There's this flowchart. It ticks me off.

[dagas_isa]

I has a rant.

This flow chart provokes in me an irrationally angry reaction.

That chart has 75* different "stereotypes" for female characters. In other words, pretty much any female character is going to fit onto that chart. Not a problem. You know because pretty much anyone will loosely fit into one archetype or another. But then there's tone in the article that implies that all of these 75 stereotypes (and the women they've chosen to represent, including Tsukino Usagi, Azula, Zoe Washburne, and Yoko Ono) are somehow representations of poorly done female characters. Yes, one of those is a real-life figure.

*facepalm*

I'm all for critical examinations of source material, but seriously? This is the kind of critique that says, "Hey, there's no right way to ever write women," and takes for granted men are more nuanced** because seriously, trying not to write a woman who calls to mind one of those tropes is well, a nightmare, and something of a useless effort.

Oh, and seriously, most male characters wouldn't even make it through the first gauntlet if someone decided to turn a critical eye to them, so why do people set that as a minimum standard for female characters? I don't even know. We already have so many rules and codifications for what makes a good female characters, why is this flowchart needed? And why is the point being proven in the accompanying blog post that somehow there is a lack of development/variety/nuance in female characters? Why don't male characters get the same level of examination?

I may be a touch bitter because it's the type of thinking displayed in the making and presentation of that flowchart that also seems to fuel the excuses for not wanting to read/write/watch female characters.***

*sigh*

This touched a huge sore spot.

---

* I counted. Even if I'm off, it's still a lot of archetypes/characteristics that are being painted as stereotypes. Also, if you're curious, 56 of those "stereotypes" don't even require a love interest.

**Oh, you do not want to hear me rant about much of a myth the "nuanced male character" is. Really.

*** I honestly have no problems with people preferring to focus on male characters, but it's definitely something I'd rather not see people not try to justify beyond "This is what I like," and how they personally relate to male and female characters.

ETA: I've been linked on the metafandom delicious. The text accompanying their bookmark is irrelevant and kind of hilarious.

Comments

[lian]

>_<;


>_<;


...this flowchart only proves that you can compress everyone into one/two dimensions if you only squint liberally and try hard enough. Waaaay to sabotage her own intentions, omg.

[dagas_isa]

Basically. And the author even admits that she "does not include every type of female character that has ever existed" on her chart. So if there's 75 ways to be a one/two dimensional character and she's still missing some...

I don't even know.

[gloss]

Thanks for articulating a great deal of my sadness and rage over that stupid chart.

[rhivolution]

I caught this on boosette's journal earlier and I must say that I do not even know wtf the chart's creator was attempting to do with it.

[chronolith]

This flow chart provokes in me an irrationally angry reaction.

I don't think your anger is irrational.

[havocthecat]

+1!

[jackandahat]

This chart really does strike me as a cross between "You shouldn't write women, ever, because you suck" and "All your favourite characters are bad, and you're a bad person for loving them."

According to that chart, being female and making it to the end of the horror movie means you're a 2D character. So... if you die early, you're 2D, if you live, you're 2D. You're literally not allowed to be female in a horror movie...

(via Metafandom)

[halfshellvenus]

This chart really does strike me as a cross between "You shouldn't write women, ever, because you suck" and "All your favourite characters are bad, and you're a bad person for loving them."

THIS.

Re: (via Metafandom)

[jackandahat]

Which is telling, since "You just don't want me to write!" is usually the strawman used by people who are being told to be careful how they write women/POC/disabled characters/whoever. But... no, according to some people you can't do it right, ever.

[havocthecat]

**Oh, you do not want to hear me rant about much of a myth the "nuanced male character" is. Really.

I kind of think that I want to! Hi, you don't know me, but I'm adding you on the strength of this rant, which is absolutely beautiful and getting linked to in my journal, because I need to rant about this same stinking chart.

[dagas_isa]

Hi! Welcome aboard, and thank you.

[willful_zephyr]

I'd like to hear it, too, please!

[aldanise]

But--but-- that flowchart doesn't even make sense. She has Sarah Connor and Faye Valentine on there as stereotypes at the same time that she's saying they're "Strong Female Characters". WTF? And, seriously, every female villain everywhere is somehow a stereotype, really? Really?

(And now I just spent half an hour trying to make sense of that thing that I could have spent reading about divorce in Japan and the safeguards that used to be put in place for women in the case of divorce. Argh.)

[dagas_isa]

Yeah.

(And now I just spent half an hour trying to make sense of that thing that I could have spent reading about divorce in Japan and the safeguards that used to be put in place for women in the case of divorce. Argh.)

And I'm really sorry for this, because that flowchart isn't worth wasting the time it takes to make sense of it.

