One of the things I've heard a lot over the past few days, often directed at people, like myself, who have rainbow flags on their Facebook portraits, is that they only want the easy road to pride. That they don't really know what pride is or means. And maybe that's true for some people. But as a bisexual woman, I think I know what pride means to me.
Pride is being able to be who you are, with no filters, no bars, no screens. Pride is being honest with yourself and with others. Pride means no more hiding, no more excuses, no more closets but also, no more safety nets. For some, pride means no more sleepless nights, but for many, the road to pride is full of nothing but. Pride is an adventure, but like any adventure, it is an endeavor. To be honest with others, we must first be honest with ourselves.
Pride means my friends' stepmother is their stepmother in every state, not just the one they were born in, but it also means coming to terms with the lies their mother told both them and herself. It means their mother must also come to terms with those lies. Pride means confronting disappointment, as much as it means confronting joy.
Pride means in many ways acceptance. Pride means that we can walk hand-in-hand with our partners no matter the gender or the race. Pride means that we can hold our heads high, accept ourselves, even when others do not accept us. Pride means suffering slings and arrows on the road to pride. Pride means that I have a wonderful and loving boyfriend, and that there are those even in my own community who will say that I cannot understand them because I can pass for straight. Pride means checking our privilege, acknowledging our prejudices, facing tough choices.
Pride is about truth and the truth can often be harsh, because when we step up to stand in the spotlight all our imperfections and our shadows are revealed.
Pride is a great power - but like all great powers, it comes with great responsibility.
We still have a long way to go before we can truly reach pride. Pride is a movement, not a static thing, and it is ever changing and ever-flowing like the river in a certain Disney movie that I love even though it may be problematic and historically inaccurate. Pride is bittersweet, it is beautiful and terrible like all good things. Pride is nothing more and nothing less than love itself, with both the sweetest, gentlest touches of romance and the harshest, bluntest stings of a mother's tough love.
Pride is not angry, and it does not hate, but it is about dealing with both anger and hatred. Anger and hatred from the outside, and anger and hatred from within. Pride means that my life might have been so different if I had embraced it before now. Pride means that I know things now I didn't know before. Pride means that I can look back and pinpoint a time when I was alone, when I was afraid... when I was bigoted and prejudiced as much as I hate to admit it. Pride is the courage to say, "I have changed" as much as it is the courage to say, "I have not changed." Pride speaks out from every voice differently, and it means we need to see both the beauty and the ugliness of both ourselves and others.
Pride means that maybe I should've asked my best friend out in high school when I realized just how hot she looked in that green summer dress based on some movie I don't remember now and that she never cared for (just the dress). Pride means that I can allow myself that regret without forcing myself to regret the fact that the thought crossed my mind. Pride is about experiencing the whole range of human emotion, not just the happy ones.
Pride is about extending hands to neighbors. It's about friends and family wearing rainbows and about friends supporting you when your family can't. Pride is about standing up for those who can't or won't stand up for themselves. Like God, many people do horrible things in the name of pride, who don't represent it at all. Pride, unlike god, doesn't require that we forgive those people - but maybe we should anyway. Pride is about teaching, and combating ignorance. Pride is about overcoming our own ignorance, in fits and starts and finally leaps and bounds.
Pride is amazing.
But pride also hurts.
Don't tell me I don't know what pride is. Because I do. I know it all too well, in the depths of my heart, in my brightest places and darkest corners.
Pride, like any noble cause or great endeavour, has both scarred and healed me. And it will both scar and heal you. It is a battle as much as it is a relief.
That is pride.
This is pride.
WE are pride.
6/29/15
9/6/14
My Problem With Useless Females
"A Dissection of Passive vs. Active Roles"
Okay. So. I'm here to talk about what is, for me, a very painful subject; that is, the definition of a 'worthwhile' female character. I'm not going to use 'strong' as an adjective here - that's a word that's been done to death, and creates more debates than it solves, because it creates a false expectation of what a 'good' female character implies (with most people, it's 'a female that acts like a man', and that opens a whole can of gender-bias worms on its own).
No, my problem is less with 'weak' females and more with 'useless' females.
I'm assuming that everyone in their lifetime, male or female, has seen at least one movie or TV show aimed at a male audience. I am also thus assuming that most people, having probably seen several, is intimately familiar with the female characters who show up in those. Aside from a few select sub-categories of works where the entire cast is male (shows or movies taking place in all-male institutions like boarding schools or the military before women were allowed and all women are minor characters if they have characters at all, or shows, usually aimed at females, where the all-male cast is the selling point - yes, that very specific subgenre known as Boys' Love or yaoi, plus Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, if you don't count that in the former group) most shows will have at least one female cast member. Looking up the Smurfette Principle on TVTropes, you'll be guided into realizing that the vast majority of them just have one.
What I'm here to talk to you about is how they manage to screw her up.
Recently, I had the pleasure of watching a very good buddy-cop movie starring Will Smith. I'm going to assume that every human being at least knows what that is, or is at least capable of googling the term. The movie is called Bad Boys and if you like action comedies, and buddy cop movies, I highly recommend it. Or I would, except.... for her.
The average female in a work aimed at males is generally... not very intelligent. She's usually exceptionally beautiful, even if the work states she isn't (although in that case, she's generally just averagely beautiful) and she usually wears clothing that shows off her assets. I don't really have a problem with any of that.
My problem with the female in Bad Boys is that she's not just stupid - she's RIDICULOUSLY stupid. In fact, the only bearing she has at all on the plot is to do stupid shit to get the main characters in even more trouble. Aware that there is a group of people trying to kill her, she seems to go out of her way to present herself as a target, make it harder for the main characters to help her, and I don't think she'd be any easier to take advantage of if she had walked out on the street with a bright red sign strapped to her saying "I'M THE WITNESS YOU WANT TO KILL, SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD" in all caps.
