3d • INTRO & CHAT ROOM
Hero vs Heroine
A little something it's time to get off my chest, this on the subject of strong female characters in movies and books that seems the topic of discussion nowadays. More specifically, this tendency of Hollywood changing established male characters into females or weakening the male characters to make the female ones look stronger. Now, i have nothing against strong female characters, just as I have nothign against strokng male characters. For me, it's the plot and only the plot; the story rules all. So, if a story calls for a strong female character, I'll use one; if it calls for a weak female I'll use that; same for the males. But if I use a strong female character, I am NOT simply going to make all the men around her wimps, or give the female lead unusual advantages that the best of males don't have. Everybody earns their way to heroism, guy or gal. In my various stories I have some pretty strong women, but they still have their faults just as the men do. And of course, anatomical and physiological differences dictate there are some things that one sex can do that the other cannot; just like by extension there are some things that various alien races can and cannot do that humans can.
A practical example: In my big fantasy series, amongst the many characters I have, there is one warrior who is the best with the blade, but shy around girls, so naturally he attracts the eye of a set of teenage triplet sisters... who unfortunately for him are three of the King's daughters. He spends 3 books doing his heroics like the other characters, the girls come on rather strong trying to win his love, so finally t do that they try to prove themselves to him by joining the army and training just like any grunt. They have to work their way up and in the process happen upon a plot that could undo everything. They do end up proving themselves but by lots of hard work, and while at one point they save the man's life it's not because he's suddenly a wimped-out male. it's because he's been controlled by an outrageously powerful force and the one thing that can free him is for the triplets to get him to realize that he really does love them just as they do him. No shoe-horning in anything just to make an artificially 'strong' female character, no wimpy males around them to make them look good.
Another example at the other end of things, in another series of mine there is a young female that has genius brains, determination, knock-out looks that she seems barely aware of, and running her own company at a time when others her age are attending college keggers. If she has a limitation she never admits it to herself and puts up a very good front of always being in control and intellectually better than anyone around her, male or female. Even when she witnesses the horrific death of her mentor, she buries that incident deep and carries on. The problem? She's only 20, mistakes discipline for real emotional maturity, thinks she can skip past her lack of certain real-life experience, and doesn't realize that facing her losses out in the open will lead to her downfall (and pull down everything else around her). She ends up going completely dark-side. Yes, eventually she gets rescued by a male, but that doesn't lessen her capabilities; in fact, the rescuer is the most unlikely character in the entire series (and yes, as you might guess, it's a love story in the midst of Earth's pending destruction).
I've had quite a wide range of female characters of strong or notable bearing, proving that that there is no excuse for sacrificing story and plot just to shoehorn in an artificially political point. And just to show my qualifications ijn character creation, in the writing of 36 novels and 10 million words, I have created well over 550-560 different unique characters and never once did I ever create a given character for anything but what the story calls for.
Design your stories for the story, not for whatever political points (poly-points) you hope to earn.
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Hero vs Heroine
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