Women in fantasy

[Philip Overby]

Well, to me, creating more interesting female characters is part and parcel of creating more interesting characters in general.

This is something I mentioned in the last thread and has more to do with being aware of making all your characters more interesting rather than just one type.

 

[Feo Takahari]

But what else is there to say that's meaningful? I don't think you can come up with some special method to make female characters more interesting--you need to address the whole problem, including male characters (who I think are often even more boring, despite getting more to do in the plot.)

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Another female character with an interesting/non-standard story arc is Cawti from Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. When Brust got divorced from his wife IRL, Vlad got divorced from Cawti, who like Vlad is basically an assassin with super-powers. A truly phenomenal example, in the fantasy genre, of exploring male/female relations and husband/wife relations without making either gender the bad guy but simply telling a story about people. Cawti gets surprisingly evenhanded treatment, especially if you assume Brust as author might be expected to hold a grudge or engage in special pleading. A testament to Brust and (perhaps) to his wife.

 

[Penpilot]

The point of this thread is discuss how to improve women's characterization in fantasy, but I don't see too many people suggesting ways they've seen authors approach this topic or how they have, other than bringing up Elizabeth Moon.

Well to me George RR Martin handles this well. I'll be deliberately vague so I don't spoil anything and I encourage others to be careful if discussing this series.

Isolating things to something more manageable for discussion, the two sisters Sansa and Arya, you could characterise Sansa as the typical damsel in distress and Arya as the tomboy when the whole series begins. Sansa was an infuriatingly stupid girl who rankled me to no end when I read her parts. I'm half way through the second book and as she's developed, she became less so and is beginning to show more of her internal strength while still remaining true to her character. Arya... well she's kind of a ninja now, but with her own flaws.

The reason I bring this up is it's about balancing the representation. Now you don't have to have two major characters like above representing strong and weak, but I think representation is key. What I mean by that is let's say your main character is a wishy washy weak female that falls dead center into a bad stereotype. I think just showing even a minor female character in one instance that isn't that stereotype helps to point out that that weak female character isn't a representation of females as a whole. That weak character is just a singular instance of a weak female. That's how I think things can be handled.

 

[Philip Overby]

What's interesting about you bringing up Martin is that a lot of people on the surface may see him as one of the cardinal sinners as it comes to representing women poorly. But I'd argue that he has some of the most remarkable women in all of fantasy if you dig deeper. Yes, there are instances of prostitutes, "sea-wives," and the like, but these are all minor characters for the most part.

Even though Sansa appears the typical defenseless damsel in distress, she is remarkably strong for someone who suffers so much. When you dig deeper behind just this surface representation of the characters, you can see that Martin put a lot of thought into how they develop throughout the story. Yes, Sansa is infuriating at the beginning, but she learns and grows in incredible ways.

I agree with Penpilot in saying not all women in stories should be represented as strong characters. Some should be weak in different ways to make the strong characters pop out so much more.

For instance, say you had a female character that was in a gang of women thieves. The others kill and maim without mercy for their victims, use sex to lure them to their deaths, or other such unscrupulous methods to steal money. However, the main character only takes what she needs and doesn't want to hurt anyone, actually stopping to help those wounded by her gang. If this one character shows that she's deeper and more complex than others who are the same gender and "job" as she is, then it makes her shine in the story more as a compelling character.

 

[Devor]

The point of this thread is discuss how to improve women's characterization in fantasy, but I don't see too many people suggesting ways they've seen authors approach this topic or how they have, other than bringing up Elizabeth Moon.

I suppose I could talk a bit about what I'm trying to do with one of the women in my story. I'm not sure how much people can learn from it or not. It's different, but I'm not sure that it would work as an archetype for anyone else.

To start, the two MCs are a recently married couple, so there's a different relationship story than you see with most novels. It's after guy-meets-girl. Their relationship develops as the peaceful life they're supposed to have together is interrupted by the events of the story. In particular, these events are changing both of them, and the story between them is how their relationship survives when they start to feel like they're with different people.

