Let the gender in games be moved here PLZ

[jere7my]

Are you sure jere7my meant the movie? HTTG's series is itself an adaptation of and expansion on several radio plays.

Indeed. Adams wrote the radio plays, then changed things significantly for the books, including changes to characters, plot points, worldbuilding, and so on. Then he did it again for the TV show, the stage play, the video game, and the screenplay that ultimately became the movie—all of which he wrote.

[jere7my]

I know, I read the scripts. They read like they would be better if there were tapes *sigh.*

There are tapes. You can buy the radio series from Amazon, or listen to it on YouTube. They are the definitive version of HHGttG, insofar as one exists.

[Zmeoaice]

Yeah, Adams probably didn't endorse the movie because he was kind of dead when it was made.



Anyhow, when it comes to giving women equal strength to men in fantasy stories and RPGs and whatnot, I don't have a problem unless they're scrawny and still as compentent as the men. Which happens often. They should be beefcakes.

[jere7my]

Yeah, Adams probably didn't endorse the movie because he was kind of dead when it was made.

He was, but the movie was based on his screenplay. The producers said "this film is not a literal translation of the books (just as the books were not a literal translation of the original radio show), but all of the new ideas and characters came from Douglas Adams himself. The hired writer simply came aboard to improve structure and make the screenplay more coherent."
(from IMDB)

[Lissou]

I'd like to hear more actually. 20%? Really, knights? That's not a side you typically hear and I would to see where I could read more.

You may find this article interesting, and it links to other places that show sources. One of the interesting things, I found, was how people had always assumed Viking warriors were male because they were warriors, but when they decided to actually check the bones, they found that within their sample about half of them were female.

[Fish]

When did I ever make the assertion you bolded?

When you asserted:

I, and every other reader, comes to fiction with expectations. It is the duty of the author to give context for the reader to understand when these expectations are not true within his world.

I don't think I misunderstood a thing; I think you vastly overstated your thesis.

Context is an important part of understanding any literary work. Today it is important to explain to young readers that there were no cell phones in Renaissance Europe, but the idea of gang warfare, which is central to R&J, is far more intuitive to the current generation which has grown up amid the Capulets and Montagues fighting it out in the streets. The people of the day understood this context because they grew up in it, while for me, it required a brief study of history to grasp certain concepts of Shakespeare's work.

Yes, this is how it works in the real world. When a reader lacks context he seeks it; he does assume it is the author's duty to provide him with an EZ-Reader.

Agreed, but sometimes and most of the time are not the same thing. Most of the time the writer must consider the reader, or he will lose him.

Movement, thy name is goalpost. "Most of the time the writer must consider the reader" and "give context" to "[me] and every other reader" are not the same thing. The former I can agree with; the latter is unrealistic in the extreme.

[factotum]

Is Romeo + Juliet legitimate? How about the Beeb Sherlock?

Not sure what Romeo and Juliet has to do with anything. As for BBC Sherlock, that's an odd one, because what they essentially did was take the central characters and put them into situations and plotlines that bore very little resemblance to the originals; in a way, that's not so bad, because there's very little chance of anyone confusing the BBC show with A.C. Doyle's work. I'd still rather they'd called it something other than Sherlock, though.

[pendell]

Women have always fought in wars. The effectiveness of female warriors and female mercenaries, when not wiped from history due to chauvinism, is such that the difference in fighting capability is probably not a good explanation as to why there are fewer female warriors throughout history.
There may be evolutionary reasons why women are less likely to engage in conflict, (less disposable, less likely to compete for mates, etc. etc.) but are largely exaggerated seeing as there are clear evolutionary reasons why a man would want to avoid a fight to the death. Even the evolutionary reasons could easily be attributed more to cultural evolution as opposed to genetic.

A few years ago I had a mouse problem in my house. While researching I came across This snippet

According to an exterminator friend of mine, the best thing to put in a mousetrap is not cheese or peanut butter or any food product. He says put lint or cotton in the trap.
If you put peanut butter or cheese in the trap you are going to catch a male mouse who is out hunting for food. You can kill males by the dozens, but if you leave one female alive - you are going to continue to have a mouse problem.

If you use cotton or lint you are going to catch a pregnant female who is out looking for nesting material to have her litter in.

By killing the pregnant females - you will stop the infestation at its source. Kill all the females and the mice will die out after a while. Kill the males and you will have mice forever.

Why can't it work the same way with humans?

I think this is the real reason there aren't more female combatants. It's because, back in the days before we had 7 billion people, putting females in line of battle meant you were risking the future safety of your tribe, which may have numbered only a few hundred or thousand people. Males are expendable, females are not.

This would explain why there are such societal constraints which require protecting women, and why women aren't legitimate targets in war. So long as men confine themselves to killing other men, it's a dominance dance , an adjustment which gets rid of the aggressive members of the population but doesn't threaten the genetic line. In a dominance dance, combatants struggle but there is a surrender which results in a new social order. By contrast, when you start killing the women as well as the men, war has stopped being a dominance game and becomes a battle of outright extermination, the attempt to wipe out an entire tribe or family or genetic line.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[happycrow]

//edit to accomodate Brian P's reply

Brian,

Depends on the kind of warfare, what's driving it, and who's being targeted. Context counts, and women-and-children were not always considered off-limits even officially.

