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

Rule of Cool is about writing things that would break Willing Suspension of Disbelief under normal circumstances, but the audience accepts it anyway just because it's cool.

Author Appeal is about writing stuff the creator personally finds appealing.

They're not really the same, even if they can overlap.

Yeah. That sounds like a good distinction.

In short is how is direct: Rule of cool try to charm the audience while author appeal is about the author being self indulgence with is work for some reason of another.

Think about all scenes with female feet in the Quentin Tarantino movies, specially From Dusk Till Dawn.

Purpose to the plot? Nope. Does Tarantino have a foot fetish? Hell yes.

And compare to the founties of blood it show every time a chararter get hurt.

usefull? not, is cool to the audiences? hell yeah.

I found this article on The Mary Sue about the way mothers are used in stories about male villains.

https://www.themarysue.com/mommys-boy-villains-loki-kylo-ren-zuko/

The essay focuses primarily on the characters Loki from Thor, Kylo Ren from Star Wars and Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. While the first two point to the idea of the relationship with the mother causing a problem, Zuko gets some praise for having his mom be a source of inspiration for him and subverting the "mommy's boy" villain trope.

I do like the article and how it points out these issues in how mothers are treated in villainous stories.

I've also noticed that it's not uncommon for stories about male antiheroes to have poor relationships with their mothers, especially on TV. Livia Soprano from The Sopranos, Abigail Whitman from Mad Men, and Beatrice Horseman from Bojack Horseman are all horrible parents whose abuse heavily shapes the main character and is a source of many of their issues. It's worth noting though that in all those cases the father is also terrible and abusive.

Well, Anti Heroes rarely have decent family lifes

@Windleopard- That's very interesting. Although I would consider those characters fairly different, and varying degrees of sympathetic, they do have a commonality of being varying degrees of non-macho (at least according to Western standards, because I think Zuko is "macho" in terms of a Samurai-style culture, even though he wouldn't look it in comparison to a burly barbarian type).

I do wonder to what extent this falls into a general pattern/assumption that guys have a good relationship with their mothers and girls with their fathers.

Also worth noting though that there are differences in terms of their mothers- Zuko has memories of an apparently saintly and presumed deceased mother, Loki's mother was his Morality Pet and his positive character development is tied to guilt over contributing to her death, and Kylo's mother is actively fighting against him and while she wants to reform him, is coming to terms with the fact that he might not be redeemable and should be killed.

And similarly, their relationship with their fathers somewhat differs- Zuko has like the worst father in history, Loki had a pretty bad relationship with his father at some points, but the two eventually reconcile (maybe not coincidentally, this ties into Loki's possibly permanent Heel–Face Turn), and as far as I can tell, Kylo had as good of a relationship with Han as he did with Leia, although he has more qualms about killing his mother than he does about killing his father.

This put me in mind of Shakespeare's play Coriolanus, where the rather ulikable and arguably villainous title character is a mammas boy, with his mother pushing him toward his ambitions but also ultimately guilting him into a Heel–Face Turn. But what's kind of interesting is that while the play is really tonally serious, and his mother is in the mold of a stereotypical rather hard-edged Roman matron, their interactions an really easily be played as the kind of My Beloved Smother scenes one might find in a modern comedy (thinking of like Principal Skinner and his mother).

While the article does have a point, it used the worst examples because Kylo, Loki and Zuko their mother are actually a good thing, hell int he third film Odin is pretty much a villian who unfinish buisness haunts is sons(and in fact, the film let him go to easly for my taste), Zuko villiany is because of his father abuseness to him and Kylo turing to the dark come from to source: Snoke(who is pretty much a parental figure of sort) and Luke failure to figure out his corruption(and the source of is Atoner status).

I mean, there are time when the trope play in other way around, with a male villian usually loving her mother as is only good trait, at the same times a daddy daughter then to be rebellious and trying to get far away from him.

Yeah. Zuko, Kylo and Loki are cases where the mother is the heroic one. Heck, in the case of Kylo, he is defined for his family at his mom side.

