Femme Fails

[foolish_m0rtal]

x_mog  recently posted about how she wanted to be Tommy from Power Rangers for Halloween, and in general how she many times wants to dress up as the male main characters. I will confess the same. She wonders what this says about her.

I don't think dressing up as male characters says anything about anything. I think it says something about the companies. I see that even now the women are seldom as awesome of a character as the men, so it's natural people mostly go for the male characters. I will say this for Tarantino, as uncomfortable and rated M as his movies can be, he respects his women characters. GO, Quentin.

I will also agree that this is why slash is so rampant- the female characters are simply not awesome enough. I make a game of replacing one of the secondary male characters in a slash pairing with a female equivalent and see whether this would work really beautifully and be a more likely and enjoyable male character/obvious female love interest pairing.

For poorly written female characters, the answer is usually yes. Fandoms with nicely developed female characters (and well developed relationships with them) seldom have as large of a slash following as fandoms without. (Okay, I'm thinking of Stargate as an exception to this, but I will argue that Stargate is more balanced in terms of straight:slash ratios) You can throw some exceptions to the rule on this, and I'm sure there are. Even so.

Movie example: National Treasure. (I know, I know, but bear with me) I checked out its fandom on FFnet and aside from a few totally awesome Ben/Riley fics (oh man, Labrador Incident by Missy Jade is terrific), the slash was small and felt flat, either poorly written or just written for the hell of "oh, these guys would be hot together," which never makes for a good story (Or at least, the kind of story I enjoy/respect) as opposite to the film's canon Ben/Abigail. This is with Riley being a totally awesome well-loved character, so there's no quibbles about the secondary main character being the 2-D one.

I look at a project of mini stories I'm writing right now with minor characters, and I see a trend:

Great Gatsby: Daisy
Godzilla: Audrey
Gattaca: Irene
The Beauty: Mr. Omura (homme fail!)

All poorly written, all with a much more interesting minor character. And

Main character + Interesting same gender character + poorly developed heterosexual love interest= GIANT FLASHING SLASH

Companies, make better female characters that I can actually respect and identify with!

So I'll ask you guys: who are the best and worst love interests in media? They can be females or not.

Comments

[threepwillow.livejournal.com]

Welcome to The Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking! About a fifth of the way down - check out the paragraph about the "screaming ninny."

I couldn't agree with you more. ♥

[foolish-m0rtal.livejournal.com]

haha, that article was GREAT. After I got over the mortification that it was MIT writing it...O///O

The screaming ninny is spot on, though instead of the whole 'women want someone they can emotionally live through' for me it's more of a logical 'She sucks, he doesn't. Of course the main character should pick HIM.'

[x-mog.livejournal.com]

lol Maybe your right. I always RP or write male charactors more than females too. And maybe it is because it's hard to find some kick-ass females. :( I guess even in my youth I saw this... Although I always like Kimberly too. I just didn't want to BE her. XD To Power Ranger's credit, Jen from the... ummm... Gosh. I forget which series of Rangers that was... Time Force? O__O I wanted to be HER at one point. Wes was a moron.

I think Clamp makes kick-ass females. ^.^ Which is probaly why I like their work so much. Yuko is like THE most kick-ass female ever, in my mind. And I ADORE Himawari. ♥ (Although we NEED MORE OF HER, THANKYOU VERY MUCH CLAMP!!!)

Also, Spiral's females are awesome. Like, all of them. Rio, Madoka, Hiyono, Ryoko... They ALL kick-ass!!!

Ummm... Also, I like Sakura from Naruto. I think she's the main reason I still like Naruto... >.>

And I still maintain that Risa Hawkeye from Full Metal Alchemist rocks hard. ♥

Lastly, I always liked Misa Amane from Death Note. She was a little ditzy and ZOMG talk about a Light-complex. x.x But she was so much smarter than she looked. And if they'd given her the proper chance, he had the makings of a great female charactor. (Takada sucked though. She sucked SO BAD! -__- Your ownly failure, Death Note, was your lack of awesome females...)

I also like Hanabusa in Nabari No Ou, even if she's minor.

....Are we even talking about just females we love in general? >.>; Uhhhh... I could go on and on and on...

[obseletevulture.livejournal.com]

I couldn't ell. Since I already know I have issues with gender roles being customary and all, in addition to being the asexual ninny of your f-list... XDD

I like writing slash, because homosexuality is "forbidden" technically speaking. I never like the stories where the main characters get together and everyone's okay with it. I want GUILT. And Neurotic hiding. Because let's face it, I'm straight and that's more or less the way I handle men. XD With profoundly neurotic feeling-hiding worthy of the most paranoid homosexual guy.

...This probably goes some way towards explaining why I like CF so much, by the way.

One anime with good female characters is Spiral, though. Rio kicks ass--the gray haired girl who blows her ribs up with her own bomb on purpose? (I won't even TRY to defend Juvenile Orion, because the female characters there are so flat it's hysterical.)

Haah. I thought it was jsut ebcasue any given fandom usually has ten billion male characters, or at least a few really interesting ones, and three females? ^^;; Or maybe that's just the stuff I watch/read. Ummm. Dorian Gray anyone?

And I guess Nabari no Ou isn't bad for decent females, but the msot interesting one so far is Yoite, and Yoite is...well...a lot more complicated than anyone would need to be. XDD
Any argument I continue with Yoite needs to be carried out on genetic basis.

Usually it's shoujo manag that care abotut heir female cast,a dn even then, the female characters are either "men" with boobs (ie: tough ladies0 or delicate flowers of womanhood. There's not much middle ground.

Oh, but YOU have a Thessaly icon. I mean...enoguh said right there. Thessaly could probably kick anyone's ass if she wanted. XDD Neil Gaiman's good at making decent females. Hunter, from Neverwhere? She can do everything, and she's an understated lesbian. XD And Terry Pratchett, too. Angua's awesome. Sexy werewolf female in the watch? And Cheery Littlebottom is...well...jsut abotu as complicated as Yoite. And I'm not even going to touch the plot of "Monstrous Regiment"--might I add most people who write for monstrous regiment end up writing femmeslash? XD Between two crossdressing women, one of whom is a vampire. The fanfiction alone would give twilight fans green envy.