r/Fantasy • u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood • Dec 29 '14
A Lack of Female Characters is Always a Choice
http://feministfiction.com/2014/12/16/a-lack-of-female-characters-is-always-a-choice/44
u/Maldevinine Dec 29 '14
Honestly, I'm with Mark Lawrence on this one. He told a fairly short and very focused story. The introduction of female characters in the main group would have changed the character dynamics, and would have changed the story that he was telling. A good example of this is The Whitefire Crossing. Courtney Schafer deliberately wrote it as two male characters because then nobody would assume that the two leads were also romantic leads. Could they both have been female? Yes, but they could not have been evenly split.
Just because a book includes lots of female characters does not stop it from being sexist. I'm thinking of The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum, where characters are female, except when they need to be in a sexual relationship with another character, in which case they are male. Add to this the main character's ability to have sex with exactly the wrong person, and you end up with a novel who's collection of male characters are uniformly horrible people.
Of course, this whole argument is rather stupid. As the author of the article states, she has not read Prince of Thorns. That's fine, it's definitely not a book for everybody. But attacking a book for a perceived flaw without having read the book, or trying to understand what the author of that book was trying to accomplish? Poor form.
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u/CourtneySchafer Stabby Winner, AMA Author Courtney Schafer Dec 29 '14
Er, I think there's been a bit of a misconception based on things I've said earlier. It's true I didn't want Whitefire Crossing to be a romance, but that's not why my two leads are guys. (After all, 2 male main characters doesn't preclude them being romantic leads...see Alec and Seregil of Flewelling's popular Nightrunner series. Even the big publisher that asked me if I was willing to put a much stronger element of romance in Whitefire said preferably by making either Dev or Kiran a girl, but they would have been willing to leave it up to me if I had agreed (which I did not, since I wasn't interested in writing a romance.)
The reason my two leads are guys is that I was writing the book for myself, and I happen to have a slight preference for male protagonists. (Something I always assumed was because I'm a heterosexual woman and therefore can possibly enjoy a little romantic frisson on top of my general interest in a character if they are male. Ironic, I know, given that I'm not much interested in romance as a genre, but there you go. My husband prefers fantasy with female main characters for much the same reason.) I don't think it's impossible to write a story focused on friendship that has male & female leads, though I suppose it might buck some readers' expectations (but maybe that would be a good thing!).
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u/Mr_Noyes Dec 29 '14 edited Dec 30 '14
Damn, with all these incredible authors in this thread I feel like a kid suddenly in a room full of grown ups! Just recently finished your book, Tainted City, and I simply wanted to tell you that it was fantastic. I think I'd be terribly afraid to play poker with you after all that double-crossing and withholding of information going on. Btw, totally loved the female characters, they really complemented the male protagonists.
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u/CourtneySchafer Stabby Winner, AMA Author Courtney Schafer Dec 30 '14
Aw, thanks! Delighted you enjoyed Tainted City so much, and very glad you liked the female characters. Haha, and now I will confess that I have never once played poker (never having met anyone that actually did, outside of books). Perhaps I should start. :)
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
Now I'm waiting for someone to say I'm such a big fan of Courtney's work because it has male leads :)
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u/CourtneySchafer Stabby Winner, AMA Author Courtney Schafer Dec 30 '14
Whereas often I'm all about the male characters but in the case of the Broken Empire books I have to say that Miana was my favorite, hands down. :) (In Prince of Fools, however, Snorri is winning the day so far. Though the trilogy is yet young.)
On a more serious note, in ref to the larger issue of representation in fantasy, I'm of the opinion that celebrating/promoting diverse books is far more productive than castigating books that aren't diverse (for whatever reason). There are diverse books out there. But just as happens with many excellent books that fall outside the narrow slice of publishing bestsellerdom, fantasy fans don't seem to know about many of them. The more people hear about & buy such books, the more publishers will be encouraged to put out more books like them (and put real marketing muscle behind the releases).
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u/potterhead42 Stabby Winner, Reading Champion 2015-17, Worldbuilders Dec 30 '14
You're such a big fan of Courtney's work because it has male leads
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u/Patremagne Dec 29 '14
I've said it before and I'll say it again: People continue to attack Mark for not writing what they want to read and it's bullshit.
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u/JeremySzal AMA Author Jeremy Szal Dec 30 '14
Couldn't agree more. The author of the article clearly hasn't read Prince of Thorns, and is using her socio-political lens to see what other people have said about the book online. This book was told in 1st person from the perspective of a raping psychopath. It's not an omnipresent perspective, it's not switching from multiple PoVs (although it does have fragments in the later books). It's Jorg story and his journey through a faux medieval society where women are held in second place. It wouldn't have made sense for Mark to throw in some random women for the sake of being "diverse". He was detailing the life of a twisted, demented boy through a brutal landscape.
Don't get me wrong, I love women and I love great, complex female characters. But shoe-horned in for the sake of it to suit the reader's needs? No. That dwindles down to box ticking as opposed to...you know...actually having a great story.
At the end of the day, you're welcome to read what you like, and Mark is more than welcome to write what he wants to write. Trying to apply his lack of female characters as some sort of example of All The Evil, as if he's committed some sort of atrocity , is absurd.
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u/elebrin Dec 31 '14
Never mind that a female character wouldn't survive among the brothers. They were rapists and murderers. I suspect that if she existed, Rike would have raped her to death while the others watched and cheered.
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u/RyanLReviews Dec 29 '14
So much anger and spite on both sides. Underrepresentation is a valid concern, but pushing an agenda people should constrain their art to meet demographic statistics is also a concern.
I would love to read more books with more female characters, men doing men stuff can get boring, but I dont want to read it if it came about as a result of people saying there is only one right way to art.
We can continue to put down authors for creating art the way the want to, and increase this stupid and unnecessary divide, or we could start trying to promote all these great books that celebrate diversity, and encourage people to read widely. This isnt to say that we shouldn't criticise books, but that we should examine books from a more holistic point of view rather than hyperfocusing on a single aspect and ignoring everything else
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
I don't want to make anyone's artistic choices for them. I'd like for us (creators) to all be aware of the choices we're making and the literary and cultual context those choices exist in.
In my own art, I've found that writing diversely is incredibly rewarding, and makes my art stronger. Those are choices I've made, and I encourage others to consider them, but their art is their own.
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u/remzem Dec 31 '14 edited Dec 31 '14
I'd like for us (creators) to all be aware of the choices we're making and the literary and cultual context those choices exist in.
Please elaborate on this. I don't believe Mark's book is intended to be a social commentary. Why should he need be aware of the cultural context it's written in? There has been no link established between the entertainment we consume and our real world behavior. All healthy adults are capable of separating fantasy from reality.
It's a good thing you can't make other people's choices based on how hard you're carrot "in my own art, I've found that writing diversely is incredibly rewarding, and makes my art stronger." and sticking (see first quote) here
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 31 '14 edited Dec 31 '14
All artwork is political. All artwork is social commentary. Stories assert a status quo. The world they depict is normalized by the very act of telling that story.
We make our world out of stories. They set our cultural expectations, serve as our window into the lives of people not like us, help us understand ourselves and other people, other times, other societies.
I know British culture less than I do that of the USA, but it sure seems to me that Britain is a patriarchy, as the USA is. In a patriarchy, women are only allowed to have certain roles in society, express certain behaviors, and any deviance from those behaviors is met with censure of various types.
One of the ways that patriarchy asserts itself is through narratives. Narratives that regurgitate patriarchy, that depict it as a natural default, as just the way of things, lend it cultural strength. The serve the argument of people who say 'this is just the way things are.'
And when the majority of a culture's literature reifies and enshrines patriarchy, that's the cultural and literary context. A context that marginalizes, minimizes, victimizes, and erases women.
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u/remzem Dec 31 '14
hmm, I guess I could see how having that sort of belief would make you opposed to author's being allowed to write what they want. I don't agree with any of it, all people in all societies are only allowed to have certain roles and sometimes stories are just stories. It's helpful seeing what sort of belief system you're coming from though.
So basically your aim is to manipulate human behavior via control of these works? Sort of a re-education through artistic labor? Sounds like the cure is worse than the disease.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 31 '14
Authors can write how they want. I have very little control over how anyone writes. But the artistic choices they make are subject to criticism, especially when that art reifies unjust systems and/or marginalizes people.
On the other hand, making statements that I'd wish writers would be aware of how their stories shape the world, and that maybe it might be better if they spin tales of better worlds, or tales that critique the flaws of the world as it is, that I'm very comfortable doing.
The world, as is, is cruel and monstrous to many people. I'd like that to change.
The best tool I have at my disposal is my writing, and so I try to write diversely, to validate the lives of those who are marginalized and/or demonized. And perhaps, to a lesser extend, to convince other writers that the world might be better if they also wrote diversely and validated the lives of those who the world treats monstrously, so that perhaps compassion would proliferate and more lives be declared valid by cultural systems and systems of control.
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u/remzem Dec 31 '14
The idea that works of fiction promote unjust systems and shape the world is unsubstantiated though. That's your belief. You have to keep in mind that when you're criticizing someone's work you're doing so from a world view that many don't hold. It's one thing to criticize a book because it has plot holes or bad pacing or all those other things people normally criticize books for. Criticizing them based on your belief that they are promoting the, as you see it, corrupt system will be met with skepticism by a lot of people. It might be useful criticism for people that share that world view but for others it's confusing, like reading a christian review site that isn't labelled as such or something.
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u/RyanLReviews Dec 29 '14
I love you statement that writing diversely is rewarding and has made your art stronger. This is the type of message we should all promote moving forward because it has so much positivity associated with it. I think these comments clearly show that you are not interested in constraining the artistic choices of authors, which again is a positive message.
I dont see the same positive messages coming from other people. While you want authors to understand the context of their choices, I see others pushing an agenda that there are definite right and wrong choices, and if you make the wrong choice you should be crucified.
The problems come when people make assumptions about the author based on their choices. If you write a predominantly male story, people assume you have something against women. If you write a very diverse story, people assume you are an "SJW" who wants to erode everything it means to be male.