Lissou, Reddish Mage

That's a pretty good entry-level article for it. Note that the actual history-professor is entirely non-plussed by the idea that women didn't do all these things. "Warrior" was also not always a strictly binary definition - "civilians" were armed to the teeth in many medieval contexts, taking part in feuds and other forms of "private warfare," (blood feud, inimicitiae capitales) particularly prior to the invention of the civil state and its monopolization over violence in the name of justice. In several forms of blood feud, peasants and other generally-considered-noncombatants were the explicit targets in a declaration of war. I can't do this topic real justice -- dissertations can and have been written on the individual figures in question, and any serious "ask Dr. Google" will pull up enough examples to drown the thread in links. I would take serious issue with one thing the author asserts that has ramifications for how we discuss things here, and that's the assertion that if one writes mostly men doing this stuff, one is consciously choosing to erase half of humanity.

As if, for Comic #2, The Giant got up one morning twirling his mustache and chuckling "mwahaha, I will erase dem...."

That's not how it works. We've got cultural conditioning based on a somewhat-aberrant historical period providing women in general with much more freedom at the same time as it worked to create and then enforce gender-role norms which hadn't necessarily applied previously, said norms being both promulgated and attacked primarily by women, much as women's suffrage was (long discursions into economic and social history which so don't belong in this thread), and which are taken as historical universals, because that's what pop-culture does. History is a game of dangerous assumptions. Without a deep grounding in historical memory, it's easy to look at the society you grew up in and think "this is how it is." Pop culture generally argues for the universality of contemporary mores even while it pushes the envelope in specific areas ("Dr. Merry's Husband" is a "whoo" title for the 40s and 50s and I have it on my bookshelf, but most of its social assumptions would be considered seriously antiquated by our readers here). Lots of things we take for granted can be very surprising on a historical basis (for instance, it might surprise a lot of readers to know that sexual abstinence outside of marriage was the feminist position in the early-mid 19th century, and feminists willing to go to the mat over that nearly brought down a US President).

Pop culture does that and is driven by the commercial tastes of both sexes. Sexy women sell. Male beefcake sells. I make game assets on the side here and there (halting attempts at 3d modelling being my one 21st-century skill), and I'm constantly appalled that many game players who happen to be boob-enabled far prefer sexy armors to actually protective ones. But that's their preference, and I've no right to tell them what they should and shouldn't enjoy, any more than I could tell somebody that they're wrong to like curly hair rather than straight.

Most people don't look around and think "wow, I sure am growing up during a historically unusual and economically aberrant period! Future historians are going to look at my world and have a hard time convincing their students about just how weird we were!" We're all going to be considered hopelessly retrograde thirty years from now because of social mores they'll take for granted but which we can hardly imagine.

[ahdok]

Actually i think jere7my brought up in an old discussion thread that not all appearances of the greek gods are totally literal, Im not sure about that particular scene, and Im no expert, but it could be his mind fighting with his tired body there and athena is representing his mind.

I suppose we could back up our arguments by spontaneously re-interpreting classical literature to remove all the agency of female characters in order to support flawed worldviews... but eh, it's a lot of effort.

Women are, on average, weaker than men

Can we please move on from this? it seems like every other one of your posts starts from this premise, but it belies a massive understanding of statistical distributions. While technically correct, it's really not at all the reason why (for example) Women are vastly under-represented in the military or the construction industry.

Population distributions are typically broad bell-curves. The shift in the position of these bell curves in raw strength for males and females is proportionally very small compared to the size of the bell curve itself. The physical strength required to perform these jobs is a barrier to entry, but the population of looking-for-employment potentially interested females who sit above that barrier is significantly larger than the number of posts available. This is even ignoring the fact that if someone actively wants to pursue such a career but "doesn't qualify" they can go weight-training and get physically stronger.

When using phrases like "on average" you're making a statistical argument, and anyone who understands population distributions or has a background in statistics can tell you that the statistical difference in men and women seeking work in these industries is largely an irrelevance.

The main barrier for entry to these professions for females is currently, and has always been an ingrained cultural conditioning that these professions are "for men" - and females are discouraged from a very early age from pursuing paths that lead to these eventualities.

For any author to take this alleged "duty" to provide context for all expectations held all his readers is impossible.

When did I ever make the assertion you bolded? It is easy to misrepresent someone's argument then bash it away. It is much harder to deal with the actual argument.

Uh, you did.

I, and every other reader, comes to fiction with expectations. It is the duty of the author to give context for the reader to understand when these expectations are not true within his world.

Since you blew off the last one for being a minor paraphrasing of your point, here's your "actual argument".

Since Rich has already stated that it's not the 'duty' of an author to give this context, and Fish did a very good job of it, and I already made my version of the argument too, I don't see it worth retreading those points, but I will add something.

Not only do authors not have this duty to meet the expectations of their readers, but also I think your expectations in this regard are bunk.

We're talking about a fantasy story comic strip, set in a world not like ours. If you had expectations to the contrary then those are set right in panel 1 of strip 1, because there are goblins. Readers might expect to see a world unlike ours - there are goblins. They might expect to see something awesome and fun and exciting and interesting - because the people who pointed them at the comic strip will have evangelized about it and told them it's worth reading. These are reasonable and typical expectations. An author might expect that people who have been pointed at their work will have also been told that it's good.

But I don't think the typical reader comes into such a context with the expectation that the societal norms of a fictional fantasy world conform to the social environment of the modern-day American construction industry. I don't think the typical reader comes along and expects the story to naturally follow the typical gender-relations that our real world does. It's a story. Most readers will come to the story unsaddled by preconceptions about what characters they are going to see or what roles they have in the story. The whole point of stories is that you approach them in a receptive state to take in the narrative.

