How can we write when our tropes are burning?

[tielan]

Lately overheard in fandom:

OVERTHINKINGIT: Tell me, what do you do with female characters?
FAN 1: Burn them!
OVERTHINKINGIT: And what do you burn apart from women?
FAN 1: More women.
FAN 2: Tropes.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Good, now why are female characters worthless?
FAN 2: Because...they're tropes?
OVERTHINKINGIT: So, how do you tell if a female character is a trope?
FAN 1: She fits into your handy female character flowchart with terms that were totes not stolen from TV tropes.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Ah, but now, can you not also have male characters who are tropes?
FAN 1: Oh...um...yeah, I guess.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Are all tropes bad?
FAN 2: When they apply to female characters!
OVERTHINKINGIT: What else is bad?
FAN 1: Het fic.
FAN 2: People who complain about race representation.
FAN 3: Republicans.
FAN 1: Major characters who aren't white or male and who don't appropriately defer to the white males.
FAN 2: People who write het fic.
FAN 3: Female characters.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Exactly! So, logically...
FAN 2: If she's a female character...then...SHE'S A TROPE!

Dear Overthinking It,

Certainly, you've put together a useful flowchart for identifying tropes. However, not all tropes are bad, and the fact that a character matches a trope does not make them any less "real", "strong", "worthwhile", or "interesting".

You might like to reconsider reducing females - real or fictional - to a single most notable aspect.

not exactly encouraged by your reductionism,
T.

tl;dr version

OVERTHINKINGIT: If your female character fits any trope at all, she's not a "strong female character."
FANDOM: Let's take her out the back and beat the shit out of her!

Comments

[glass_icarus]

PRETTY MUCH THIS, OMG.

(also, MONTY PYTHON DERIVATIVES FTW! that made me laugh, thank you :D)

[tielan]

I figured someone somewhere would get the reference. :)

It's certainly a useful enough tool for considering the options for female characters and which tropes one wishes to use for them. But it limits female characters to an either/or situation - she's either a real, strong female character or she's a trope.

And since the questions leading to 'a strong female character' are extremely vague...all female characters are tropes!

As someone - I think was marina - pointed out: in most of these fandoms, the problem isn't the female characters. The problem is the canon and the writers of the canon and the fanon and the fanfic writers of the fanon.

[elegantpi]

First: YES. THIS.

Second: Where did fandom get the idea that tropes are "bad"? If they were bad, then all media would SUCK. I mean, TV Tropes is a freaking jungle of a website - if you go in, pack a lunch and a large ball of twine, etc. - and every show I love has an entry on there. So.. fitting a trope is somehow bad? No, I don't think so. Tropes can be misused, even overused, but they are not inherently bad.

Every character ever conforms to several tropes, male or female. The people who are torching and pitchforking about female characters and tropes have obviously never studied literature or literary theory. Or given much thought to what they're talking about. *sigh*

[tielan]

Trope are inevitable. I found a hilarious page yesterday which laid out in 8 points why you can't avoid tropes in your story.

I think there was less talk of pitchforking female characters, but it's implicit in the layout of the flowchart: you can be a "strong female character" OR you can be a trope.

FFS, ELLEN RIPLEY was in the tropes section!!

Someone on my other journal pointed out that "it just shows what female protags need to be strong characters and how few of them there are". Actually, what it shows is that women are naturally disadvantaged because the majority of female characters were 'minor cast' in their canon - they don't have the natural immunity or story-assumptions that the white males of their canon do. And then even the ones whose canon is about them (ie. Sailor Moon, Ellen Ripley) get dismissed!

It's a no-win situation.

[lady_ganesh]

I for one have found canons by going to the Tropes page for things I really love.

[havocthecat]

*splorfle* This is awesome as a response to the rage.

[tielan]

I figured I could rant and probably be dismissed as one of those feminist frothers, or show exactly how ridiculous the flowchart was in terms of defining (or failing to define) 'strong female characters'.

I mean, hello, Ellen Ripley? Because she didn't survive the third act?

And one thing the flowchart and it's defendants fail to note is that most of the time the canon is Not About The Female Character, which is why she can't carry her own story or survive to the third act. It's flawed in that the 'role' of women shouldn't be as fridge fodder or helpful assistant or romantic interest, but the nature of writing is that all the secondary characters exist to help or support the main character(s).

Since the main character(s) are almost never female, and because there's a narrative history of using women as love interests, 'the help', or fridge fodder, female characters are at an automatic disadvantage from the get-go. Because "they can't hold their own story" or "they need a man/romance", so they're considered expendable, unimportant, and available to abuse (by the writer) without mercy.

[lady_ganesh]

Ellen Ripley survived the third act twice, and could've ended up in at least three places on that flow chart. They didn't even figure out their own examples!

(Here from Metafandom)

[eggcrack]

Perfect response to a fucked up thing!

[rubyfruit]

Yes. Pretty much this.

I am so tempted to say that The Chart's idea of a Strong Female Character would probably be a man, but that's going overboard, and is the opinion of someone who no longer considers herself a feminist because of those who do proclaim to be feminists doing stuff like...The Flowchart of Doom.

[lady_ganesh]

Also, 'cause I forgot to say this: THANK YOU.

[andmydog]

You said it much better than I could. I'm too filled with incoherent rage.

[dejla]

Oh, yes. Thank you!!