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Too few female characters?

I think you miss the part that most of the characters that we root against are also males. Dragon is the male. We root for male characters and we hate and despise male characters. IMO, that balances it out

...are you serious? Male characters fight male characters and women lie there and do nothing and that's BALANCED?
 

Valentinator

Minstrel
Sheer nonsense, in my opinion, and you can find plenty of speculative fiction to the contrary that readers don't have a problem with. I think it is a mistake to write down the prejudices of a subset of readers, and that's essentially what you're advocating here. The majority of the readers have, in my estimation, the requisite imagination and real world experience to realize that there are women out there who can perform physically on this level, in the real world where there is no magic or hand-waving explanation of how a woman could do so, and so wouldn't require an explanation of how it happens in a fictional world.

Well, I was just sharing my opinion. I have my real world experience, you have yours, I see no problem with that. I say that best female warriors don't have a single chance against best male warriors. It's your right to disagree. There is no way to prove or disprove it anyway.

It seems to me like you're saying that reading about a female killing a dragon would be less exciting than if a male did it. Is that correct?

I'm asking, because if that's what you're saying, then I think we may have some fundamentally differing opinions about writing.
To me, it's up to the writer to make a situation exciting. If a writer isn't able to make a fight between a woman and a dragon as exciting as a fight between a man and a dragon, then to me that's a failure of the writer and not of the characters.

I was referring to the original archetypal fairy tail. No doubt, there are plenty of ways to write a really good story about female knights slaying dragons. It will be just quite a big deviation from original trope (that's what I call 'good explanation'). I was just saying that simply changing the names from John to Jill wouldn't work well.
 
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Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
After reading the latest posts in this thread, I am thinking of my favorite moments from one of my favorite Fantasy movies.

It's Alice in Wonderland (2010) and I refer to the personal battle between the brave, armored Alice and the huge and deadly Jabberwocky dragon. In case that you have never watched the movie, you can see a picture of the battle right here.

Alice managed to destroy the Jabberwocky not by means of sheer strength, but thanks to her great courage, determination and pride. It takes loads of mental and emotional strength to enter and endure battle, it's not only physical...

Also, why do you always have our species in mind during these discussions?

We are Fantasy writers, and many of us have other species in our worlds. In my Aylar species, the females go to war while the males stay home even though a male is far stronger and larger, simply because in this species the females represent 87% of the total population.

Fantasy literature does need more female characters in strong roles, I agree with that.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
1. Tradition; and
2. Sports deal with large numbers of individuals, where averages for something like strength matter more.

We're talking about individual characters in a story, and statistical distributions don't define an individual person. Rather, they broadly define populations.
I get what you're saying in terms of story, but I question this in commonplace reality.

When serving in the Marines, at the outset of the debate over women in combat roles, I took part in several platoon level tests designed to ascertain the female Marine's ability to keep up physically with male counterparts.

The females selected for these exercises were not the average. First, they were Marines. Secondly, they represented the top ten percent of physical & mental toughness, specifically selected for these tests.

Every single one I witnessed failed to keep up on forced marches...every one.

This was primarily a measure of physical strength and stamina, but there were a few breakdowns in mental toughness which accompanied the failures. However, males are as susceptible to mental breakdown in this regard.

The problem, story-wise, is when we try to equate males and females using the same standard, like physical strength in the above example. In a situation where all males are physically fit (the Marines), exceedingly few women will be able to compete at that level. In the reality that makes up most of our world, the average man isn't near that level of fitness. As such, there will be many women who could outdo them physically.

So the fairness of a measure like fitness, depends entirely on context and setting. When the comparison is mental, like Trick mentioned above with "Tenacity", the playing field is level, unless an individual is susceptible to mental breakdown through physical burden. That is individual though. I've met plenty of tough women. I've meant plenty of mentally & physically weak men.
 
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I'm trying very hard not to take this personally, Valentinator, because it seems to me you just said that, as a woman, I should stay at home, not make decisions, and have no impact on the story.
 