What you're doing is taking your real-world experiences (which from your arguments seem to be somewhat heavily rooted in construction) and applying them to the story. You're bringing your own personal baggage along and telling the author they have a duty to carry it. If this were a flight, the airport staff would ask you to pay an extra surcharge for excess baggage.

By arguing that an author of a fantasy comic strip in a fictional world containing more than 1/6 females in roles of value would "have a duty to justify that decision to the reader" because it "doesn't conform with female representation in real-world-comparable industries" you're also making the statement that every author of every story that contains a higher representation of females than a comparable real-world situation needs to individually make justification for their existence, and this includes every fantasy story, every war story, and even every modern-day story about any field with this imbalance (let's say, crime fiction) ever written.

And you're also telling me that I have a duty to explain to my readers why so many of my adventurer characters in my comic strip are female. I don't, and it's an irrelevance to anything I'm trying to accomplish with my strip.

Your expectations are bunk. Typical readers do not come to these stories with those expectations. And... even if they did, writers still don't have a duty to justify a decision to disregard them.

[goodpeople25]

I suppose we could back up our arguments by spontaneously re-interpreting classical literature to remove all the agency of female characters in order to support flawed worldviews... but eh, it's a lot of effort.

Where did i do that? all i said is that i read that the appearances of the greek gods in the oddessy isn't always necessarily literal and that Athena could sometimes represent his cleverness. So your example isn't perfect. If you mean my suggestion that Athena looks good in myths much more then she looks bad cause she was patron of Athens and the other war god was Ares? Well what I'm saying I guess is using classical lit as an example isn't the greatest as there is a much different culture and a large amount of history behind it.

[ahdok]

I suppose we could back up our arguments by spontaneously re-interpreting classical literature to remove all the agency of female characters

Where did i do that? all i said is that i read that the appearances of the greek gods in the oddessy isn't always necessarily literal and that Athena could sometimes represent his cleverness.

You did it right in the thing I directly quoted. I've bolded it this time. You said "we could remove this female character and say she's a metaphor" and I said "Yeah, we could, but let's not."

It's an interesting interpretation of the work, and certainly merits its own discussion when discussing that work, but I'd rather not do that kind of thing in the context of this argument. I chose one strong female character from one classical epic mostly because the example I had to hand was funny, but there are loads of candidates for the point I made. An argument about whether this particular one "counts" is a little irrelevant to the point that even classical authors like Homer and Virgil could write women into strong roles. If the nature of Athena specifically is an issue, let's have Dido or Circe instead.

As for BBC Sherlock, that's an odd one, because what they essentially did was take the central characters and put them into situations and plotlines that bore very little resemblance to the originals;

I'm aware that this is a little off topic, but I'm pretty sure the new Beeb Sherlocks are based on the individual books fairly heavily. I've only watched the first series though. When I did so, my girlfriend, who really likes detective stories, was able to fairly cleanly work out each of the plots in advance from the specific Sherlock story it was based on. They're heavily reworked, but they are still the originals. I think. (Waves not a Sherlock Expert flag)

So now I suppose the question is who is making up this story - is this Elan telling it and the entire tale is essentially him talking to his kids?

QUADRUPLE FANTASY!!! QUADRUPLE FANTASY!!!

Although in all honesty, while a common trope, it's quite fun to think of OotS this way, and you can even use it to hand-wave fourth-wall breaking and things disobeying the written rules of the game in-universe.

[goodpeople25]

You did it right in the thing I directly quoted. I've bolded it this time. You said "we could remove this female character and say she's a metaphor" and I said "Yeah, we could, but let's not."

It's an interesting interpretation of the work, and certainly merits its own discussion when discussing that work, but I'd rather not do that kind of thing in the context of this argument. I chose one strong female character from one classical epic mostly because the example I had to hand was funny, but there are loads of candidates for the point I made. An argument about whether this particular one "counts" is a little irrelevant to the point that even classical authors like Homer and Virgil could write women into strong roles. If the nature of Athena specifically is an issue, let's have Dido or Circe instead.

Okay that is fine that the interpretation dosen't help your arguement but is a interpretation of the work and i believe all arguments should hold up to scrutiny and have problems pointed out no matter what side of the argument I'm on. so saying I'm supporting a flawed worldview is kinda insulting to me personally. Also the viewpoint means that athena represents his cleverness .. Which he got from Athena. also i never said it didn't count but on the flip-side using an example where oddyesus is useless till athena saved him but disliking oddyesus using Athena's gift to save himself kinda weakens your argument as in one athena saves oddyesus the other one Athena saves oddyesus. main difference bieng the Man looks weaker in yours.

[ahdok]

Yes, it's a valid interpretation of the work, but you can pretty much apply any interpretation you like to any work you like, and therefore support any argument you like by re-interpreting all works to support your statement. Whether or not you view Athena as "real" has very little relevance to my argument at all, it's completely besides the point. It was one example out of many that ancient Greeks and Romans could write female characters with agency into their stories, despite their societal norms.

The "flawed worldview" I mention was the original point that I was arguing against, not yours... Specifically the argument that we should be taking the gender-composition of Roman Legates as a benchmark for the expectations of our fantasy stories.

