30 Day Fandom Meme Day 6

[leethet]

Day 06 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?
I prefer writing the main characters in most fanfic – they’re all men. That says something about our culture and the difficulty in finding heroines (outside of romance novels, and don't get me started on those). I looked for them growing up – I was a bookworm – but the girls were always timidly saying “We should tell mom and dad about this” while the boys were shouting “Let’s go have adventures!” Is it any wonder I identified with the guys? I have to assume that that’s changed a little in kids’ books – at least, I hope it has. But I notice Hermione’s still a bit of a wienie sometimes.

Comments

[elmey.livejournal.com]

My favorite heroine growing up was Joan of Arc. Because she got to wear armour and fight. The religious stuff never registered :) I find it difficult to write women though--partly because I'm uncomfortable giving them as much angst as I'd give a man--and I love angst. I have no trouble reading it for women, but find it hard to write.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

To be fair, this is only my assumption about why I write men, you know. I've given it quite a bit of thought, but I'm no shrink. :-) (I could never admire Jean d'Arc precisely because of the religious stuff - that put me right off!). As a reader, I wanted girls who did adventure, but they didn't exist. So I followed the action; that obviously led me to the "belief" that guys did action and girls fell in love, and I was an adult before I stopped just enjoying writing guys and thought about why I rarely wrote girls (not never, just less often). Admittedly some of the fascination is simply that of "other," but I don't think it's wrong to factor in the examples I was given. Girls were all about boys and fashion, things that I either (in the first case) was excluded from by being unattractive or (in the second) could not possibly have been more bored by. I wanted swords and sorcery and horses and castles and space ships and aliens and adventures (without any real injury, of course!)... and that was guys.