sholio | A post of miscellaneous unrelated things

A post of miscellaneous unrelated things

1. Roga is right. Red River is the gayest Western ever. There is just no way to view the characters as completely straight in some of the scenes without resorting to hetero tinhattery. (It was also completely fascinating to watch a 1948 western through 2009 eyes. Fascinating in an occasionally skeeved-out kind of way.)

roga pointed me to this Red River fic (incidentally written by

hradzka of "oh John Ringo no" fame) which is very well written and pretty much nails the utter slashiness of canon -- you don't need a tinhat to believe that this is what's happening when the camera is not on them. (The author's notes are also entertaining -- scroll down for them.)

2. I am currently struggling with temptation to buy one of these. No, I don't need a sonic screwdriver pen and an itty-bitty Doctor Who journal, but I want it!

3. Dollhouse, the new Joss Whedon show, aired last night. I'd actually forgotten about it since glooming at length about the casting spoilers and premise last year. The reactions I'm generally seeing on my f'list aren't encouraging; there are a couple of people who liked it, but a whole lot more OH JOSS WHEDON NO. There's a poll over at

liviapenn asking people's opinions on the show (including options for not having watched it).

4. Also ganked from

liviapenn, What news anchors do during commercial breaks is unbelievably adorable. :D

5. I don't recall how I got here, but I had an intriguing insight while reading this review of Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere". What I found fascinating from a writing standpoint was this:

The next thing I wanted to understand was why I didn’t like any of the women characters quite as well as I liked the Marquis and Old Bailey. Now, I did admire the women, and I was thrilled none of them were characterized by obnoxious stereotypes. But I really liked the Marquis and Old Bailey, so I had to ask myself what precisely was the difference? The first thing I realized was that the women were mostly oblivious to Richard’s discomfort. So were many of the men - but Old Bailey asks Richard if he’s all right and tries to feed him. The Marquis occasionally hands out stern encouragement, so he has noticed Richard is afraid and overwhelmed. This endears the two characters to me, because Richard is the Everyman through whom I put myself into the story. It’s inevitable that I’m going to perceive any character who fails to notice his feelings as insensitive to Richard, and by extension to me.

This really fascinated me, because it made me think that I might finally know why I have trouble relating to a lot of so-called "strong" female characters -- it's because of their lack of empathy towards the people around them. (Though I don't specifically remember feeling that way towards the women in Neverwhere -- I found Door kind of wimpy and annoying, and Hunter completely awesome, but it's been a decade since I read or watched it, so take all of that with a grain of salt.) In general, though, I can think of a number of times I've been bothered by writers tending to give female characters abrasive personalities for no particular reason (like the "ice queen" type or the fish-out-of-water sort who doesn't even try to figure out how to work with the people around her -- see half the romance novels ever written -- and are usually allowed to get away with it) while the male characters, in contrast, are more conciliatory or at least less inclined to be in-your-face jerks to people they supposedly care about or have to appease, unless they're flat-out villains.

I know there are exceptions to this, there are a ton of exceptions to this, and there are also lots of cases where female characters get castigated and male characters get let off the hook for similar behavior -- see Rodney McKay + Sam Carter. But for one particular dynamic, I think it explains a lot, for me. And it's something that I'm going to keep in mind when I'm writing a gender-mixed group of characters.

ETA 6.

fox1013 is hosting a Gen Battle, generally modeled after the Porn Battles only, well, gen. There are prompts for a ton of big and small and micro fandoms : Prompts #-H, Prompts I-R, Prompts S-Z + Crossovers and fic is here. I already have a couple of insta-recs, too: Discworld/Torchwood crossover, Owen+Death (TOO AWESOME FOR WORDS) and another Owen ficlet for the prompt "zombies". Apparently I still ♥ Owen quite a lot.

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It's funny, I just (like, a day ago) finished rereading Neverwhere for the first time in ages, and posted some rambling thoughts on the subject. I was a bit surprised to notice more flaws - or maybe 'flaws' isn't exactly the right word, more just frustrating niggling things - than I remembered. I did notice that Door and Hunter fall victim to looking negligent for completely failing to point out dangers Richard would be unaware of, like, oh, that vampires exist in London Below, so that Richard can stumble into more trouble.