[goodpeople25]

Yes, it's a valid interpretation of the work, but you can pretty much apply any interpretation you like to any work you like, and therefore support any argument you like by re-interpreting all works to support your statement. Whether or not you view Athena as "real" has very little relevance to my argument at all, it's completely besides the point. It was one example out of many that ancient Greeks and Romans could write female characters with agency into their stories, despite their societal norms.

The "flawed worldview" I mention was the original point that I was arguing against, not yours... Specifically the argument that we should be taking the gender-composition of Roman Legates as a benchmark for the expectations of our fantasy stories.

Okay but sorry for the edit but i added a 2nd argument in my post. Im now aruguing your point that my interpretation weakens Athena. It doesn't because oddesyes's cleverness and intelligence comes from Athena, your view does however weaken oddesyes and i rather your good points against sexism not be sullied by sexism.

[ahdok]

Okay, you've officially lost me.

Here's where I think we're at, please correct any mistakes.

--

I'm saying that Ancient Greeks wrote strong female characters in their stories, despite their social environment. That's all. I cited Athena specifically as one example.

--

Your original argument appeared to be presented as a counter-argument to my point, essentialy saying "You can really count Athena as an example of a strong female character, because you can just interpret her as a metaphor." If this wasn't stated as a counterpoint, then I don't follow your argument from the outset, and apologise, although I would like to know what you meant.

--

My second argument is that "Athena's only a metaphor" is a terrible counter-argument to the starting premise.

One: Because she is cited only as one example to support my argument, out of a pool of many valid examples,
Two: Because even if she's only a metaphor, she's still a female character in the story who's a badass.

--

Your argument now appears to be that I'm a sexist because I'm "weakening Odysseus"? No, I'm lost. Sorry.

Also... have you read the Odyssey? Odysseus is a complete tool.

[goodpeople25]

Okay, you've officially lost me.

Here's where I think we're at, please correct any mistakes.

--

I'm saying that Ancient Greeks wrote strong female characters in their stories, despite their social environment. That's all. I cited Athena specifically as one example.

--

Your original argument appeared to be presented as a counter-argument to my point, essentialy you were saying "I'm not sure you can really count Athena as an example of a strong female character, because you can just interpret her as a metaphor." If you did not intend this as a counterpoint, then I apologise for the misinterpretation, and in that case I don't understand what you're trying to argue from the outset.

--

My subsequent argument is that "Athena's only a metaphor" is a terrible counter-argument to the starting premise.

One: Because she is cited only as one example to support my argument, out of a pool of many valid examples,
Two: Because even if she's only a metaphor, she's still a female character in the story who's a badass.

--

Your argument now appears to be that I'm a sexist because I'm "weakening Odysseus"? No, I'm lost. Sorry.

Also... Odysseus is a total tool.

Actually i was just pointing it out. what im pointing out now is that you said i was reinterpreting athena to remove her agency and support flawed world views.
I said i did not i was just stating an interpretation.
You said i was removing her and not to bring it up as it doesn't help your argument.
I said it doesn't remove her and that Odysseus's cleverness comes from athena so saying shes sort of a metaphor doesn't change her strong female charecterness but it kinda weakens odysseus so it kinda looks like you prefer odysseus to be dragged by athena to shore cause hes useless.
You said you didn't get it.
We catch up in real time.
Im sorry if you didn't get my point but all im saying is its a valid interpretation that Athena is kinda there but not there. And that it doesn't weaken Athena anymore than it does by making Odysseus look less weak.

[SaintRidley]

This post is a public service announcement.

Remember, folks, that when you use "female" as a noun to refer to humans, you sound either like an extraterrestrial anthropologist writing notes about your latest discovery. At best.

At worst you sound like this guy:



This post has been a public service announcement.

[ahdok]

Okay okay, I think I follow... but if we both think "Athena as a metaphor" is entirely irrelevant to her agency as a character, or the inclusion of female characters in Classical literature... then what point are you making by bringing it up?

This post is a public service announcement.

Remember, folks, that when you use "female" as a noun to refer to humans, you sound either like an extraterrestrial anthropologist writing notes about your latest discovery.

Actually, it's a little deliberate on my part... Where I can I'm trying to approach the whole discussion from the mindset of an extraterrestial anthropologist... (i.e. one that's not approaching the discussion with the conditioning of one of the groups being discussed) so that's quite a compliment :)

Mostly though I haven't been writing "women" or "girls" because many interpret one to exclude the other. I've also seen similar discussions in the past where the huge diverse landscape of genders that exist have interacted badly with those specific words and derail the conversation. As I'm not the most keyed-in person to the precise subtext of everything people say and Trans-representation has been an undercurrent of this conversation throughout, I've been using the safest term I've seen from my previous experience.

If you have suggestions for better terminology then I'm receptive.

[goodpeople25]

This post is a public service announcement.

Remember, folks, that when you use "female" as a noun to refer to humans, you sound either like an extraterrestrial anthropologist writing notes about your latest discovery. At best.

At worst you sound like this guy

This post has been a public service announcement.

Im trying to avoid saying woman and girls as well as trying to sound impartial. But still if you have better terminology plz share.

Okay okay, I think I follow... but if we both think "Athena as a metaphor" is entirely irrelevant to her agency as a character, or the inclusion of female characters in Classical literature... then what point are you making by bringing it up?

I cant post a different interpretation on a piece of literature without ulterior motives? Well i kinda like that it makes Odysseus look less like an idiot. And maybe that a female character dragging the useless male to shore is kinda not the best argument to chose to make against sexism. But really its possible to quote someone and not have a stake in the argument.