She insists on only talking to a single person. She's smart enough to figure out that the guy she's talking to is actually his partner about halfway through the movie, but insists on coming along on stakeouts and then complains there's nothing to do. When the main characters decide to make their move, she insists on follwoing them, without a weapon, into the zone of fire so often that they eventually have to handcuff her to the wheel of their police car. She steals a gun from one of them and has the bright idea to track down the leader of a drug cartel, who has been trying to kill her the whole length of the movie, in his own nightclub, and tell him to his face that she wants to kill him, and proceeds to attempt to do so, only to somehow survive because unfortunately, the main characters need her in order to make their case against this guy. She insists on accompanyiing them to survey the bad guys, insists on getting a better look at them while hiding behind a fecne, and then proceeds to STAND UP VISIBLY TO LOOK, giving away the rest of the characters' cover.
Honestly, she contributes about as much to the story as Will Smith's partner's dog when it all comes down to it. Her purpose for existing, being the sole witness they need to protect, could have been easily served by a photograph that they needed to keep the main villain from getting a hold of, with a lot less headache for the main characters.
Needless to say, this is a female character done WRONG. And, to be honest, how many times has this exact dumb female showed up in a movie you're trying to watch, causing you to facepalm every five minutes with their antics? To be honest, I think I would've preferred a traditional damsel in distress. At least she would have had a reason for existing.
The real kicker lies here in the difference between active and passive story roles - and the total lack of any of them. This was a character who was designed to have a passive level of ability. Traditional female. Cook. Clean. Sex. Take care of the menfolk. She was forcing herself into an active story position and causing problems. A story position where there was no room at all for her to exist.
Let's take another character, in almost the exact same genre, in almost the exact same position: the chick from Men in Black.
If you get right down to it, despite all the aliens and the monsters and everything, Men in Black is an odd-couple buddy-cop movie (again starring Will Smith - what is it with him and these movies?). You've got two partners and a chick Fighting Crime (even if it's alien crime) in a humorous action setting. And yet.... for some reason, the chick there didn't offend me as much as the chick in Bad Boys. Sure, she had a lot less screen time, did a whole lot less, spoke a whole lot less.... but when she was onscreen, she was doing stuff that mattered. It's been a while since I've seen MiB, but I don't recall her doing anything that dramatically tripped up the MiB agents and she did a whole hell of a lot to help them, even in indirect ways. She never (to my remembrance) got into a firefight with the aliens, but she didn't have to.
Passive character. But a useful one.
A lot of feminists (and I use the term loosely, to include the feminists that make most people - including other feminists - want to gouge their eyes and ears out with soap until the pain stops) will tell you that only a female character who has an active role can be considered a good female character, because passive roles are 'useless'. Mostly, this goes back to the idea that traditionally men have reserved active roles for themselves and forced females into submissive or passive roles. Thus, any female taking a traditional gender role is in fact 'useless' and any female taking a non-traditional gender role is 'useful'. While this does open up the can of worms I mentioned earlier in my post, about worth assigned to different roles and gender studies etc., I'm not going to get into that. I'm just going to look at characters in passive and active roles.
You see, here's the fallacy of that logic: by that logic, the only 'worthwhile' character in a film about a space shuttle launch is the astronaut inside. By that logic, the only 'worthwhile' character in a film about a company is the CEO. The only 'worthwhile' character in The Hunt for Red October is Sean Connery.
These are the 'active' charactrs. They're the ones you see 'doing' things and being 'proactive' in a circumstance. They go out, they fight the bad guys, they get the treasure (and often, The Girl, if they're a man) and they come home victorious to their spouses, significant others, or family members (which can be problematic if they got The Girl and their wife finds out, see Marvel's Thor for Sif's plainly disapproving reaction). It's true that they're the most visible characters... but are they the most useful?
Let's dissect some other movies for a moment, and then we'll move on to Anime.
A lot of people complain about the female character in the Van Helsing movie. (Actually, a lot of people complain about the Van Helsing movie in general, but whether it was a Really Great Movie or not - pro tip, it wasn't - it was still fun to watch and I enjoyed it so we're talking about it) She is, again, supposedly an active character role - I say supposedly, because examing what she actually DOES in the movie, it's not really a whole lot compared to Van Helsing, but we'll get there - and to be honest, she goes out and attempts to fight monsters alongside the male, title character with the best of them. In practice, she serves most often as the movie's eye candy, and she falls prey to every horror-movie cliche in the book (Gods, woman, look UP! UP!) but in the end, she's actually done some fairly plot-critical things. Useful? Debatable. I mean, it probably wouldn't have been as emotionally dramatic if the friar dude had delivered that last syriingeful of cure to Van Helsing (though it might have; I'm sure some shipping communities are thinking hard right now >.>) but story-wise, it still could have happened. If she'd been written out of the plot, some other poor villager could have delivered most of her lines and Van Helsing wouldn't be much different, other than the lack of a suitably dramatic/tragic love interest, and we might've been spared her mediocre-at-best line delivery. On the Usefulness Scale, I'd probably give her a four. She's definitely better than the Bad Boys chick who wasn't even the love interest and did more to hurt than help.
And now, let's look at some passive roles.
Anybody remember classic Scooby Doo? I'm too young to really 'remember' but I've seen some episodes. You know Danger Prone Daphne, right?