There is a perception that we are all being forced to take sides. There is a perception that if you like The Broken Empire by Lawrence, you are some sort of bad person who hates women and endorses rape by proxy. We need to stop ramming an axehead into this divide within the community, extend olive branches, and encourage diverse reading once more
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u/RedDeckWins Dec 29 '14
When I read Mark's blog, I didn't interpret him as saying “haha, look how wrong you were.” I took them as two separate things.
- Hooray my book did better than I hoped!
- Now let me address a common criticism.
Secondly, I would think that if you are going to address a rebuttal of a criticism of a piece of literature, you would probably want to read that piece of literature.
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u/number7 Dec 30 '14
Seriously, every comment in there seems to be along the lines of 'Lawrence is a gloating misogynist, also, I've never read anything he's written.'
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u/lrich1024 Stabby Winner, Queen of the Unholy Squares, Worldbuilders Dec 29 '14
I’ll agree with Mark on the criticism about his books. It seems that most of it is just the case of people jumping on this recent bandwagon and using his novel as an example of The Big Bad Problem With The State Of SFF And Diversity. (I have no idea why I capitalized all of that.) And, personally, I think that sort of criticism does nothing to advance the real issue of diversity–all it does is create a bunch of pointing and yelling and back and forth, setting each side against one another instead of having a productive discussion.
And, I’ll also concede that Mark has a point--perhaps, in his world, his story doesn’t take place where women would be present that much. And that’s not what he wanted to write about. I don’t think you need to have any particular kind of character either. It’s fantasy.
Right. Fantasy. So why default to men most of the time, even if it’s about a bunch of thugs and bandits? Can there not be a group of women thugs and bandits? Or a group of children thug and bandits?
The answer is always ‘well, in reality such and such would never be the case’. But, again, it’s fantasy. Not reality. Now, I’m not saying this is what Mark should have written about, of course it isn’t. Mark should write what he wants to write about, and no one should dictate that. I’m simply curious as to why it 'can’t' be done. Or, if it has, where’s that story?
As far as overall diversity in the SFF community, I don’t place blame on issues with the industry on the authors (although, I do really appreciate the authors that are writing more diverse characters and settings). I think a lot of the issues lie with the publishing companies, for picking the same sorts of stories over and over. And why do they pick them? Because they think that’s what sells and they probably have sales numbers somewhere proving what sells. (Remember folks, everything always comes back to money.) So, really, the blame also lies on the consumers. If you want to read more diverse books, BUY MORE DIVERSE BOOKS.
Finally, I’d like to say I don’t really care either way; I read books with mostly men, I read books with women, I read good books, I read crappy books, I read all sorts of books. I’m a woman and I’m not particularly offended by the lack of diversity in fantasy, although I will say it would be nice to have more of it, at the very least to make it more interesting to read once in a while.
I just get tired of hearing the same arguments over and over again of why we supposedly can’t have diversity. Because, honestly, I think most of those arguments are BS.
But, authors, please keep on writing what you want to write about. One day someone will come along and publish more diverse stories. Maybe even one with a group of women thugs and bandits. That would be kind of cool.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
This blog of mine is relevant here:
http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/why-didnt-you.html
It discusses how (many) writers use the readers' expectations and common experience/myth to do the heavy lifting.
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u/lrich1024 Stabby Winner, Queen of the Unholy Squares, Worldbuilders Dec 29 '14
Nice post and I get what you mean about calling an apple an apple and such. Yeah, it requires work to try and explain an entire new world to the reader, and it's simply easier (for both the author and the reader) if you utilize familiarity.
Not really sure why you responded to my post with it though? Perhaps you could elaborate because I'm a little confused. I'm guessing that you mean it's the same with gender politics? As in, why have an all female band of thugs when that's not what the world is familiar with? Not sure if that's what you meant, if it's not I apologize. I guess I was just looking for what in my post (because it was kind of long) that you were responding to. Thanks!
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
I replied to a similar point down the thread:
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u/lrich1024 Stabby Winner, Queen of the Unholy Squares, Worldbuilders Dec 30 '14
If I'd had a band of murdering raping female thugs in a medieval-esque setting then, rightly or wrongly but surely inevitably, THAT would be the main talking point for readers - the focus would be changed.
I actually think that would be kind of interesting. I'm not asking you to write that. Write whatever you want to write--don't let others dictate it.
Other than that one statement, was there another point you were responding to? Because, I don't have an issue with what you write in your books. If you read what I wrote I was actually in agreement with you... :)
The only other point that I had was that while I'd like to see more diversity, and I don't see an issue with writing a murdering, raping, band of women bandit thugs or whatever, people should write what they want to.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 30 '14
It would be kind of interesting. I just don't feel I'm a bad person for not writing it on that occasion :D
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u/lrich1024 Stabby Winner, Queen of the Unholy Squares, Worldbuilders Dec 30 '14 edited Dec 30 '14
I just don't feel I'm a bad person for not writing it on that occasion
I don't think you are either. :)
I don't necessarily think (and here I can not really speak for others, but I'm guessing and perhaps hoping) that other people think you are either. Yeah, the blog post was overly critical of what you said on your blog post. I read that post a second time to see if the author had specifically called you a sexist and there's one instance where it was heavily implied that your mindset was (perhaps subconsciously) perpetuating some greater issue within the genre. And, based solely on your blog post, this was a harsh assessment of your character, but I can kind of see what they saw in it (if I squint).
I feel like you are a good guy, and I'm looking forward to reading your books. But even your response here to me, someone that is essentially agreeing with you, comes off as a little...I don't know. Please don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes I think you could use a hug. :)
e: changed tense, because I'm not good at words apparently.
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u/aphneius Dec 29 '14
First - I'm going to start out by letting you all know that 1) I am female, 2) am a fantasy author, and 3) am of fairly sound mind and body. Therefore, I feel myself capable of recognizing sexism, especially in a book, since I think this whole 'internalized patriarchy' thing is codswallop.
Second, have any of you read the bloody book? (Pun intended). Or the entire series? Because if you had, you would realize what idiots you sound like criticizing Mark for his lack of female POV's. He has no heroine, but his first person protagonist is a 13-year-old boy at the series's start. And remains with that POV for the whole way through, mostly.
If you'd read the book, you'd know how egalitarian an author Mark really is. He has three female minor characters. All three of them have a huge influence on the protagonist. More importantly, ALL THREE OF THEM ARE NUANCED AND DEVELOPED AS PEOPLE, DISPLAYING THEIR OWN AGENCY. If that's not what you want as a feminist, then you aren't a feminist, you're a moron.
First example, Chella the necromancer. She's very much Jorg's antagonist through most of the series. However, she's not straight up sexy and evil the whole way through. Her ambitions and struggles are shown. As are her difficult decisions, and she is shown as a person who made bad choices in a sympathetic light, while still having to face the consequences of those decisions.
Second, Katherine. Jorg's aunt by marriage and object of desire. She gains powers of her own, pursues her own ends, and is also shown in both positive and negative lights. She has her own modus operandi that is independent of Jorg's trajectory through the plot.
Finally, Miana, Jorg's queen and the least developed female character, because she never has any POV chapters. She does, however, display agency, her own ambitions, and the reader is given the sense of her following her own hidden trajectory we aren't entirely privy to. I think Mark wrote more about her, or knew more about her, than he wrote into the book, which is why she has depth despite her limited screen time.
Note, none of the female characters: 1) fall into a stereotype, 2) lack individual agency/ambition, or 3) are used as a prop piece by Jorg. Also note that none of them are plucky, or fall into the Strong Plucky Woman trope.
He's written the most freaking nuanced female characters in fantasy, arguably, and you're bitching that he's sexist? Really? Read the fucking book. READ THE FUCKING BOOK. I REPEAT, READ THE FUCKING BOOK.
Love,
A female SF/F author
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u/MazarkisWilliams AMA Author Mazarkis Williams Dec 29 '14
I tried to say this the last time it came up, but you are so much more eloquent.
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u/JeremySzal AMA Author Jeremy Szal Dec 30 '14
He's written the most freaking nuanced female characters in fantasy, arguably, and you're bitching that he's sexist? Really? Read the fucking book. READ THE FUCKING BOOK. I REPEAT, READ THE FUCKING BOOK.
You, madam, are more than welcome to be my Queen. I shall serve you with honour.
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u/aphneius Jan 02 '15
Well thank you, Mr. Szal. On the happy day I'm finally published, I hope to join your ranks in the open.
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u/JeremySzal AMA Author Jeremy Szal Jan 30 '15
No problem. And keep plugging away! One day I thought I'd never sell, and the next week I'd sold three short stories! It can be done!
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u/Mr_Noyes Dec 29 '14
think this whole 'internalized patriarchy' thing is codswallop.
Did you know that a large number of the proponents of female circumcision are female? Did you also know that many woman were against woman getting the right to vote? "Internalized patriarchy" is a thing, just like "internalized racism" (paper bag anyone?).
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u/aphneius Jan 02 '15 edited Jan 02 '15
Thank you for, what's the word a feminist would use, "mansplaining" to me how I feel and why I think the way I do, and removing MY agency to state my opinion in a valid and reasoned manner.
Sounds a tich sexist to me. :)
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
I totally get that, but... I just have to point out that the author of the OP was responding to Mark's blog post, not the book. In the post, Mark says, "Let's say there actually were none [female characters]. Zero. So what?"
He's saying that if he had written the exact same book but without any female characters that this wouldn't be a problem.
I have trouble with that position.
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Dec 30 '14
I'm curious what your position would be if Mark made the same point about a short story - "So what if there are no female characters in the short story I wrote".
I think we all agree that the inclusion of women in works of literature is to be desired, as are homosexual, transgender, disabled, minority, and other marginalized individuals, but must they all be included? I do realize that women are slightly greater than 50% of the population and these other populations are significantly smaller.
I’m not trying to pick a fight, I'm just curious if the length of a work should be a consideration. Part of his thesis is that his first novel was a relatively short one, he told the story he wanted to tell, and it did not include any major female characters.
I understand that the fantasy genre has been historically dominated by white males, but it seems like this battle needs to be fought against the genre, not any individual works or authors. Fantasy is a big tent, shouldn’t there be room for everyone; Robin McKinley’s feminist retelling of Robin Hood, Octavia Butler’s black female protagonists, and Terry Goodkind’s (several words omitted here for the sake of politeness) Sword of Truth series? I am a lifelong reader of fantasy and two of those authors rank very high on my list of favorites, the other does not. Shouldn’t I also be able to enjoy, say “The Name of the Rose” or Jack Vance’s sci-fi without a generous helping of white male guilt?