[brian 333]

Here is the thing, and I'll say it again:

I am not opposed to more women in comics, stories, movies, or 'traditionally' male-dominated careers. I support a woman's right to choose, and whether that choice is 'traditional' or not it affects me not at all.

I abhor labeling. It reduces a person to whatever label is stuck on him. I advocate seeing the person first, and any characterization of that person is secondary. This means I do not support quotas for inclusion of any group, because this reduces them to being a label which 'only made it here because of the quota', regardless of merit.

When someone demands a quota because Group X is underrepresented, I ask myself, (and I think you should as well,) underrepresented as opposed to what? If the advocates want Group X to be represented at a 50:50 level, I ask, is that their real world level of representation? Or is that simply the advocate's dream? As it turns out, even in the most generous analysis of women warriors presented here, the numbers fall far short of 50:50, with 20% being presented as more realistic number. Since the author of this comic has already exceeded this, I am left with the feeling that this is simply an agenda pushed by certain groups rather than an actual complaint of non-inclusion.

As to the context idea: my comments are valid. All of the good writers give context for the reader to understand his world. Even Rich. Verisimilitude is an important part of writing, and ignoring it leaves the reader confused and eventually he abandons the work for more palatable fare. If the writer wishes readers to enjoy his work he has a duty to his reader to create the feeling of realism in his story. If he is writing for himself and does not care about readers, it is certainly his choice to ignore this concept.

Stories, such as Winter's Tale, which I cited earlier, which do not provide context for the reader to understand the fantasy, or which create situations and characters lacking in verisimilitude, may be a literary buzz for a time, but they are soon forgotten. Hemingway and Steinbeck are still read today because they do provide context that allows the reader, even most of a century later, to understand their works. Who remembers Mark Helprin?

Now, as I am not a warrior, nor am I a medieval research scholar, my comparisons have been based on what I do know. I am an Industrial Electrical and Instrumentation Technician. I travel a lot, and live far from home for most of the year. My work is not as dangerous as adventuring, nor as physically challenging. There are no barriers, (other than those imagined,) to women entering my field, and many incentives. Over the thirty years I have been in my trade, I have seen more women enter the workforce. But the numbers are staggeringly low. Women are choosing not to enter my trade, and the reasons I have heard from women who have entered and left the trade I have cited earlier: family, no desire to travel, potential danger. A career as an adventurer has all of these and more. Why is this an invalid extrapolation?

Finally, I want to point out that from the very beginning I have not made any anti-women comments, and yet my comments have been re-interpreted as if I have an anti-woman agenda. Based on what? Based solely on the idea that anyone who doesn't wholly agree with an agenda is opposed to what the agenda is supposedly supporting. I happen to believe, based on my life experience, that quotas are far more harmful than helpful, and I happen to believe, based on my life experiences, that groups pushing agendas may begin with good intentions, but eventually end up victimizing the very group for which they are supposedly fighting.

Feminism should be about choice, not quotas. Quotas limit more than they liberate, while choice opens all doors. Art should be about the artist's vision, not political correctness. Vision opens the eyes to wonders undreamed, political correctness installs blinders on everyone.

[ahdok]

All of the good writers give context for the reader to understand his world.

Are you saying that because in my comic I haven't explained why 70% of my adventurers are female, I'm a bad writer? I'm pretty sure it makes more sense to blame my suckiness on my thesaurus.

More importantly... Aren't there plenty of good stories where that context is deliberately withheld, so the reader can formulate their own ideas about what's going on? Isn't reader interpretation an essential part of art in general? I'm not the most scholarly person here, I'm still a Physicist, but I have no clue what's really happening in Alice in Wonderland, and I love the story. Stories are a shared communication between the author and the reader, where the meaning and message is created collaboratively, and a huge part of the magic is that they can have different meanings to different people. By providing context for everything, don't we destroy the magic of possibility?

When someone demands a quota because Group X is underrepresented, I ask myself, (and I think you should as well,) underrepresented as opposed to what?

Let's say... as opposed to the fictional worlds I might find most fun? how about "as opposed to any fiction I can imagine"? They're as equally as valid as comparisons as the real world, the barriers that separate them are "one universe to another"

I'm not sure anyone here throughout the entire discussion has "demanded a quota" - I think it's been opposition of the idea that a low (i.e. around 20%) level of representation should be held as a valid baseline.

Or is that simply the advocate's dream? As it turns out, even in the most generous analysis of women warriors presented here, the numbers fall far short of 50:50, with 20% being presented as more realistic number*. Since the author of this comic has already exceeded this, I am left with the feeling that this is simply an agenda pushed by certain groups rather than an actual complaint of non-inclusion.

What's the difference? Why is "an agenda" to aspire to see women having equal representation in stories juxtaposed to a complaint that they're not when they're not?

And even if "this is simply an agenda pushed by certain groups", so what? Your tone suggests that it's somehow a bad thing?

So what if it turns out that I have an "agenda" to aspire to have equality of gender-agency in the overall landscape of our species' stories? That the baseline for males and females in narrative roles should be about equal? Then great! that's a good thing. It seems like a fundamental underpinning of equal rights to me. If we're unwilling to accept it as normal in our fiction, we'll never accept it as normal in our lives.

[Lissou]

If the writer wishes readers to enjoy his work he has a duty to his reader to create the feeling of realism in his story. If he is writing for himself and does not care about readers, it is certainly his choice to ignore this concept.

