Au Revoir & Open Thread

[lagilman]

I am off in a bit for PlagueCon (aka Passover, where the panels are never-ending but the Green Room puts out a hell of a spread). Consider this your Open Thread -- say anything, ask anything... just keep it Addams-Family Friendly, please!

Remember to put in your entries for the "Plausibility" contest, and stop by tomorrow to enter the "Midnight Cravings" contest for a chance to win a copy of the new Nocturne novella anthology of the same name, plus a copy of The Night Serpent -- and chocolate!

Comments

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

I sent you an email at sff.

[benreeder.livejournal.com]

So, Suricatus is away, and we have a thread wherein to play...did no one else stay to play today?

AHHHH I'm RHYMING! (It was that or bad puns.)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

This might be more appropriate to ask on fangs, fur, fey, but since this is an open thread - an observation and a question. Some time ago a discussion occurred on my LJ about female protagonists, regarding the 'feisty' heroine. Now, the feisty, very-much-post-Buffy heroine is a bit of a personal peeve of mine (the epitome being the protagonist of a crime novel in which the heroine basically went around shouting at people until she was -surprise! -captured by the villain). A number of folk in the discussion preferred the more old-fashioned kind of heroine (several citing Anne rather than George in the Enid Blyton books, and several citing L M Montgomery's heroines), whereas several prefer the kick-ass type. When the discussion turned to urban fantasy, I cited Wren, who is not, to my mind, 'feisty' - I thought she was interesting because her job requires that she is, to all intents and purposes, invisible, and I particularly liked that this function spills over into other areas of her life. It gave her a subtlety which a lot of the current crop of female urban fantasy heroines lack.

So my question relates to how you see female protagonists changing over the years, in fantasy?

[lagilman]

Thanks you! Wren is very much not feisty -- she's based on an old friend of mine from high school who was the most pragmatic "do what you need to do and then take a nap because the rest of the day will probably suck" personality I'd ever met. Even when I was writing the Buffy books, Cordelia was far more interesting to write than Buffy or Willow. She varied her responses to fit the occasion, not One Kick Fits All.

It's always tough (and dangerous) to predict the development of any trope, because something will hit and change everyone's plans/plots, but I don't think 'kick-ass' is going to go away any time soon, because there are still a lot of readers looking at the traditional male heroes in movies and thinking "I want a female who does that." And we're not going to get it, mainstream, in movies [insert your own rant about Hollywood here]. So it falls to books to fill the need. (Kick-ass often tends to, by definition, be not all that smart, no matter the gender, because a smart character would not get themselves into the situation where ass had to be kicked.)

I do see a trend toward a wider background for heroines, though -- fewer 'broken/tragic figures' or 'driven by demons' [figurative or literal] and more characters who take a job because they're good at it, they enjoy it, or there's good money in it, or any of a dozen other reasons people find themselves in careers: what I call the Indy Jones model (rather than, say, Batman). The protags are self-determined, rather than driven. Of course, that removes the dramalama as a primary character prod, to which I say Yay!

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Yay, indeed! Too often the drama seems to have been forced into the narrative with a spoon. Sure, it can add to a character, but it's got to naturally occur out of the character, not be inserted because the author wants some artificial angst. If the trend is indeed towards the Indy model, then that's great - feminism has achieved a lot, if that's the case. And the point about self determination is really valuable, I think.