And still loving it.  Of course, I'm not a Serious Business gamer, and I don't love it unconditionally, but it's been a lot of fun.   My favorite FF games are VII and VIII, and I've really liked Crisis Core and Dissidia. But IX-XII disappointed the hell out of me.  So while I was seriously excited about the new game, I did have reservations,  most of which had to do with the female lead.  Thankfully these turned out to be unfounded:
( Mild spoilers as I discuss female characters and slash. Probably no more spoilery than a typical review. )

And the story is fascinating so far.  I was really overwhelmed with Serious Plot and Fake Shakespearean English in XII... ugh, it was just terrible. I had no idea what the plot was and, consequently, couldn't care and never finished the game.  For me, XIII strikes a good balance between big worldwide plot and individual character stories.  Some of it, as usual with FF, makes me go WTF THIS MAKES NO SENSE.  But I am very happily along for the ride and looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

I'm working on Part 2 of my series, which if all goes well will start a sub-series on writing female characters - why it's difficult to write women in equal relationships, fear of the Mary Sue, writing sexuality through female characters, etc.  I really appreciate all of the very thoughtful comments on Part 1.  I'm so glad that it resonated with a lot of people and brought out some very interesting discussion.

In the meantime, I've seen more people who seem to object to this line of analysis.  Some of them aren't necessarily talking about me, but they reject any reasoning for women writing more male characters than female except that we want to so there (should we also stick our tongues out?).*  Is shaming women's fannish responses to the media and framing them as thoughtless, superficial, pornish pursuits more feminist than listening to what women have to say?

I really would like to see more women and girls writing fabulous female characters, both in the professional media and in fandom.  And I'd love to see female characters valued more by fandom, flaws and all.  Why can't we start with valuing real women in our fandom community, flaws and all?


*Of course the whole reason women who write slash started talking about the reasons was they were accused of exploiting gay men, disappearing women, convincing the media to keep writing men only, and possibly triggering the apocalypse.  So any response except self-reproach has been attacked.

Melissa Silverstein, who blogs at Women & Hollywood, has a post that goes very well with the current discussion of female characters in the media. She frequently talks about the lack of women with creative and financial control over the movies that get made, and here she discovers how very few women are writing pilots for the television networks this season.

While there are a fair amount of pilots about women, the story here is the lack of women who are writing and creating the shows. The only way I know about this is from a very disturbing email from a reader who sent me info that came from a high level female TV executive. This is an industry wide problem and 2010 is way worse for women creators than it was in 2009.

Women make up 23% of executive producers. Usually all creators get an executive producer credit and there are always other executive producers besides the creator. While I know of no comprehensive list that lists all the creators and executive producers by gender, extrapolating from the data above you could probably guess that women maybe make up around 10% of show creators and showrunners (and I’m probably being generous.)

She goes on to list the few pilots that were written by women.  Many of those were co-written by men.  

When I got home from work last night I was tired and had a total brain freeze. Which I guess is better than a brain cloud. But anyway, I started writing a post and was hit with this-time-of-the-month fatique and then self-criticism and doubt about what I was writing and why. So I went to bed, instead. It was a beautiful 9 hours of sleep and I could use a few more.

This morning I read this post by carolyn_claire, in which she says some brilliant things.

And be willing to listen to those who come to refute what you're saying and to examine your own motives and biases in the process. Many people have strong feelings about how one should publicly respond to fic, based on the fact that we're all fannish "neighbors" (some will say "community") and that what we say and how we say it can directly and negatively affect the feelings of the person we're talking about. That's true in meta discussion, too; what one says there can also hurt, because it IS about observed behavior in the people participating in fandom around you. So there is no disclaimer that will (or should) protect you after making these kinds of accusations; your neighbors won't be happy and they will come to talk to you about it. As they should.

I highly recommend the whole thing, if you haven't read it already.  She talks about the need for discussion and engagement, and that's my intent with the posts I hope to be writing in the next few days.  I'm not interested in self-abjecting, shaming talk about how slash writers are perpetuating misogyny, etc.  I think that when slashers as a group are accused of being soaked in internalized sexism and helping to perpetuate the invisibility of female characters, and when some respond with reasons they don't write as many female characters, I think that deserves a deeper look.   And I like to overanalyze.

So here's hoping to an actual post being completed today.

Joking of course.   And I realize I'm probably going to be guilty of doing some of the things I complain about others doing.

I'm really enjoying a lot of meta posts by people who are doing it more right than I am.  But any conversation that involves slash and is framed around "what's wrong with those women" inevitably brings out posts like this, which don't seem to serve any purpose but to make fun of slashers. Some of them are even written by women who write slash, so of course it's about those OTHER slashers. And they come with admonitions for other women to think about internalized sexism in the same breath as dismissals of women's reasons for loving slash and having trouble relating to female characters.

There's a comment to that post by havocthecatthat makes a lot of sense:
"Boyslash isn't the root of women being marginalized in media. What many of us are saying is that the marginalization of women in the media is being reflected in boyslash."
 
Except that I don't see that at all in the original post.

And then, elsewhere, there are accusations of derailing when someone wants to look more closely at the reasons women ("some" is always left out, we are assumed to know who this is, and it's always someone else) write slash that marginalizes, neglects, or villanizes female characters, instead of just shouting MISOGYNY INTERNALIZED SEXISM DOINGITWRONG.

Instead of just complaining, I want to look closer at some of those reasons from a feminist perspective, keeping in mind that yes, internalized sexism is a real thing but also that sexism in the media and in the creation of female characters is a real thing, too.  And also that women are individuals living in a patriarchal culture and we all will have different experiences and ways of coping with this reality.

 

I'm going to break this into parts, because I can only work on it for short periods of time.  So consider this the introduction.  Part 1 will be coming later. I know you're all on the edges of your seats.