Ahhh, here's the traditional 'passive female' role that so-called Feminists like to get all upset about. Daphne's always accidentally tripping over the right lever, falling into the hands of the bad guys, occasionally making a nuisance of herself, and just generally playing the stereotypical female for Fred to rescue and Shaggy to realize is out of his nerdy '70's bell-bottoms-and-stubble league. Useful? Eh, kind of. Likeable? Yes. To be honest, though, I'd say most of the Scooby cast is less than useful, so we can give her a slide. They all do their fair share of stumbling over things, and Fred's plans never work. The only USEFUL character in the entire show is Velma (or Scooby) and she's also a female. She's an active female and I suppose would serve to lend credence to 'active is better' as far as role-wise go, but if you think about it, that's one of the few shows where the main, viewpoint character is more 'passive' than 'active'. The real 'active' character on the show is Fred, and again, his plans never work. He tends to get himself in trouble more often than anything.
So now lets look deliberately at some 'passive' female characters, and for this, we're heading straight to anime. Specifically, my favorite anime - Ghost Hunt.
The main character of Ghost Hunt is one Mai Taniyama. Sucked into the whole ghost-hunting business by a ridiculously handsome, yet ridiculously arrogant young man by the name of Kazuya Shibuya (nicknamed by Mai "Naru", short for "narcissist"), Mai ends up working essentially as a gofer for Shibuya Psychic Research, Naru's company.
Oh gods, you think. Another rom-com character who can't do anything for herself.
Actually... not really. Even though Mai's efforts at becoming an 'active' character have a tendency to end in dramatic failure (usually NOT played for laughs, in a show that's more horror than romance), the show goes out of its way to show that Mai's talents lay in other areas. Unlike Monk, John, or Ayako, other members of the team that helps SPR out with their cases, Mai doesn't perform exorcisms and doesn't learn any sort of warding magic or self-defense until a much later case. And yet, Mai finds several ways to prove herself integral not only to the charactrs, but the plot of each case as well. Though she doesn't realize they're any form of actual psychic ability on her part until much later, Mai has dreams that often offer surprising insight into each and every case, so much so that the rest of SPR relies on her ability several times. She's a very personable girl and often helps the team by easing the fears and hearts of the victims of each haunting, and her ability with children and to make intuitive, if not logical, leaps of connection between unrelated points often helps the others tremendously.
Is she what most people would consider a 'strong' female character? Well, she's certainly strong-willed, but she has no magic skills. Compared to the rest of the cast, she's a supernatural featherweight. She can't drive out ghosts and often doesn't confront hauntings directly - and when she does, she's usually a victim. She gets in trouble a lot more than most people would consider a good female character having happen to them, and yet I could argue she's one of the most objectively useful people on the SPR team. Score one for the passive-character side.
If more shows and movies used characters like Mai, I think people would have a lot less problems with female characters as a whole. Passive and active roles so far have pretty much an even track record of good and bad portrayals of females, and I think we need to stop paying a little less attention to making srue there's an active female in every movie, and more attention to making sure that even the passive ones are done correctly. Another example, much less long-winded, is the character of Sakura from the Naruto anime - many people complain that she's useless, but every so often she proves that she's just as badass as everyone else, just in a different way. Unfortunately, the author of the series seems to have no clue what to do with a passive badass, and so rather than using her skills, Sakura kind of just waits around patiently, passively watching things happen and getting her ass beat up to prove she's not an active character, and generally being useless until, in a flash of author inspiration, she shows up with another reason why she's actually awesome.
Oftentimes, a 'useless' female is just a female the author obviously doesn't know what to do with. They exist in the story without a purpose and become so bad, such a load on the narrative and/or the other characters, that you could probably tell a much better, and much less sexist story, without any females at all.
But, I suppose the final topping on this little cake (as it should be) is the large body of work left behind by the Bard of Avon, one William Shakespeare.
Historians and activists alike crow about his incredibly well-written female characters, from Prospero's daughter in The Tempest to Lady MacBeth, in the Scottish play. Even Ophelia, as frail and weak as she was, and as un-feminist, is praised for her well-written dialogue and speeches and her tragic story. Many of these characters have passive roles, but one could hardly call them useless - perhaps Ophelia, poor Ophelia, might be called useless, but her role in the play is much larger than some concrete 'use'. Not a single character in Shakespeare is wasted, and we can all learn a lot from what he has to teach us.
So think on it, the next time you watch a movie or a TV show - how useful are the females? What role do they serve in the greater plot? The smaller one? Is their role a passive one, or an active one - and does it really matter either way?
Okay. So. I'm here to talk about what is, for me, a very painful subject; that is, the definition of a 'worthwhile' female character. I'm not going to use 'strong' as an adjective here - that's a word that's been done to death, and creates more debates than it solves, because it creates a false expectation of what a 'good' female character implies (with most people, it's 'a female that acts like a man', and that opens a whole can of gender-bias worms on its own).
No, my problem is less with 'weak' females and more with 'useless' females.
I'm assuming that everyone in their lifetime, male or female, has seen at least one movie or TV show aimed at a male audience. I am also thus assuming that most people, having probably seen several, is intimately familiar with the female characters who show up in those. Aside from a few select sub-categories of works where the entire cast is male (shows or movies taking place in all-male institutions like boarding schools or the military before women were allowed and all women are minor characters if they have characters at all, or shows, usually aimed at females, where the all-male cast is the selling point - yes, that very specific subgenre known as Boys' Love or yaoi, plus Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, if you don't count that in the former group) most shows will have at least one female cast member. Looking up the Smurfette Principle on TVTropes, you'll be guided into realizing that the vast majority of them just have one.
What I'm here to talk to you about is how they manage to screw her up.