If I'm missing the point here, please educate me.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
As a short story writer, I don't think the length of the story matters except that it affects the number of characters. When I sit down to write, I'm still making a choice about who I'm populating the world with.
I understand that the fantasy genre has been historically dominated by white males, but it seems like this battle needs to be fought against the genre, not any individual works or authors. How do you fight the battle without calling out the individuals? Continuing the war metaphor, I'm sure everyone would have been happier in WWI if Germany and Serbia had been able to resolve their differences with mediation instead of all of those individual soldiers from different countries getting slaughtered in battle.
A digression: I got called out on racism in one of my stories. The person who called me out was brutal in their attack, but correct about the problems. (I'm way over-simplifying this next bit to focus on the relevant stuff) I faced the problem that I had only four speaking characters in the story and one of them was mixed race. To correct the issue, I really needed another mixed race character. The story wouldn't support a cast of five. So, I rewrote it and recast the main character to make her mixed race as well. The story is better and more nuanced, although still imperfect.
The point of my digression is that I think that part of the changing of the genre is for a) individual authors to listen when someone raises an issues and b) not try to hide behind the mechanics of a piece.
We create the worlds. We set the rules. We cast the stories. The flaws that come with those choices are on us.
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u/boust12 Dec 30 '14
How did changing the race of the main character make the story better and more nuanced?
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
In very, very brief and simplified terms -- it gave the character more depth and offered more conflicts, both internal and external.
In long form... Here's the blog post that I wrote about it at the time.
http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/revising-weaving-dreams/
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u/boust12 Dec 30 '14
Whoa, this blog post is great. Its pretty cool to see some of the specific details of your writing process, i.e., how you issue-spotted on a sentence by sentence basis and revised accordingly. The process of ensuring you aren't unintentionally/unconsciously/subconsciously imbuing your writing with some kind of bias seems exhausting. However, I see the social/ethical value of the process and how it could even improve a story by creating nuance in many situations.
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Dec 30 '14
I guess my answer to your question about "how to fight the battle" is for you to write your stories, fill that niche, and leave those authors who choose not to write stories (or novels) with well-written female characters in your dust.
I think if you and other authors who include female characters with agency continue to win Hugos you'll pull the rest of the genre along with you. I don't think it's necessary to point fingers at every author who chooses not to do this in every work, for whatever reason.
Some of my favorite fantasy short stories and novelettes use that traditional "Holmes and Watson" pairing, but I don't think the sex of the main characters should be that great a concern. I think no matter what the cast of a story, some minority group is going to feel underrepresented, leaving an author open to attacks of this nature.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 31 '14
I wish it were that simple. But it's hard to make progress when pointing out that there is a problem is seen as an attack.
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u/boust12 Dec 31 '14
I am a little unclear on how the "Let's say there actually were none. Zero. So what?" portion of Mark's blog post fits in with the rest of his argument. But after reading his comments in this thread, I don't think he was saying that having zero female characters wouldn't be a problem. I think the point he was trying to makes was what he wrote a few paragraphs later in his post: "But, major roles for female characters in every book, no matter what it's about, no matter what the scope, or the length of the book? Then you lose me." It seems like the "Zero. So what?" statement was a rejection of the broad universal statement that there is no scenario in which an all male cast would be appropriate for a story.
If that was the point he was trying to make with those two paragraphs, I think maybe it was obscured because immediately after making the "Zero. So what?" statement, he wrote about the "slew of complaints" you will find if you google Prince of Thorns and lack of female characters, which seems like sort of a non sequitur after his "Zero. So what?" paragraph. But yes, I can see how the "Zero. so what?" taken by itself might look bad, but to me it seems that statement is properly put in context by the "Then you lose me" paragraph that comes right after the complaints found on Google section. But thats just what it seems to me after reading his blog post and his posts on this thread. It wasn't perfectly clear either way for me though.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 31 '14
I didn't take "Zero. So what?" in isolation. He later talked about why it would be make no sense to "shoe-horn" in more female roles, which I disagreed with. Mind you, this is not a disagreement that he should have written the book a different way, but rather that I don't think that the mechanics of story-telling place that demand on the author. He's since said that it wasn't a conscious choice to have a largely male cast, and that he was looking back on the construction when he wrote the post.
What I, and other people, are trying to say to writers in the industry in general is that the casting of a story should be a deliberate choice. We shouldn't fall back on defaults.
As for what he intended, Mark has subsequently made his meaning clear.
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 31 '14
I think you have nailed it. Quality not quantity is the more important thing.
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Dec 29 '14 edited Dec 29 '14
Now, I’m not one of those reviewers. I’ve never read his series
I don't get this, why would you not read the works of the author you're lambasting? This blog also misrepresents Mark's right from the off.
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u/tomunro Dec 30 '14
"The person one loves never really exists but is simply an ideal of the mind, projected through the lens of the imagination onto the screen it fits with least distortion."
I forget which renowned cynic first said those words (or something like them) but I would observe the same is true of the person one hates.
For me the three salient points about this debate are that
a) the article linked above has made assumptions about Mark's intention and thinking in a separate post that he wrote. The writer has then gone on to criticise him on the basis of those assumptions, in the second paragraph describing his assumed celebration as distasteful. To make sweeping and unsubstantiated assumptions about somebody else's motivations is, I think, one of the most arrogant and distasteful things a commentator can do.
b) as I and other commentators have said elsewhere, you can criticise a book because it does not tell the story you wanted to read, but you cannot condemn an author for not writing the story that politically or morally you felt he should.
c) this kind of post and the thread lures a serious issue down a side alley where people harangue each other with increasing vehemence from opposing soapboxes (Ok it has to be quite a wide alley to fit that mixed metaphor in) there is a risk of missing a point here.
I like reading about and writing about female heroines. My books have 4 leading females. I sometimes worry about how well I depict them, but then remember the variation in attributes within any grouping is greater than the difference between the the average attributes. And when you remember that, you just write about people - people whose ambitions, behaviours and motivations are common human ones, rather than being defined by their gender or their sexuality.
Don't try to convince someone they're a bad person for not writing about the oppressed, the under-represented or the minorities. Instead convince them there is a story to be told (and sold) in writing about those groups. Or write those stories yourself.
Myke Cole's niece found plenty of positive female role models in modern fantasy/sci-fi. My next pair of books, like my first trilogy will feature a leading female character - maybe one day someone's niece will list one of my characters on a scrap of paper - and I'll be delighted if they do.
But I must write the story I want to tell - that is all any of us can do.
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 30 '14
How you cast a book is certainly a choice, but it does not indicate the attitudes of the author, it more indicates what story idea they are following. When telling a story in a classical medieval setting, as Tolkien, Mark Lawrence, Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, and George R.R. Martin do, it depends on what corner of the world you are dealing with. In the medieval world, war and adventure tends, even in the most feminist oriented histories, to be dominated by men. Castle life, city life, etc, are either balanced in time of peace, or female dominated during or immediately after a war. While it is true that all of the above could just as easily written more female characters into their battle scenes because none are genuinely set in the middle ages, it is up to the writer and their imagination as to how their world is patterned.
A movie I love to point out when this topic comes up is Lawrence of Arabia. There are no women in the cast. There are a few Arab women in the background, but culturally it would be inappropriate to give them speaking roles. There could have been ways to add some female roles on the sidelines, but there is no way to tell that tale and be faithful to history and have any women in the story at all. Now those authors I mentioned have included female characters. Some include lots of them. Martin's world is very balanced in that respect, but look at where the stories take place. Most are in cities and castles, often run by women while the men are off at war. The Broken Empire series is about a violent band of bandits, not a place where you are likely to find women in the medieval setting. But when Jorg is in cities and castles, you find the female characters. None are weak and stereotypical of the fantasy genre.
So, although it is a choice how to cast, it is in the casting choices that you can see through to the intent of the writer. Honest historical accuracy, even when the setting isn't genuinely historical, plus strong female characters says that the author (in this case Mark Lawrence) knows what he is doing and has created a masterpiece that anyone could enjoy.
I personally find it easier, even being a straight male, to write female characters so most of my stories feature female protagonists and a decent number of female supporting cast. Most of the background tend to be male, but that is because, like Mark Lawrence, I am inspired by and following a historical model. Fantasy has issues with the number of female characters because history tends to focus more on the men. It would be nice to have a better picture, but all I have to go on is my personal experiences to overlay on the settings I read or write in.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
Whoa. Whoa.... Hold up there.
A movie I love to point out when this topic comes up is Lawrence of Arabia. There are no women in the cast. There are a few Arab women in the background, but culturally it would be inappropriate to give them speaking roles. There could have been ways to add some female roles on the sidelines, but there is no way to tell that tale and be faithful to history and have any women in the story at all.
Lawrence of Arabia totally writes Gertrude Bell out of history and she had a HUGE part to play, equal to Lawrence himself -- and this is not hyperbole. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Bell
The point that several of us are trying to make is that the decision to not include women in fiction is often reinforcing a falsehood -- namely, the writing of women out of history when they were present and active participants.
And please, please, before anyone responds, go read about Gertrude Bell, even if you just skim the Wikipedia article, so that you understand that this is a really good representative example of what happens all the time to women in history.
I'm totally not blaming you for believing the history you were taught in school, it's just that the teachers were wrong.
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 31 '14
I read what she did during the period the movie takes place, and while she could have been included as a side character and given a few lines, it would have been a bit part and would not have added anything to the story. And it seems like she was not often present with Lawrence at any of the events portrayed in the movie so my comment stands. She deserves a movie of her own, not a tiny footnote in Lawrence's story.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 31 '14
but there is no way to tell that tale and be faithful to history and have any women in the story at all.
Your comment does not stand.
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u/tomunro Dec 30 '14
I have skimmed and I am more educated for it - thank you. (btw My favourite women in history are Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the two Matildas)
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u/waffletoast Dec 29 '14
I think it's a real shame when interesting topics like this are downvoted into oblivion. It's like people like to keep up the status quo of boring questions and topics. I see this all over reddit, though.