Both of them are highly skilled individuals. He is a martial arts student from a peasant home. She is a guard for the independent prefecture who has just been given a small grant of land for her services.

She excels as a guard because she is a woman, and not by being a guy in woman's clothing. The landscape is rough, and their horses are part avian (weaker bones makes them susceptible to differences in weight). As a lightweight mounted archer, her horse can take her faster and farther in this setting, while a heavier rider faces severe limitations. So it's her feminine qualities which are being recognized in her position. ((edit: My wife points out that this statement only shows her feminine build, but her personality is reasonably more people-focused as well.))

I'm loosely expecting at least four chapters to be from her POV to show us what happens when her duties take her away from the main events. Once, for example, she plays the role of Gandalf - she has been sent out as one of the riders to persuade an ally to join the battle, and she has to return with help or everyone will die.

For the most part, she is the one with the duty to fight and take charge, while her husband has more personal ties to the causes behind the conflict.

 

[Sheilawisz]

A description of the portrayal of female characters in my Joan of England trilogy:

This is a story dominated by female characters, where male characters are scarce and have a rather low importance. The MC is a fifteen-year old medieval princess that travels to the modern times, and her adoptive father and boyfriend are nearly the only important male characters in the story.

She has an adoptive sister and two best friends, all teenage girls, and they are part of a highly secret and military-style organization that researches Magic and gateways to other universes.

All the Mages in training are girls in their teens, they wear black trench coats and, even though they usually live and act like normal girls of their age, they are capable of performing very dangerous secret missions and also slay magical monsters (and people!) when necessary.

They have courage, pride, magical powers, swords, battle skills, a strong commander, plots to take over the world and everything, very far from being ladies in distress =)

 

[PaulineMRoss]

By contrast, this damsel business is a subtractive offense, notable because the character lacks something. In this case, agency.

This is such a good point. It's very easy to miss the negative female characterisations when it's a quality that's missing, rather than something that's there in front of you. I've read so many books where there are female characters out there, doing stuff, wielding swords or creating magic, going on the quest right alongside the men, yet when the evil whatsits leap out of the bushes, guess who they capture? And why is the woman on the quest anyway? Because a bloke told her to, or she's following her boyfriend, or she's escaping from the marriage her father planned for her, or a bloke told her NOT to go and she's - you know, rebellious and all.

One problem here is the setting. If a story is set in the traditional medieval era, the patriarchal system is built-in and it's extremely hard for an author to find a way to work a truly independent woman into it. Women were (mostly) subservient to men in all levels of society, and it takes a bit more work to find one who can go on that quest without falling into a stereotype - the rebellious princess, the warrior babe, the witch or the whore. Mrs Ordinary Tradesman can't simply abandon the home and family and travel round the countryside with impunity in the way that a bloke can. It's not impossible to find ways around it, but it takes ingenuity, and so many authors fall into the standard setting with the standard tropes because it's easier.

There are authors capable of overcoming that. Daniel Abraham's Dagger and Coin series has a female banker in a patriarchal society, for instance. And there are a number of authors writing sensible female characters with agency. Andrea K Höst is one who writes genuinely gender-neutral worlds. Glenda Larke is another whose female characters may get captured, but they escape all by themselves (even when very pregnant, in one case). I'm reserving judgment on George R R Martin until I see where he takes his characters in the end (if we all live that long).

As someone else said, the real virtue of these threads is not that anyone rushes off to rewrite anything, but that we are all thinking about the issues raised, and perhaps that will inform people's writing in the future. And if things get a little heated, that just indicates that people have strong feelings about it. Which (in my opinion) is why we SHOULD be talking about it.

 

[Zero Angel]

There are authors capable of overcoming that. Daniel Abraham's Dagger and Coin series has a female banker in a patriarchal society, for instance. And there are a number of authors writing sensible female characters with agency. Andrea K Höst is one who writes genuinely gender-neutral worlds. Glenda Larke is another whose female characters may get captured, but they escape all by themselves (even when very pregnant, in one case). I'm reserving judgment on George R R Martin until I see where he takes his characters in the end (if we all live that long).

