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My day, books, and female characters
Aug. 30th, 2009 07:12 amYe gods, I slept 10 hours last night. I can't remember the last time that happenned.
( Cut for photo )
I was in the city yesterday. Central Sydney, that is, the above picture being a photo of Sydney's Town Hall, as taken from the window of the Kinokuniya bookshop, which should tell you where I spent most of my time. I bought Henry Jenkins' Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, because I am a geek and couldn't put it down once my hands were on it. Also Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains, and I caved and ended up buying The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan, because her journal entry from last week, Ladies, Please (Carry On Being Awesome), impressed me.
It's a post about the double standard to which we hold fictional characters, and how we tend to judge female characters much harder than male characters given the same storylines. I guess I was lucky because I grew up with Enid Blyton (where girls have all the same adventures as boys), Emily Rodda (ditto), Tamora Pierce (who writes wonderful female characters), and Mercedes Lackey (who has her faults, but writing interesting female characters is not one of them). So I grew up surrounded by wonderful and exciting girls who went on adventures, solved mysteries, and gained my respect. I never had to wish for adventures for girls like me, because I had all the stories I could want. I grew up loving these characters, and for a long time I had no favourite male characters at all, because I remember having to think hard about that (then I read Treasure Island and discovered Long John Silver).
I still love well-written female characters. It's one reason I love Tanya Huff's writing (another being the fact that most of her characters don't distinguish between gay and straight), especially her newest book, The Enchantment Emporium. Women make up most of the main cast because it's about a family in which female births outnumber male births by about four or five to one, and the powerful positions in the family are held by the older women. And all the characters are likable and unique in their own ways.
The point is, I have had so many wonderful fictional role models, and I still love a lot of the female characters that others dislike. I don't understand the hate that characters like Gwen (Torchwood) and Ginny (Harry Potter) seem to attract. It drives me nuts when female characters are criticised for being "bitchy" or "weak", but if they were male they wouldn't attract any scorn for the same actions.
Anyway,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahtales' post impressed me enough to finally seek out her book.
So now I have more to read. ^_^ Yay.
( Cut for photo )
I was in the city yesterday. Central Sydney, that is, the above picture being a photo of Sydney's Town Hall, as taken from the window of the Kinokuniya bookshop, which should tell you where I spent most of my time. I bought Henry Jenkins' Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, because I am a geek and couldn't put it down once my hands were on it. Also Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains, and I caved and ended up buying The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan, because her journal entry from last week, Ladies, Please (Carry On Being Awesome), impressed me.
It's a post about the double standard to which we hold fictional characters, and how we tend to judge female characters much harder than male characters given the same storylines. I guess I was lucky because I grew up with Enid Blyton (where girls have all the same adventures as boys), Emily Rodda (ditto), Tamora Pierce (who writes wonderful female characters), and Mercedes Lackey (who has her faults, but writing interesting female characters is not one of them). So I grew up surrounded by wonderful and exciting girls who went on adventures, solved mysteries, and gained my respect. I never had to wish for adventures for girls like me, because I had all the stories I could want. I grew up loving these characters, and for a long time I had no favourite male characters at all, because I remember having to think hard about that (then I read Treasure Island and discovered Long John Silver).
I still love well-written female characters. It's one reason I love Tanya Huff's writing (another being the fact that most of her characters don't distinguish between gay and straight), especially her newest book, The Enchantment Emporium. Women make up most of the main cast because it's about a family in which female births outnumber male births by about four or five to one, and the powerful positions in the family are held by the older women. And all the characters are likable and unique in their own ways.
The point is, I have had so many wonderful fictional role models, and I still love a lot of the female characters that others dislike. I don't understand the hate that characters like Gwen (Torchwood) and Ginny (Harry Potter) seem to attract. It drives me nuts when female characters are criticised for being "bitchy" or "weak", but if they were male they wouldn't attract any scorn for the same actions.
Anyway,
sarahtales' post impressed me enough to finally seek out her book.So now I have more to read. ^_^ Yay.
