Too few female characters?

[Valentinator]

Elite fighters deserve to be compared to elite fighters. I raise you Cain Velasquez.

Height 6 ft 1 in (185 cm)[1]
Weight 241 lb (109 kg; 17 st 3 lb)
Division Heavyweight
Reach 77 in (196 cm)

I wouldn't say he's slower than Ronda Rousey.

 

[glutton]

Can't resist replying to this anymore... Trick wasn't talking about pure speed, but agility which smaller people do tend to have more of than larger ones - if you watch a Ronda Rousey highlight, you'll see she uses more fancy-looking 'would fit an agile/speedy fictional character' throws/takedowns/transitions than Cain does in that video. This isn't really a male vs female issue, but more of a big vs small issue - Ronda isn't even the best example to pit against Cain in this case as she cuts weight from around 160 lbs and is one of the larger female fighters, if you compared the 115 lb women or 125 lb men to the heavyweights, then difference between smaller and larger people would be pretty noticeable.

This isn't to say big people are necessarily less skilled, just their body type limits their ability to pull off flashy agile moves. Effectiveness is what matters most in the end, so a larger fighter who is more consistent than all others would definitely get my vote for 'best' in terms of skill...

 

[Valentinator]

Can't resist replying to this anymore... Trick wasn't talking about pure speed, but agility which smaller people do tend to have more of than larger ones - if you watch a Ronda Rousey highlight, you'll see she uses more fancy-looking 'would fit an agile/speedy fictional character' throws/takedowns/transitions than Cain does in that video. This isn't really a male vs female issue, but more of a big vs small issue - Ronda isn't even the best example to pit against Cain in this case as she cuts weight from around 160 lbs and is one of the larger female fighters, if you compared the 115 lb women or 125 lb men to the heavyweights, then difference between smaller and larger people would be pretty noticeable.

This isn't to say big people are necessarily less skilled, just their body type limits their ability to pull off flashy agile moves. Effectiveness is what matters most in the end, so a larger fighter who is more consistent than all others would definitely get my vote for 'best' in terms of skill...

I agree that big people are generally less agile, but to win a fight you should either have superior skill (like agility) or ability to counter that skill. I'm sure Cain can counter agile guys with his other tools. There are certain tricks against speedsters and the best fighters usually know them all.

If you want to see really fast and agile heavyweights, check out Fedor Emelianenko. His agility is incredible, he pulls crazy moves all the time. And, I have to say that, he is waaay faster than Ronda.

 

[glutton]

I agree that big people are generally less agile, but to win a fight you should either have superior skill (like agility) or ability to counter that skill. I'm sure Cain can counter agile guys with his other tools. There are certain tricks against speedsters and the best fighters usually know them all.

Yes, skilled big fighters would be favored to win over similarly skilled smaller fighters hence why there are weight classes in combat sports as size/strength tends to outweigh an advantage in agility, I was just commenting purely on agility on its own. And yeah there are exceptions like Fedor but as a general rule the higher the weight class the less you see flashy agile movie-looking stuff. The guillotine counter Cain does at the end of his highlight that TKOs JDS is nice though.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I feel like we're looking at two facts, but I'm not entirely sure what conversation they're meant to support. For me, I'm interested in how these facts affect me as a writer...



1. Fact: the top male fighter/weightlifter/runner can outperform the top female fighter/weightlifter/runner.

(This is not to say men are the best at every sport. I haven't had any luck verifying this, but I imagine there are some gymnastic/acrobatic feats in which the record holder is a petite woman.)

Spoiler: a time I "lost" to two girls

I do have one experience in which girls score an athletic victory. My karate class held a kick-a-thon for charity. We had to throw as many kicks as we could in half an hour.

I was #5 at 1346 kicks. #4 kicked 1352 times. Bah, I coulda had 4th if not for that fancy flying scissors kick combo I did at 999 & 1000!

Anyway, #2 and #3 were the girls with kicks numbering in the 1500s. #1 was a guy from Thailand with 1700 kicks, but he had been a martial artist since the age of three. He was dead tired at the end. The girls didn't seem to break a sweat. I can tell you my leg felt liks a 200 pound weight after 20 minutes, and in well into the 1200s, a couple of my kicks were too low to be counted. The two girls and I were yellow belts who started training at the same time, and we were all the same age, ~19-20. I was the only participant over 200 pounds, so I felt pretty good that I beat 1000 kicks, which was the goal given by the teacher.