Recently, I had the pleasure of watching a very good buddy-cop movie starring Will Smith. I'm going to assume that every human being at least knows what that is, or is at least capable of googling the term. The movie is called Bad Boys and if you like action comedies, and buddy cop movies, I highly recommend it. Or I would, except.... for her.
The average female in a work aimed at males is generally... not very intelligent. She's usually exceptionally beautiful, even if the work states she isn't (although in that case, she's generally just averagely beautiful) and she usually wears clothing that shows off her assets. I don't really have a problem with any of that.
My problem with the female in Bad Boys is that she's not just stupid - she's RIDICULOUSLY stupid. In fact, the only bearing she has at all on the plot is to do stupid shit to get the main characters in even more trouble. Aware that there is a group of people trying to kill her, she seems to go out of her way to present herself as a target, make it harder for the main characters to help her, and I don't think she'd be any easier to take advantage of if she had walked out on the street with a bright red sign strapped to her saying "I'M THE WITNESS YOU WANT TO KILL, SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD" in all caps.
She insists on only talking to a single person. She's smart enough to figure out that the guy she's talking to is actually his partner about halfway through the movie, but insists on coming along on stakeouts and then complains there's nothing to do. When the main characters decide to make their move, she insists on follwoing them, without a weapon, into the zone of fire so often that they eventually have to handcuff her to the wheel of their police car. She steals a gun from one of them and has the bright idea to track down the leader of a drug cartel, who has been trying to kill her the whole length of the movie, in his own nightclub, and tell him to his face that she wants to kill him, and proceeds to attempt to do so, only to somehow survive because unfortunately, the main characters need her in order to make their case against this guy. She insists on accompanyiing them to survey the bad guys, insists on getting a better look at them while hiding behind a fecne, and then proceeds to STAND UP VISIBLY TO LOOK, giving away the rest of the characters' cover.
Honestly, she contributes about as much to the story as Will Smith's partner's dog when it all comes down to it. Her purpose for existing, being the sole witness they need to protect, could have been easily served by a photograph that they needed to keep the main villain from getting a hold of, with a lot less headache for the main characters.
Needless to say, this is a female character done WRONG. And, to be honest, how many times has this exact dumb female showed up in a movie you're trying to watch, causing you to facepalm every five minutes with their antics? To be honest, I think I would've preferred a traditional damsel in distress. At least she would have had a reason for existing.
The real kicker lies here in the difference between active and passive story roles - and the total lack of any of them. This was a character who was designed to have a passive level of ability. Traditional female. Cook. Clean. Sex. Take care of the menfolk. She was forcing herself into an active story position and causing problems. A story position where there was no room at all for her to exist.
Let's take another character, in almost the exact same genre, in almost the exact same position: the chick from Men in Black.
If you get right down to it, despite all the aliens and the monsters and everything, Men in Black is an odd-couple buddy-cop movie (again starring Will Smith - what is it with him and these movies?). You've got two partners and a chick Fighting Crime (even if it's alien crime) in a humorous action setting. And yet.... for some reason, the chick there didn't offend me as much as the chick in Bad Boys. Sure, she had a lot less screen time, did a whole lot less, spoke a whole lot less.... but when she was onscreen, she was doing stuff that mattered. It's been a while since I've seen MiB, but I don't recall her doing anything that dramatically tripped up the MiB agents and she did a whole hell of a lot to help them, even in indirect ways. She never (to my remembrance) got into a firefight with the aliens, but she didn't have to.
Passive character. But a useful one.
A lot of feminists (and I use the term loosely, to include the feminists that make most people - including other feminists - want to gouge their eyes and ears out with soap until the pain stops) will tell you that only a female character who has an active role can be considered a good female character, because passive roles are 'useless'. Mostly, this goes back to the idea that traditionally men have reserved active roles for themselves and forced females into submissive or passive roles. Thus, any female taking a traditional gender role is in fact 'useless' and any female taking a non-traditional gender role is 'useful'. While this does open up the can of worms I mentioned earlier in my post, about worth assigned to different roles and gender studies etc., I'm not going to get into that. I'm just going to look at characters in passive and active roles.
You see, here's the fallacy of that logic: by that logic, the only 'worthwhile' character in a film about a space shuttle launch is the astronaut inside. By that logic, the only 'worthwhile' character in a film about a company is the CEO. The only 'worthwhile' character in The Hunt for Red October is Sean Connery.
These are the 'active' charactrs. They're the ones you see 'doing' things and being 'proactive' in a circumstance. They go out, they fight the bad guys, they get the treasure (and often, The Girl, if they're a man) and they come home victorious to their spouses, significant others, or family members (which can be problematic if they got The Girl and their wife finds out, see Marvel's Thor for Sif's plainly disapproving reaction). It's true that they're the most visible characters... but are they the most useful?
Let's dissect some other movies for a moment, and then we'll move on to Anime.
A lot of people complain about the female character in the Van Helsing movie. (Actually, a lot of people complain about the Van Helsing movie in general, but whether it was a Really Great Movie or not - pro tip, it wasn't - it was still fun to watch and I enjoyed it so we're talking about it) She is, again, supposedly an active character role - I say supposedly, because examing what she actually DOES in the movie, it's not really a whole lot compared to Van Helsing, but we'll get there - and to be honest, she goes out and attempts to fight monsters alongside the male, title character with the best of them. In practice, she serves most often as the movie's eye candy, and she falls prey to every horror-movie cliche in the book (Gods, woman, look UP! UP!) but in the end, she's actually done some fairly plot-critical things. Useful? Debatable. I mean, it probably wouldn't have been as emotionally dramatic if the friar dude had delivered that last syriingeful of cure to Van Helsing (though it might have; I'm sure some shipping communities are thinking hard right now >.>) but story-wise, it still could have happened. If she'd been written out of the plot, some other poor villager could have delivered most of her lines and Van Helsing wouldn't be much different, other than the lack of a suitably dramatic/tragic love interest, and we might've been spared her mediocre-at-best line delivery. On the Usefulness Scale, I'd probably give her a four. She's definitely better than the Bad Boys chick who wasn't even the love interest and did more to hurt than help.