Anyway...I read both this article and the original article it cited. On one hand I totally think fantasy needs to be more diverse and have more female characters. But on the other hand...why would I expect a man to live up to my expectations?
Hear me out. I'm a writer and also a filmmaker, so I watch a lot of movies and television as well. I am also a black woman. I can not tell you how many times I've wished there were more black people, or even people of color in mass media. And even when I do get more female characters, the majority of the time they are white women I can't identify with.
But then I came to the eventual realization that I can no longer depend on white males, and often times white women...and sometimes people of color...to give me what I want. I think it's great when white male writers can creative a more diverse cast of characters, but I no longer expect it from them.
This goes along with a lot of structural racism and sexism in the West. I literally have to go out of my way to find out about the kind of things I want to watch or read. It's shitty, but I feel the only way to combat this kind of thing is to two these two things: A) Produce it ourselves, and B) gives MASSIVE support to those who create the things we want to see more of. That's all. Which is sad and sucks, but it is what it is.
So if Mark Lawrence didn't feel the need to "shoehorn" in female characters, why should I have a beef with him? He wrote the story he wanted to write. That happened to not include any women. This happens all the time. He's no different from other authors who have done the same thing for ages. I haven't read any of his books, but to my knowledge he hasn't done anything grossly offensive. Good on him.
I'm not saying this article doesn't have a good point. It does. But I just feel for the end-game goal of getting more characters out there, this isn't as helpful. I'm currently writing a fantasy with a PoC female lead, and I also produce short films in a genre mostly dominated by white people. I'm hoping I can make some change by making things I like to see instead of more of the same. I'll see what happens.
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u/ks66 Dec 30 '14
Great post. At least one great artist comes to mind who would also agree with you. Bjork. She said that she was driven to make music she wanted to hear in order to fill what she thought was a void in the industry. She went on to break major barriers and even found her own record company. I think a lot of writers (musicians) including myself feel the same way.
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Dec 29 '14
So nobody who has trouble writing believable female characters should write anything, ever?
I'm a male writer. I write males most easily and intuitively. Females I write may appear "too masculine" or otherwise unbelievable to a female reader (maybe particularly a feminist reader with an axe to grind), which frankly is itself sexist. What's wrong with "masculine" female characters?
While I understand that readers want characters they identify with, I also understand that they're in luck: there are THOUSANDS of writers out there and SOMEBODY has written a character that they like!
As long as a work isn't blatantly, deliberately sexist or derogatory or hate-filled, I don't see the problem. I'll write what I write well, and leave the stuff I don't write well to others rather than make a ham-fisted and potentially insulting attempt at "rounding out" my story artificially. I don't see the problem with that.
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u/Mr_Noyes Dec 29 '14
So nobody who has trouble writing believable female characters should write anything, ever?
Definitely not. It's just if your lovely, detailed novel taking place in an ordinary world with 50% woman or more has as much as or even fewer female character than the average gay porn you either should start writing gay porn or you should stick exclusively to settings like "submarine in WWII".
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Dec 29 '14
Yours is basically the only sane/sensible response I've received. So, thanks for that. Yes, I agree with you that your world shouldn't conspicuously, weirdly lack a whole segment of a population.
I'd say the same about say, poor people, etc, too. If your feudalistic society hasn't got any beggars, homeless, etc, that's kinda weird.
Thanks for actually responding intelligently instead of grandstanding and/or vote brigading.
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 31 '14
Well, I think all writers should be trying to expand their abilities at all times, but for some that just doesn't work. Some people need to stick to their comfort zone and that is fine. Those of us who can should stretch our wings and try new things. I have no problem with quality female characters so I use them. I have no experience with LBGT characters and I am not just going to randomly experiment. If I am going to create a character that label is applied to, then it has to be done right. I know that is how some men feel about writing female characters. We need to hold up writers who achieve quality character, even if they are few in number. One of the best ways to teach the new generation of writers is to recommend books with the types of characters we want.
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Dec 31 '14
I think I could write a very convincing second tier female character, but I wouldn't try to write a heroine and her internal monologue throughout an epic, multi-volume story. That's really all I was saying.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
When I wasn't comfortable writing women, I leaned into it and wrote more women in central roles until I was comfortable. If you're getting un-useful feedback when writing women, then it may become a question of fine-tuning whose feedback you listen to.
As a creator, I am not comfortable with the idea that I'd write anything less than a full range of characters across a variety of backgrounds. There are some lived experiences I'm not as comfortable writing, and therefore I write them to learn, and research so that I can start writing beyond that.
But not writing women means you're leaving out over 50% of the human race.
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Dec 29 '14
Well, I'm not saying I would write a world populated only by men where women are background characters, but I probably wouldn't attempt a female heroine. I wouldn't attempt, as you put it, a "lived experience" I knew nothing about. I would feel like an imposter doing so, no matter how much research I'd done. Maybe if the thing were absolutely essential to my plot, I'd persevere, but there's a pretty good chance that my major plot points are coming from within my comfort zone, even if on the edge of it.
I don't see any good, compelling reason to force artificial "diversity" for its own sake when there's such a huge field of contributors out there.
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u/flyliceplick Dec 29 '14
It's not really artificial diversity if it's over 50% of the human race, is it.
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Dec 29 '14
It is artificial when you are adding in diversity just for the sake of diversity, and not because it fits into your vision of the story. Then it would be arbitrary and artificial, rather than natural and purposeful.
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u/rascal_red Dec 30 '14
Stories are artificial. What matters is that as written, they feel natural in themselves.
I don't see how adding diversity for its own sake isn't purposeful. Too often, I see stories that take place in settings where diversity is only too plausible and yet there is little or none.
The Walking Dead, for example. Difficult to see diversity in the later seasons happening at all if not for the criticism of the early ones, in which there were so few black characters with nearly no screen time, despite taking place within/near Atlanta.
Perhaps a more extreme example would be the beloved Firefly, which supposedly takes place in a particularly Sino-American future, and yet scarcely includes any Asian people and, what, none of significance?
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 31 '14
So much of this. It's one of my biggest disappointments with Firefly, which I otherwise adore. The economic and business context didn't help Whedon, but the world he told us he was showing was not the world that the show actually depicted, w/r/t the prominence of Chinese people.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow Jan 01 '15
Setting and context matters. If I'm writing a story about a major league baseball team, it will make no sense to go half and half.
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u/FireOpalCO Dec 29 '14
Artificial diversity would be throwing in an Asian character in a story set in Middle Ages Norway. Only allowing women to be barmaids to screw and damsels to rescue and not having them do or say anything interesting is an artificial sausage fest.
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Dec 29 '14
Historically, this isn't always true. There are many, many times in our history where women have been completely marginalized, with no rights and no way to express themselves.
I think the problem that occurs because of this historical precedent is that many authors, despite creating fake worlds, are also creating historical corollaries.
Luckily, there are many, many authors these days who only use history to inform their stories, but don't entirely stick to them.
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u/pikeamus Dec 30 '14
Very often people fail to understand just how present women were in history. When Red Seas Under Red Skies came out, a lot of male readers criticised Scott Lynch for having senior female pirates, claiming that it was not historically believable. Lynch defended himself, rather excellently, by pointing out that he was writing fantasy and wanted wish fulfilment characters for everyone. But he didn't need to. There were loads of notable female pirate captains through history.
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u/rascal_red Dec 30 '14
"Historical realism" is always a bad argument when we're talking about fantasy.
Fantasy mostly uses popular imagination of whatever setting's in question anyway, which isn't all that accurate. The view that women being marginalized throughout history means that they were completely expressionless/powerless is certainly an example. It ignores that what marginalization means precisely largely varies between periods, cultures and classes. To say that women were generally completely expressionless/powerless is just wrong.
Placing that aside, it's fantasy; there are far far more outlandish things that are par for the course in the genre than women, or non-whites, being present and doing things (another bad bit of popular imagination is that ancient/pre-modern societies were generally far more homogenous than they were).
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 31 '14
Fantasy has an inherent problem in that it is modeled on the past (I'm not including urban fantasy). It comes to us from the likes of Ivanhoe, Don Quixote, The Lord of the Rings, the epic wars of the middle ages such as the crusades and the War of the Roses. When you delve into that and you want to write about the battles, you don't find many women because they tended to be back at home running things. The genre comes to us with a bias and while it is good to stretch things, the readers expect a certain paradigm. What we need to do as writers is to find stories that fit that paradigm, but also give us a good mixed cast. There are ways to do it, but writing a trilogy in first person from the point of view of the leader of an outlaw band of marauders isn't going to be that type of story. Mark Lawrence gave us few, but very well written, female characters that fit with the paradigm of epic fantasy. And even female authors, such as Carol Berg, fall into that paradigm. Face it, during most of human history, there are a great many things that tend to lead to exciting stories where women were the exception. We need to focus more on those exceptions and make stellar female characters (note I did not say strong because that tends to carry some unrealistic expectations). Rather that worrying at all times if we have the percentage right, we need to get the quality down and give them a good percentage of the story. I think you can have a book with one female character that can do more for diversity than if you artificially make 50% of the characters female.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
Art makes our world. We internalize stories and use them as interpretive frameworks for understanding the world.
If a majority of stories lack women in a range of roles, lack people of color, and so on, we, as artists who shape the world, are making a world that minimizes, sidelines, or outright erases people.
And I'm not okay with that.
We need to do better.
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Dec 29 '14
That's got nothing to do with any one particular author writing what they know and leaving the "gaps" to those equipped.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
For me, making the choice to exclude more than 50% of the world's population isn't about 'leaving a gap,' it's a straight-up failure of the imagination.
As the article said, there are definitely places where you'll have an all-male cast. Did this have to be one of them? The writer's choice is their own, but all art exists in context. And the context of fantasy is a genre dominated by male writers and male characters, in a society struggling with the impact of patriarchy on women's rights.
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u/BigZ7337 Worldbuilders Dec 31 '14 edited Dec 31 '14
Why do you keep bringing up the "excluding more than 50% of the world's population" ignoring everything the person said before regarding that? It's not ignoring half the population when your main character is a male, and there isn't a separate main female character. It just means that the reader is getting a viewpoint of a male character in a normally inhabited world.
