whoops that got long and thinky about women and stories. Plus meme
I've been seeing a lot of posts and discussions recently about writing female characters in fanfic. There are too many for me to address specifically, but it seems to boil down to what it always tends to in fandom: there are a lot of people out there, each with their own backgrounds and reasons and hang-ups and issues. Oh, fandom. And as usual, my reaction tends to be: whatever you do, it's usually a bad idea to let fear or anticipation of other people's opinions control your actions, especially when those opinions prevent you from creating things. Others' opinions expanding your worldview and inspiring you to take action is one thing; being guilted or pressured into action is something else. To be less abstract, I vividly remember a conversation I once had with a professional writer I know, who will remain anonymous. She was also a fanfic writer, and I had many a discussion with her about awesome female characters (in fact, I think the first time I saw her in person was at a Tamora Pierce book signing). But...she only ever wrote male main characters, and rarely wrote female secondary characters, both in her fic and her original work. I asked her about it once, and she explained that she got incredibly anxious; she loved female characters so much, plus she felt like female characters are judged much more harshly by audiences, so the prospect of writing women into her stories stressed her right the fuck out. Granted, this particular friend was a bit of an anxiety bomb, but I've seen the same feeling in other people. And I get the impression that a lot of the people who get the most defensive about not writing women are covering for a similar guilt, and are reacting against a sense of being pressured about something that doesn't make them comfortable. Of course, this is all conjecture, because I don't feel any anxiety about writing women. I haven't written all that much fic, but I was looking over what I have and going "okay: female-POV, established het; male POV,...