Authors do not have a duty to readers.

And readers are a vast group. There will always be people who enjoy a work and people who don't. Some won't enjoy a work because some things aren't explained. Others will enjoy the same work for the exact same reason. Your premise is that all readers enjoy realism and no readers enjoy the lack of realism. It's not true. Even if it were, authors still would have no duty to readers. If they write poorly, they won't get read. That's still fine. If they want to be read, there might be things they could do that would help them with that, but zero percent of those things are a duty.

Art should be about the artist's vision, not political correctness.

That I agree with. (Or at least the first part. You make them sound incompatible. What if someone's vision IS politically correct?)

[ti'esar]

(Or at least the first part. You make them sound incompatible. What if someone's vision IS politically correct?)

I don't know why people seem so convinced that Rich must have been pressured into becoming more socially conscious in his writing, and not have just decided to do so of his own free will.

[ahdok]

I genuinely think I've run out of interesting or new arguments about this, so I'm going to sign off and start putting my rhetoric into practice by drawing more comics where this issue remains irrelevant. However, I'd like to ask you all one last question.

Let's use The Order of the Stick, because it's the thing that we're most familiar with, and let's shuffle Vaarsuvius over to one side just for economy of message.

Take the remaining five menbers of the Order. If, from day one, Rich had of written this story with Roy, Elan, Haley, Belkar and Durkon all having their genders swapped... what difference would it actually make? The story would have all the pronouns swapped, and some of the more gender-laden insults would need to be changed, and the small bit here or there would be a different... but other than that? What does it matter?

Are you genuinely willing to argue that, had Roy/Elan/Durkon/Belkar been female, and Haley been male, you as a reader would have found the strip alien or unintelligible or uncomfortable or weird or unfamiliar or unrelatable or (whatever word you want, pick yer poison)... to the extent that as a reader you'd have been alienated to the point of not reading it? Do you actually believe that?

Well... your loss. Imma go read Rat Queens now.

[brian 333]

Are you saying that because in my comic I haven't explained why 70% of my adventurers are female, I'm a bad writer? I'm pretty sure it makes more sense to blame my suckiness on my thesaurus.

You do not need to write a thesis statement to grant a concept verisimilitude. By including many female characters presented as characters first, (who happen to be female,) you have given verisimilitude to your world. If all of your female characters had been damsels in distress, then I would have wondered, "Where are the heroes?" (You may be too young to remember MUD's.) That would have required explanation.

More importantly... Aren't there plenty of good stories where that context is deliberately withheld, so the reader can formulate their own ideas about what's going on? Isn't reader interpretation an essential part of art in general? I'm not the most scholarly person here, I'm still a Physicist, but I have no clue what's really happening in Alice in Wonderland, and I love the story. Stories are a shared communication between the author and the reader, where the meaning and message is created collaboratively, and a huge part of the magic is that they can have different meanings to different people. By providing context for everything, don't we destroy the magic of possibility?

I enjoyed Alice as a child because of the visual imagery it invoked. As an adult I am far more critical, and have a higher threshold of suspension of disbelief. I would read it again now as a trip into the past, to relive the age when I first went through the looking glass. Today, picking up a copy for the first time, I wouldn't read it all the way through. The story is discontinuous, disjointed, and lacks reference to things I understand. This is also another case of the movie turning the whole thing into a dream.

Let's say... as opposed to the fictional worlds I might find most fun? how about "as opposed to any fiction I can imagine"? They're as equally as valid as comparisons as the real world, the barriers that separate them are "one universe to another"

I'm not sure anyone here throughout the entire discussion has "demanded a quota" - I think it's been opposition of the idea that a low (i.e. around 20%) level of representation should be held as a valid baseline.

As a writer you can use whatever baseline you like. As a reader you can judge it by any baseline you like. As an agenda driven protester you may not demand a writer conform to your chosen baseline by altering his story to appease you, or if you do I and people like me will call you out. My original post was in response to exactly such demands. Almost all of my subsequent posts have been corrections of misinterpretations and misrepresentations of my original post and subsequent defenses.

What's the difference? Why is "an agenda" to aspire to see women having equal representation in stories juxtaposed to a complaint that they're not when they're not?

The difference is simple; the first is educational. It informs the reader that something is seen as unfair by a member of a group. It may even propose a solution. The second is authoritarian. It claims authority over a particular subject and demands conformity to this authority. Think of Kyle and Cartman from South Park. Kyle attempts to convince, while Cartman demands obedience.

And even if "this is simply an agenda pushed by certain groups", so what? Your tone suggests that it's somehow a bad thing?

It is my opinion that this is a bad thing. Such advocacy often begins with good intentions, and grows into an organization which has as its sole purpose the maintenance of the issues which it 'fights'. If the issue is ever actually solved the group loses power and purpose, after all, and therefore the bar is always moved up and up and up. The goal may be equality today and reparations for past injustice once equality is achieved.

You can easily tell the difference between the two: one is amenable to reason, the other is not. One allows various viewpoints while the other demands adherence to only one view. One advocates choice, the other demands conformity. If you belong to a group which says in one way or another, "If you don't agree with us 100% you are the enemy!" then you are not following a cause, you are promulgating an agenda.

So what if it turns out that I have an "agenda" to aspire to have equality of gender-agency in the overall landscape of our species' stories? That the baseline for males and females in narrative roles should be about equal? Then great! that's a good thing. It seems like a fundamental underpinning of equal rights to me. If we're unwilling to accept it as normal in our fiction, we'll never accept it as normal in our lives.

