Subject: Seconding this.
Author:
Posted on: 2025-01-27 19:46:31 UTC
Female characters honestly get shafted in all sorts of ways, including very often being written solely as romantic lovers or love interests with nothing else going on in their lives. The world loses nothing by having more female characters fulfilled by friendships and activities, without needing to be/do anything else in order to be worthy.
And that goes for real women, too. {= )
~Neshomeh
I impose a personal rule that any and every female character that I'm currently writing must, without exception, eventually have a permanent love interest. However, I'm very stuck on who should be coupled up with Helena, and I don't plan on creating an entirely new character as a love interest for her. Boarders who have read the Fairy Godfathers spin-off, who do you think has the most romantic chemistry with her?
You may notice that my missions so far have had no failures. This is because:
Do note me if there's anything wrong with this set-up.
And, frankly, you don't need to shoehorn a relationship in just to have one.
--Ls, agreeing with Nesh and Lily
And why only for female characters?
~Neshomeh
especially in fanfic, so I impose this rule as a kind of protest.
Characters develop relationships organically as you continue writing them into situations. I know I didn't start out intending to put my Agents together; they just kinda fell into it after a while. And amatonormativity--the preference for romantic love uber alles, and how everyone's expected to fall in romantic love and place romantic relationships above all others--is equally worth "protesting", especially in fanfiction spaces. ;)
I think you made a typo in saying "the preference for romantic love uber alles", because I'm not sure what that means.
--Ls probably won't be using the concept of amatonormativity, unless as a trivia question
Translates to "above all," and perhaps carries a connotation of excessive dogmatism.
~Neshomeh
Female characters honestly get shafted in all sorts of ways, including very often being written solely as romantic lovers or love interests with nothing else going on in their lives. The world loses nothing by having more female characters fulfilled by friendships and activities, without needing to be/do anything else in order to be worthy.
And that goes for real women, too. {= )
~Neshomeh
Honestly, sometimes I doubt my own writing, which is why I regularly check in with the comm to make sure my writing doesn't violate the general spirit. Do stop me if I come off as repetitive or attention-seeking.
And honestly older writers, too--we all have these moments of doubt regarding the reception of our work. But I can say for sure that writing for yourself and what you want to see will always make for better writing than writing for the opinions of other people.