McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Hero vs. Heroine
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meskarune on February 23, 2011, 08:54:03 AM ---Male fighter protagonist gets knocked out, and is locked up in a room with his hands tied togehter. The man will evaluate where he is, and begin trying to escape.
Female fighter protagonist gets knocked out and is locked up in a room with her hands tied together. The FIRST thing that pops into her head is "holy crap someone could rape me"
--- End quote ---
In a contemporary setting, yes.
Having the reactions of male and female characters in that situation not be what you would expect in a contemporary setting is a way of getting in clues that the setting you are writing about works differently.
(I've just last night written a scene where the female POV character has been knocked out and wakes up tied up, and her first reactions go "I'm still alive so somebody has reason not to kill me outright just yet; test my bonds, whoever tied me up is competent; there's nothing lying around the room that could help me escape so the people who've abducted me aren't idiots; they've left me my clothes so they're not trying to make me feel vulnerable that way; the room is reasonably warm so they're not trying to break down my resistance through hypothermia.")
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meskarune on February 24, 2011, 07:14:47 AM ---If in your fantasy world, women are bigger and stronger than men, you STILL have to take into account that women carry pregnancies, breast feed (and hence have a child nearby) and possibly menstruate.
--- End quote ---
Or you could just, you know, look at the sort of ways medical tech advances and availability affect gender relations in history and expand it into an SFnal future where these fundamental issues are very different. See for example Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, which does rather a lot of interesting stuff with the social consequences arising from it becoming technically possible and then culturally standard to bring children to term in uterine replicators rather than in women's bodies.
Paynesgrey:
In Bujold's work, those issues are part of the overall theme and are a key element in her worldbuilding. For a book which isn't aiming at gender issues or simply isn't taking the worldbuilding in that sort of direction the old gender/pregnancy issues still apply. Whether it's a necessary or even useful to eliminate those matters depends entirely on whether or not the author is interested in going that direction or not. If the story takes them there, great. If not, why bother?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Paynesgrey on February 27, 2011, 05:52:29 PM --- If the story takes them there, great. If not, why bother?
--- End quote ---
I agree entirely, but to my mind, if one is creating a non-mimetic world for an SF or fantasy setting, not changing those things is every bit as much of an active choice as changing them; I am inclined to think the "why bother?" cuts both ways.
Paynesgrey:
Boils down to "is this useful for telling the story" and/or "does it add to the world the author is interesting in building, does it take that world in a direction the author wants or even cares about?"
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