If you aspire to that then by all means put it in your work and share it with everyone. This is what I have been saying all along. However, I did try to point out that even though others may not do this, it does not mean they are advocating gender inequality. The reaction to my post demonstrates I am not as good a writer as I wish to be.

And here's the thing: he doesn't do A so he means B. This is a concept that has caused a lot of heartache over the years. If person writes a murder story from the PoV of the murderer, can you then extrapolate that that person advocates murder? If a person writes a pirate story from the PoV of the pirate, does it mean he has a Jolly Roger tacked up on the wall of his garage? (He may not even have a garage!)

So a writer who writes a story with five male and one female lead characters is a misogynist who wants to repress women? How is that a fair conclusion? Or better yet, must such a writer prove he is not a misogynist by more inclusion of female lead characters or else risk being so labeled? Again, where is the fairness?

50:50 was proposed as the only fair ratio. I claim it is not, and gave valid reasons for my claims. If you want to write 50:50 stories, go for it. If you want to write 100:0 stories, again, go for it. I hope you include enough context for me to enjoy your tales, because from what I can see so far, you're a pretty good writer and I wouldn't mind reading more of your work. (It's a bit episodic and drifts off into one-panel-bits from time to time; I prefer stories, but that's just my preference.)

But to claim that The Giant was being unfair when he did not make a 50:50 cast is unreasonable.

(I know adhok never made this claim, but this claim was the one to which I originally responded.)

I genuinely think I've run out of interesting or new arguments about this, so I'm going to sign off and start putting my rhetoric into practice by drawing more comics where this issue remains irrelevant. However, I'd like to ask you all one last question.

Let's use The Order of the Stick, because it's the thing that we're most familiar with, and let's shuffle Vaarsuvius over to one side just for economy of message.

Take the remaining five menbers of the Order. If, from day one, Rich had of written this story with Roy, Elan, Haley, Belkar and Durkon all having their genders swapped... what difference would it actually make? The story would have all the pronouns swapped, and some of the more gender-laden insults would need to be changed, and the small bit here or there would be a different... but other than that? What does it matter?

Are you genuinely willing to argue that, had Roy/Elan/Durkon/Belkar been female, and Haley been male, you as a reader would have found the strip alien or unintelligible or uncomfortable or weird or unfamiliar or unrelatable or (whatever word you want, pick yer poison)... to the extent that as a reader you'd have been alienated to the point of not reading it? Do you actually believe that?

Well... your loss. Imma go read Rat Queens now.

If you were alive in the days of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" you might also recall "All that Glitters". The show may have been ahead of its time, and anyway, "Soap" beat the crap out of both shows not only in the talent of the actors, but in the fact that it was self-consciously a comedy.

"All That Glitters" was a direct role-reversal TV show with an internally consistent world in which Eve was create by God. Then She took one of Eve's ribs to make Adam. Surprisingly, the show lasted 65 episodes in the Archie Bunker era of TV.

So no. I would not have had a problem at all, as I said in an earlier post, with an all female cast of OoTS, (though I may have thought the title a boorish pun in that case.) You see, this is part of the fundamental misunderstanding you seem to have of my posts: I am not against including more women in comics. I have never been. It takes a serious revision of what I say, or a very clever selection of text out of context, to even generate the idea that I have any problem whatsoever with women in literature, or life.

What I am against is people who threaten to label an artist who does not conform to their agenda. When you say 1:6 isn't fair, I refute that with real world numbers indicating that it may well be more than fair, not because I would exclude women from adventuring careers, but because they would chose other careers. If you find an adventuring group with higher representation more suited to your fiction, then by all means use them. But don't label The Giant a misogynist because he didn't make your choice.

And don't label me one simply because I happen to believe that women and men are different. I see the evidence of it all around me every day. Women can be as brave or cowardly as any man. Women can be as smart or dumb as any man. Women can be as loyal, kind, just, honest, or have any other trait you can imagine. But women are not men, and because of this a woman may make choices a man would not for reasons a man would not.

Different does not imply better. Or worse. And I think that is the obstacle we keep running into. "He says different, but he means better." No. I don't mean that. I never even implied that. That idea came from you, not me.

[ahdok]

Nono... I'm proposing 50:50 as a fair approximate baseline for the global ratio of all characters in all writing, not that every individual writer conform to 50:50. (This is why I used such a stupidly wordy phrase as "equality of gender-agency in the overall landscape of our species' stories?". I'm not Vaarsuvius most of the time.)

I would aspire to a world where our fiction represents our people fairly on the global level. Individually, story concerns will always come first. If a story has only four characters, and two are homosexual, and the other two have a baby over the course of the story, it's unlikely that this story will have a 50:50 gender ratio (although in a fantasy world, I'm totally down with the idea that a lesbian couple might both have babies through magic... that's totally cool.)

As a writer and a reader, I don't demand anything of any individual, but what I can do is highlight the disparity that exists in our stories overall and make the recommendation to writers that when the decision doesn't matter to their narrative, that they might consider leaning towards whichever group is under-represented.

I'm bad at keeping my pledges, I'm really stopping now. :)

[Liliet]

Three major points actually. In addition to the two you brought up, there is a very good reason, in story, for Haley to not be kicking butt. She's a rogue. They go out of their way to avoid situations like that. No surprise shes in a lot of trouble when she's forced into a confrontation she isn't equipped to handle.