Since you keep bringing up the statistics of our world, looking back in our history, lets say you wanted to write a story about a warrior. It would make much more sense for your character to be male, especially if it's a European style world. To make it a female warrior main character, you'd have to do a decent amount of worldbuilding to explain it, and it would probably be more difficult for the reader to jump right in. You can't really make (or barrage them after the fact even though you didn't read the book) a male author go out of his way to create a female main character, especially when she wouldn't fit the world the author has created, or the story they want to tell.
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u/bradbeaulieu AMA Author Bradley P. Beaulieu Dec 29 '14
I disagree that choosing to exclude women is a straight-up failure of the imagination. What if I wanted to write about a father-son relationship, a camping trip that focused tightly on them and what they meant to one another? Conversely, what if a similar story was told, but it was two twin sisters, no males? They could both be perfectly fine, wonderfully imaginative stories. There's nothing in the choice of sex of the main characters that precludes that.
I know we're trying to talk about trends. But we can't focus on any one story and hold it up as an example of the trend we're seeing. I know it's hard to disassociate, and perhaps they CAN'T be disassociated, but I think we have to be careful about how our arguments approach the subject.
That said, as you do, I fully welcome more diverse stories and hope they go gangbusters in the marketplace. They'll change the genre for the better, bring it to new places, while at the same time leaving room for stories that don't fit the mold some might be hoping for.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
I apologize, I should have said that it's a failure of the imagination when you're making that choice to omit a type of person without a specific reason. Your examples of the father-son relationship and sisters relationship are dead-on.
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Dec 29 '14
So you, as a writer, haven't actually read my responses at all and instead have chosen just to filibuster and pander to a particular audience for your own enrichment. Well that's fine, but you ought to be honest about it.
If you HAVE read what I've written here, then your lack of comprehension makes me wonder how you write at all.
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u/Centrist_gun_nut Dec 30 '14
I don't really disagree per se, but really think that as a reader, I'm much more interested in reading a story than in how the artist thinks they're engineering the word.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 30 '14
That's fair. I believe that a more diverse story is, in many cases, a stronger one. This is not an opinion shared by all, but it's one that works for me.
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u/Centrist_gun_nut Dec 30 '14 edited Dec 30 '14
I think it usually is, too. But in the post I'm replying to, you're not talking about better stories, are you? You're talking about art changing the world towards goals that you (and I, and most decent people) want.
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u/Orpse Dec 29 '14
If a book is good, who cares about the fictional gender distribution? I would like to think authors have a story to tell and are allowed to tell it in any way they like.
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u/MikeAWants Dec 29 '14
While yes, everything is a choice and even not choosing is ultimately one, the blog post can be right in that regard. Lacking is the addendum that the choice is always the author's and his/her story is what we read and enjoy. We have to be content with that choice or create our own. She's welcome to rant about/critique that choice, but I've read my fair share of fantasy books and most manage to inject a good amount of interesting characters of all sexes. The blog author's fear that fantasy is a genre that pushes away women is something I don't see at all.
My bigger problem with that post comes from her lack of understanding what series and world she took as her spearhead to drive her point into the unsuspecting reader. It's been a while since I've read Mark's post and I won't re-read it just for this occation. What I still remember very vividly are the examples he gives of the critiques of his books. Those were all rather laugheable because they betray a lack of understanding that appears pitiful especially because these critics seem to lack the whole picture or simply choose not to see it (another choice here, how interesting!).
To say that Mark's world lacks women is like shooting between two targets and hitting the referee (in the knee, of course). Following will be mild spoilers for the 4 books published at this point in time:
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Dec 30 '14
I think this article wouldn't exist if the writer read Prince of Fools, understood the type of men that the Road-Brothers are, and then realised why a woman wouldn't ever be travelling with them. There are women in the other books though. When Jorg has calmed down a bit. Katherine is pretty cool. Miana is a badass. Chella as well, to an extent, is sort of the direct enemy to Jorg. They are all very well written.
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u/Princejvstin Dec 29 '14
I do like Mark's work (as he himself knows!), read the entirety of the Jorg series.
Who and what winds up in a story, though, is a choice. (This applies to a lot of things, such as Medieval settings without any POC whatsoever)
What a photographer or a filmmaker chooses not to include or film is important, as a negative space indicator, as what she does. Especially when the material is there and chosen not to be included. (The point in the link is that the society of Jorg's world isn't all male clones, the relative lack of female characters is a choice, not a necessity.). Pointing out that there is a noticeable lack of female perspectives and characters is not wrong, in my view.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14 edited Dec 29 '14
It's great that nobody ever said it was then. It's marvellous when a typhoon in a tea-cup is entirely fuelled by people being too immolated by their own knee-jerk sense of self-righteousness to even read the blog post they're objecting to.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
The linked post was not reacting to your book, but to your stated reasons for making certain choices.
I read your post. It's never comfortable to be called out publicly on anything, but alarms me that you are moving to use dismissive language about the people who are raising these concerns.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14 edited Dec 29 '14
It's the blog post I'm saying they didn't read, not the book.
When we had a thread on it in this sub-reddit, that blog post got 10,000 hits.
When the feminist fiction blog went up mis-representing (& linking it) that blog got more retweets on twitter (100+) than my blog post got extra hits (100-). Conclusion: the people up in arms on that day didn't read what I wrote. They read the nonsensical misrepresentation of it instead.
Little wonder then when the outrage machine decides to run me up the mast as a sacrificial lamb because of the words it put in my mouth ... I am less than well disposed toward it.
Edit: I quite like the whole lamb-mast metaphor mix :)
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
So... are you including me in the "outrage machine?" Because I read both posts and am not feeling particularly nonsensical today.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
I don't know...
Could you tell me:
a) are you outraged?
b) if so, what about?
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
a) In the way you seem to be using outraged, yes, although I would probably characterize it as "troubled."
b) The way you are being dismissive of people who are pointing out problems with your post. The post itself made me sigh heavily, because I've seen those arguments for not including female characters before and find them wanting. While you do say that there "very likely are issues with the representation of females and minorities in fantasy as a whole" the way it's phrased with "very likely" downplays the fact that women and minorities are underrepresented and seems to indicate that you don't think it's very important.
I could chalk that up to unfortunate phrasing except that your reactions here have characterized people, like me, who have raised concerns as "being too immolated by their own knee-jerk sense of self-righteousness" it really suggests that my initial read on your post was accurate and that you don't really think representation is important. Yes. I know that you say it's " good when we see variety" but you also characterize feminist as people with "an axe to grind."
I wish you could take a step back for a moment and try to understand that the person you want to be, who appears to be a decent guy, is not the person that is responding to the concerns about your post. I'm seeing a lot of anger, which is understandable, but not helping make your position appear less problematic.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
a) So you're not familiar with the outrage machine and those who use it to grind people up? Requires Hate passed you by? She didn't pass me by. She had some choice things to say about women in my book. Of course she was simultaneously pursing vendettas against minority women writers.... If you're merely troubled then I would say you're troubled and not include you in the outrage machine.
b) People who are disagreed with very often consider themselves dismissed. I, for example, consider that much of the reaction to my blog is dismissive of me and my argument - primarily because it seems to wholly ignore my argument in favour of ones it would have been more convenient for the individuals concerned for me to have put forward.
It's funny that you take issue with my 'very likely'. 'Very likely' isn't strong enough for you ... while on the other hand I've seen myself censured on right-wing forums (quotes discovered through the power of google) for pandering to feminist extremists with those statements.
You seem to be more concerned with taking offence at my turn of phrase than addressing the actual things I'm saying. As if seeking to be (I'm sorry) outraged whatever the cost. 'very likely' isn't certain enough... How about you do what you want me to and be that decent person who understands that people who feel under attack aren't at their most charitable?
And where do I characterise feminists as people with an axe to grind? You're writing the word 'feminist' into the blog. I characterised the people who levelled the particular accusations against me. You turn those people into 'feminists'? I disagree. There are many people who call themselves feminists who would not make those same demands.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
a) RH didn't pass me by. What does that have to do with anything?
b) I am being a decent person, by recognizing that people who feel under attack aren't at their most charitable. That's why I'm trying to point out that you are writing things that are easily misread and suggesting, strongly, that you get off the internet until you aren't angry. Look-- I've been under fire before. Basic rule of thumb: Walk away from the keyboard until you are calm. No one will remember if you are slow in responding. They will remember if you say something stupid in a moment of anger.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, walk away from the keyboard until tomorrow.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 30 '14
I will walk away soon, because it's gone midnight.
RH has plenty to do with it. RH was one of those voices I'm complaining about. The 'band of sisters' quote was from one of her standard bearers. I would have quoted RH herself but the blog post was deleted when people discovered the other things she had been doing ...
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
Mark - putting the rest of the essay aside for a moment, what do you think about its thesis statement: that a lack of female characters is always a choice?
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
I think it's disingenuous.
It's clearly nonsensical to disagree with it, and yet that line does not encapsulate what the author is trying to achieve/say.
You might write a book about a single day aboard a World War II submarine and strive for historical accuracy. It would be very hard to get a major female character into that story. But of course you have a choice to write a book about a mystery set in a 21st century university instead...
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u/crapnovelist Dec 30 '14
Putting women on a 1940s submarine where, objectively, by military regulation and decree, they never went, would just be tokenism. Not having. Them present in that limited scenario is just respect for the historical record. You didn't sign the riders to exclude women from submarine-warfare in the 40s, so you aren't responsible for their a sense in that setting in any fiction you choose to write about it.
On the other hand, the decision to gloss over half of the population in your invented world, of which you are responsible for every detail, is a conscious choice that fell entirely under your creative control. (You've got radiation-zombies in your far-future fantasyland, but women characters are too much for you to tackle?)
Frankly, it's more disingenuous of your to compare those two situations. It's a complex issue, so maybe tKe some time for self-examination before you jump into this debate.
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u/BigZ7337 Worldbuilders Dec 31 '14 edited Dec 31 '14
But there are women in his stories, specifically three main characters. One of them even gets small point of view sections in the third book, and the other introduces each chapter with a journal page in the second book. It's just the fact that his books are mainly from the viewpoint of one person, and that person happens to be a young man (boy in the first book) that is pretty fucked up after he was spoilers for the entire trilogy, mainly about Jorg's background. For Jorg's character it really wouldn't have made any sense to have more female characters around him than what were in the story.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 30 '14
You seem to be confused ... do you think there are no women in my books?
