Oh, doubts again
Been doing very little in the way of productivity these last few days, but I've been managing to keep myself busy around the house-- the family gets home tomorrow evening, so I've got some cleaning ahead of me in the morning.
In the meantime, however, I've been doing a large amount of reading, and an inordinate (for me) amount of watching: I've finally picked up Joss Whedon's Firefly, and darned if it ain't the shiniest sci-fi show I ever clapped eyes on. Fans of Battlestar Galactica will pardon me if I call Firefly my favorite simply on account of it bein' so gosh-darned fun.
I know, I know-- I'm about two years behind the times here. Sometimes it takes me a while getting around to stuff.
Read a book of essays by Ray Bradbury entitled "Too Soon From the Cave, Too Far From the Stars," which I found mostly enthralling but perhaps just a bit too much like my mother, calling "put down these video amusements and distractions and get on with improving the world!" I wish I had that certitude, that strength of purpose. As it is, the fear of voicelessness and failure is just barely enough to keep me plugging away at The Silence. Would that I had the energy, passion, and confidence to be continually enthralled by my work!
I've also just finished a children's adventure novel called Airborn, by a Canadian gentleman named Kenneth Oppel. It was pretty enjoyable, and I think I'll seek out its newly-released sequel, Skybreaker, before too long. I quite enjoyed it, but it was lacking some passion or romance or intrigue or something which I continue to crave after finishing Pullman's The Tin Princess. I suppose I feel as though the tension that built up between the two leads was either not strong enough or not properly consummated.
Don't look at me like that. I'm not a pervert.
I wonder whether the near-universal need in adventure stories to have both a strong male and female lead stems from a desire to appeal to both genders of readers, or whether it signifies a universal acceptance of the fact that love is so close to the heart of adventure-- and I sort of wonder, as I type, if these points are mutually exclusive. Maybe we tell stories about boys and girls who come together as part of an adventure in some attempt to unite boys and girls across the world as they're caught up in the adventures we spin for them. I suppose it's kind of a heterosexually-centered line of thinking, but if the number of Harry Potter slash-fics on the internet is anything to judge by, we can go ahead and set up the heterosexual alliances and let the legions of teenaged girls on the 'net take care of the rest.
Was that insensitive somehow? It's not my intent to be.
I'm so bad at this writing thing. This Kenneth Oppel fellow is only thirty-nine, and he's already had more than a dozen books published. He even had one published in his final year at university! Apparently he sent a manuscript to Roald Dahl, who then forwarded it to his literary agent! I wonder if I ought to do something like that. Yikes-- Roald Dahl? That's frackin' lofty. Somehow I imagine Pullman or Alexander would be a little too busy to take a look at mine.
Hm. Well, it could be worth a try. I've got to finish it first, though. Better get cracking!
*Sigh.* Kinda wish my manuscript had airships...
In the meantime, however, I've been doing a large amount of reading, and an inordinate (for me) amount of watching: I've finally picked up Joss Whedon's Firefly, and darned if it ain't the shiniest sci-fi show I ever clapped eyes on. Fans of Battlestar Galactica will pardon me if I call Firefly my favorite simply on account of it bein' so gosh-darned fun.
I know, I know-- I'm about two years behind the times here. Sometimes it takes me a while getting around to stuff.
Read a book of essays by Ray Bradbury entitled "Too Soon From the Cave, Too Far From the Stars," which I found mostly enthralling but perhaps just a bit too much like my mother, calling "put down these video amusements and distractions and get on with improving the world!" I wish I had that certitude, that strength of purpose. As it is, the fear of voicelessness and failure is just barely enough to keep me plugging away at The Silence. Would that I had the energy, passion, and confidence to be continually enthralled by my work!
I've also just finished a children's adventure novel called Airborn, by a Canadian gentleman named Kenneth Oppel. It was pretty enjoyable, and I think I'll seek out its newly-released sequel, Skybreaker, before too long. I quite enjoyed it, but it was lacking some passion or romance or intrigue or something which I continue to crave after finishing Pullman's The Tin Princess. I suppose I feel as though the tension that built up between the two leads was either not strong enough or not properly consummated.
Don't look at me like that. I'm not a pervert.
I wonder whether the near-universal need in adventure stories to have both a strong male and female lead stems from a desire to appeal to both genders of readers, or whether it signifies a universal acceptance of the fact that love is so close to the heart of adventure-- and I sort of wonder, as I type, if these points are mutually exclusive. Maybe we tell stories about boys and girls who come together as part of an adventure in some attempt to unite boys and girls across the world as they're caught up in the adventures we spin for them. I suppose it's kind of a heterosexually-centered line of thinking, but if the number of Harry Potter slash-fics on the internet is anything to judge by, we can go ahead and set up the heterosexual alliances and let the legions of teenaged girls on the 'net take care of the rest.
Was that insensitive somehow? It's not my intent to be.
I'm so bad at this writing thing. This Kenneth Oppel fellow is only thirty-nine, and he's already had more than a dozen books published. He even had one published in his final year at university! Apparently he sent a manuscript to Roald Dahl, who then forwarded it to his literary agent! I wonder if I ought to do something like that. Yikes-- Roald Dahl? That's frackin' lofty. Somehow I imagine Pullman or Alexander would be a little too busy to take a look at mine.
Hm. Well, it could be worth a try. I've got to finish it first, though. Better get cracking!
*Sigh.* Kinda wish my manuscript had airships...
posted by Nate at 4:13 PM
2 Comments:
I think it's not so much meant to appeal to both genders as it's meant to appeal to its larger audience, the men. I think we have trouble seeing this sometimes, because we ARE men, but the fact remains that men in these stories, nine times out of ten, are the protagonists and are almost always stronger than the women who are, as a general rule, disgracefully weak - not because women ARE weak, but rather because they are portrayed that way. It's not a blanket rule. There are exceptions, but my general sense is that women in adventure stories are portrayed in inexcusably sexist ways, accompanied by the occasional, tokenistic moment of feminism behind which a writer can hide like the lawyer and the coward he really is.
I offer Ms. Knightley's memorable one-liner near the end of the first Pirates film, "You want pain? Try wearing a corset!" as she hits that guy with that pole. Characters like Elizabeth Swan are only inserted into these stories to deliver a sense of empowerment to the men who absorb them. A writer who stands accused of this treatment, however, can protect themselves with moments like these.
It's still an ugly, sexist world out there. I noticed just the other day (I'm finally reading stupid Da Vinci Code) that Dan Brown, for example, takes twice as long describing the physical attributes of the female characters as he does with the male ones.
Adventure stories are written by boys for boys. Yes, I understand this is not all true. But the fact of the matter is that there's a trend. Much as we might with they weren't, many of these women characters are nothing more than romanticized sex-objects created by pig-headed authors. Read it. Notice it. It's true.
In short:
Female leads are not nearly as strong as I think you think they are nearly as often as I think you think they are.
This is not fair.
This "near-universal need" for a male and a female lead walks hand in hand with the near-universal need for boys to get erections when they see girls they like.
Just throwing that out there. I know there are examples to the contrary. I'm just making an observation and perhaps offering a warning not to over-romanticize a thing that isn't always there.
Dude, read some children's adventure fiction. I'm talking Philip Pullman, Lloyd Alexander (and here I mean more Westmark than Prydain, but even so), Garth Nix, even the Kenneth Oppel book I just read. Hell, read Philip Reeve's "Mortal Engines." The balance of power in these stories is almost always very even-keeled.
I'm not talking Indiana Jones or James Bond, here. I'm talking Mortal Engines and Abhorsen.
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