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

One thing I did really like about the Maleficent film is the implication that Maleficent's curse backfired. She clearly states in her curse that Aurora will "grow in grace and beauty, beloved by all who meet her." As the film later firmly establishes, even Maleficent is powerless to combat the effects of her curse. Which means she is magically compelled to love Aurora just as everyone else is.

It's a neat bit of Hoist by His Own Petard, that Maleficent in her moment of greatest villainy manages to ensnare herself in a wordplay trap that forces her to grow as a person.

If only she were a more sinister character prior to this point, it could have been amazing. I'd have loved to see a more one-dimensionally evil Maleficent like the one in the original film, forced down a road of ironic Character Development after discovering that she has inadvertently infected herself with love.

edited 6th Dec '17 4:27:10 PM by TobiasDrake

Yeah, I haven't heard of that. Although it does show a case of dated history, due to the fact that recent findings show that Richard was not good to look at. However, if someone wanted to give Richard his due, they would deconstruct the notion of Beauty Equals Goodness.

What should have happened, IMO, is that they should have made her a more complex character, but still ultimately a horrible person and villainous to the end.

Someone who rose to power, and used whatever she could to get what she wants.

So I wanted to talk about two characters from the DC comics Titans franchise; Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke and Jade Nguyen aka Cheshire.

Slade in his early appearances was pretty much an unambiguous scumbag, doing things like kidnapping Cyborg's girlfriend and deliberately endangering civilians to get away from the Titans. In contrast, Cheshire started off with some standards, avoiding collateral damage during her assassinations and and even turned the tables on some racist white South Africans who had hired her to kill a black civil rights worker.

Now Cheshire is known as that woman who once nuked a country and Slade is treated as a noble demon despite the latter starting out as being more deplorable than the former. Even the fact that Slade has stuff like nuking Bludhaven and statutory on his resume isn't enough to stop fans and writers alike from leather pantsing him. Jade at least gets treated as a scumbag but people actually debate on whether or not Slade is a villain. And I can't help but feel the fact that Slade is a white man while Jade is a Vietnamese woman raises some questions as to why that is.

People are always more likely to slap the Noble Demon characterization onto the white male villain. And once they do it, they'll convince themselves that anything worse he did—like statutory rape, or the destruction of Bludhaven, is out of character. Probably doesn't help that "Judas Contract" treated Slade more like a victim of Terra than the other way around—no sexism there, right?

From what I heard, George Perez wanted Slade to be an out-and-out monster but Wolfman was the one who saw him as a victim. He even says as such in the commentary for the Judas Contract animated movie.

Wasn't the story where Cheshire nuked a country and was treated as an irredeemable monster because of it written by beloved feminist writer Gail Simone to boot?

According to his trope page Wolfman had Slade portrayed as something of a Tragic Villain to the point where he was more of a Punch-Clock Villain more than anything, and it was later writers that put more emphasis on his faults. Slade's characterization post-Identity Crisis seems to get a lot of flack for making him too much of a one-dimensional villain, depending on when that issue of Cheshire nuking a country was written, there may be some overlap here.

FWIW adaptations been more kind to Cheshire since she's usually portrayed as an anti villain, while Slade is the one that's usually played as an irredeemable asshole, including the Judas Contract movie.

edited 19th Dec '17 2:15:02 AM by Rynnec

The story where Cheshire nuked Qurac (Deathstroke the Terminator Vol 1 #19) was written by Marv Wolfman in 1993.

Gail Simone simply considered that a character with that on her record shouldn't be treated with sympathy when she started using her in her stories.

edited 19th Dec '17 2:23:19 AM by M84

I really cant disagree with her in that.

Wolfman treated him as a tragic villain, but made him guilty of, in addition to typical supervillain activity like murder, statutory rape of a teenage girl. Which he then blamed on the teenage girl.

A lot of this may be due to Wolfman liking Deathstroke too much. Not for nothing does he have an entry in the Creator's Pet comics page.

That sounds awful in so many levels.

Yeah, it dont make it any less disgusting, or sexist.

I like having female villains that dont get the Broken Bird treatment , but if is doing to excuse giving a male villain a Draco in Leather Pants , that is hideous.

edited 19th Dec '17 7:13:48 PM by KazuyaProta

I think it says a lot about Wolfman, who as I mentioned above, also wrote the whole "Cheshire nukes a country" thing.

