random bits

1.  havocthecathas made a pimp post for Army Wives, a show that completely escaped my notice, but which I may have to check out.

I like female characters. I want strong female characters with emotional growth that get to blow shit up like the boys do, or talk about their feelings, if that's their forte instead. I will never say that a female character must possess typically male personality traits in order to be a strong female character. Trust me. (Also, my mother would smack me upside the head and I'd never hear the end of it if I were do say something so patently ridiculous.)

In Army Wives, I get that. I get strong female characters. I get them remembering everything that's happened to them. I get them reacting based off those things. I get conflict, both emotional and physical, I get characters who learn things and don't forget them. Yes, you get women who are identified, in part, by the men in their lives. That's an inescapable part of the show's premise. But you know what? You get women who refuse to allow themselves to be solely defined by the men in their lives. I'll take it.

2.  Earlier today, she also directed me to two articles that essentially said yes, writers are told that they must write all about the white, heterosexual male and everyone else must be there to admire them, and women can't talk about about anything but how great the white male is, or the audience will get bored, think they're gay, or get the silly idea that the guy may not be the best thing in the world.

This is an old rule I learned in screenwriting around the time I was taught your lead character must be a white, straight man (like the target audience): if you have a woman right there in front of your leading man and she’s not stirred by him, the insecure young men film and TV target will wonder what’s “wrong” with him. Is he gay? Is she? The real reason, I was informed, to put women in a script was to reveal things about the men. Any other purpose I assigned to the women was secondary at best, but I could do what I wanted there as long as the women’s purposes never threatened to distract the audience from the purposes of the men. Once I realized that merely passing the Mo Movie Measure test was enough to “distract” the audience from the men, I quit screenwriting and have never regretted it.

...

Only to learn there was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors. My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I’d found the “audience won’t watch women!” argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters).

At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”

This is me not being bitter.  Is it working?  (Seriously, I have love for the white, heterosexual male.  I also have love for the gay or bi white male, not to mention the asian, black, hispanic, indian, arabic, etc. male of any sexual orioentation.  Not to mention the female of any ethnicity and sexual orientation.)

In other news, I think I need to expolre thehathorlegacy.com

3.  To end on a happier note:  Today I had chinese dumplings, fried scallops, and fried shrimp, with ginger sauce to go with them.  This may be irrelevant to anyone else, but it made me happy.

*sigh*

 Anyone ever read a book they should love, but can't quite?

I'm reading (though I'm thinking I'll set it aside for now and try it again later...like, sometime when I haven't just read 2 articles that are all about how you have to write to make the male great and have the girl meaningless if you want to sell, and haven't seen the only icon post ever-that I've seen-of one of my manga and have it have a huge number of icons, but the only female represented is the one who died before the series started) Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock.  On the one hand, I really like the story, which seems to be shaping up to be a retelling of Tam Lin, and the way Polly seems to have two sets of memories that don't go together, but...it seems specifically written for girls who want to be boys, or who wanted to when they were young.

Polly doesn't like looking like a pretty girl, she wants to look like her best friend, who is described in ver unfeminine terms.  When she has adventures being a hero's sidekick, she specifically pictures herself as a male sidekick.  All of her hobbies are specifically pointed out as normally being for boys.  When she stands up to bullies, she hates it when everyone calls her a Heroine, because that's just surface and meaningless, but being a Hero is real and your true self.

I like Polly, but I keep wanting to shake her and tell her that there's nothing wrong with being a girl, and it seems to be pointed out how much she doesn't like things connected to being female every few pages.

Does this continue the entire book, or is there ever a point where she realizes that it's ok to be a girl, and that you don't have to be a boy to be strong or cool or have adventures?

(And yeah, I realize a lot of this probably has to do with when it was written, but...)

*Was mistaken for a boy once when she had really short hair, and has never had short hair ever since.* 

ETA:  Since I probably didn't make it clear enough(from what I can tell):  I think a lot of my problems(being this prominent, at least) are due to my reading it right now.  I know who recced it to me and can tell why, and agree with their reasons from what I've read and shall try it again later.  Just very bad timing.

I'm sorry, I'm fictionally cranky today.

 Another thing that's been going around that's been making me extremely irritable (and most definitely carried over into the other posts of the day) is a lot of the talk about women in comic book movies.  Outside of Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Daredevil, all these superhero comic book movies the last few years are having heroines largely limited to non-action roles, mostly just the girlfriend or mother figure.  Uhm...so far, I've largely thought they were all pretty cool myself, but we aren't getting into that.  (Lets face it, X-Men and FF only had action girls because they're team movies, and DD because Elektra is his best known lover.  We pretend Catwoman does not exist.  Just like we pretend Halle Berry as Storm did not make the entire comic book fandom sob in sorrow.)  Then there's Doctor Horrible.  I haven't seen it yet, so I'm not commenting there.  It seems to be bringing a lot of this out, though.

But someone somewhere said that that's all any of the female characters in comic books were.  And someone else said that female characters never should have any role save the girl to get rescued or the mother.  And all comic book heroine suck anyway.

The women in this icon, and everyone remotely associated with them, would like to have words with that sentiment.  As would an amazingly long list of women connected to the heroes movies are being made of.  And an even longer list of other women in comic books.

No, I'm not linking.  I burned the threads from my head as best I could.  Much like the "Storm should be raped" essay I once read.

Here's the thing.  Pretty much all all these iconic heroes they've been making movies of have several action women-lovers, heroines, and enemies-linked to them.  Batman in particular is drowning in them.  But you know what?  The movie makers skip them.  It's basically all about the screen writing articles I linked to earlier.  Other character types in these movies would, very simply, have more to do in the plot and distract from the hero being heroic and saving the day.  Apparently, the rule is that girls in comic book movies only get to help do that if there are several boy heroes.

My point?  I'm not sure I really have one, beyond apparently being generally cranky regarding fiction today.  I get watching comic book movies and saying the female characters are mostly just love interests, because it's true.  That doesn't mean they suck.  But watching a few movies and knowing nothing about comics themselves or the characters beyond the iconic males Hollywood has been promoting, and assuming there are no heroines in the action sense, or female characters beyond assistants and girlfriends?  I might refrain from biting your head off if I like you.

Comic books = Megan's babies, even if The Big Two are annoying her too much for her to be reading a lot lately.

And Gwyneth Paltrow says comic books are only for boys.  What does that make me and about half the f-list that read comics?  She can join Halle Berry in the Comic Book Movie Hall of Ultimate Shame.

Also, I have been spoiled for a part of Dark Knight.  It does not influence my intentions of seeing the movie, but:

Barbara.  Freaking. Gordon.  Mess with her the way the spoilers threaten, and there may be blood.

(no subject)

 Has anybody read this?

(Why yes, I do still have a 30% off coupon burning a hole in my purse, why do you ask?)