Also a good point about female characters being overly abrasive - was just reading something the other day where the characters were supposed to have a bantering sort of relationship, but the level of sarcasm employed by the female protagonist was way out of proportion, until it was more like 'constant verbal abuse' than 'light banter', even though the author seemed to want the reader to be seeing the latter. It really didn't reflect well on the character at all, and yet it seems to happen quite often.

Neverwhere -- I wonder how I'd react to it now. I loved it so much at the time, but since then I've become increasingly disenchanted with Gaiman's novels ("Anansi Boys" is the only other one that I've particularly enjoyed, and that one, perhaps, mostly because it pushed my long-lost-brothers fan-buttons really hard), plus I think that, these days, I'd be more irritated with certain aspects of Gaiman's casting in Neverwhere -- the major PoC characters being clearly designed "Other" while the boy/girl-next-door (no pun intended, really!) are young and white.

Anyway, though, what you're talking about with female characters -- yes, that's it exactly! I have seen so many movies and read so many books in which the women were depicted as callous and touchy and verbally/physically abusive to the people around them, where I think they were supposed to come off as sarcastic or feisty. I used to worry that I had some problem with assertive women, reading them as "bitchy", but I really don't think it's that at all -- because assertiveness doesn't mean tearing other people down or refusing to see someone else's side of the issue, and I wonder if the problem is that a lot of writers just don't really know how to write assertive women! They mistake arrogance and rudeness and inflexibility for strength and assertiveness.

That's an interesting point about female characters. My biggest problem bonding with many female characters is that they tend not to bond as much with other chars as male chars do, and this is one aspect of that.

This is why I love Ziva of NCIS, because she's totally the confident tough-chick type, who struggles with showing emotion and empathy, but her teammates/friends make a point that it bothers them when she doesn't seem to care (so it's shown as, not just a trait, but a flaw she's trying to overcome), and it makes it clear that she really does care even though she has trouble expressing it. There are male chars like Rodney or s1 SPN Dean who have this conflict, but with them it's usually presented as a character flaw, a negative trait; I haven't seen that done with female characters as much; often we're supposed to cheer them on for being a heartless bitch (on other hand in NCIS Director Shepard was very non-empathetic, but that might've been deliberate; I never could figure if the audience was meant to like her or not...)

Like I said in the comment above, I wonder if the problem (at least part of the problem) is that a lot of writers have trouble writing assertive women -- they have no trouble at all writing men who are strong, stubborn and flawed, but also vulnerable, yet when it comes to women they don't seem to be able to manage the same balance. Jenny is a good example; although it's tough to say, I really did get the impression that we were supposed to like her, that she was supposed to be a tough assertive female boss, where actually she came across as something very different. (I think I'd like her better if I felt like we were supposed to find her a bad boss, but based on the way Gibbs and everyone else reacted to her, I really don't think so.) And, yes, I love Ziva for all the reasons you mentioned, though it kinda highlights how rarely I find those traits in female characters.

Yes, absolutely. Really, I think many men have trouble writing women, period - it's a related problem to the cultural appropriation issues; a lot of male writers tend to write female chars as another sort of "Other". And I think some male writers relate to female characters differently than to male chars - women as figures of desire or admiration, not real people. And then, too, some male writers don't put a lot of thought into writing relationships anyway. Say, in SGA - the strongest relationship in canon was probably John & Rodney, but that was mostly because the writers were doing self-insert; their most convincing friendship scenes, the casual hanging out, were based directly on the writers' own friendships. They weren't trying to write friendship, they were just writing what they knew. But they don't have such an easy grasp on how women might relate, and don't take the time and effort to try to portray it (and don't just write women friendships like their own, though they often could). A lot of the "action women" type chars are there because they're cool and sexy; they're not really intended to be compelling characters in their own right.