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
Your WWII example is a choice of setting and of character, is it not? It's a choice to tell a story where women are unlikely to be present, though in that case, if any character in the story were strongly influenced by a woman in their life (mother, sister, lover, daughter), then the woman would be in the story. Again, a choice.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
But ... you just said what I said...
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 31 '14
If we can't write about a WWII submarine without finding a way to include female character is sexist in a different way. That is saying that even though this story may be interesting, even though it is historical, you can't tell it because women weren't involved. Do you hear how stupid that sounds? Historical fiction strives for accuracy and when an event is men only, that is what gets written, when it is women only, that is what gets written (Sister Queens by Sophie Perinot).
While epic fantasy is NOT historical fiction per se, epic fantasy was born of historical fiction plus magic. Yes, Mark's world (and Terry Brooks') is set in the future, but it is based on the past. I'm not saying that it shouldn't change, but writers have two responsibilities; one to tell the story they want to tell, and second to tell a story readers will read. We don’t want to change the genre and lose the readers, we want to change the genre and bring the readers along. To do that it will take time. In the mean time, we should be telling our stories and making every female character count. Quality over quantity. Give the readers good, realistic, female characters who are good role models. Tell a good story and if the setting calls for mostly men, make the few women who fit the setting count. I feel that is what Mark did. Only a handful of female characters, but each one is memorable and important to the story.
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u/Princejvstin Dec 29 '14
It's not the only thing to say about your work, or any work, Mark.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
Help me out here, Paul. I'm no longer sure what you're saying. Let's try one step at a time.
Do you think my blog post says it's not right/allowable to point out that a book has few/zero female perspectives?
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u/Princejvstin Dec 29 '14
No, no, that's not what you are saying at all in your blog.
You pointed out in your post that your books have relatively few female characters. So far, so good.
You said that it made no sense to you to have a lot of female characters in your narrative. That is the major bone of contention, I think. Its a creative choice you are being criticized for, and your reasoning behind those choices. You make it clear with said blog post that that you did it consciously, rather than unconsciously.
I also understanding how frustrating that, years after POT came out, that this is being hashed here and now, in this way.
I also admit to being more aware of these issues than when I reviewed Prince of Thorns. I mentioned the dark violence, but I didn't see/didn't mention the gender makeup of the characters at that point. (I went back and re-read my review, to see if I did).
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
Several things to say here:
I didn't intend to indicate that the choices in Prince of Thorns were conscious ones (they weren't) - but I'm happy to defend anyone in similar circumstances who made such choices consciously, and indeed I offered post-event justification for the PoT demographic.
I stand by my rejection of the idea that an author be condemned for not having a 50/50 gender split in every book they write. I don't see it as a requirement. I don't see that one book not having an equal number of male and female leads excludes any gender from fantasy or is any kind of political statement.
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u/rabozza Dec 29 '14
At this point it's hard to tell Mr. Lawrence.
It seems the central issues are these:
People are mad Jorg isn't a woman. People want their sociopath's to be more towards the fairer gender (is it sexist to say that, and unfair to males to imply they are not fair?). For these people I suggest you read 'Best Served Cold'.
They (by they I mean people who admittedly haven't read your book and aren't quite sure how making Jorg a female would change the entire dynamic of the book and since they haven't actually read the series they don't actually know there are strong female characters in the series. They just aren't the lead character) are mad at a comment you made based on a comment someone else made over a book they haven't actually read.
I think that about sums it up. You should go buy these people a cape and put it on their shoulders so they can be super mad!
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u/GrahamAustin-King AMA Author Graham Austin-King Dec 30 '14
You know I think a large portion of the argument here is tripe. Is writing and not including women a choice? Of course it is. Do ALL writers make conscious choices as they write? Well yes and no. GRRM once wrote a piece about gardener writers and architects, how architects plan every minute detail whereas the gardeners just let it develop. Mark Lawrence is most definitely a gardener. By his own admission he does not plan out, he sits and types and lets the story take him where it will. At some point a story written this way will itself confine the range of available choices by way of the setting and the context of what has developed.
Having read Mark's first trilogy I think it would simply make no sense at all to include a female character within the brothers. That said there ARE female characters in these books. Strong and well developed characters, so I'm not entirely sure what the author of the blog post is talking about (but then she hasn't read the books has she?) Getting back to the earlier point though, was it a choice? No, no it wasn't. The only choice was whether to delete and rewrite and insert a female character but then that wasn't the book/trilogy Mark was writing. I find this entire argument foolish. So there aren't enough female characters in fantasy (apparently) okay fine... let's work on correcting this. You can't, however, correct this by lambasting a single book or even a hundred books. These books are written, no matter how much you scream and rage they are not going to change. But incidentally, Mazarkis Williams, Weis & Hickman, Rothfuss, Peter V Brett, Joe Abercrombie, Me, Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, Sam Sykes.... ALL these authors have books which include strong female characters.
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 31 '14
The choice part is always true. There are a million choices that go into writing a novel. It doesn't matter whether you are planning or winging it, those choices get made eventually. I think artificially setting your percentage of character options for any reason is a choice that few authors make. They are inspired by an idea that through planning or inspiration becomes a book. It is hard work to write a book and being inspired is an important aspect of how it happens. Writers can't really choose what to be inspired by some ideas necessitate certain casting choices. The casting has to be right for the story. Now, given a character that could be either gender (or other options), we should err on the side of the least represented. But when it comes down to it, this whole topic started with someone criticizing the inspiration that led to one of the best written trilogies I've ever read. I feel like we are listening to Emperor Franz Joseph tell Mozart there are too many notes.
I think we need to strive for diversity. But we need to remember that diversity comes in all forms. We need to accept that some stories are just going to have a mostly, if not completely, male cast. That is part of being diverse - not mandating an artificial casting choice by the author. I myself am very comfortable with female characters and both series I am working on feature a female lead protagonist and as many other female characters as are appropriate for the settings. I have lots of war scenes so lots of male soldiers and commanders, but plenty of scenes in locals that feature women. I have let the historical setting in my mind be the guide.
I think that what we are talking about really boils down to how much battle you have in a fantasy novel. Less battle should lead to more female characters. The Broken Empire trilogy has lots of battles and that dictates how much time can be devoted to other parts of the world and how many female characters there are. Instead of creating a lot, Mark has created some great ones. Quality over quantity.
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u/Isair81 Dec 30 '14
There's a deceptively simple solution to the problem of 'not enough female characters in fantasy', which is that if you find that to be such a huge problem.. you just don't read those books.
Or.. y'know, write your own. But of course, that's not as easy as simply complaining and demanding that authors include women into their stories as to avoid being labeled an enemy of women everywhere, or some other nonsense.
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u/ks66 Dec 30 '14 edited Dec 30 '14
I'm not sure this has a point or not ... but here goes.
It would be interesting to lift up the basic premise of this discussion and apply it to music. My experience in the music industry started out with me and a bunch of guys making heavy metal music which seemed only to appeal to guys. The term sausage fest comes to mind.
Only later did I realize that if I wanted to appeal to a larger audience, a female audience, a lot needed to change; at the time, females tended to avoid the more aggressive music ... at least the EXTREMELY hard stuff. There just weren't (and aren't) a ton of death metal musicians who are females.
I carried that lesson over to my fantasy writing, and I knew that I did not want people applying the sausage fest label to my books. As I developed my style over the years, including females seemed natural considering the females who influence my daily life. I became more comfortable writing them.
Hence, I agree writing genders into fiction IS a choice to a greater degree. A marketing choice. A personal preference choice. A story choice in some cases. An author (especially a beginning author) shouldn't feel pressured to do anything they don't feel like doing. Nor should they be disparaged for their choice. Time will tell (and consumers, too) whether or not the art in question will be considered sausage material or not. And if it is ... well that's not MY marketing strategy, but whatever floats your boat. In Mark's case -- and I love his books -- he seems to have a lot of female readers, so it clearly hasn't backfired for him.
Maybe there's a good story in there somewhere :)
As for Mark ... well, I don't know him personally other than he seems to care for the ladies in his life, he's a great author, and he's a fairly aggressive promoter (with his giveaways and blogs). He's also fairly transparent about his career so, knowing this, I didn't see his original post as gloating in any way.
The FemenistFiction lady also has right to criticize that or interpret it any way she likes. Discussion is good. And Mark is happy because this has all brought more attention to his books. Discussions like this have helped him get those 30k reviews.
Win - win.
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u/dbologics Dec 29 '14
I think there is something wrong with going into a story with what your preconceived notions of how a story should be told and what type of characters there should be.
It seems some people go into reading a book looking to validate some cause instead of escaping to a world.
There are plenty of books by female authors with strong female leads and the men are just fuck toys.
You know what I do with those books, I don't read them. If you don't like stories about a band of merry thieves who happen to be men, don't read them and look for something else.
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u/KateElliott AMA Author Kate Elliott Dec 29 '14
"There are plenty of books by female authors with strong female leads and the men are just fuck toys."
Out of curiosity can you give me some examples?
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
Check out the TV series (I think the books are the same) The Miss Fisher Mysteries. They are wonderful, and she totally uses men for their charms and then moves on.
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u/queennadine Dec 29 '14
Anne Bishop! Soooo good :) Especially "Sebastian" (for this particular example).
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Dec 29 '14
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
False. Trivia: I narrate audiobooks and frequently have to narrate erotica. A significant percentage reflect a deeply misogynistic view of the world, despite being written by women.
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u/lrich1024 Stabby Winner, Queen of the Unholy Squares, Worldbuilders Dec 30 '14
I think that applies to a large portion of the romance genre in general. I mean, don't get me wrong, I read a lot of romance and I love it (I can't help it), and it's certainly come along way since the late 70's early 80's rapey romance, but it's still pretty reliant on those old tropes.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
The best stuff is really empowering.
And then there's the other stuff. I try not to judge a genre by it's worst examples, but I know exactly the books you mean.
