A Way to Make Save the Girl Sensible?

It's not so much that any given instance of this thing is sexist; the problem is that it's so often the female love interest who is saved by the male protagonist (who then wins her as a reward) and so rarely the reverse. Such a wide range of stories do the same thing, and the net effect of that is to imply that women are weak, they need saving, they're passive rather than active, they're objects to be saved rather than subjects with a viewpoint etc.

Dont forget that it isnt this trope unless the hero is sacrificing a whole bunch of innocent people to get her back.

The problem is that in general, women are physically weaker than men. So even the toughest female protagonist might need help from the male protagonist if a man assaults her. But it doesn't mean that she has to becomes a reward for him, even if that technically often is what happens. Simona Ahrnstedt handles this very well. Even if the female protagonist is saved from assault by the male protagonist, they will often have more problems to solve before they can become happy together. And it also helps that these female protagonists are proto-feminists, who wouldn't approve of the idea of a woman becoming a man's "reward".

Never try to apply a general rule to specific instances where it can easily be wrong; apply it only across a population.

The kind of works we're talking about (mostly action-based stories) definitely don't deal with people 'in general'; the characters tend to be exceptional in some way, up to and including having actual superpowers.

edited 12th May '14 2:00:14 PM by imadinosaur

Though actually, it's very rare for the hero to actually let these people die (because that'd be too grimdark). Usually the hero simply finds a way to save both.

So he needs to fail.

Heh. The first time, the hero decides to save the girl, and many people die and the girl hates him.

The second time, said girl tells him to save the people and trust her to help herself...then she dies.

The third time, he's specifically ready with a good strategy to save both, refusing to choose between one or the other....

Whether he fails or not depends on how entertaining you find it for him to keep fucking such choices up.

If there's a fourth time, he takes the Keyser Soze method and gets rid of all of them.

I am reminded of a story where two characters are discussing sacrifice. One asks the other if he knows anything about being a parent. He says he does. In fact, he had let his son die in order to stop a war that was ravaging the continent.

The other characters says that the difference between him and her. He let his son be sacrificed to save the world, whereas she would sacrifice the world to save her son.