The character of the day is Stella from The Stairway

Made by @illydna

The character of the day is Lucie from Lucie

The character of the day is Eris from A Figment of Discord

Made by @midorifragments

The characters of the day are Haruna, Kana and The Witch from Tower of Feles

English translation by @memoriesoffear

The character of the day is Alys from A Timeless Story and A Figment of Discord

Made by @midorifragments

The characters of the day are Mia and Maxie from Scaredy Cat

They are both wlw!

The characters of the day are Mariana, The Doll Maker and Aunti G from Red Haze

Made by @aestheticgamer

In Inception, there are no female characters in the real world

We’ve all been there. Staring at our planning document with a long list of characters who are like our children. We love every single one of them, but what about the reader? Will they get confused? Will they be able to keep track? Will they care about any of your characters if they don’t get enough page time? 

If these questions have plagued you, it might be time to think about who gets the chop. To help with the dilemma, I have put together a list of questions to ask yourself.

1. What does each character bring to the story thematically?
2. List what each character does to advance the plot?
3. Could any of these things easily be done by another character?
4. Do they all have distinctive personalities? 
5. Do they all have distinctive mannerisms/speech/appearances?

If you’re struggling to answer these with a clear yes or no, it might be time to bin some characters. Bonus questions to consider are:

1. Is there potential to merge two characters into one? 
2. Does this character need a name, or are they just an extra?

Hope this helped!

[If reposting to Instagram, please credit @isabellestonebooks]

klartie:

rip to all the fictional ladies who died because their only purpose in the narrative was to further the man pain

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

The Epic of Gilgamesh has sparked me into thinking about women in literature and storytelling, and how in some ways we are unusually misogynistic in the way we tell stories compared to…most of history

I’ve been reading the Foster translation of the epic, and it’s striking how…not-antagonistic the text is toward women.

For one thing, a significant portion of the characters with important roles are female. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are obviously the important ones, and Utnapishtim to a degree, but we also have Inanna, Ninsun, Shamhat, Siduri, Utnapishtim’s wife, and even Aruru, who gets credit here for being the supreme creator being.

I was surprised as well by how neutral the text is in portraying them. Shamhat, the ‘harlot’ (“sex worker” doesn’t work here, because there are some spiritual/religious connotations here as well i think?), is…just a character. She isn’t demonized, we aren’t supposed to despise her. Siduri is just a weird lady running a tavern at the end of the world all alone. Ninsun, Gilgamesh’s mother, is a source of wisdom and authority.

There are repeated occasions throughout the story where other characters seek out female characters because of their power and/or wisdom (e.g. Gilgamesh going to Ninsun for help interpreting his dreams, the gods summoning Aruru to create someone to oppose Gilgamesh). They’re also actually allowed to speak in the story.

I remember being surprised by it when I read the Iliad that we actually got to hear Briseis speak, just as I was by how much talking women do in Shakespeare.

I think I expected less because the storytelling produced by the present day world around me set the bar so low.

In the Original and Prequel trilogies of Star Wars, there are, like, at most six female characters with speaking roles that I can remember (Leia, Padme, Mon Mothma, Zam Wessell, Beru Lars, and the decoy queen in The Phantom Menace whose name I can’t remember). You probably don’t even remember some of these, because they were not important at all. It’s like if Dexter Jettster happened to be female.

That’s just the thing, though, isn’t it? Dexter Jettster is male. Chewbacca is male. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn are male. Sebulba, the pod-racer that explodes in Episode 1, is male, Jen Porkins is male, Greedo is male, Poggle the Lesser is male, Boss Nass is male, Salacious Crumb is male, Captain Panaka is male, even the droids are at least coded as male. There is no reason for it.

I don’t know quite enough about Marvel to compare, and honestly haven’t bothered with Marvel in a few years, but only one of the original Avengers is female, as well as only one of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, both were defined by their relationships to major male characters, and both died. The focus on the male characters is overwhelming. 

We’re used to stories that barely have any female characters in them. The Lord of the Rings has what, three? four? women? Stories that actually have similar proportions of men and women receive backlash, as Scott Lynch did when Red Seas under Red Skies had “too many” women (it was still predominantly male!) Even books that are praised as “feminist” or appear to be focused on women neglect the actual presence of women. I only read the first two Throne of Glass novels, but I can only remember two female characters in it apart from the main character, and iirc both of them die. (It’s not a 'feminist’ series at all, but I digress.)