And now, let's look at some passive roles.
Anybody remember classic Scooby Doo? I'm too young to really 'remember' but I've seen some episodes. You know Danger Prone Daphne, right?
Ahhh, here's the traditional 'passive female' role that so-called Feminists like to get all upset about. Daphne's always accidentally tripping over the right lever, falling into the hands of the bad guys, occasionally making a nuisance of herself, and just generally playing the stereotypical female for Fred to rescue and Shaggy to realize is out of his nerdy '70's bell-bottoms-and-stubble league. Useful? Eh, kind of. Likeable? Yes. To be honest, though, I'd say most of the Scooby cast is less than useful, so we can give her a slide. They all do their fair share of stumbling over things, and Fred's plans never work. The only USEFUL character in the entire show is Velma (or Scooby) and she's also a female. She's an active female and I suppose would serve to lend credence to 'active is better' as far as role-wise go, but if you think about it, that's one of the few shows where the main, viewpoint character is more 'passive' than 'active'. The real 'active' character on the show is Fred, and again, his plans never work. He tends to get himself in trouble more often than anything.
So now lets look deliberately at some 'passive' female characters, and for this, we're heading straight to anime. Specifically, my favorite anime - Ghost Hunt.
The main character of Ghost Hunt is one Mai Taniyama. Sucked into the whole ghost-hunting business by a ridiculously handsome, yet ridiculously arrogant young man by the name of Kazuya Shibuya (nicknamed by Mai "Naru", short for "narcissist"), Mai ends up working essentially as a gofer for Shibuya Psychic Research, Naru's company.
Oh gods, you think. Another rom-com character who can't do anything for herself.
Actually... not really. Even though Mai's efforts at becoming an 'active' character have a tendency to end in dramatic failure (usually NOT played for laughs, in a show that's more horror than romance), the show goes out of its way to show that Mai's talents lay in other areas. Unlike Monk, John, or Ayako, other members of the team that helps SPR out with their cases, Mai doesn't perform exorcisms and doesn't learn any sort of warding magic or self-defense until a much later case. And yet, Mai finds several ways to prove herself integral not only to the charactrs, but the plot of each case as well. Though she doesn't realize they're any form of actual psychic ability on her part until much later, Mai has dreams that often offer surprising insight into each and every case, so much so that the rest of SPR relies on her ability several times. She's a very personable girl and often helps the team by easing the fears and hearts of the victims of each haunting, and her ability with children and to make intuitive, if not logical, leaps of connection between unrelated points often helps the others tremendously.
Is she what most people would consider a 'strong' female character? Well, she's certainly strong-willed, but she has no magic skills. Compared to the rest of the cast, she's a supernatural featherweight. She can't drive out ghosts and often doesn't confront hauntings directly - and when she does, she's usually a victim. She gets in trouble a lot more than most people would consider a good female character having happen to them, and yet I could argue she's one of the most objectively useful people on the SPR team. Score one for the passive-character side.
If more shows and movies used characters like Mai, I think people would have a lot less problems with female characters as a whole. Passive and active roles so far have pretty much an even track record of good and bad portrayals of females, and I think we need to stop paying a little less attention to making srue there's an active female in every movie, and more attention to making sure that even the passive ones are done correctly. Another example, much less long-winded, is the character of Sakura from the Naruto anime - many people complain that she's useless, but every so often she proves that she's just as badass as everyone else, just in a different way. Unfortunately, the author of the series seems to have no clue what to do with a passive badass, and so rather than using her skills, Sakura kind of just waits around patiently, passively watching things happen and getting her ass beat up to prove she's not an active character, and generally being useless until, in a flash of author inspiration, she shows up with another reason why she's actually awesome.
Oftentimes, a 'useless' female is just a female the author obviously doesn't know what to do with. They exist in the story without a purpose and become so bad, such a load on the narrative and/or the other characters, that you could probably tell a much better, and much less sexist story, without any females at all.
But, I suppose the final topping on this little cake (as it should be) is the large body of work left behind by the Bard of Avon, one William Shakespeare.
Historians and activists alike crow about his incredibly well-written female characters, from Prospero's daughter in The Tempest to Lady MacBeth, in the Scottish play. Even Ophelia, as frail and weak as she was, and as un-feminist, is praised for her well-written dialogue and speeches and her tragic story. Many of these characters have passive roles, but one could hardly call them useless - perhaps Ophelia, poor Ophelia, might be called useless, but her role in the play is much larger than some concrete 'use'. Not a single character in Shakespeare is wasted, and we can all learn a lot from what he has to teach us.
So think on it, the next time you watch a movie or a TV show - how useful are the females? What role do they serve in the greater plot? The smaller one? Is their role a passive one, or an active one - and does it really matter either way?
8/16/14
30 NPC and Plot Hooks Inspired by Digimon
So while reading a newsletter, I found a list of NPC and plot hooks for D&D inspired by Transformers, and realized that you could get plot hooks like that from just about any TV show or movie, so I decided to make a list of my own, from Digimon: Digital Monsters. You'll find ideas from the first four series here; bonus points if you can list where each number came from, and from which series!
1. An enemy of the party traps them into performing meaningless, tedious tasks to distract them from their duty - perhaps by using some form of obligation the party has incurred.