As someone else said, the real virtue of these threads is not that anyone rushes off to rewrite anything, but that we are all thinking about the issues raised, and perhaps that will inform people's writing in the future. And if things get a little heated, that just indicates that people have strong feelings about it. Which (in my opinion) is why we SHOULD be talking about it.

I'm pretty sure that even if we're not all dead by the time the series finished, George R. R. Martin will be!

I echo that thinking about these issues is valuable, but if things get a little heated, please step away from your keyboards people. We don't want to ruin our community. After the first Bechdel thread I had started putting people on my ignore list so that I wouldn't be offended by them and feel obliged to retort. During the second, I ended up removing people from the ignore list and haven't regretted it yet.

 

[Ireth]

I've read so many books where there are female characters out there, doing stuff, wielding swords or creating magic, going on the quest right alongside the men, yet when the evil whatsits leap out of the bushes, guess who they capture?

Heh. I've gender-flipped that a time or two in my own writings -- most of the time it's the men who get captured. At one point in my longest-running roleplay, the villains intentionally kidnapped a man to bait his wife, who had killed their father years ago. The wife had enough sense not to go after him (partly because she was pregnant), so the man's daughter went to his rescue instead (among others, both male and female), and held her own pretty well.

 

[Mindfire]

Heh. I've gender-flipped that a time or two in my own writings -- most of the time it's the men who get captured. At one point in my longest-running roleplay, the villains intentionally kidnapped a man to bait his wife, who had killed their father years ago. The wife had enough sense not to go after him (partly because she was pregnant), so the man's daughter went to his rescue instead (among others, both male and female), and held her own pretty well.

Well that's pretty cold.

 

[Ireth]

Well that's pretty cold.

What is, the villains' tactics? I'd agree. The fact that the wife had killed the villains' father? She was protecting her husband; the villain's father had been trying to kill him. The fact that I mostly have men get kidnapped at all? Most of my characters are men, period.

 

[Zero Angel]

Heh. I've gender-flipped that a time or two in my own writings -- most of the time it's the men who get captured. At one point in my longest-running roleplay, the villains intentionally kidnapped a man to bait his wife, who had killed their father years ago. The wife had enough sense not to go after him (partly because she was pregnant), so the man's daughter went to his rescue instead (among others, both male and female), and held her own pretty well.

Your post made me think of something else that is usually pretty cliche. Even if we do have female characters with agency, they are almost always the first in-universe with that agency! That is, generally we don't have a situation like the one you're describing where something a female did before the story started is the reason for the story existing. If the females do have agency in a story, they are almost always reacting to a male-generated situation.

Obviously, your example does NOT suffer from this.

 

[Zero Angel]

What is, the villains' tactics? I'd agree. The fact that the wife had killed the villains' father? She was protecting her husband; the villain's father had been trying to kill him. The fact that I mostly have men get kidnapped at all? Most of my characters are men, period.

I don't want to speak for Mindfire, but I assume he meant that the wife wouldn't go to rescue the husband.

This is a cliche yet again! That the children or unborn are more important in some way than someone that has lived their life, taken the time to have experiences and training, etc. This is the opposite of how we feel about pretty much ANYTHING else in real life or in books. Do we care when a new character is introduced only to be snatched away? Do we fret more over the character that we've spent 15 minutes generating or the one that we spent 15 minutes generating followed by years of campaigning? Do we sacrifice the CEO to save the entry-level worker?

Interesting points!

 

[Ireth]

Your post made me think of something else that is usually pretty cliche. Even if we do have female characters with agency, they are almost always the first in-universe with that agency! That is, generally we don't have a situation like the one you're describing where something a female did before the story started is the reason for the story existing. If the females do have agency in a story, they are almost always reacting to a male-generated situation.

Obviously, your example does NOT suffer from this.