Current western culture considerate that the Samurai are one of the pinacles of masculinity

edited 8th Apr '18 5:44:47 PM by KazuyaProta

Yes and no, usually the pinacle are ether templars or Vikings, Samurai are romantized as this warrior zen type of guy who never lost is cool.

I said one of them, you certainly havent meet fans of a sort of pan-"warrior culture". And the archetype of the badass warrior that never lose its cool? That is literally one of the biggest ideals of Masculinity ever.

And Templars are hardly popular, you have Alt Righters that love them because they killed Muslims but overall, most of society fear them for being the Trope Namer of, well, Knight Templar.

If you said Knights, you could have a better point (albeit, they are losing their popularity slowly), but no, Templars are hardly popular

edited 8th Apr '18 6:07:52 PM by KazuyaProta

Knight usually get bad rep for being too idealistic, in part for being the figure of fairy tale but not for not being badass.

Usually int he ancient warrior the most popular are: Vikings, Crusader, Spartans and Samurai and I guess Samurai get bonus point for being "Oriental".

(I mean considering how much the alt right are weeboos...something it never stop of facsing me).

Heroic Knights usually get shit a lot, I agree with that.

Crusaders are popular with the Alt Right, but not much with anyone else, The rest seems fine.

Is interesting but is hardly suprising, Hitler himself did praise the japanese and chinese cultures considering them equal or superior to Germany.

As soon you are in pop culture, the Alt Right will respect you.

edited 8th Apr '18 6:29:09 PM by KazuyaProta

It's more that the alt-right started on 4chan which was originally created as an imageboard focused on anime, so the overlap between "people who like anime" "channers" and "the alt right" are rather high.

edited 8th Apr '18 6:30:55 PM by Fourthspartan56

, I will said is a mix of Both, the aliance ebetween both Nazis germany and Imperial japane allow alt right to praise japan without been ideological impure.

Also, most of the most moderate(that means they want violence but dosent want to do personaly) praise Japan as modern and yet highgly hoogenized state, being the closet thing they want to a modern nation: Highly insular, modern, tons of pop culture and with old fashion ideas about women and minorities in general.

They just ignore all of the issues Japan is currently facing partly because of all of that such as population decline due to declining birth rates and lack of immigration.

Turns out in this day and age no one is an island, even when you're an island nation.

edited 8th Apr '18 7:29:14 PM by M84

Birth Rates that aren't even that bad compared to the west, but really compounded by the lack of imigration.

AKA a problem that if they get there way they will just replicate.

Considering how self indulging the alt right is, they dont care at all.

Because something that I have notices about the, is that unlike old neo nazis who at least have something of ideology, the alt right since to be live a fantay or being manly or this edgysona stright out of a bad anime or fan fic.

Not surprise to me must of them move in this contradictory things as "We can used violence just because" and "we all the victim of the left", is pretty much millenial nazism....

damn, I feel weird typing this.

Nazism and Neo-Nazism aren't particularly well thought out ideologies either. And the alt-right is even less well thought out and organized. It's this horrific mishmash of sexism, racism, xenophobia, and contempt for empathy and compassion. It's all of the ugliest and hateful ideas humanity has ever spawned mixed with angsty entitled dipshit assholery stewing within online echo chambers for years.

edited 9th Apr '18 12:19:30 AM by M84

Not surprising, they're explicitly anti-intellectual with a contempt for rationalism. That tends to produce poorly thought out results

So I found this article on TMS which discusses how female characters in movies have a tendency to be written out for the sequels by whatever means (death, break up, etc).

https://www.themarysue.com/the-girl-doesnt-stay-in-the-sequel/

Spoilers for Deadpool 2 for those who haven't seen it.

I've been noticing this trend myself for a bit now. I think when I became aware of it was Agent L's absense in Men in Black 2.

They're usually not seen as "main draws" and hence more expendable. You can trade one in for another, much like Bond Girls.

Other than the title character, how many characters tend to stay?