2. Some service the party has ordered is only available in another form of currency; what's worse, the party didn't find this out until after the service has already been given.
3. The party must gather totems of ancient warriors, and by using them, gain new spells and abilities.
4. An evil wizard attempts to take over the world by using ominous obelisks to amplify and broadcast his mind-control spell, which makes all living things become Chaotic Evil and hostile to the party.
5. Powerful villains embark upon a reign of terror from within a stronghold at the top of a magically-created mountain.
6. A party member’s rival is convinced that the only way to become stronger is to slay that party member.
7. A cherished friend of the party dies, and the party must embark on a great quest to the place where he can be resurrected.
8. Each party member must quest for a talisman that represents a good trait they embody in order to gain new strength (perhaps a prestige class).
9. The party must confront a monster that can only be slain by the positive energy of a child’s dreams.
10. A powerful master vampire moves in to the party’s hometown in search of the subject of a prophecy - specifically, the prophecy of how to slay him.
11. The party finds convenient shelter for the night - a mansion laid out with good food and warm beds - but there is no one in sight. It could be an enemy trap, where everything is an illusion.
12. The party encounters a magician who works for the enemy, but has a heart of gold and wishes for only one person’s safety - a confused and abused little girl who has grown up to become the enemy’s most trusted lieutenant.
13. The enemy’s recurring henchman is a bratty, incompetent imp who provides comic relief, but is ultimately much more dangerous than he seems.
14. A demon forms a special bond with a pair of human children, and switches to the party’s side at a crucial moment. He can then become a recurring character, attempting redemption, or sacrifice himself for the greater good.
15. A beast tamer sees her companion animal as only a method for getting stronger, and competes in arena fights for a title - but her companion cares deeply for her, and wishes to be seen as more than simply a tool of war.
16. The party needs a special magical ability to defeat the enemy, but can only gain it through a friend’s sacrifice.
17. The enemy’s lieutenant has a powerful connection to a party member’s backstory - a destined companion or long-lost relative, brainwashed and coerced into service by the enemy.
18. The enemy is a fallen angel, corrupted by an as-of-yet unknown greater evil, an archdemon prince of incredible power.
19. A former enemy, defeated by the party, turns out to be not-so-different from the heroes that defeated them, and returns to ask to join the group. Will the party be able to forgive his past crimes?
20. Perhaps the same universe as 15, a world where humans fight with companion monsters against dangerous foes, for power, glory, and sometimes, as a sport.
21. The group, or a single party member, is offered the chance to undo the series of events that set them on the path of adventure, and appear to be brought back in time to the point before they set off into the world. Perhaps they are given a different form or appearance, to prevent damage to the timeline if they should meet themselves in the past.
22. The party has been transported to an alternate plane of existence, and must solve a puzzle in order to get back home; a wrong solution, and they could never return to the prime material plane, or could return in different bodies.
23. A powerful golem, created by magic, rebels against his creators and begins searching for a purpose in life.
24. A demon plants dark seeds into children, turning them into geniuses and giving them extraordinary powers, but can control them at will, and will harvest their souls when the seeds mature.
25. An innocuous creature that assists/follows/joins the party turns out to be an angel in disguise.
26. The party is assisted/followed by a stodgy chronicler who has inherited an ancient Book of Heroes; it holds useful information, but is often obscure and difficult to decipher.
27. The enemies are the remains of an ancient band of Heroes, seduced to evil by a smooth-tongued demon.
28. A potential ally of the party is a young paladin, whose holy mount is not a horse but a legendary dog-like beast with powers over lightning.
29. The party is instructed to climb a holy mountain to receive training at the top; much to their surprise, they get there and find that the ‘legendary master’ who resides there is a tiny pixie!
30. A recurring enemy for the party is a pair of knights of the evil empire - one who is effeminate, suave, and uses magic and a fast rapier, and the other who is powerful, masculine, and fights with a heavy broadsword.
5/16/14
Do You Wanna Make Some Babies? -A sad Frozen parody-
Do you wanna make some babies?
Of characters that we play
Maybe some kittens or
Those ones we’d plotted for
Why does it gotta be this way?
Of characters that we play
Maybe some kittens or
Those ones we’d plotted for
Why does it gotta be this way?
We used to be best buddies,
But now we’re not
I wish I knew the reason why
But now we’re not
I wish I knew the reason why
Do you wanna make some babies?
Yaoi roleplay babies.
Yaoi roleplay babies.
Fuck off, Miri
Okay, bye.
Do you wanna make some babies?
Or plot how some lovers fall
I was so close to you
I haven’t got a clue
Why did you toss it all?
You don’t respect me, and you never have!
Or plot how some lovers fall
I was so close to you
I haven’t got a clue
Why did you toss it all?
You don’t respect me, and you never have!
It gets a little lonely
All these empty threads
Where half of our life sped by
All these empty threads
Where half of our life sped by
Do you wanna make some babies?
Do you remember when we did that?
Do you remember when we did that?
Wresie, I know you’re in there
I almost forgot how it had been
They say, “Stay strong”, and I’m trying to
But I was right there for you
If you’d just let me in
I almost forgot how it had been
They say, “Stay strong”, and I’m trying to
But I was right there for you
If you’d just let me in
We always had each other
But you hurt me
Now what am I gonna do?
But you hurt me
Now what am I gonna do?
Do you wanna make some babies…?
6/15/13
I miss...
