From a storytelling perspective, authors are not obligated to make their main characters (or even 50% of main characters) female. Considering the way the whole SF&F genre has been taken over by gritty female urban fantasy vampire hunters in recent years, finding a decent story with a male lead is actually a nice change.
From the perspective of realism, the fact that the most competent characters are male is to be expected. That really is the way the world works, thanks to the fact that males have a flatter bell curve with longer tails on just about every measure of ability. It isn’t the result of an evil male conspiracy, and there’s nothing wrong with an author depicting this elementary fact of (current) human nature accurately.
So I’m left wondering how your comments amount to anything more than “I’m unhappy because you aren’t writing the story the way I would have done it.”
You’re missing my point by a long ways. I’m not complaining about the main character. I keep explicitly saying “even if you don’t count the protagonist”. I’m mostly examining how the not-protagonists stack up against each other. Your remark about variance might be on point, except I’m complaining not only about the ratio of competent males to competent females, but also about the specific sorts of insufficiently varied flaws that are depressing the female characters’ abilities/badassery.
I was commenting specifically about the end of your previous comment, not the whole topic. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. But as to this new point, why should an author feel obligated to gender-balance the complexity of the flaws they assign to minor characters?
Yes, I’m aware that there’s a fairly common intellectual position claiming that authors should devote vast amounts of energy to worrying about that sort of thing. I just think that’s a deeply misguided enterprise. A good author will naturally come to a pretty reasonable balance in the natural course of writing a story, and any major tweaking beyond that point is more likely to make the story worse than better.
Do you really think HP:MoR would be a better story if EY had spent a few weeks listing all the characters by gender, and trying to tweak the plot and insert details to ‘balance’ things? As opposed to, say, working out plot complications or dreaming up new moments of awesome?
I do think it would be better if the girls had more varied characteristics-- flaws, virtues, and interests. Who knows, there might be something generated from more interesting characters which would lead to more moments of awesome.
Do you really think HP:MoR would be a better story if EY had spent a few weeks listing all the characters by gender, and trying to tweak the plot and insert details to ‘balance’ things?
You’re strawmanning me. I will reply to you no further.
Do you really think HP:MoR would be a better story if EY had spent a few weeks listing all the characters by gender, and trying to tweak the plot and insert details to ‘balance’ things? As opposed to, say, working out plot complications or dreaming up new moments of awesome?
Well, there’s always coinflips. Much quicker than lists.
So what?
From a storytelling perspective, authors are not obligated to make their main characters (or even 50% of main characters) female. Considering the way the whole SF&F genre has been taken over by gritty female urban fantasy vampire hunters in recent years, finding a decent story with a male lead is actually a nice change.
From the perspective of realism, the fact that the most competent characters are male is to be expected. That really is the way the world works, thanks to the fact that males have a flatter bell curve with longer tails on just about every measure of ability. It isn’t the result of an evil male conspiracy, and there’s nothing wrong with an author depicting this elementary fact of (current) human nature accurately.
So I’m left wondering how your comments amount to anything more than “I’m unhappy because you aren’t writing the story the way I would have done it.”
You’re missing my point by a long ways. I’m not complaining about the main character. I keep explicitly saying “even if you don’t count the protagonist”. I’m mostly examining how the not-protagonists stack up against each other. Your remark about variance might be on point, except I’m complaining not only about the ratio of competent males to competent females, but also about the specific sorts of insufficiently varied flaws that are depressing the female characters’ abilities/badassery.
I was commenting specifically about the end of your previous comment, not the whole topic. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. But as to this new point, why should an author feel obligated to gender-balance the complexity of the flaws they assign to minor characters?
Yes, I’m aware that there’s a fairly common intellectual position claiming that authors should devote vast amounts of energy to worrying about that sort of thing. I just think that’s a deeply misguided enterprise. A good author will naturally come to a pretty reasonable balance in the natural course of writing a story, and any major tweaking beyond that point is more likely to make the story worse than better.
Do you really think HP:MoR would be a better story if EY had spent a few weeks listing all the characters by gender, and trying to tweak the plot and insert details to ‘balance’ things? As opposed to, say, working out plot complications or dreaming up new moments of awesome?
I do think it would be better if the girls had more varied characteristics-- flaws, virtues, and interests. Who knows, there might be something generated from more interesting characters which would lead to more moments of awesome.
You’re strawmanning me. I will reply to you no further.
Well, there’s always coinflips. Much quicker than lists.
Of course, that’s harder with fanfiction...
Beware! You have summoned the ancient demon of Sexism. You must pay for your hubris … in blood.
(Blood is another word for karma, right? Right.)