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

Well, slavery is considered a serious offense in Westeros.

Ser Jorah Mormont was banished from the kingdoms because his involvement in the slave trade after all.

It's not just modern values: slavery is illegal in Westeros (which is why Jorah Mormont fled from there - he was caught selling criminals to slaver to pay for his debts). I'll give you that Daenerys is an idealist, though.

The show also has a halfway decent person that took part in the slavery system in the form of Hizadhr zo Loraq, so not all of them are dog-kicking assholes.

The book, conversely, does not have that. Hizdar's a bastard there too. Which makes for really uncomfortable reading as our white heroine frees slaves from the evil brown folks.

Hold your horses: the problem for most of Dany's arc is that we get her thoughts and opinions... or, those of those who support her. As a result, we don't get a nuanced viewpoint.

Yet, there still is nuance. The reason why she has as much trouble as she does? Is basically because the Ghiscari and Yunkai aren't actually the 2D puppy-kickers she and others think them to be or see them as. :/

The more Tyrion we could get in that environment, the more rounded our view is likely to get, too.

edited 27th Feb '17 10:41:10 AM by Euodiachloris

A couple of things here:

Sure in westero slavery is ilegal but their treatment of smallfolk is a times slavery in all but name which make the thing hollow.

Also Dany is not against slavery for being from westeros(in fact in a cultural sense, she barely belong there) but because her issues as being sell as wife which it kinda help the whole "modern vs fantastical values"

No really, he is just a pragmatic guy who wants bring glory to the cities but he dosent really care about Dany issue that much, this rise him from being a eating puppy idiot but not that much

edited 27th Feb '17 10:37:02 AM by unknowing

I think there was one really popular fan essay saying basically the same that (minus the Tyrion bits) that GRRM supposedly commented on.

And if you believe one the high priests in Meereen the city only turned to slavery because of how badly the (also slavery practicing) Valyrians fucked up the area.

I find Daenerys deeply conflicted. On one hand, she would like to help build a fairer and better world where she is now. On another, she wants to conquer and reclaim the Iron Throne. Yet, she also wants everything to burn in her dragons' fire and live her own life. I find that extremely relatable and nuanced.

If Martin's trying to do anything subversive there he has not done it well. It reads like a bad 19th century travelogue a lot of the time and is one of the major things that made me give up on the series.

Admittedly this is probably off topic for the thread, since whether or not there's racism/Orientalism in the book doesn't really have anything to do with Daeny's gender.

The Mary Sue on Marvel's Femizons

http://www.themarysue.com/femizons-post-trump-era/

I'm just gonna roll my eyes with the whole "Trump Era" thing and move on. Sometimes The Mary Sue can be a bit stupid. But come on guys the man's been in office for two months, even if all of DC is on flames right now let's not pretend as if there's been some unmistakable shift in the balance of the universe since then. Hell I'd argue that pretending that there has been is exactly what Trump wants. You don't have to word every conversation in terms of Donald J. Trump. Please don't.

So from the get go there's a really shitty assumption that good villains are relatable villains. The villains of the Disney Renaissance are among some of the most memorable villains in recent Western memory, and the majority of them are straight up evil for evil's sake. The whole article fails to justify why relatable villains are a good thing, or what relatable villains even look like, or what the fuck the Femizons have to do with any of that, or if we're arguing for relatable villains or diverse villains (because there is a huuuuge difference there).

See, this is why I don't like The Mary Sue. They slap on provocative headlines to draw clicks, but fail to really add depth to their articles. It very much feels like "entry level wealthy white girl social justice" in that it rarely goes deeper than just "diversity = gud, sexism = bad", frequently misunderstands many important parts of gender theory, and only covers the media works that are hip and popular with its target audience, rather than actually looking deeply into fiction.

They're like Kotaku, in that they have very low standards as to what they publish. Sometimes good and actually thoughtful articles show up, sometimes it's just the thinly veiled rants of various flavors of Fan Dumb, like shipping manifestos or character apologetics/bashing, some of which contradict each other ("if you don't like Jane Foster, or if you do like her, it's because you have internalized misogyny you terrible human being!"). And yeah, they definitely suffer from serious Fandom Myopia as well as a genuine reliance on clickbait (e.g. "Why is the entire X Fandom Nothing but a bunch of woman-hating manchildren?") a lot of the time. It's basically random Tumblr posters trying to pretend they have some legitimacy.

edited 3rd Mar '17 2:21:41 PM by AlleyOop

I can't say that I like Kotaku and Mary Sue that much.

Mostly because it is the to go source red pillers use to red pill other young and stupid men by providing them a steady stream of crappy articles and authors that can be used to paint a picture of how inane feminism has become and how SJW are ruining everything in modern media.

