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

I've never liked the term for similar reasons.

Berkley Breathed made fun of the term for the exact same reason.

Example #1◊

But black culture in America has a long history of slightly altering words to get people to think about their meaning.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 11th 2019 at 1:45:56 AM

I get the impression 'people of colour' is used as it covers a wider spectrum then "Black people" but I'll admit I've never used the term

I use non-white, mainly because the term People of Color make me think on literal People of Color (Green Aliens, for example).

Back to the Endgame talk, Yeah. MCU female.heroines have the issue that they're either "Low tier" or simply too powerful. So in practique, they don't get the dramatic action scenes.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 11th 2019 at 3:50:15 AM

Not a huge fan of the term either due to existing outside the black/white dichotomy and belonging to an ethnicity with its own history of being on both sides of racial discrimination, often at the same time. I also like "non-white" or better yet "non-European" myself but some people are opposed to it because they believe putting a "non-" in front implies that it's a bad thing and that being white/European is inherently more prestigious.

But if there's any country for which People of Color is a useful term it'd be the US, due to the fact that many places, especially the South, historically did once legally classify people as "colored", and while this practice was primarily aimed at people of African descent it was also used to discriminate against anyone who wasn't overtly "white" including East and South Asians (Middle Easterners as well, until they successfully convinced the racists that they're another form of "white").

Probably a better topic for the race thread, folks.

Regarding Silaws' post about Black Widow. He's not wrong, it was her scene and she took all.of.it.

But on the other side, it feels wrong that the only female OG Avenger died to save a man.

As someone else said, all of this wouldn't be a issue if there were.more women in the team but...that wasn't the case.

I remember on the Mary Sue site that one of the article writers complained that the Handmaid's Tale 3rd season ended with a bunch of the Handmaids sacrificing themselves to escort children out of Gilead. They questioned why it was better to focus on children than fellow Handmaids.

They got blasted by the comments of the site's fans.

I also have a lot of issues with the MCU for how they took Janet Van Dyne, the first female Avenger and the person who named the team, and gave her roles to Black Widow and Iron Man.

And then when she does show up, she’s nothing at all like her comic counterpart. It was such a fucking letdown.

Incidentally, I just finished watching the sixth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and that season finale has a great example of how to do a heroic sacrifice.

Melinda May, OG S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent since episode 1, gets impaled on a magic sword, the only thing that can kill the season's two villains, by one of the villains and then falls through a portal. She lands in a weird realm where life and death are wonky and proceeds to use that sword to throw a spanner in the wrench of the villain's plans.

One of the bad guys, a woman named Ixel, comes through the portal to fix what she's broken while the other bad guy, Sarge, fends off the other protagonists outside the portal. There's a fight scene between May and Ixel where May takes the upper hand, but Ixel is able to fix the broken part of the plan and escapes back through the portal, secure in the knowledge that May's mortal injuries will take her if she follows.

Ixel emerges into the safety of the regular world, but shortly after, May emerges from the portal and runs her through with the magic sword, killing Ixel. Before she collapses from her deadly injuries, May tosses the sword to the other protagonists so they can use it to bring down Sarge and end the conflict.

The episode drops in a last-minute cop-out, but had May actually died here, it would have been a satisfying enough send-off for the character. Much moreso than what Black Widow got. This is for multiple reasons.

1. Agent May's gotten a ton of focus and development over the course of the series. We've spent a lot of time with her and she's got plenty of awesome and heartwarming moments to her name. She's not just a major character; she's actually been treated like a major character.
2. Agent May is not burdened with the responsibility of being the sole female representation in the works she appears in. Her series has always had a pretty mixed ratio of gender representation, and so the loss of a female character is less devastating.
3. Agent May's sacrifice directly solves the plot. She's not sacrificing herself in the second act to pick up a MacGuffin so that others can solve the plot in the third. She's sacrificing herself in the third act to kill one of the main villains. It's more equivalent to Iron Man's Snap than Black Widow's jump.
4. The people who are sad for Agent May's passing are not exclusively male. In fact, it's another female character, Daisy, that cradles May and listens to her dying words. This feels appropriate because May and Daisy have built a Bechdel-approving mentor/student relationship over the course of their appearances in the series.

So. Yeah. An awesome female character with a wealth of awesome moments and plenty of female peers to split representational duties with, gets to die in a way that solves the plot herself. Minus the last-second cop-out, that is. That is how you kill a badass female character without offending half of your audience.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 11th 2019 at 4:39:03 AM

The only point that really matters is just Number 2, which was Widow's real issue all.along. She was the female.face of the MCU for a long time despite.being a Major Secondary.