NCIS is all about characters, though - not deep ones, but compelling ones, and the women as much as the men. With that one exception, and I don't know what the heck is up with Jenny Shepard - especially in s4-5, she makes a lot of questionable choices that pit her against Gibbs and the team. But they never played her as outright antagonist...it's odd. Her char works better if we weren't meant to like her, but, yeah, the writing was confused (My personal theory is that some of the show writers didn't like her...) Ziva, though, is one of my favorite action chicks...Aeryn Sun of Farscape is another one who struggles with personal relationships and empathy, and like Ziva, it is portrayed as a struggle, as a flaw she's trying to overcome. But, yeah, there's not enough of them!

And how many of these female characters that you have a problem with are written by male writers. The best characters I have seen are when there is input from male and female. It's one of the best things about Criminal Minds post Elle. Elle was an awful FBI Agent but I have to say that Emily Prentice is totally different. She can banter with the boys but still maintain a female friendship with Garcia and J.J. (I didn't think I had to write abot Ziva, she is already great.)

I just came over to say this! I never really liked Elle that much, although I found her arc fascinating. And I remember all the hassle in the fandom when Prentiss arrived whereas I was just delighted to have a character I could *actually* identify with. But then I love the characterisation in CM in general, and the women in particular. I think it definitely shows that there are women on the writing staff.

I need to watch this show one of these days; I have so much to watch that it'll probably take me a long time to get there, but I've heard good things about it.

You really need to watch this. It is dark but has just the right amount of humour to keep it from dragging things down.

It helps to have Debra J Fisher and Erica Messer as co producers as well as be on the writing staff. The producers have a hand in the direction the show takes, don't they?

Ah, I didn't realise they were producers as well. That makes a HUGE difference, not just for the plot-lines but the whole attitude of the show. It's nice to have one that doesn't frustrate me with the female character development for a change :D

I just like the the girls on CM can be tough when they need to be but don't lose their femininity. (I loved the episode when the three went out to the night club :D)

I haven't seen CM, but yeah, I think a lot of it is male writers getting stuck on preconceived notions about women -- not even necessarily direct stereotyping, but sometimes a conscious effort not to stereotype can lead to female characters being treated with kid gloves and not allowed to develop as characters.

Are we talking about a certain sci fi show here? ;-)

*laughs* I wasn't specifically thinking of it when I wrote that, but it certainly applies!

Hee, I loved hradzka's Bruce/Dick parallel about the movie -- so true!

Thanks for the news anchors link, which is adorable. (And I am not imagining that I saw you make another post and then delete it before I got a chance to read, right? Because I was curious :-))

Ha, yeah, there was ... I worked on the cattle drive story last night, posted what I'd written and then changed my mind and privatized the post, because it's still the very roughest of rough drafts and I still don't really have a plot. :D I figured it'd be a good idea to go ahead and do some more work on it first. Sorry to be a total tease!

My main character is Israeli at this point (they're all immigrants from Earth anyway, and since you gave me the movie info, and there's a definite dearth of Israelis in SF, I figured, why not?). So I may ask you questions if I need to ...

No problem! Have fun writing, and I hope the Israeliness doesn't give you too much trouble :-)

I liked Dollhouse, I think it has an enormouse potential to examine our views on gender, sexuality, ethics, exploitation and "doing the right thing". Joss has never backed down from those issues and I trust him to keep the studio happy but still deliver an edgy drama. People need to give it a chance.

I certainly think that anyone has the right to like the show! LJ fandom seems to have come down pretty heavily on the "dislike" side (at least in my neck of the woods) but that doesn't mean you can't like it.

I think my problem with the show is that I feel any premise as fundamentally skeevy as the one Joss is exploring needs to be subverted immediately. In many cases, there is a need for a long buildup establishing how disturbing the status quo is, in order for the eventual subversion to have meaning. In this case, I don't think you need that, because the wrongness is established by the premise itself -- I think you need to begin subverting immediately, or you'll alienate viewers, which is what it sounds like is happening. But I have no idea what Joss has planned down the line; there may be a big turnaround of expectation coming. I just hope for his sake, if that's what he's got planned, that he hasn't made a major error in judgment by not jumping into that immediately.

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A post of miscellaneous unrelated things

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