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conulyThis is a long, complex post with many tangentally related points, so bear with me.
My post had basically said, at one point, that neopets has such an large percentage of females on the site that what it really needs (and doesn't have) are more strong female characters, both good and bad. The few times there is a gender difference in pets (the usuki pets, the royal zafaras) the males look reasonably strong and the females look like girlygirls. I don't think there IS anything wrong with being a girlygirl but it's not the best role model, okay? Now, in fairness, plots and whatever do often have equal numbers of male and female protagonists, but let's look at the most recent plot
The meridell plot: Main female protagonist is Lisha, she's the younger sister of our main male protagonist Jeran. Jeran is the one who battles and who gets to be the hero, he watches out for his kid sister when he finds her. Lisha has one female and two male friends. All other main characters are male, from Lord Darigan to King Skarl.
Neoquest II: Our main hero is Rohane... he's also the captain of the ship in which he's stuck. His first two team members are female, the third is male. While the two female team members are important, he's the strongest, he's also the main one. I haven't gotten that far yet, so I may be mistaken, but it also seems to me like most of the bosses in this game (the king's advisor, the leximp, the miner foreman) are male. I have not yet come across a female boss.
Neoquest I: ALL the bosses are male except for Faleinn, who is cursed and becomes good once you show her the medallion. She's not bad on purpose. The vast majority of the NPCs are male. Only one or two important NPCs are female. Our main character is the gender of your pet.
Characters in Neopets: There are a few well-known villians. Some of the most well-known are Darigan, Sloth, Jhudora, the Shadow Usul, Vira. Of these, two are female. One of them (Vira) is a villian because she's obsessed with her looks. The other (Jhudora) doesn't seem to actually do anything. The Shadow Usul is refered to using both pronouns, so I'm not sure where it fits in. Darigan and Sloth BOTH have plots, the rest of them do not.
The faeries: Are all female. This is, mihi, as bad as making only the important ones male. It's just strange. And since they mostly show up when they're being whiny and demanding.... Still, it's important to note that there are strong females in neopets.
You'll notice I concentrated on villany. There's a very good reason for this. Everyone else concentrates on "girls aren't encouraged to be doctors/lawyers/firefighters". I really think girls need the chance to pretend to be mad scientists and evil politicians too, same as young boys. In fact, I'd say it's more important... you can pretend to be evil and then go back to being a good kid, and see that there really IS a lot of stuff you can do. Get it all out of your system, eh? Also, the bad guys are way cool compared to the good guys, everybody knows that. Compare Darth Vader's lines to Luke Skywalker's.
This trend of not having strong female villians goes all through popular culture, of course. Looking at star wars, we have a few female heroes: Leia (who's kickass), our rebel leader whatshername, Padme. There are NO female villians until the books, where Mara Jade quickly reforms and marries Luke. In the books, this is often explained as "the empire was evil and sexist", but I think there's more going on here. For some reason, it never occured to Lucas that females COULD be evil. I don't get it. Why shouldn't women be dictators and grand moffs? And not in the classic sci-fi sense of "grinding men to the dirt and using them merely for breeding" either, thankyouverymuch.
To look at something more recent, there's Harry Potter who has a decent number of female friends (Hermione comes to mind, a nice counterpoint to Ron) and some female sports stars (and we note that Slytherin's team has no female players). It also has silly girls in two houses with no counterpart silly boys and NO female villians until book four... where the only female villian we've seen is arrested. We see more of them in the next book (two, this time!), but one of them is only a villian because she's obsessed and in love with Fudge... a traditionally "female" reason for doing evil things, she's not evil because she's evil, she's evil because she's a little unbalanced. Do we ever see men being evil because they're obsessed with women? In books this is, not real life. You can't really complain that Harry Potter has no strong female characters, McGonagall should clear that up, but most of the silly ones (disregarding Fudge) are female, and the evil teachers (Snape, whatshisname who was voldemort, "Mad-eye") are mostly male. To me, this seems more than slightly unbalanced.
There's also shows which are very pro-female on TV. I'll name two of them and hope it doesn't embarass me too much to admit to watching very silly cartoons... Kim Possible and the Powerpuff Girls. In the first one, our protagonist is female, her male sidekick is conspicuously clueless. I'll be the first to say that her only REAL enemy is female, and the rest are all more than a little pathetic at what they do... but they're all male. I'm not sure if this was deliberate or not, but it grates as much as having an equal standard for both genders of villanry. As for the powerpuff girls, they do a little better. Most of the strong characters are female, again, though I've read this was unintentional. They had one very clearly "female" villian who stole only Susan B. Anthony dollars (and taught a valuable lesson on sexism). They have a few other female villians like Princess and Mr. Jones' wife. The vast majority of their baddies are male, though... Mojo Jojo, Fuzzy, the Gangreen Gang, Him (who acts female... odd.) and so on. Still, at least the idea of evil women isn't completely unheard of in Townsville.
Going with my trend of female-centered shows, we have the Buffyverse. I can't recall all the villains off the top of my head, but let's start:
Glory: Female. Crazy, but she was evil BEFORE she was crazy.
Dru: Female. Crazy. She was crazy BEFORE she was evil.