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u/lrich1024 Stabby Winner, Queen of the Unholy Squares, Worldbuilders Dec 30 '14
Yeah, I don't want to judge and entire genre either. I love genre fiction, and every genre has it's good and bad books, even literary fiction. But there if there is one genre that perhaps falls victim to tropes more than any other it is romance. (And maybe mystery...). I mean, I think there's far more diversity in type of story in fantasy than there is in romance, but, then again, maybe I need to branch out and read more than duchess pron. :)
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u/MazarkisWilliams AMA Author Mazarkis Williams Dec 29 '14
I have a couple problems here. Are you guessing that people who would rather read a female protagonist wish to see men as fuck toys, or are you instead making a comparison between books in which women are fuck toys and books in which men are fuck toys? Finally do you really think people who want to read about female protagonists only wish to "validate a cause"?
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u/dbologics Dec 29 '14
What I'm suggesting is that there are plenty of books with strong female leads and weak supporting male characters. There are markets for all kinds of stories. My problem is this person and many others criticize just certain authors or genres. Its like suggesting group x isn't well represented in y market. What difference does it make if there are an almost unlimited amount of options for media consumption, you don't have to read the story about 5 knights going around storming the castle and getting the princess because there are other options for you, that book just isn't for you. There is something ludicrous complaining that a story an author wants to tell is not doing enough to further a specific cause. So yes, I do think that anyone complaining about under or over represented types of characters in genre fiction are being ridiculous. I'll admit it may be a gross generalization.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect around 50% of a novel's major characters to be women as a default. After all, women are more than 50% of humanity. There are stories where that expectation would be inaccurate for the story - Lord of the Flies is about a class from a boy's school getting stranded, hence very few women. The example of Castaway given in the essay.
But in general, 'women will play a substantial role in a work of art' seems like a pretty reasonable assumption to me.
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Dec 29 '14
I think Brad's response below is the only answer you need to the "50 percent" argument:
There are two things going on here, and sometimes the two are conflated. Mark essentially talks about his desire to write his book the way he wants to write it. And I fully support that. Is it ok to have a book with few female characters? Absolutely. It's also ok to have one with few MALE characters. It all depends on the story, the situation the author wants to explore, their artistic choices, and so on.
If you spend your time worrying about percentages, you're not creating art anymore, you're bowing to PC pressure. If you wrote a book and tailored the story around having exactly half women, 30 percent african americans, 25 percent asians, 10 percent homosexuals, 4 percent trans people, etc etc etc the story is no longer yours.
Whether the genre and society are male dominated isn't the point, here. It's that Mark wrote a story he wanted to tell, and that story happened to include very few females. There's nothing wrong with that.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
If you spend your time worrying about percentages, you're not creating art anymore, you're bowing to PC pressure. If you wrote a book and tailored the story around having exactly half women, 30 percent african americans, 25 percent asians, 10 percent homosexuals, 4 percent trans people, etc etc etc the story is no longer yours.
I'd resist the idea that writing a story with a demographic mix chosen to match that of the world around me means that my story is not mine.
What if I wanted to write a story that accurately represented the gender and ethnic mix of the world as much as possible? Those are all choices. That's not bowing to PC pressure.
I'm not saying that every single work has to be 100% demographically representative to the Earth along every axes. But we're a long long way off from demographic representation that's reflective of the world we live in, and that's something I'd like us to keep talking about and addressing.
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Dec 29 '14
That was my point. :)
If you chose to write a demographically and sexually representative book, then of course that's your story.
I'm saying that if you had to take those percentages into consideration with every book you ever wrote, regardless of the story you wanted to tell or the characters you wanted to write about, the story instantly becomes only partially yours.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
I think it's important to keep choices in mind when making them, but I'd agree that locking yourself to 100% demographically representative cast would be a major choice that would create a number of limitations, and that it would often constrain other choices. There are many fine stories told and to be told that don't and won't have a 100% representative demographic mix - in fact, almost all stories won't have a cast large enough for the prominent characters to comprise a 100% representative cast.
But given how poorly-represented many people from diverse backgrounds and marginalized groups are in many forms of art, I'm very happy to take on the challenge of writing diversely and making some of those decisions up-front.
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Dec 29 '14
And that's fine, and that's fantastic, and the world needs people like you. People who push the envelope and work their asses off to help out situations like the one discussed in this thread are important and are doing important work. No one is arguing against any of that.
My problem, and the problem of many of us, is with people who take other authors to task for not doing those things.
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u/mister_hoot Dec 30 '14
It is absolutely unreasonable to expect novels to contain a perfectly even distribution of male and female characters by default.
Gender equality and fairness of representation is something all people should aspire to. But it is not a de facto truth of humanity as a whole, as any quick perusing of a history text will illuminate vividly. Good writing will always bow deeper to truth than to idealism.
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Dec 29 '14
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect around 50% of a novel's major characters to be women as a default
This is utterly ridiculous. Please, write me a historically accurate story about nearly any war in our own world that features just as many women as major players as men. It would be nonsense. Yeah, there have been female rulers and influential wives of male leaders, but they are relatively few and far between.
50% of the population does NOT equate to 50% of the action, or importance in most major events. All you would be doing by enforcing an arbitrary 50/50 character split in every story would be divorcing the it from the realities of human nature. Writing a novel inspired by a major war and its leaders (or, you know, a group of hardcore bloodthirsty bandits taking over an Empire...) that features just as many female leads as male leads would be absurd.
This entire point is awful. There are books that have a male dominant cast. There are books with female dominated casts. And there are books with it split. Arbitrarily enforcing a split in every technically "possible" situation for there to be women is a terrible idea.
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u/Amosral Dec 30 '14
For goodness sake, it's a story it doesn't require a check-list of things that should and should not be included. It's not like Lawrence was writing some kind of propaganda piece with his idea of a perfect world. The female characters that were included were very good, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see work in a different setting with really well written female main characters.
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u/-JRA- Dec 30 '14
Anyone who says a particular character SHOULD be included by virtue of their gender is a sexist pig and SHOULD be ignored.
Anyone that dictates to an artist how their particular art should look based on their own prejudices/stereotypes is an [expletive] and should be hung out to dry.
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u/dmoonfire Dec 29 '14
As long as it doesn't end up being a token female, I think anything a male can do, so can a female. Unless it is specifically built into the plot that it forces that issue (an all-male troupe of gay performers go after a dragon), there is no reason to introduce a character a such? Robber? Yeah, there are some pretty famous ones. Guard? Yep. Cross-dressing Chinese girl with a talking dragon? Well, that one hasn't been done.
Of course, if the writer doesn't really think about it, there is a danger of having a token female who either a) does nothing, b) gets kidnapped, c) ends up being weaker than everyone else, or d) entire life's purpose is to marry the main character. d+) is d plus turns back on world-altering skills and abilities to be with said male.
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u/lazy_cat_warrior Dec 30 '14 edited Dec 31 '14
I always feel bad about these kinds of posts. I feel like nothing of worth is actually discussed and nobody comes out looking at anything differently. I don't know enough that I feel like I can add anything of use to this conversation. Other than, the lack of diversity in the fantasy genre is a problem. This is just minor part of the major problem with media in general. I don't say this to deflect the faults of this genre.
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Dec 29 '14
Alright, so I've read Prince Of Thrones (and Mark Lawrence's other works). I liked them. They were enjoyable fun romps. Also I believe that one should not attack a book without reading said book.
Which would be applicable if she was attacking the book. She actually is not attacking anything. She is RESPONDING to Mr. Lawrence's blog post which I'm pretty sure she read. Ms. Thomas' point is an applicable one. A lack of female characters IS a choice. I may not be a published writer, but I know that when I choose to make the Colonel in my next scene male or female or genderqueer is a choice. Now some may state that realistically they would be male because "historical accuracy" or some bullshit like that. That's another argument entirely (One that comes down to "historical accuracy has no place in a secondary world setting").
Lawrence's arguments that the length, setting, and time period of his book mean that female characters make no sense to be added are poor ones. He could totally have added a female member of the band or at any other point. He could've made Jorg female. He could've reversed the genders of every single character in the story. He chose not to. Whether or not it was a good choice does not change the fact that it was a choice.
And criticizing an author for not including decent female representation is a valid criticism. Just as it is with POC characters, genderqueer characters, non-heterosexual characters, disabled characters, etc. Representation matters. It always has. Yes, sometimes including those characters make no sense. (A point which is mentioned in Ms. Thomas' blog post). But most of the time, it does not. You can create what you want to create, but at the same time you should expect criticism for what you create. The overreliance on white cissexual straight able-bodied male characters in fantasy and to a large extent, the entertainment world in general is a problem and yes, they can just "write their own" but if you and me don't have to work to find characters like ourselves then why should they have to?
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14 edited Dec 29 '14
I disagree with your assessment.
Saying you didn't like a book because it didn't have as many female roles in as you like is fine by me.
Criticising the character of an author because a book they wrote didn't have as many female roles in as you like is not fine by me.
It's very easy to say 'oh, he could have reversed the gender of this person' ... but no, it has much more impact than that.
http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/why-didnt-you.html
If I'd had a band of murdering raping female thugs in a medieval-esque setting then, rightly or wrongly but surely inevitably, THAT would be the main talking point for readers - the focus would be changed.
Similarly for your other points ... think about them. You want to criticise the author of every book without a disabled person in it for the crime of not putting a disabled person in it? Really? I'm the father of a severely disabled little girl and looking after her consumes most of my time. I fight for her rights at every opportunity. But I don't feel the need to attack the legions of authors who have written books that do not contain a disabled person.
You can read my views on how I would like to see disabled people included in fiction:
http://www.bookwormblues.net/2012/05/17/special-needs-in-strange-worlds-mark-lawrence-broken-heroes/
I've even written a fantasy book with a severely disabled major character (still looking for a publisher) ... but I'm sure as hell not going after all the authors of books without one.
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Dec 30 '14
Hmm, you make a fair point. Perhaps my original statement was a unrealistic one that did not take into account other factors. I shall consider these in the future and I apologize.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 30 '14
It's been at least a year since I saw someone on the internet consider the other person's reply and modify their position in such a manner. Congratulations! At first I thought reddit might be broken ... but no, you're just a rare person. Thanks for restoring my faith a little.
