention. I tended to think males as liars, mostly because most works of fiction i enjoy most of the liars are male.

"Take your weapon; strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete."

Unless it's the protagonist. Especially in Video Games. There's a reason One-Man Army is a popular trope.

Men lie to get sex, women lie to get things out of sex. Or so the stereotype says.

It happene quite often to male warbands as well, again, especially in Video Games. However, I think the distribution is about the same as how powerful warriors are normally. There are more male warriors, but relative to how often they appear, women are more often ineffective. I'm not sure it's specific to warbands or other greater scopes.

The male counterpart to that is dumb power. If it's a woman and about power, it's usually a great magician of some sort. If it's a male who relies on manipulation and other intelligence-requiring methods, he'll often create a power suit or something that allows him to get physical. Or a powerful dragon.

Well, that's my impression.

edited 5th Oct '15 4:43:34 PM by AnotherDuck

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You mean, aside from archaeology (Liara), old asari traditions (Samara), the way the asari handle an independent planet (Illium), the way an asari handles the worst hellhole in the galaxy (Aria), managing a huge information network (Liara again), doing politics (Tevos), trying to fight the reapers (Thessia)...yeah, aside from that, 90% of what remains probably is about asari sexuality.

Seriously, in 1, there are three instances of asari sexuality: the first talk you have on the Normandy with Liara (exposition time), the stripper on the Citadel, and Sha'ira. And Sha'ira points out that, actually, she does not necessarily sleeps with her customers, despite what one might think. Then in 2, all the asaris you meet are Aria, Samara, Eclipse leaders or workers on Illium (yeah, there is one stripper too, and Sha'ira is mentioned by a Cerberus crewmate who notes that she isn't a prostitute - again). Oh, of course, I forget Morinth, who is an asari gone wrong, whose all other asari actively hate. And in three, there isn't even an asari stripper in Afterlife. Probably a couple mentions in Citadel (since Sha'ira is back), but not much more.

The point is that they use their reputation to extend their influence over the galaxy (despite not being that powerful in the first place, as the Reapers demonstrated, even though they were given a kickstart by the Protheans), but the sex part isn't exactly glossed over repeatedly. They definitely are the Green Skinned Space Babes of the universe, but they aren't only there when Shepard needs to bang, OK?

It's nice to point out that despite their obvious flaws, they are portrayed neither more nor less sympathetically than the other races. And they aren't even shown to be the worst liars in the galaxy - that would be the Salarians, who are acknowledged time and time again to have the best secret service and to perform experiments that should not exist.

They play some traditionnally female traits straight, but subvert, in my opinion, many more. Samara actually calls herself a quintessential knight errant, which is a very male role, while Aria or Vasir are pretty much devoid of any gendered clichés whether it is in their behavior or in their fighting skills. Even Liara, who starts as a weak Damsel in Distress, ends up being much more than that (plus, she is a scientist - it's not that common for scientist roles to be assigned to female characters, especially since the most famous case of a medic in the squad, Mordin, is a guy instead).

Why is there a pattern of 'feminine wiles'? Is it due to All Women Are Prudes? Or to justify (to varying degrees of success) sexiness and/or fanservice on the woman?

Do men ever use 'masculine wiles' or 'romantic wiles'? Do male manipulators manipulate in mostly non-sexual ways? Or sometimes take advantage of young innocent girls? Is it portrayed as being far more predatory (power dynamics etc) than females seducing males?

Incidentally, could the seductive women be capitalizing on the sexist idea that women are weak and can't do or mean any harm?

the "feminine wiles" pattern comes from a general male oriented narrative mindset. basically:

Person A: "this female character is deceptive & manipulative."

Person B: "so how do we portray that?"

Person A: "well she's female right? she'll just use her sexiness. all females are sexy right?"

Person B: "Yeah, good idea!"

only, there is no conversation like that (that would be silly ), but a general unspoken, unchallenged, assumption that creates that trend.

edited 6th Oct '15 8:30:52 AM by Jetyl

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One theory I've had is that "feminine wiles" allows for the paradoxical combination of All Women Are Lustful and All Women Are Prudes.

So, it's like the character acts "slutty" (all women are lustful) but won't have sex with "you" or only does so for calculating reasons (all women are prudes).

Heck, the 'all females are sexy' idea seems to be quite prevalent. Okay, they can also be cute and thoroughly non-sexual, like the Inguene.

Could feminine wiles be related to Evil Is Sexy as well? Though we've long grown out of the 'only evil can be sexy' stage... I hope.

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Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Gender bent?

Excuse me, my mind is about to suffer a serious case of Logic Bomb. I need to breathe.

You claim that God is opressing us, but I see you opressing others without needing a God.

" true there but World of warcraft has more relevance to its story than Warcraft I, II and III at this point."

Except World of Warcraft is pretty much driking the other three games mythos for very long except in Pandaria with Garrosh...bah.

When it come to sexuality there is a inversion of the typical "men act,women are" in that Women can control their sexuality at will, meaing they can have sex with other motive than sex itself while Men ARE sexual being, is their endgame that define them, almost all sexual humor in sitcoms comes from this

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Yep. Male power is generally depicted as physical strength.

Men are depicted as ogres, bastions of physical prowess capable of lifting mountains and tearing down the sky with their brute strength. Women are depicted as spies and deceivers who don't need to tear down the sky because they can talk and/or seduce it into coming close enough to stick a knife.

Deceitful men are often depicted alongside other traditionally "female" traits. They're lanky, physically weak, soft-spoken, emotional, maybe even a bit submissive. If they aren't completely useless, then they're frequently villainous - in both cases, their failure to live within the male gender standard is a sign that they are at best unreliable and should not be trusted.

Physically powerful women are often depicted as boisterous, thick-skinned, logically-driven, etc. This is where the "Man with tits" concept feminists often complain about stems from; because physical power is considered the male domain, these characters are usually given other male characteristics as well. She doesn't wear dresses, she hates the color pink, she snubs her nose at femininity. She's "one of the boys", a hard-drinking hard-cursing badass. She may or may not have much to contribute to the protagonists' cause, but as punishment for her rejection of her gender standards, she will not live to see the end of the story.

edited 6th Oct '15 10:07:22 AM by TobiasDrake

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Oh, also still not so sure the Night Elves were efficient in warcraft III. I mean, their defeat is all but fetishized by official artwork.

Sexual dimorphism is often seen in both biology and fiction. It is however a huge problem in real life that we do not have many examples of efficient women in military, powerful roles. I mean. it was not until recently that the U.S took in their first female Rangers, right?

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes