Fiction Elite : Reclamation

Selezen

Selezen
Well, it's maybe up to us fiction dudes to make sure GalCop's legacy lives on. Even if it's only historical... :)
 

Mobius

Mobius
great update, thanks for the mention as its always nice, i see you are a fan of my work:D
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Aewarin Jameson

Aewarin Jameson
drew said:
This week I explore the weird and wacky world of the Elite community at large... What makes it tick?
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I don't normally read blogs of this kind but figured what the hell - enjoyed it which was a shock :eek:

Yes, the 80s were the best .. and the hyper-link to the sound clip doesn't work on my laptop .. what was it ? (Presume it's a sound clip - the box entitled "You’re already humming that theme, I know you are…")
 

drew

drew
Liqua said:
I don't normally read blogs of this kind but figured what the hell - enjoyed it which was a shock :eek:
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A shock you enjoyed a blog, or a shock you enjoyed something I wrote? :cool:

Yes, the 80s were the best .. and the hyper-link to the sound clip doesn't work on my laptop .. what was it ? (Presume it's a sound clip - the box entitled "You’re already humming that theme, I know you are…")
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As Cody says, no link.

Cheers,

Drew.
 

Darren Grey

Darren Grey
drew said:
This week' topic is 'Women in Sci-Fi'. Have I done it justice? See for yourself.

http://www.wagar.org.uk/elitereclamation/progress-report/women-in-sci-fi/
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This has been in my head a bit recently, as the issue of badly written women seems to crop up often - not just in sci-fi, but in fantasy novels, comic books, TV series and video games (perhaps the worst of the lot).

The problem often comes up that writers attempt to include women but invariably fall into terrible tropes - the damsel in distress, the overtly sexy women (in both good and evil flavours) and of course the "man with *******" trope. The last one made me think in particular, because I don't believe there is that much inherent difference between men and women. There are subtle biological differences, but most of the difference comes entirely from social constructs and there are plenty of people who break the mould. So why should "man with *******" be unbelievable?

And then I realised, a big problem with badly written women is that we are so accustomed to badly written men. In sci-fi and fantasy in particular we persistently see unrealistic male characters. Men with supreme confidence, no self-doubt, no hesitation. The archetypal heroes and villains. They don't have emotions beyond anger and justice, they act on altruistic lines (good and evil) and there is little subtlety to their behaviour. But somehow we only question the validity of this personality type when we add ******* to the characters.

Our expectation is that women should be better written, having important roles but still having realistic emotions. We have gotten so used to men being badly written that we don't question when they lack this depth. When a female character is insecure this is often written badly, but men are simply never insecure. It's no surprise that George RR Martin can't write a good female character when he has little experience of writing good male characters in the first place. When has one of his male characters ever had a sleepless night?

This of course doesn't change the bigger problem of women having very little appearance at all. But I do think our culture has a serious problem of writing men as super-alpha-men, extremes of masculinity (physically and mentally) that have no relation to real world men. Women in stories are even more ridiculous and unbelievable when set beside or in the same tone as these perfectly secure and confident heroes.
 

Susimetsa

Susimetsa
Both genders are basically social constructs. There was once an interesting experiment in a Swedish day-care centre (myran) where the day care workers were observed over a length of time. Even though the workers were educated about treating genders equally, there were still many differences in how they treated boys and girls - and how boys and girls behaved in general, such as:

- Boys were addressed more directly with their names while girls were addressed softly and with a higher tone
- Boys had merely to grunt at a table and a girl would hand them the salt or whatever they were asking
- The workers talked to boys about cars and their number, speed and brand, while they talked to girls about their colours and beauty and compared them to horses.

In a lot of research, it's been concluded that the gender identity ("I am a boy, so I engage in boyish activities") appears at around the age of 2-7.

However, there are some gender-related differences that seem not to be socially constructed. For example:

- girl babies show more interest towards faces, while boys pay attention to movement
- boys are physically more active and aggressive
- human and chimpanzee babies show similar gender-related interest in various games and toys
etc. etc.

However, it should be noted that these genetic differences are smaller than the variance within the gender.
 

Susimetsa

Susimetsa
Darren Grey said:
And the variance is one across many averages - individual men and women can be wildly different from their peers.
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Indeed, it is a very complex topic and when you add cultural differences, the potential for variance increases even more.

This variance is also the reason why human sciences are an interesting area. There are no 1+1=2 answers here.
 
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