I have found a share of viral pictures, specially from Kotaku that are outright fabrications, but the fame those websites got for producing steaming heaps of crap make falling for fakes really easy.

What red pillers do is hardly Kotaku's or the Mary Sue's fault though, Those guys will use literally anything.

Oh no, articles on a website with multiple authors contradict each other, as if the people working there have different opinions about things. That's a weaksauce argument about why they're bad; every publication ends up having articles that contradict from time to time, particularly ones that are heavy on the author's opinions and personal interpretations of things. This is not, somehow, a marker of quality. It's a thing that happens when you have multiple contributors to a thing.

And can we stop shitting on Tumblr? It's really juvenile when what you're basically complaining about is people having opinions. If you're going to do that, you might as well complain about literally every social media site, and that's way off the topic for this thread.

edited 3rd Mar '17 9:34:15 PM by AceofSpades

It's natural to shit on pages where the crap to decent content ratio is way too high. I mean, if it's a common source for opponents of those ideas to use as examples of why those ideas are crap, then I wonder if they don't do more harm than good.

I don't usually click on those links unless someone says the article is actually good.

I don't agree with everything TMS writers post. That said that article is pretty spot on when it comes to the Femizons.

Spot on about what?

The sexist way they were written

sure, but is a low hangig fruit, it dosent take much to see they were a straw feminsim squad, I dont give point to figure out that.

Actually, though the author points out that the way they were handled was ridiculously sexist, they seem to find the characters interesting and would be interested to see Marvel use them in their movie or shows. Which they acknowledge isn't likely. They're not really knocking on Marvel much in this article.

I can kind of see the point, though. In today's political climate, you can have a group of meta women band together in response to internet trolls, the alt-right and increased political expression of misogyny — after all, you're going to get empowered guys being utter dicks (not looking in Killgrave's general direction). And, one reaction to being traumatised is... to hit back when you find out you can. -_-

They just go about it in exactly the wrong ways, though — meaning they get considered villains by the wider public, even if they actually get treated as being very, very grey in reality: say, varying between Daredevil and Punisher levels of grey, depending on the individual. Which could make for compelling viewing or reading if that point is made: that the goal might be worthy, but the Pussy Riot on Acid (including offensive name) methods they've picked are not always helpful.

Some might be able to do a Deadpool (sometimes heroic, often not — mostly with their own goals foremost), others not. Or, the odd one or two might even get the full-on Jessica Jones antihero treatment. Possibly with the Night Nurse plotline the Netflix series are pushing. Or, even turning up with Luke Cage plot proper. Intersectionality can be touched on with minimal racebending. Some of his traditional villains can be easily converted across.

As I said: rainbow of grey. There's scope to have truly vile, Evily Evil... and not-so-bad in the same group. Villains don't have to be 2D these days. And, the best aren't. Cottonmouth and Black Maria were not depicted as their usual 2D in their latest iteration in Luke Cage, and are all the better for it. You can see where both are coming from, even though they're really not nice people and make terrible choices that lock them in a downward spiral. Yet, they have their reasons which make sense.

edited 6th Mar '17 5:45:12 AM by Euodiachloris

I feel like that idea would be kind of stupid. "They're villains but not really you're supposed to like them except they do bad things", paired with all the hor new topicality of the day. Again, relatability has little to do with making good villains.

I'd argue that this need to make diverse characters positive role models actually hurts attempts at making good diverse villains. Nobody thinks that your stock straight wide male character has to be a true American role model, but the same doesn't apply to black or female characters.

Is the embassy efect, as minority are...well, minorities they speak for a entire population, I have yet to reminber a good black villian or good tryt o make a native american villian and see how that work to you, even white men villian can be memorable as they cross the moral horizon over and over just look magneto, loki or to a trutly extreme example Alex the large of clockwork orange, now swich him to a woman or a black men and suddenly things get REAAAAAALLY ugly.

Cottonmouth from Luke Cage was a great black villain.

I think the easiest way to avoid the embassy effect is just to have the majority of the cast be the same ethnicity as the villain. Then the story is just about the main characters fighting someone who's the same as they are.

edited 5th Mar '17 6:00:21 PM by Draghinazzo

I'd say the article is actually arguing for diverse villains specifically by citing the Femizons and listing out what their qualities and such were. It doesn't really do so strongly, but it is arguing for it.

Also, Femizons is an oddly fun word to say.

Except even that has its problems in refusing to have a diverse cast which reflects the American reality. Which, let's face it, most of us here in the thread are talking about. It's one thing if you're in like, Japan, which is largely and deliberately homogeneous, but in places like America having a deliberately one tone cast is reading as less and less true to many readers.

edited 5th Mar '17 9:12:31 PM by AceofSpades