Well, to be fair, the woman in question only killed the guy after he attacked her family while hallucinating (he's a vampire who had just drunk from a mage; their blood acts like LSD for vamps). But she knew about the situation and had been defending others beforehand. Her husband only showed up later, and that's when things got a bit out of hand, necessitating the vampire's death for safety's sake.

 

[Ireth]

I don't want to speak for Mindfire, but I assume he meant that the wife wouldn't go to rescue the husband.

This is a cliche yet again! That the children or unborn are more important in some way than someone that has lived their life, taken the time to have experiences and training, etc. This is the opposite of how we feel about pretty much ANYTHING else in real life or in books. Do we care when a new character is introduced only to be snatched away? Do we fret more over the character that we've spent 15 minutes generating or the one that we spent 15 minutes generating followed by years of campaigning? Do we sacrifice the CEO to save the entry-level worker?

Interesting points!

Well, the wife was none too pleased about having to stay behind and let others rescue her husband -- she wanted to go, but was pressured into staying where she'd be safe for the sake of the baby (which admittedly was not very developed yet; she was only a few weeks along, and had just found out at all). She later faced the same conundrum when an unrelated conflict sparked an all-out battle, and this time she acknowledged the danger of fighting while pregnant (this time she was several months along). It's worth noting that the woman is also completely deaf, and while she knows how to wield a sword, one-on-one fighting is vastly different than melee fighting.

 

[Mindfire]

What is, the villains' tactics? I'd agree. The fact that the wife had killed the villains' father? She was protecting her husband; the villain's father had been trying to kill him. The fact that I mostly have men get kidnapped at all? Most of my characters are men, period.

I mean the wife's attitude toward her husband.

Daughter: They took dad!
Mother: *shrug*
Daughter: Don't you care?
Mother: Meh. F#%& it.
Daughter: O.O
Mother: What's your problem?
Daughter: Daddy! :'(

Maybe I'm exaggerating.

 

[Ireth]

I mean the wife's attitude toward her husband.

Daughter: They took dad!
Mother: *shrug*
Daughter: Don't you care?
Mother: Meh. F#%& it.
Daughter: O.O
Mother: What's your problem?
Daughter: Daddy! :'(

Maybe I'm exaggerating.

As I said in post #96, that was not the case at all. It was more like this:

Daughter: They took Dad!
Mother: Well, let's go save him!
Daughter: Nuh-uh, not you. You're pregnant, you need to think of the baby.
Mother: He's my husband, d*mmit!
Daughter: It'll be okay. Me and these people will go get him, and you'll stay here with these other people in case the bad guys try to find you themselves.
Mother: *grumblemumble* Fine. But I'm not going to like it.

 

[Mindfire]

As I said in post #96, that was not the case at all. It was more like this:

Daughter: They took Dad!
Mother: Well, let's go after him!
Daughter: Nuh-uh, not you. You're pregnant, you need to think of the baby.
Mother: He's my husband, d*mmit!
Daughter: It'll be okay. Me and these people will go get him, and you'll stay here with these other people in case the bad guys try to find you themselves.
Mother: *grumblemumble*

I was ninja'd and didn't see that post until after I submitted. Lol.

 

[Penpilot]

One problem here is the setting. If a story is set in the traditional medieval era, the patriarchal system is built-in and it's extremely hard for an author to find a way to work a truly independent woman into it. Women were (mostly) subservient to men in all levels of society, and it takes a bit more work to find one who can go on that quest without falling into a stereotype - the rebellious princess, the warrior babe, the witch or the whore. Mrs Ordinary Tradesman can't simply abandon the home and family and travel round the countryside with impunity in the way that a bloke can. It's not impossible to find ways around it, but it takes ingenuity, and so many authors fall into the standard setting with the standard tropes because it's easier.

Again I'll pull out Game of Thrones as a prime example of a patriarchal society where women are strong from the beginning. Look at Cersi and Katrina, two women who wield a lot of power and influence. They've learned to use their strength and power within the confines of a patriarchal society.