Writing Trends

There's a discussion on fanficrants on why female characters are disproportionately the ones hated. Surprisingly, it's non--wanky. In summary, a wide variety of factors are blamed, from the fact that women are more critical to other women to the fact some published authors shouldn't be allowed to write female characters.

Someone else brought up the point that some fen write slash (and more claim to) because they don't want to deal with the baggage of gender roles in relationships -- that the temptation of just shoving male and female shaped pegs into Man and Woman shaped holes is too great for them to deal with het (I would argue that with slash, the temptation still exists and that both bad het (see: Queen of R*cketshipping) and bad slash suffer from the writer's inability to grasp that a romantic relationship can work in more than one way).

For that matter add on a recent post to ameliazellove pointing out that a lot of fans seem to take Amelia's feelings for Zelgadis for granted (despite the fact many of us seem to think reasons he would like her are easier to come by) -- part of that is due to the fact Amelia is more open about expressing feelings than Zelgadis (which is not hard, as your average houseplant can be more emotional than Zel), but part could be related to gender bias.

I've seen a lot of discussion on what constitutes feminine roles versus masculine roles, and I've come to realize that I really don't write like that. At least, I don't think I do. Every time I type it out, it comes off as wanky and self congratulatory. But, for those of you who read my work (especially original fiction and watching me roleplay), I suppose that's the real test.