[recessional]

I kind of loved how one of my original female characters literally got stuck with no end point.

(Lilaea Scott, or Lilaea zhi Elovier zhe Relaetir an Vaeran, depending on which of her naming patterns y'wanna use. I can't get to the chart right now, possibly all the WTF crashed it, but basically she's not the protag and doesn't carry the story on her own, but she's not a love interest, she doesn't have or want a baby, she's not in a horror movie, she's violent but it's not her only characteristic, and she's definitely not almost perfect . . . . but then she gets stuck in the "so what's her flaw?" bit and can't move on, because NONE of the options even apply a little bit.)

(And they didn't even ASK ME if she was a human who was also an elf-princess! *woe* I should have got mary-sue points for that.)

[dagas_isa]

Well, that's not every female stereotype. The author was very clear on that, just the important ones. I'm sure there would be an elf-princess question if the flowchart was comprehensive.

I don't even know.

[astridv]

I agree with every word, down to the footnotes. (here via havocthecat)

[birgitriddle]

That flow chart is so convoluted I don't even know if it's even possible to make a coherent reaction to it.

I'm going to take a pen to it and follow it and see where the hell she would "place" my favorite female characters.

[birgitriddle]

Also, Harley Quinn, while she does have a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, shouldn't be on there. -glare-

[4thofeleven]

I like that 'three dimensional character' is only one of the hurdles a character has to pass - and I'm trying to work out if "Can she carry her own story?" means that if you have two female characters in a story, they cancel each other out...

[(Anonymous)]

The chart is a joke. A lot of the supposed stereotypes aren't bad. At all.

Some of my favorite female characters? Two members of the military in the world they are from, each with their own career in a different branch, with an adopted daughter the two raise.
Hurt the daughter, and either will go Mama Bear on anyone daring to hurt the daughter. Bad? No. It's awesome.
One of them completely destroying a villain who hurt her daughter is the crowning moment of awesome for the entire series the characters star in. That scene is liked enough to be found multiple times on youtube.

And if she were male? I bet nobody would whine that he'd not be nuanced.
My point? Mamabear is not bad. Most of the things listed in the charts aren't.


What is bad if a character is only one thing. But them having moment of trope X or Y? not bad at all. That's just writing. YOu can't evade every trope that exists. It's not possible, unless you write about eleven-legged amoebas from planet Y.

[minoanmiss]

If I say "Your rage is balm for my soul" does that come through how I mean it? Because I read your entire essay saying "YES AND YES AND SKEWER THAT BULLSHIT FLOWCHART AND ALSO YES."

*applauds*

[sunnyskywalker]

I... cannot figure out how this is supposed to work, because so many characters fit all the criteria for one of the dozens of stereotypes, but also can carry their own storylines, have flaws, etc. and so would also count as "strong women." And it's so linear - what, you can't be a strong supporting female character? Ever? Pretty much every possible aspect of any character, male or female, can be a stereotype if that's all they are, but having a particular characteristic or role isn't an automatic ticket to Stereotypeland. But going by this chart, it's almost impossible for a female character not to be a stereotype.

And I complain about stereotypical female character all the time. It is a problem. And a female character being stereotyped does have a different effect than a male character being stereotyped, because of all the history and context baggage... but even if you stipulated that, say, female characters had to be twice as original/strong to be thought half as good, this sets the bar way more than twice as high as the bar for the male characters. Most of whom get way more credit for being nuanced and original than they actually deserve. How many World-Weary Law Enforcement Dudes alone get credit for being soooo nuanced because they have one quirk or a dead younger sibling or war angst that gets mentioned once or twice a season in passing, with maybe one episode that one time focusing on it?

[ladysugarquill]

Pretty much every possible aspect of any character, male or female, can be a stereotype if that's all they are, but having a particular characteristic or role isn't an automatic ticket to Stereotypeland.

This. Tropes Are Not Bad after all.

[sunnyskywalker]

And this chart gives no opportunity for mix and match combinations - you only get ONE box, the end. Which isn't how many characters work!

[dagas_isa]

But going by this chart, it's almost impossible for a female character not to be a stereotype.

Pretty much this.

How many World-Weary Law Enforcement Dudes alone get credit for being soooo nuanced because they have one quirk or a dead younger sibling or war angst that gets mentioned once or twice a season in passing, with maybe one episode that one time focusing on it?

Also this.

I think any character has to at least roughly fit into a box or trope, I mean that's kind of what our brains do. Most of the nuance comes from giving time and focus to characters. If one character has twice the screen time as another, and we always see things from his PoV, of course he's going to be the one who is more nuanced. If he wasn't, there's something wrong.

