This isn't a particularly original complaint

[dolorosa_12]

Fandom, I love you to bits, but do you think you could manage, just for once, to acknowledge that female characters exist?

Sincerely,

Ronni

This post is brought to you by Fandom A, which seems to have reduced its most awesome female character to being a sort of cheer squad to the main slash pairing, Fandom B, which alternates between ignoring my favourite character and blaming her for the stupidity of her husband and son and only mentions my second-favourite (teenage) character when discussing which creepy old man to pair her off with, and Fandom C, which prefers incest pairings to writing about female characters (admittedly, the canon is horrible in this regard and tends to kill off every female character as quickly as possible).

This post is also brought to you by the knowledge that if people wrote fic for my favourite mini-fandom, it would all be angsty incestuous pairings of the (male) Imperial family members, with a side order of woobiefied (male) villain.

Bonus points if you can guess the fandoms.

PS It's not so much that I want people to stop writing fic, making art and producing meta focusing on male characters. It's that I wish it could be supplemented with equally good amounts of fic, art and meta about female characters. I wish female-centric texts would become as popular as male-centric texts.

Comments

[hickumu]

Fandom C is Supernatural. Especially frustrating because, especially in the early seasons, they wrote damn good female characters.

Fandom B, I'm drawing a blank on, and come on, Fandom A could be any one of half a dozen shows nowadays.

[dolorosa_12]

You've got it in one. It's depressing how notorious Supernatural is for this kind of thing.

I was thinking of Teen Wolf when I wrote about Fandom A, but you're right that it's a kind of ubiquitous pattern.

[hickumu]

So, just out of curiosity, what was fandom B?

It's a pattern I especially started noticing in a lot of anime. Just out of curiosity, what is your take on the opposite phenomena - when the most awesome female character out of nowhere becomes a homophobic bitch who's only purpose is to stand in the way of the main slash pairing's true love? More tolerable, less tolerable, or the same?

[dolorosa_12]

I've (thankfully) never encountered that phenomenon. Is it something that happens a lot in anime fandom? It seems to me to be a version of a trope you sometimes get in love triangles, where the writer makes the unwanted potential partner be a horrible person in order to clear the way for the preferred pairing.

Fandom B was Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire.

[hickumu]

It is indeed! A subset, if you will, born of Japan's rather complicated attitudes towards homosexuality. Depending on the situation, on the individuals involved, or on whether they acknowledge it, society at large can range from tacitly accepting to antagonistic.

[goodbyebird]

Hah I guessed SPN too, and yes, TW is a perfect fit for A. Ladies never get anywhere near the amount of love the guys get :/

[dolorosa_12]

It's true, and it's a shame, because most canons will have at least one or two awesome female characters. I'm not sure what to do about it besides write about them myself.

[soapyhermit.livejournal.com]

Fandom A = teen wolf (don't watch it but guessing by the slash pairing that it's Sterek)

Fandom B - A song of ice and fire.

Fandom C - SPN?

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Got it in one. You're the first person to guess all three correctly! (People on Dreamwidth couldn't figure out B.)