My kohai. All of you. You know who you are, or you should - Jor-chan and Bren-chan and Ray and Turtle/CJ and Brandon and all of you, I fucking miss you okay? And I'm homesick as hell and I'm not acting like a reasonable human being because everyone is moving on and moving away and I'm trying to keep things together and sometimes I go insane because things are changing and I need them to be the same for my own selfish reasons, because I'm scared and I don't know what I'd do without you guys. I want to keep the status quo because it's safe and comfortable and I've been a huge bitch trying to hog all of you to myself. I miss you all and I want us all to stay together forever, even though I know that life doesn't work that way.
But even through all the changes, can't it work like that just once? Where nobody goes away to college and is never seen again, where nobody outgrows each other or loses touch? I'm holding on so tight I'm breaking things. I don't want to do that but I didn't even realize I was doing it until now. So if we grow, can it please be together?
I miss my old life. I want to go back to the way everything was way back when, when Ray livedjust fifteen minutes down the block and I could pop out on a Saturday afternoon to go see him, where Bren-chan would show up fifteen minutes late to my house because he forgot he said he was coming, and Ray the responsible one detoured him back on track - but I'd been panicking for twenty. Except it would be even better because Wresie would be there with us instead of five states away. Sometimes I have dreams like that. Where everything is back to being perfect. And I like my job and my new room and where I'm living but there's moments where I'd give my right arm to be back in Mom and Dad's apartment living on ramen and microwave meals and having friends drop by for impromptu Munchkin sessions and "Hey let's head down to that coffee shop in the music store" and "What are you doing this afternoon?"
Living with friends is different than I expected, too. Sometimes it feels like I talk to Angel less now that we're roomies than we did when all our contact was over the internet. I miss not having to worry about student loans and rent and hours and call times and whether or not my schedule was free when I wanted it to be. Money is nice and I can buy a lot of stuff, but the stuff doesn't make me happy the way those simple days did. And with everything breaking apart, and it feeling quite a lot sometimes like my fault, it makes me feel like I'll never feel that way again.
"Goodbye, Halcyon Days" indeed.
Y'know, when characters on TV grow up they always seem to get jobs in the same buildings, nobody ever moves away unless it's a plot point, nobody ever loses touch. I don't really know how to handle it and I wish someone would tell me, help me figure it out. I hate losing friends, whether due to inactivity or divine intervention or simple conflict of personality.
I remember when nobody on CR had even thought about what they'd do if drama happened on the site, when "Missing: One Best Friend" was enough to remind people of what was really important; I remember when life was easy and chores were hard and homework was something you did as little of as you possibly could to pass a class.
I wish Life were a multiple-choice test, not a short- or long-answer type. Maybe then I'd be able to pass.
I hurt, guys. It hurts. I miss my buddies, my kohai, my friends, my group, my nakama, my true companions, my way-more-than-five-man band.
I just wish things were back the way they used to be, but time always rolls forward, doesn't it my friends?
But even through all the changes, can't it work like that just once? Where nobody goes away to college and is never seen again, where nobody outgrows each other or loses touch? I'm holding on so tight I'm breaking things. I don't want to do that but I didn't even realize I was doing it until now. So if we grow, can it please be together?
I miss my old life. I want to go back to the way everything was way back when, when Ray livedjust fifteen minutes down the block and I could pop out on a Saturday afternoon to go see him, where Bren-chan would show up fifteen minutes late to my house because he forgot he said he was coming, and Ray the responsible one detoured him back on track - but I'd been panicking for twenty. Except it would be even better because Wresie would be there with us instead of five states away. Sometimes I have dreams like that. Where everything is back to being perfect. And I like my job and my new room and where I'm living but there's moments where I'd give my right arm to be back in Mom and Dad's apartment living on ramen and microwave meals and having friends drop by for impromptu Munchkin sessions and "Hey let's head down to that coffee shop in the music store" and "What are you doing this afternoon?"
Living with friends is different than I expected, too. Sometimes it feels like I talk to Angel less now that we're roomies than we did when all our contact was over the internet. I miss not having to worry about student loans and rent and hours and call times and whether or not my schedule was free when I wanted it to be. Money is nice and I can buy a lot of stuff, but the stuff doesn't make me happy the way those simple days did. And with everything breaking apart, and it feeling quite a lot sometimes like my fault, it makes me feel like I'll never feel that way again.
"Goodbye, Halcyon Days" indeed.
Y'know, when characters on TV grow up they always seem to get jobs in the same buildings, nobody ever moves away unless it's a plot point, nobody ever loses touch. I don't really know how to handle it and I wish someone would tell me, help me figure it out. I hate losing friends, whether due to inactivity or divine intervention or simple conflict of personality.
I remember when nobody on CR had even thought about what they'd do if drama happened on the site, when "Missing: One Best Friend" was enough to remind people of what was really important; I remember when life was easy and chores were hard and homework was something you did as little of as you possibly could to pass a class.
I wish Life were a multiple-choice test, not a short- or long-answer type. Maybe then I'd be able to pass.
I hurt, guys. It hurts. I miss my buddies, my kohai, my friends, my group, my nakama, my true companions, my way-more-than-five-man band.
I just wish things were back the way they used to be, but time always rolls forward, doesn't it my friends?
2/9/13
You Know You're Addicted to Roleplaying Forums When...
Magic time Skype chats are wonderful things:
You know you're addicted to roleplaying and forums when:
1. You decide you want to create a forum for all your onexone roleplays.
2. You have enough onexone roleplays that you NEED a forum to keep track of them.
3. You would rather roleplay your onexone roleplays on a forum. Unless you decide you want to play them on Skype.
4. You realize that you would probably create onexone roleplays via skype as AUs to the ones on the forum just because they're on the forum.