But training and physical condition being equal for one's gender and body frame, no excuses about relative size... the girls won the day. The only guy who beat them had been training his whole life.



That said, kick-a-thons aren't common, so I don't know if this experience works as an exception to what fact #1 implies. It is an example of fact #2, below, if you narrow the group down to just the yellow belts or even those with less than ten years of training.

2. Fact: there are groups (a martial arts class, characters in a story, ten random people, Dragon's Egg PCs) in which a woman is the strongest athlete and/or the best fighter.

(It's more common for a male to be strongest in a given group, but groups in which a female is the strongest do exist in both real life and existing works fiction.)




The Question: What do these facts mean to me as a writer?

Fact #1 tells me it's likely that readers won't expect a woman to be the strongest in a given group.
Fact #2 tells me that a woman can be the strongest in a given group.



What do I do with these facts? Same as I would with any fact or anything I feel the need to research: know the facts, understand them, and make a decision on how important these facts are to me as a writer.

Spoiler: specifics about my strongest fantasy character

My 6'9" barbarian princess is an anomaly. She is extremely strong, but her mother brought her up to be what the world sees as "ladylike." Her body makes it hard for the world to accept her as ladylike.

I see the "what makes her a woman" side of her personality to be a mix of societal and biological, but I don't feel the need to explain myself now or when I get to writing this character's story, which I'm putting aside until my standalone WIP is finished.

However, I've been playing this character in Dragon's Egg, and I love how her look elicits reactions and assumptions from other characters. So there are not only reader expectations but expectations that other characters have of this woman, in part because of her gender and her physical build which puts "manly men" to shame.

When I finally get to writing her, I'll have had the RPG experience depicting reactions to this large, powerful, deadly female fighter--reactions that are appropriate according to other MS members who are talented writers and/or artists!

 

[glutton]

2. Fact: there are groups (a martial arts class, characters in a story, ten random people, Dragon's Egg PCs) in which a woman is the strongest athlete and/or the best fighter.

This is certainly true, I suppose for me personally the upper human limits in a setting have more significance than for most since the group my female main characters are most relevantly compared to is usually... the top tier warriors in their world. Almost every book I've written has the female lead as a super elite fighter who often battles multiple other elite fighters over the course of the story, it's just a specialty of mine lol.

 

[Steerpike]

I think it is important to realize that while you could write a story taking place in the real world with an elite female fighter, you arguably have even greater freedom to do it in a fantasy world, and you don't have to use hand-waving or explanations to explain how a female warrior could be the best. The suggestion was made somewhere in the thread that if you have a female character like that you have to go through all kinds of literary contortions to explain how it is she can be so good, and that's nonsense in my view. Just make her the best, if that's how you see the story. The vast majority of readers will be right there with you if you've done your job as an author, and the ones who get hung up on that aspect of the story should be ignored in favor of following your vision.

 

[Trick]

The suggestion was made somewhere in the thread that if you have a female character like that you have to go through all kinds of literary contortions to explain how it is she can be so good

Where was that said? I can't seem to find that...

 

[Steerpike]

Where was that said? I can't seem to find that...

For example:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...-female-characters-post185036.html#post185036

 

[Trick]

For example:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...-female-characters-post185036.html#post185036

Thanks. Seems like a lot of the hang up here is in trying to stay completely accurate (through a lense, of course) to real world averages. Knowing the stats is one thing. Not making the same stats present in a fantasy world is our prerogative as writers.

For myself, I like well placed backstory for every important character, giving insights into their special attributes. I get much more immersed that way and there's no reason to do that more so for female characters than male. Pay as much attention to each character as is dictated by their importance to the plot, I think.

 

[Mythopoet]

Thanks. Seems like a lot of the hang up here is in trying to stay completely accurate (through a lense, of course) to real world averages. Knowing the stats is one thing. Not making the same stats present in a fantasy world is our prerogative as writers.