You know, something that really bothers me of Persona 5 , is that the only one sympathetic Palace Owners of all the game are both woman.

Besides that Shadows being evil per se dont really makes sense based on Jungian psychology (the shadows of most of the villains, specially the later ones, act exactly like the real person) and the whole associating mental illness with evil (what is a distorsion? Narcissism, psychological issues in general? -awful- Morality?, this would be important later)

In all the game, there only two palace owners that happens to be female, and those two are the only ones that gets sympathy and eventually joins to the heroes ( they are also the non criminal Palace owners).

The thing is, why? Why the only Palace owners that are not evil are woman? It honestly annoys me, I would have fine with not having female Palace owners (I mean, the common theme arround all Palace owners are that they are abusive authority figures, which tend to be male and have a evil female authority figure would have been problematic given the issues that woman face, specially on Japan).

The thing is, while the first female palace owner could be argued to actually have a mental illness , the second one is a perfectly sane woman which have a palace because she resents her status social and constantly trying to prove herself in a male-dominated profession, is bizarre why she even had one, specially because all other Palace Owners were either narcissists or sociopaths of some type (or teenage girls suffering from depression).

Wolfman also put Donna Troy, then a teenager, in a relationship with much older man, Terry. So there's a trend of creepy ephebophilia in his work.

edited 19th Dec '17 7:18:25 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

It could also be a message about just how demoralizing it really is to have to constantly prove yourself in your profession due to your gender. And still get less respect for it.

Made even worse since Terry Long resembled Wolfman himself in his youth.

edited 19th Dec '17 7:20:04 PM by M84

It's not problematic to have female evil authority figures when you have several more male evil authority figures.

I don't think Deathstroke is a Creator's Pet as the trope is defined. Most of the comic book characters are probably disqualified due to being main characters or not The Scrappy.

Well, most Persona 5 villains are based on real life scandals involving authority figures, I don't think that Atlus find one good enough to include in their game.

That's the intention and that's why I find the fact that she (a adult professional prosecutor) was initially mean to be a deateable option for the male teenager protagonist absolutely hideous.

The issue is less Sae herself, albeit, having a Palace is on itself a sign of being a pretty messed up person, either with some type of antisocial disorder or having suicidal depression and absurdly low self esteem.

Basically, having a Palace is on itself a sign of being mentally unhinged, and Sae is not unhinged at all.

My issue in general is that, of all the Palace owners of the game, the only ones that are show as something else than (literally) Sin incarnated, Females Are Innocent is pretty much on effect.

P5 had the same Complete Monster dichotomy that the 2003 FMA anime had, with the exception that even the Anti-Villain aren't even actual antagonists.

My issue is basically, that while the only two females Palace owners are show as woobies, the male ones are all a bunch of Hate Sink, the fact that the second female Palace Owner don't have any mental disorder just make it worse (and breaks the rules of its own universe)

edited 19th Dec '17 7:46:17 PM by KazuyaProta

Deathstroke was very much a Creator's Pet. If you disagree, feel free to edit the trope page and explain why you think he doesn't count.

Talking about ephebophilia, remember that the P5 MC can date adult woman and is show as him being a Übermensch Byronic Hero with a sensible heart on action.

He's the reason why I hate the Chaotic Good alignment and why I want to remind that they can be every bit as preachy as Lawful Good.

Seriously, I like my own headcannon of Joker as someone with a Bipolar disorder in a manic phase that will have a hard time when he left it

edited 19th Dec '17 7:57:04 PM by KazuyaProta

He's a main character in a Persona game. Of course he's going to have issues.

Different thread for that topic.

Hmm, I don't think that one character's father in Persona 5 was supposed to be hate sink? Haven't played the game and my impression is from character page so might be totally wrong about that

Anyway, really sad that P&P stuff is super niche since this thread seem to mostly relate about popular media :( I think it would be good/interesting to discuss examples from less known sources

edited 19th Dec '17 11:19:34 PM by SpookyMask

Continuing from my initial question, how do you guys think the Teen Titans Judas Contract story would have been viewed if it were written today?