We’re actually backsliding in some respects, if you ask me—in visual media, traditionally “unattractive” women are disappearing. Weird women are disappearing. “Strong Female Character” has become just another trope as restrictive as any of the other roles “allowed” for women. We see people looking backward at characters like Edna Mode as unusually human and well-represented when I’m not convinced that they were at the time.

And now the Epic of Gilgamesh seems unusually woman-focused and not-misogynistic. I wonder how we got here…

I’ve just started to really look at people funny when they praise books, esp YA books, for having “strong female characters.”

Like someone in my YA lit class praised Children of Blood and Bone for having women that are “allowed” to fight and be independent and have significant roles in the story, and how important the book is for including that. And I just.

Alanna: The First Adventure is 30+ years old, Dealing with Dragons is 30+ years old, Sabriel is 25+ years old, so it’s not like independent, self determining female leads were invented yesterday in YA. Graceling, the Hunger Games, and a lot of the foundational Girl That Fights YA turns fifteen years old soon. A girl that was 16 when the first of the Hunger Games trilogy came out is now 30, and in a few years may be able to give the books to her own daughter to read.

Meanwhile, over the recent 3 or so years popular YA books are dominated by plots about girls trapped in castles, bound by curses, or in arranged marriages whose stories all hinge on falling for boys.

YA romance and romance subplots have always been a thing, sure.

But I seriously feel like, idk, 10 years ago, plots where the romance was a vital element (or the primary element)fit into their own niche significantly more, and books that were primarily “fantasy” actually were, well, primarily fantasy.

Am I making this up in my head? Has anyone else noticed this? There definitely used to be YA fantasy that actually centered significantly on worldbuilding and non-romance plot instead of being primarily romance with either a court intrigue or a fairy tale retelling backdrop.

What i’m trying to highlight is the huge boom in YA books where

• the female protagonist falling in love with a man
• the female protagonist being betrothed or otherwise having her sexuality controlled and restricted

is a REQUIRED element of the plot (and often the magic and worldbuilding) as in the story itself hinges on it.

There’s also been a small explosion of YA books with the female MC being a “sacrifice,” being given over to something as currency/appeasement, or otherwise fulfilling a very passive, inanimate role (e.g. Poppy being the “Maiden” in From Blood and Ash or whatever the title was.) What is UP with that.

It would be ridiculous to attribute something like this to a single author, but I’m still going to say that Sarah J. Maas did not help any of this good god

YA readers are growing up with ACOTAR and TOG now, not any of the numerous “strong” heroines that were defining in the 90’s and 2000’s, which means they’re growing up with SJM’s INTENSELY gender essentialist, tradwifey A/B/O lite faeries labeled as “feminist” fantasy.

Both series have a 500+ year old faery “male” “claim” and impregnate an 18-19 year old girl, and both series sexualize the “domination” and aggression of the “males” (in the throne of glass series, the endgame love interest fucking. bites the protagonist without her consent to uhh. “claim” her.) In ACOTAR in particular the plot eventually revolves around the pregnancies of the main female characters, by their aggressive, controlling fae “male” “mates.”

I have read excerpts from later Throne of Glass books and the way female characters are described is. disgusting?? like one thing in particular that’s branded into my brain is a teenager being described as looking like she would have been “barely past her first bleed, if not for the size of her breasts” or something like that.

And the smut scenes aren’t even sexy.

The upside to this is that the YA category seems to have collapsed quite a bit overall and doesn’t enjoy anywhere near the popularity that it did even just 3 years ago.

Hopefully when it all settles we’ll have new areas of growth in the places all the readers have cleaved off to.

sjbattleangel:

All of it is just beautiful.

 Sejic gives the women of DC the proper respect they deserve by writing them with humor, fun and agency. He seems to be respectfully aware of the progressive comic fans’ (myself included) popular wishes such as making Cass Batgirl/Batman/The Black Bat or having Ivy and Harley’s bisexuality be recognized. Along with LGTBQ+ characters (like Batwoman) getting their happy endings.  

His designs for the women of DC are awesome yet practical with taste. It is great that rather then going full-on “sexy”, their costumes are feminine but eye-catching and suitable for combat. For example, Starfire is longer designed as pin-up girl (cough*Red Hood* cough*) but as true warrior princess.

With all the chaotic management DC has been through, The heads of Times Warner need to wake up and do what should have been done a long time ago, put Stjepan Šejić in charge of DC. Period.