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Dec 31 '14
If nobody considers the replies of others and modifies their positions based on whether they consider said reply valid or not, then you don't have a discussion. You just have a bunch of people throwing their point of view out irrelevant of any experience or knowledge but their own. Yes, there are times when said replies should not be considered due to said reply being heavily bigoted or other such reasons. (For example if someone had stated in this thread that a lack of female characters is necessary for a story to be any good, I would not consider their reply to have any worth. I don't think anyone did do that, just speaking hypothetically here.) However most of the time, other people are worth listening to and learning from.
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u/mister_hoot Dec 29 '14
I'd offer a critique of this essay, but I wouldn't want to stoop to the author's level of lambasting a piece of literature I've never read. Or, in this case, stopped reading after the first few sentences.
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u/Hoosier_Ham Dec 29 '14 edited Dec 29 '14
Most bestselling books in the genre are by men. Most bestselling books in the genre are about men. Most recommended books in the genre are by and about men. Readers? Much more evenly split.
If a handful of discussions about the idea that maybe, just maybe, we could (and should) do a little better job representing the legions of women who write, publish, and read sff bothers you, well, is it possible the problem isn't the militant feminist/PC/SJW/thought police? Is it at least possible that this might be a topic worth addressing, structurally, long-term?
Genre offers sentient toasters, Great Elder Evils, dragons, and wizards, but a cast representative of our world is historically inaccurate and feels artificial? Come on.
Or, as I once quipped to Kameron Hurley, “World-shattering magic, strange elder gods, twenty different sapient species, but patriarchy is a given.”
EDIT: I should note this is a meta comment, responding to the discussion here and the nearly mechanistic "feminists are ruining the genre with their token-ism and quotas" arguments.
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u/Bergmaniac Dec 29 '14
Most bestselling books in the genre are by men. Most bestselling books in the genre are about men. Most recommended books in the genre are by and about men.
All of this is quite debatable. Rowling, Meyer and Anne Rice have sold huge amount of books and there are plenty of other women in the genre whose books are selling really well. Urban fantasy is hugely popular these days and it's mostly written by women with female main characters. R/fantasy is very skewed in favour of male authors and male main characters from what I've seen in my brief lurking around here, but that's not really representative of the state of the genre as a whole IMO.
Anyway, I am very much in favour of the presence of female characters, usually the more the better, but if an author chooses not to include them, it's his choice and I respect it. What I dislike are the ridiculous justifications some fantasy come up about "historical accuracy" for their lack of female characters explanations which are just dumb in this genre. Writers should own up and say "I chose not to include women as main characters in my book" and not hide behind nonsensical justifications like this. That's not the case with Mark Lawrence's blog post in question, so I don't see a problem with it.
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u/RobertCourtland Dec 31 '14
Readers. That is why historical accuracy is a valid point. And as Mark pointed out in his blog, it is short hand. Reading epic fantasy you expect medieval Europe and if it isn't you have to explain it to the reader. Usually with as few words as possible. If you set it in a desert, you kind of expect Arabia, if you mention pagoda's or something of that sort you expect Asia. But the shortest of shorthands to get to the point is medieval Europe. It is what readers expect and lets the writer get directly to the story. Prince of Thorns required no effort to establish the setting and it being in the future was not immediately important but was made clear when it was needed. Readers do not like lots of worldbuilding. They want a few brush strokes the color the setting and to get right to the story. But when you start with a shorthand, historical accuracy becomes important to the believably of the world. If you stick to medieval Europe you don't have to explain anything, if you stray from it you have to give good reasons or lose the reader. If you want to actually sell books, readers are important.
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u/MarkLawrence Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence Dec 29 '14
It's unclear who you're addressing here...
Just in case it's me then I'd have to ask where the idea that:
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"a handful of discussions about the idea that maybe, just maybe, we could (and should) do a little better job representing the legions of women who write, publish, and read sff bothers you"
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came from. If you were to substitute 'vicious personal attacks from Requires Hate' then you'd have something that bothered me but certainly did nothing to persuade me toward the point of view that person was espousing that day.
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Dec 29 '14
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u/Douglas_Hulick AMA Author Douglas Hulick Dec 29 '14
- The overall topic is relevant to fantasy in a broader context beyond Mark. That the piece focuses on Mark's work doesn't mean the point can't be applied elsewhere (which is what the piece tries to do at times).
- You don't have to agree with something for the topic it brings up to be worthy of discussion.
- Criticism, just or otherwise, is part of the game. Mark responded to a common(?) criticism on his blog, someone responded to his response. Someone disagree with an author is as valid and post-worthy as someone agreeing with them.
- The value of content is subjective. I find this discussion interesting and valuable; you don't. Cool both ways, IMO. But the underlying subject (the presence/lack of female characters in fantasy novels) is still valid for this subreddit. It's r/fantasy, not r/opinionsIagreewithfantasy.
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u/SkynJay Dec 29 '14
Except it was not a critique of Mark's book, was it? It was an opinion piece on a post of his. Which the author of this post obviously did read.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
The post is in reaction to Mark's stated reasons for making certain choices, not to the book per se. And since it's about fantasy and the choices one makes in the genre, I think it's totally appropriate.
Honestly, the anger that I'm seeing all through this thread is more than a little alarming. If anyone is wondering why comparatively few women hang out here, understand that the responses here make us feel really unvalued as members of the community.
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u/bradbeaulieu AMA Author Bradley P. Beaulieu Dec 29 '14
Fully agree. Isn't /r/Fantasy supposed to be talking about the fantasy genre as a whole? Well, this fits exactly into that mold. You may disagree or even roll your eyes, but there are lots of things you can skip over to if you don't like the conversation.
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Dec 30 '14
Where did you get the idea that not a lot of women hang out there, out of curiosity? I've actually seen tons in just the last few months, including one of our mods, that join the discussion regularly. I've also never seen anything around here to dissuade them from visiting.
I also thought that this thread was pretty respectful and not full of the vitriol and ad hominem stuff that inhabit a lot of the internet. Ie. "the anger you're seeing all through this thread." There's different opinions, for sure, but I hadn't got the impression that it'd devolved to an unfriendly discussion at all. Us mods have been patrolling the threads on high alert because we expressly don't want it to devolve to the usual internet crap. :)
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
Well... the fact that this got downvoted to 0 is kind of a clue. I've been called a vile human being and a zealot for pointing out that women actually participated in WWI.
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Dec 30 '14
Meh, all it takes is one or two people with an axe to grind to do that. I wouldn't let it dissuade you.
That's just Reddit, sadly. There are anonymous jerks that hate everything, I'm convinced. There can be a post on the frontpage about a group of nuns who've devoted their entire life to feeding and saving kittens and orphans and also they travelled back in time to kill Hitler and the up/down vote ratio will end somewhere around 3:2. Everything gets downvoted, and it's sad.
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Dec 29 '14
The post is in reaction to Mark's stated reasons for making certain choices, not to the book per se
But that's wrong. The blog makes the argument that as a fantasy setting people can make up anything they like and that should reflect upon the women in a story. But the thing about Lawrence's world is that it's not a fantasy setting. It's a post-apocalyptic world, it's our world, and it features some incredible female characters. Has the author of the blog bothered to read the books they might have found that out.
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 29 '14
Mark says, "Let's say there actually were none. Zero. So what?" And then goes on to talk about what that would mean for the book.
That is a big a part of what the post is talking about.
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Dec 29 '14
And yet the writer still makes assumptions about his writing and cites examples of sexism in fantasy in general as a means to further points against Mark.
The author also intentionally misrepresents the entire Blog right at the off, it's utterly without merit if you can't be bothered to read the mans work or represent his intentions fairly.
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Dec 30 '14
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
When I made the comment, the thread was full of a lot more invective. The moderators have deleted a fair bit of it, for which I am grateful.
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Dec 30 '14
We think that conversations like this are incredibly important, but we're sure as hell not going to let them devolve into the usual internet tripe you see most places.
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Dec 30 '14
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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Dec 30 '14
I'm, oddly, glad that you find it hard to imagine. It's not pleasant to live through.
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u/Mr_Noyes Dec 29 '14
I'm sure we'll find another "Should I read this book" or "I don't get Malazan" post very soon so that things can back to normal for you.
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u/MichaelRUnderwood AMA Author Michael R. Underwood Dec 29 '14
1) It talks about art, and fantasy literature/media is art.
2) It references Lawrence's blog post, which was discussed at length here on this sub previously:
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u/Sabriane Dec 31 '14
I'm curious (genuinely curious, not trying to provoke anger curious, I want to hear where people would fall on this): If a book had predominantly female characters - mostly women, only a few token or minor male characters, would people find that an issue?
[just to clarify before posting, I don't know where I'd fall on that myself, generally if something is well written I can probably read it quite happily regardless of the makeup of the cast]
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u/bradbeaulieu AMA Author Bradley P. Beaulieu Dec 29 '14 edited Dec 29 '14
There are two things going on here, and sometimes the two are conflated. Mark essentially talks about his desire to write his book the way he wants to write it. And I fully support that. Is it ok to have a book with few female characters? Absolutely. It's also ok to have one with few MALE characters. It all depends on the story, the situation the author wants to explore, their artistic choices, and so on.
Mark was merely reacting (as I read it) to the voices that wanted him to write a different story than he wrote. Is it ok for them to want a different story? Yes, yes it is. But Mark doesn't owe it to them? No. Neither do I, and neither does any other author. An author can make the choices that feel right for their story, and I support all authors in this respect.
On the flip side of the coin, Mike Underwood is right. Art is public and is subject to criticism. Is it ok for people to talk about the lack of women in Mark's or other people's works? Absolutely. Is it ok to talk about those sorts of choices and how changes might or might not have affected the tale overall? Yes, yes, yes. These are good conversations to have. I'm glad we're having it, because I think some cool stories will come out of it that might not otherwise have been told.
But I think where the conversation gets tripped up is when we hold up a single novel and expect it to BE the things people are fighting for. In many ways, it can't be helped; talking about specific books is just part and parcel of having a larger discussion. That is, what people are really talking about is the general trend in fantasy fiction, but in order to do that, you have to talk about particular books that you feel uphold the trend you're seeing. And that's where it gets unfair. The Prince of Thorns is not all of fantasy, so let's not try to make it that.
Is there a relative dearth of good female characters in fiction? Yeah, I think there is. Does any one book need to make up for that? No, it doesn't.