4 also ties directly into 2, on top of that 1 is something that was beyond fixing by the time of Endgame.

I agree completely that Agents of Shield has built things better and is thus able to do better sacrifices and such, it’s just that we passed the point of it being viable to fix Widow’s issues a while back.

Endgame couldn’t change that she’s had minimal development due to being denied solo films, Endgame couldn’t fix the fact that she has a huge burden of being the only female original avenger, Endgame couldn’t fix the fact that due to lack of diversity in the past Widow never had a serious connection with any female characters.

Maybe it could have been fixed back in Age of Ultron, have Widow be the one to bring Scarlet Witch properly into the team (shit have Clint take the Hulk calming duties, he’s always been chill) then you can have her mourn Widow’s death upon returning from the Snap.

Were I writing it, Hawkeye would sacrifice himself and Widow would be asked to protect his family.

I think if you don’t have Widow make the sacrifice you still make it more about her, specifically you lean into the idea that dying is easy, it’s continuing on that’s hard. I’m glad they didn’t go that route in the film, but I think that’s the way you take it if Hawkeye is the one to die.

If I were writing it, nobody would make the jump. Since when do superheroes give up and acquiesce to the Sadistic Choice?

There's always a Third Option in superhero media, because superhero media is an optimistic power fantasy that's supposed to inspire and make you feel heroic. That's part of the problem with Vormir; it is tonally inappropriate to have an edgy, cynical murder-planet where heroes have to kill each other to progress and then to play it 100% straight.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 11th 2019 at 8:28:28 AM

To be fair, I dislike that attitude from.fiction, so I'm oddly fine with Bormir.

Issue is, it's Manpain planet.

I think in real life lots of people die horribly in bad situations...because real life.

But in real life women don't die for the specific purpose of manpain. Because real life isn't a story.

Edited by M84 on Sep 11th 2019 at 10:58:13 PM

Real life is random, chaotic, and meaningless.

Nothing in fiction is ever random, chaotic, or meaningless. Everything that ever happens in a fictional universe is guided by the hand of an almighty god, for the purpose of shaping the narrative.

Nothing happens by accident or by happenstance in a fictional world. Everything is a deliberate choice made by the story's creators, and any other choice could have been made instead. You cannot analyze the art of crafting a story until you accept that basic premise.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 11th 2019 at 9:09:27 AM

Um... women die all across the world because of Planet Manpain.

Honour killings when she tries to choose her own partner, domestic punchbags for when face is lost, because the baby was the wrong gender, because her family stopped the dowry/ refused to allow a renegotiation of the terms of the bride price, because being a widow is unlucky, because he feels suicidal and deems she (and the kids) should join him, because "women's health issues" are icky and thus not high on the budgetary agenda...

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 11th 2019 at 4:18:08 PM

Plus, this talk is about Black Widow having a Heroic Sacrifice. This is not a talk about random deaths and how they apply.

The former talk about Hela made me think that, well, Woman being Generic Doomsday Villain actually has a meaning, given that the role used to be male reserved.

A villainess based on physical power is actually welcome.

That isn't a argument for fiction tho. Especially when discussing a Heroic Sacrifice done because the sacrificed wanted.

I get the idea of Widow and Gamora, with Widow's willing sacrifice being a foil to Thanos sacrificing Gamora. Issue is...why we take the female characters for this?

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 11th 2019 at 10:20:00 AM

That's not manpain. Manpain is something that is done by writers for the sake of male characters' character development at the expense of female characters being marginalized and disposed of.

Manpain in real life would be like God or something deciding that the best way to make a man get character development would be to kill off his wife and children.

Honor killings are done to reinforce the power men have over women in the cultures that condone them.

I've also argued before that Hela is not a Generic Doomsday Villain, being an embodiment of imperialism.

Edited by M84 on Sep 11th 2019 at 11:21:16 PM

Not always how it is framed. After all, it's a tragedy for the man who had to kill his sister/daughter/whoever to save the family from disgrace. A heroic act that proves he is a man of solid character, one who holds traditions sacred... And, who has passed through a trail by fire.

Prime elder material, if he keeps up the hard work.

Pity the slut was a slut; what a horrible thing to have done to him, to make him have to face this terrible decision! How noble of him to choose to do what a man has to do! How much he must have loved who she had been when she was pure! How tragic! Etc, etc.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 11th 2019 at 4:42:01 PM

Oh, I didn't meant Hela especifically. I meant that even a female Generic Doomsday Villain means something because that role was reserved for male/ male-coded entities

I would also want to put in that just because horrible things happen in real life, that doesn't make it a good idea to put that in your story.

You're the writer, you can pick and choose.