Trick

Auror
1. Tradition; and
2. Sports deal with large numbers of individuals, where averages for something like strength matter more. We're talking about individual characters in a story, and statistical distributions don't define an individual person. Rather, they broadly define populations.

Tradition is not an argument. Women cannot compete with men on an athletic level. When you bring the best of both together, the men win, every time. This is not a flaw in women, it is simply a biological lottery that favors men very heavily. There may be a very rare women who can compete in a professional sport with men but I have never heard of one. And, if you offer evidence of even a few I'll guarantee that they either naturally or unnaturally had male hormone levels.

In this case I was referring to the knights which is a situation where averages for something like strength absolutely matter. Athletic ability maybe good mostly for sports in this era but knights were athletes, no doubt about it.
 

Trick

Auror
As long as there is one, there's your character.

You can dream one up, yes. As an author there is a lot of license in these things and I encourage writers to make it believable enough that it won't break the suspension of disbelief. I challenge anyone, however, to find a real life example of one who did not have a hormone imbalance, whether that imbalance was purposeful or not. Now, this could be the explanation in the story but then we run into Ursula K. Leguin's issue of female characters who are just men with breasts (albeit, they are likely to be rather small).
 

Valentinator

Minstrel
That's unfortunate, because it's an extremely poor argument. Putting male characters in both the villain and hero roles has no bearing on balance vis-a-vis female characters.

That's all subjective, it's a matter of personal perception. Personally, a male that restores status quo of the world by killing another male who wants to destroy it is pretty much the same as two females doing nothing. Result is the same.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
Just going to leave this here to make a point -

tumblr_m3orkn8ORA1rn2llbo1_400.gif
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
That's all subjective, it's a matter of personal perception. Personally, a male that restores status quo of the world by killing another male who wants to destroy it is pretty much the same as two females doing nothing. Result is the same.

You've lost me here.

We have two guys fighting. One of them's a hero, he's the good guy. The other guy is a villain who wants to destroy the world. The good guys kills the villain. This has the same effect as two women sitting around doing nothing.

At the very least the difference is that there's a dead guy after the men are done fighting, whereas when the women are done sitting around doing nothing there's no dead guy.

Now put that into a story perspective, which makes for the more interesting story?
Two guys fighting to the death, or two women sitting around doing nothing?
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
There may be a very rare women who can compete in a professional sport with men but I have never heard of one. And, if you offer evidence of even a few I'll guarantee that they either naturally or unnaturally had male hormone levels.

So, what, now you want to get into the hormone content of phenotypical females? Does it strike you as ironic in any way that the idea of a physically competent woman sends you down that rabbit hole, where you've immediately got to look around for some kind of explanation to support it? If you have one male character who is vastly superior to another, are you waving it away based on hormone levels (and even the implication that they may not be natural)? If you see a male character in a book who is more sensitive or good with children, are you saying "Oh, I guarantee that this guy has abnormally high female hormones levels!"

Really, it's somewhat astonishing the mental gymnastics so many people want to go through to explain away a competent female character, rather than simply just acknowledging that the character is really good at something and that's OK.
 
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T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
As long as there is one, there's your character.
No argument there. Like I said, it depends entirely on context.

In the gym I work out in, there are women who lift way more than some of the male members. The difference has nothing to do with hormones. The males undoubtedly have the advantage of testosterone. But, the women I'm speaking of train hard, are more consistent, & have been at it longer. That's reality. Reality isn't about averages, it's about individuals.
 
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Valentinator

Minstrel
You've lost me here.

We have two guys fighting. One of them's a hero, he's the good guy. The other guy is a villain who wants to destroy the world. The good guys kills the villain. This has the same effect as two women sitting around doing nothing.

At the very least the difference is that there's a dead guy after the men are done fighting, whereas when the women are done sitting around doing nothing there's no dead guy.

So overall women have advantage, they both survived, right?

Now put that into a story perspective, which makes for the more interesting story?
Two guys fighting to the death, or two women sitting around doing nothing?

Well, I was obviously exaggerating. Two women can do plenty of interesting things, but two guys fighting to the death seems more realistic to me. And I'm not claiming this is something to be proud of.
 
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