Make that four major points:

4) This comic has long moved past the point where Haley being saved from Crystal via timely intervention by another member of the Order could ever end up looking anything remotely like a damsel in distress situation. It would purely be a big damn heroes moment, one-liners and "Are you okay"-s would be exchanged, Haley would insist on staying in the fight (likely aided by the presence of Durkula as one of the reinforcements), the tide would turn on Crystal who would promptly escape with her last hit point (even if by accident), and the hunt for Bozzok would begin.

Okay soooo that was the point that was, by and large, made by me.

You see, there have been scenes with male characters being freaking awesome and badass solo. Like, the scenes that center specifically on their awesomeness on their own.

A good example which was not first brought up by me was Roy's arena fight with Thog.

There is only one female character who could have such a scene: Haley. It does not matter to me personally, as a girl, how high a percentage of male characters have got those scenes; what matters to me is, since that was established as a thing, I want a female character - who I, due to our shared gender, see as more or less a representation of me in the comic - to get one too.

At the time of that debate, she hadn't.

Now, there are two subproblems there.

1) No matter how many male characters don't get their scenes, it only takes one female character to not have it to have the ration hopelessly skewed in favor of male characters. Why? Because this female character constitutes 100% of female characters in OotS.
In other words, there is only one girl.
Rich has written about this before - that early on, he fell into the Smurfette Principle trope, and that this is something he recognizes and regrets and will not do again.
However, acknowledging the mistake does not, by itself, remedy it. There are still 4 male characters and 1 female character in the strip. That's a fact.

2) Apparently Haley can't get her scene (she can btw, everyone who said the rest of Order need to intervene because she can't handle it by herself has been proven WRONG WITH A BIG BANG) because she's a ranged Rogue.
Aka a teamwork oriented class that is not suited to close melee combat and is, as far as I know, considered the most underpowered class in core 3.5 after Monk.
Which is a conscious choice made by Rich at the time of her creation - to give specifically her specifically that class.
Which falls RIGHT INTO the tropes of "guys are brawl, girls are brain" and "guys smash girls shoot" and "girls are team oriented, guys are solitary" which result from and contribute to perpetuation of traditional gender roles.
And, in a great example of why those roles suck, in the eyes of many forumites apparently prevents Haley from getting a badass solo scene.

I don't even know why I have to try so hard to explain that the situation of "There is just one girl in the party, and she just so happens to be the weakest class" is not good...

My argument was that, while Rich cannot do anything not horribly retcon-y to remedy either the situation with the gender ratio in the party (EXCEPT IF CRYSTAL JOINS THE ORDER AHEM OFFTOP SORRY) or Haley's class,
he can, however, fight off the straight-down-the-railroad-of-gendered-assumptions unfortunate implications of Haley being less capable of epic solo feats.

By giving Haley an epic solo feat.

Which is exactly what happened.

*Rich is really good at this - the "Haley does gymnastics looking for traps while dressed like Tomb Raider" may offend absolutists like Liliet (Liliet, correct me if I'm wrong and I will bow to the lash), but the joke itself actually mocks the males in the strip for acting like adolescent dorks (note that Roy, the voice of reason, immediately reasserts adult behavior). c.f. strips 35 and 102. Similar for Haley in 88.

Okay, so you got exactly right that I have a problem with that scene. There is not much point in criticizing it - it was, like, 10 years ago - and I did enjoy it as a joke back when I first read it.

There is, however, a problem there.

Upthread many words were said about normalization. About how if you write something in a certain way without highlighting it, it gets perceived as "just this normal thing" that little bit more.

Well, here's the thing: it works both ways.

By writing a dark-skinned main character without any lampshade or explanation for it, Rich normalized seeing black people in main roles.
By writing all male characters in the party acting like pre-pubescent boys in sexually inappropriate ways, Rich normalized...
men acting like pre-pubescent boys in sexually inappropriate ways.

Which is a thing and a problem. A huge problem. For details, google "rape culture" because I'm not explaining all of this here on such a small prompt, but IT IS A HUGE PROBLEM.

I have many, many words in a very, very irritated tone to say about it, but tl;dr
it sucks

(Rich has partly remedied that by examining Roy's chauvinism in the Miko arc, but the work would have still been better without that joke)
(do you know how ****ing hard it is to find a work with a female protagonist where said female protagonist is never sexually assaulted in any way?)
(kind of a little bit MUCH HARDER than a work with a male protagonist fulfilling same criteria)

You may find this article interesting, and it links to other places that show sources. One of the interesting things, I found, was how people had always assumed Viking warriors were male because they were warriors, but when they decided to actually check the bones, they found that within their sample about half of them were female.

TBH, the whole "they assumed swords meant men and brooches meant women without ever thinking to actually check" kind of sums up half this thread for me.

[BannedInSchool]

(do you know how ****ing hard it is to find a work with a female protagonist where said female protagonist is never sexually assaulted in any way?)

But if in a work of fiction the women were never verbally, physically, and sexually assaulted/abused it would break verisimilitude because the real world just doesn't work that way.

[happycrow]

...actually, at least as I interpreted it, he mocked them acting that way. Now, possibly I misread it.

Not getting into "rape culture" and what it defines as abuse. If I behaved the way rape-culture theorists wanted me to behave, my wife would divorce me for emotional abandonment.... sorry, just not going there, been Othered too many times. And no, I'm not going to argue about that here (or in PMs).