5. You realize you would probably then put them on the forum after a few sessions.
6. You can see that this is creating an infinite loop of 3-5.
7. You have already created forums for the sure need to do something
8. You interrupt roleplaying on a forum to decide to make a forum for onexone roleplays.
9. You interrupt planning that forum to write rules about why you're addicted to roleplaying forums.
10. When this is not the first time 8 has happened to you.
11. When its not the first time 9 and 8 has happened to you
12. When you create forums for friends just to have them say never mind later
13. You create a forum, forget about it for a year, come back and decide to start over
14. .... or not
15. When your forums die because you decided to create 4 new forums.
16. When your first response to a forum dying is "Oh, wow, I have this great idea for a new forum!"
17. When your first response to an awesome dream is, "There should be a forum about this!"
18. When you create a forum based off of a story you tried to write
19. When you create a forum based from a current one on one role play
20. When you write a story based off of a forum.
21. When you create a forum based on a story you wrote based on a forum
22. When 90% of your fanfiction is based on roleplay and/or forums.
23. When you create a "sub forum"
24. Alternative - When you create a sub forum for a sub forum
25. When you hang onto friends you should've dumped a long time ago because you're worried about how dumping them will affect your forums.
26. When you start to regret dumping said friends because of all the wonderful forums you no longer roleplay together on.
27. When most of your "Hey remember when?" stories involve forums.
28. When you write forum threads months in advance.
29. When your characters ruin those threads you wrote in advance, and you cry out, "ALL THOSE YEARS OF PLANNING.... WASTED!"
30. When you write a list of rules for how to tell you're addicted to forums.
You know you're addicted to roleplaying and forums when:
1. You decide you want to create a forum for all your onexone roleplays.
2. You have enough onexone roleplays that you NEED a forum to keep track of them.
3. You would rather roleplay your onexone roleplays on a forum. Unless you decide you want to play them on Skype.
4. You realize that you would probably create onexone roleplays via skype as AUs to the ones on the forum just because they're on the forum.
5. You realize you would probably then put them on the forum after a few sessions.
6. You can see that this is creating an infinite loop of 3-5.
7. You have already created forums for the sure need to do something
8. You interrupt roleplaying on a forum to decide to make a forum for onexone roleplays.
9. You interrupt planning that forum to write rules about why you're addicted to roleplaying forums.
10. When this is not the first time 8 has happened to you.
11. When its not the first time 9 and 8 has happened to you
12. When you create forums for friends just to have them say never mind later
13. You create a forum, forget about it for a year, come back and decide to start over
14. .... or not
15. When your forums die because you decided to create 4 new forums.
16. When your first response to a forum dying is "Oh, wow, I have this great idea for a new forum!"
17. When your first response to an awesome dream is, "There should be a forum about this!"
18. When you create a forum based off of a story you tried to write
19. When you create a forum based from a current one on one role play
20. When you write a story based off of a forum.
21. When you create a forum based on a story you wrote based on a forum
22. When 90% of your fanfiction is based on roleplay and/or forums.
23. When you create a "sub forum"
24. Alternative - When you create a sub forum for a sub forum
25. When you hang onto friends you should've dumped a long time ago because you're worried about how dumping them will affect your forums.
26. When you start to regret dumping said friends because of all the wonderful forums you no longer roleplay together on.
27. When most of your "Hey remember when?" stories involve forums.
28. When you write forum threads months in advance.
29. When your characters ruin those threads you wrote in advance, and you cry out, "ALL THOSE YEARS OF PLANNING.... WASTED!"
30. When you write a list of rules for how to tell you're addicted to forums.
8/14/12
Fighting With Friends Sucks
Why do I always end up using this thing for depressing shit?
Editing almost isn't worth it anymore. Might take a hiatus.
Too much competition turning even good people into nervous wrecks who are all ablaze about 'proving' how good they are and deciding that because some peole think they're better than them, that makes them better than those other people.
DOn't they get that they're just perpetuating the cycle?
Or am I just in editing for the wrong reasons?
I hate fighting with friends. I shouldn't quit in the heat of the moment... but a break sounds nice. Get my head on straight. Get Matt to find a sub for me in the FFI part. Apologize to Riza and Rugou for not getting the You Belong With Me part in. They can find a sub for me there, too, I'm sure.
I'm just letting everyone down right now by staying in the game, so I'll take a step back and take a break. Boss'll have to find someone else for my parts of the WORM. I was looking forward to it, but right now I just can't get myself to care. Maybe that'll change in the morning. Whatever, it was gonna have to wait until I got my enclosures which we can't afford. At least with me taking a hiatus I don't have to be a burden about that to my family anymore. Not that I wasn't being selfish there, either.
I hate fighting with friends. It brings on my depression. Miri needs a big hug....
Editing almost isn't worth it anymore. Might take a hiatus.
Too much competition turning even good people into nervous wrecks who are all ablaze about 'proving' how good they are and deciding that because some peole think they're better than them, that makes them better than those other people.
DOn't they get that they're just perpetuating the cycle?
Or am I just in editing for the wrong reasons?
I hate fighting with friends. I shouldn't quit in the heat of the moment... but a break sounds nice. Get my head on straight. Get Matt to find a sub for me in the FFI part. Apologize to Riza and Rugou for not getting the You Belong With Me part in. They can find a sub for me there, too, I'm sure.
I'm just letting everyone down right now by staying in the game, so I'll take a step back and take a break. Boss'll have to find someone else for my parts of the WORM. I was looking forward to it, but right now I just can't get myself to care. Maybe that'll change in the morning. Whatever, it was gonna have to wait until I got my enclosures which we can't afford. At least with me taking a hiatus I don't have to be a burden about that to my family anymore. Not that I wasn't being selfish there, either.
I hate fighting with friends. It brings on my depression. Miri needs a big hug....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)