But making the stats present in a fantasy world is also a writer's prerogative. (Personally, I don't, because no one in my fantasy world is what you would call human.) But I do think it's every writer's right to make their fantasy worlds as unrealistic or realistic (by which I mean, similar to our reality) as they personally want to. It's every writer's right to decide what they personally find to be believable and design their fantasy worlds to their own personal preferences.

 

[Svrtnsse]

But what if the dragon is a girl too? Shouldn't she be capturing a prince then?

 

[Trick]

But making the stats present in a fantasy world is also a writer's prerogative. (Personally, I don't, because no one in my fantasy world is what you would call human.) But I do think it's every writer's right to make their fantasy worlds as unrealistic or realistic (by which I mean, similar to our reality) as they personally want to. It's every writer's right to decide what they personally find to be believable and design their fantasy worlds to their own personal preferences.

That's what I'm saying. I was coming at it from the idea that real world stats are the default and that we can stray from them all we want in the fantasy genre. So... agreed.

 

[Trick]

But what if the dragon is a girl too? Shouldn't she be capturing a prince then?

I think in that case the dragon should capture a donkey that sounds like Eddie Murphy... I'm sure that's never been done.

 

[glutton]

Total badass. Dat shield...

 

[Valentinator]

Let me rephrase my old post. I guess it sounded too harsh. I don't want to say that female-best warriors are not working at all. Of course it works, it's an awesome trope. I just want to say that some explanations of fighting superiority may be helpful sometimes for both genders. For example, Brienne of Tarth is a very realistic, believable character. Can she be the toughest warrior? Absolutely. But I want to point out that GRRM did extensive amount of explanation why it works. He didn't characterize her like she's a male knight. I see no problem with that and I don't think it is insulting for characters like Brienne or women in general.

My conclusion is if you can pull out believable female-berserkers without providing any specific background information, than just go for it. If you can't, maybe it's better to do a little bit of world-building.

 

[Guy]

I think it is important to realize that while you could write a story taking place in the real world with an elite female fighter, you arguably have even greater freedom to do it in a fantasy world, and you don't have to use hand-waving or explanations to explain how a female warrior could be the best. The suggestion was made somewhere in the thread that if you have a female character like that you have to go through all kinds of literary contortions to explain how it is she can be so good, and that's nonsense in my view. Just make her the best, if that's how you see the story. The vast majority of readers will be right there with you if you've done your job as an author, and the ones who get hung up on that aspect of the story should be ignored in favor of following your vision.

That's the approach I took.

 

[Steerpike]

I suppose the extent to which a writer might feel compelled to explain things may be influenced by how common an elite female fighter is in that world. If a character is the only female who is able to fight on that level, a reader may wonder how she came to occupy that position. But if elite female fighters are common, then the reader will be more likely to accept it as simply a fact of the fantasy world and not require an explanation.

 

[glutton]

I suppose the extent to which a writer might feel compelled to explain things may be influenced by how common an elite female fighter is in that world. If a character is the only female who is able to fight on that level, a reader may wonder how she came to occupy that position. But if elite female fighters are common, then the reader will be more likely to accept it as simply a fact of the fantasy world and not require an explanation.

For most of my worlds they are not 'common' but there is often more than one; and as well, it's not like a huge number of male elite fighters is shown per book either.

In the Iron Flower series, the top 5 warriors in her nation are 2 female, 3 male

In Lost from Legend, the top 4 good guy warriors are 2 female, 2 male

In The Red Rider, the top 5 human warriors shown are 3 female, 2 male

In Blood of Kings, the top 5 warriors are 1 female, 4 male... but that is a take on Arthurian legend so...

In Saving Fate, the top 5 warriors shown are 2 female, 3 male... in this one there may be a significant gap between number 1 (male) and all others though

In Raiders of the Dry Coast, the top 5 warriors shown are 2 female, 3 male

In Tales of the Gothic Warrior, the number 1 established MMA fighter in the world (where open weight and open gender matches are allowed) is female and gets fought to a draw by the titular heroine

Hmm I guess there is a pattern XD

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Total badass. Dat shield...

I see your shield and I raise you…

TWO shields!