[sunnyskywalker]

I think the problem often isn't which tropes are used (though occasionally...), but who gets to be the focus of that show or episode, exactly for that reason - that gives time to build nuance.

[ladysugarquill]

Yeah, they lost me the moment they said Tsukino Usagi was a one-dimentional character.

Hmm, these people really need "Tropes Are Not Bad" linked at them. All I see are character types with mostly sometimes snarky labels, are those supposed to be bad? But I think the authors of that flowchart lost their point halfawy through...

Also, I *love* it how a female character is only "strong" if she's the bloody protagonist. So, there is ABSOLUTELY NO good secondary female characters? As in, they can't possibly exist? Which basically means that if you write a story with a male MC, ALL your female characters are shit. Yeah, I don't think so.

[dagas_isa]

So, there is ABSOLUTELY NO good secondary female characters? As in, they can't possibly exist? Which basically means that if you write a story with a male MC, ALL your female characters are shit. Yeah, I don't think so.

Honestly, I took the first question a lot more generously (not "does she carry a story on her own?" but "could she?" which would let a lot of secondary characters through the first question), but even then it's both impossibly vague (if you spend enough time with her PoV in mind and center evens around her, then even Hot Villainess Minion #2 probably could) and because in my favorite stories, no one character could because it's all about the ensemble.

Though if that's what they're saying that a female character can only be strong if she's a protagonist perhaps, "Hey! Write more stories about female protagonists!" would be more productive.

[sunnyskywalker]

I wasn't so generous :D Everything else was so cut and dried - "Does she do/have X?" - so I took "could she" as a sloppy way of saying, "does she, at some point, demonstrate that she can?" Which would also allow for this to work in ensemble casts if they sometimes take turns being the focus of episodes.

Writing more female protagonists would be great, along with female-all-the-other-roles! (Except maybe female dead victims; we aren't hurting for more of those.) Maybe someone can make a snappy flowchart of all the possible cool roles they could have.

[dagas_isa]

Writing more female protagonists would be great, along with female-all-the-other-roles!

This, so much. I'm not going to say that there aren't problems with how women are portrayed in fiction, but in general, I'm (mostly) okay with the variety of female characters that exist. I'm just not as pleased with how limited their "career opportunities" tend to be or how often those opportunities mean supporting a male character instead of getting their own stories.

Or in other words, the female characters don't need so much improvement as much as people just need to make better use of them.

[sunnyskywalker]

You can't be a villain and a strong female character either! That cuts out a lot of career opportunities. Which means, I guess, that if you wrote a story about a female villain with female minions versus a female protagonist with female sidekicks, you can STILL have only one strong female character. That doesn't seem remotely accurate. I'm strongly in favor of having more female protagonists, but that doesn't mean all other possible roles suck by definition.

came from metafandom

[wicked_liz]

It kinda saddens me that I'm not more angered by this. Saw it earlier in the week and didn't bother.

It's an attempt at mocking sub-culture, with the usual humour of calling girls whores, vapid whores, sex-kittens, or lesbians and the always popular psycho bitch. I'm not going to spend the evening thinking up hate-mail to send the author. She clearly misses the point of a lot of the characters she attempts to pigeon-hole.

Take the "Lois" (Family Guy) example, now I loathe Lois, however, if you actually watch the show, you understand that she is supposed to be a satire on the "perfect wife". Not an actual Stepford. The WHOLE POINT of a show like Family Guy is mocking television tropes. As is the "Lucy Lui bot" from "Futurama" .

It's a cheap attempt at character study, when it's already a truth universally acknowledged that Hollywood is a master at peddling off the one-dimensional character. Male or female.

Re: came from metafandom

[dagas_isa]

I think, by itself, the chart isn't horrible. The problem for me was that this chart is a visual representation of every conversation I've seen on the internet about why people aren't interested in female characters. So outside context it's just inaccurate and off target in its criticism, but within context it just hits a sore spot for me. Especially because of all the disclaimers that were put up front none of them were, "Just because a female character is depicted on here, as an example, doesn't make her a bad character. Also Tropes Are Not Bad."

[wicked_liz]

Growing up all of my heroes were male characters, all of my favourite authors were also male. But luckily when I was nine a family friend gave me a copy of Christopher Pike's "Witch". And my world-view was broadened.

It's regular-fare YA, but to me, it's still one of my favourite books ever, because the main protagonist was a girl, and it's not about her falling in love or saving her family farm, but about her truly finding herself. And she doesn't really get a happy ending.

Don't let what other people think bother you too much. My favourite characters are always the ones that transcend gender and are just plain awesome. And people who find female characters uninteresting have just robbed themselves of something indefinable and precious. They're people who can't see beyond the trope, and are probably unable to fully enjoy Shakespeare (XD). It's their tragedy.