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

One advantage is that the chances of that love interest ending up dead go down if they are a fellow hero that can defend themselves when villian decides to go after the loved ones of their arch nemesis.

The main issue with civilian love interests, especially female ones, is a lack of effort put into making us care about them as their own people and not an obligatory part of the genre to appeal to a mass audience. When combined with the fact that they are often not a direct part of the action due to being civilians, it makes them feel boring and uninteresting.

One example of this is dana from batman beyond. IMO the fact that terry never reveals his identity to her severely limited the way she could be involved, and it felt like the writers weren't that interested in her beyond someone to create drama for terry.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jan 19th 2019 at 7:00:02 AM

I have to ask, how exactly are we defining "being part of the action"? Two of the most popular comic book pairings have the love interest not be a superhero, those being the pairings of Superman and Lois Lane along with Spider-Man and Mary Jane. It is far from am intrinsic problem, just a matter of writers not wanting to put the work in.

Edit: And speaking from a diagetic perspective as to why a superhero may have a civilian love interest opposed to another superhero, they probably want to have a life away from all of that.

Edited by Kakuzan on Jan 19th 2019 at 6:13:00 AM

I would define it as being an active part of whatever story is going on at the time; Lois Lane for instance is an investigative reporter, and so she often stumbles into whatever the larger conflict in the story is of her own volition and makes contributions that move the story along.

I agree with you that there's nothing intrisincally wrong with civilian love interests it really is just writers not putting in the proper effort.

I'm still confused at why the editors at Marvel hated Mary Jane so much.

It's mainly just Joe Quesada and his stubborn belief that having a Happily Married Spider-Man is inherently some kind of Shipping Bed Death.

Quesada believed that Spider-Man should be young and hip, and that him being married aged him too much. He notoriously lashed out at the fandom over it at one point, alleging that some fans "seem to want Spider-Man to grow old and die!"

The purpose of "One More Day" was to unmake the Spider-Marriage without actually divorcing the characters, because Spider-Man being a divorcee would age him even more than being happily married. It was a radical attempt to turn back the clock and let Spidey be in a swingin' single trying to make ends meet again.

I think this is the main thing really, people want the hero's girlfriend/boyfriend to be a part of the story.

That’s entirely on the writing. If you read Superman comics, or Flash comics, their love interests are integral to the story most of the time. Heck, the current Flash arc has Barry Allen and Iris West traveling the world together. Wally West’s Flash stories wouldn’t be nearly the same without Linda Park involved.

A lot of times the writing flops on that aspect with only a few exceptions which is probably why this situation has come about.

Also ensemble works tend to de-emphasize super heroes private lives or the contributions of their civilian cast. Lois Lane's screen time practically disappeared after the Superman cartoon transitioned to Justice League.

That's a pretty big thing too.

Said this, yeah, sometimes the idea that a female should be "useful"...even if they are anyway.

Thing is, the love interest is only in as much danger as the writer puts them in and even when the non-superhero love interest defends herself, you still get fans crying foul.

Something else that I've noticed is that male and female superhero pairings tend to be not as equal as a lot of fans think. While Sue Storm has evolved into the deadliest member of the Fantastic Four, she wasn't always like that and even after Byrne had her take a level in badass, we still had dodgy writing decisions like the Malice storyline which was basically Phoenix 2.0 and that story was problematic in its own right. Both and Black Canary and Wonder Woman have a tendency to become faux action girls when paired with Green Arrow and Superman respectively or at least be shown as less effective than their male partners.

Edited by windleopard on Jan 20th 2019 at 6:56:04 AM

That's the downside with a badly written Power Couple

A lot of that also depend of how much the super interact with the larger universe.

I mena, if a hero is just there crime busting there the focus is more in is ciilizan life, which is wife spiderman can dedicate much of mary jane or super to lois, when is more interacting with the wilder universe then the civilian largarly disapear out of the picture, which is why civilian interaction are so rare in animated justice league or teen titans.

Also how much a love interest can save themselves is another thorny point because it usually means the villian take the idiot ball so that can happen.

mispost.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 20th 2019 at 10:05:26 AM

Well the upcoming Mortal Kombat 11 is shaping up to be pretty strong in female representation. Not only do we have the franchise's first female, final boss, but it has a playable female character in her 50s in Sonya Blade. Quite an accomplishment given how fighting games seem almost terrified of having women be older than 25 (and look like they're older than 25).

Of course, some fans have to be assholes about it.

The only real problem with Sonya is her new actress.

When woman are literally not even allowed to age.

Okay, what's the deal with Ronda Rousey?

Like, 50% of the discourse surrounding MK 11 is "Ronda Rousey ruined Mortal Kombat forever by voicing Sonya."

I literally know nothing about Rousey other than that she's a wrestler. I am legitimately perplexed by why people are acting like they just cast Hitler to play Johnny Cage. What did Rousey do that's so heavily incited the fandom?

Pretending we live in a world where sexist assholery is not the primary problem in representation, there's an argument that Sonya Blade is getting treated poorly because every other major character has things like undeath and godhood to prevent them from aging.

We also don't want Ryu and Chun Li both not to age in their franchises but to be eternally awesome like Spiderman or Batman.

But in the case of Sonya Blade, General Blade is pretty awesome by itself and she does have her Generation Xerox in Cassie Cage.

Rousey has a Hatedom due to the fact she's a famous MMA fighter who has since shifted to professional wrestling after her two stunning unfortunate losses that ended her career. She has a fandom but people feel she moved from real fighting to fake fighting. Her perception as an actress is also....mixed as most of her characterization seems to be, "look really angry all the time."

Tricia Helfer was also well received as General Blade in the previous game.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 24th 2019 at 10:32:31 AM

Rousey has, to date...

Gone on transphobic tirades against Fallon Fox, a transgender MMA fighter, and believes that Fox shouldn’t be allowed to compete.

Thinks Sandy Hook was faked.

Is a really really bad actress. Just very wooden and stilted.

I'm inclined to think her hatedom is unrelated to that but, yes, she's also got a reputation for bad sporstmanship.

Transphobic tirades and parroting InfoWars talking points do sound like legit concerns.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 24th 2019 at 11:43:40 AM

I remember she got a lot of crap and bullshit thrown her way for the crime of being a prominent female fighter in a mostly male dominated sport with a male audience.

But she's long since proven herself to be a terrible human being in her own right since then.