Spike: Male. Totally hot. Becomes good.
Evil Willow: Crazy. Generally a good girl. Only evil because she's just lost her loved one. NOT EVIL BY NATURE.
Faith: Starts good, makes a mistake, turns evil in a BIG way, turns good again. She's evil because of her bad family life, however that can be said for most male villians as well.
Evil Angel: Male. Mostly good. Lost his soul again, so he became evil.
The Mayor: Male. Totally evil. No redeeming factors.
The Master: Male. Totally evil. No redeeming factors.
Dracula: Male. Totally evil. No redeeming factors. Not as hot as people in the show thought.
The First: Neuter, can appear as both male and female. Teh evillest!!!111one
The Trio: One evil, two generally good. All male. All geeky. One of them, the evil one, is a sociopath.
Buffy is the most evenly spread out of the other popcultural things I referenced, in terms of female villiany... make your conclusions yourself.
Well, it goes on. Is this because villians are associated with positions of power that women "just can't reach"? Or because women are just "too nice" to be evil unless they're warped? I don't know. Wait for a related rant on evilness in general.
My post had basically said, at one point, that neopets has such an large percentage of females on the site that what it really needs (and doesn't have) are more strong female characters, both good and bad. The few times there is a gender difference in pets (the usuki pets, the royal zafaras) the males look reasonably strong and the females look like girlygirls. I don't think there IS anything wrong with being a girlygirl but it's not the best role model, okay? Now, in fairness, plots and whatever do often have equal numbers of male and female protagonists, but let's look at the most recent plot
The meridell plot: Main female protagonist is Lisha, she's the younger sister of our main male protagonist Jeran. Jeran is the one who battles and who gets to be the hero, he watches out for his kid sister when he finds her. Lisha has one female and two male friends. All other main characters are male, from Lord Darigan to King Skarl.
Neoquest II: Our main hero is Rohane... he's also the captain of the ship in which he's stuck. His first two team members are female, the third is male. While the two female team members are important, he's the strongest, he's also the main one. I haven't gotten that far yet, so I may be mistaken, but it also seems to me like most of the bosses in this game (the king's advisor, the leximp, the miner foreman) are male. I have not yet come across a female boss.
Neoquest I: ALL the bosses are male except for Faleinn, who is cursed and becomes good once you show her the medallion. She's not bad on purpose. The vast majority of the NPCs are male. Only one or two important NPCs are female. Our main character is the gender of your pet.
Characters in Neopets: There are a few well-known villians. Some of the most well-known are Darigan, Sloth, Jhudora, the Shadow Usul, Vira. Of these, two are female. One of them (Vira) is a villian because she's obsessed with her looks. The other (Jhudora) doesn't seem to actually do anything. The Shadow Usul is refered to using both pronouns, so I'm not sure where it fits in. Darigan and Sloth BOTH have plots, the rest of them do not.
The faeries: Are all female. This is, mihi, as bad as making only the important ones male. It's just strange. And since they mostly show up when they're being whiny and demanding.... Still, it's important to note that there are strong females in neopets.
You'll notice I concentrated on villany. There's a very good reason for this. Everyone else concentrates on "girls aren't encouraged to be doctors/lawyers/firefighters". I really think girls need the chance to pretend to be mad scientists and evil politicians too, same as young boys. In fact, I'd say it's more important... you can pretend to be evil and then go back to being a good kid, and see that there really IS a lot of stuff you can do. Get it all out of your system, eh? Also, the bad guys are way cool compared to the good guys, everybody knows that. Compare Darth Vader's lines to Luke Skywalker's.
This trend of not having strong female villians goes all through popular culture, of course. Looking at star wars, we have a few female heroes: Leia (who's kickass), our rebel leader whatshername, Padme. There are NO female villians until the books, where Mara Jade quickly reforms and marries Luke. In the books, this is often explained as "the empire was evil and sexist", but I think there's more going on here. For some reason, it never occured to Lucas that females COULD be evil. I don't get it. Why shouldn't women be dictators and grand moffs? And not in the classic sci-fi sense of "grinding men to the dirt and using them merely for breeding" either, thankyouverymuch.
To look at something more recent, there's Harry Potter who has a decent number of female friends (Hermione comes to mind, a nice counterpoint to Ron) and some female sports stars (and we note that Slytherin's team has no female players). It also has silly girls in two houses with no counterpart silly boys and NO female villians until book four... where the only female villian we've seen is arrested. We see more of them in the next book (two, this time!), but one of them is only a villian because she's obsessed and in love with Fudge... a traditionally "female" reason for doing evil things, she's not evil because she's evil, she's evil because she's a little unbalanced. Do we ever see men being evil because they're obsessed with women? In books this is, not real life. You can't really complain that Harry Potter has no strong female characters, McGonagall should clear that up, but most of the silly ones (disregarding Fudge) are female, and the evil teachers (Snape, whatshisname who was voldemort, "Mad-eye") are mostly male. To me, this seems more than slightly unbalanced.
There's also shows which are very pro-female on TV. I'll name two of them and hope it doesn't embarass me too much to admit to watching very silly cartoons... Kim Possible and the Powerpuff Girls. In the first one, our protagonist is female, her male sidekick is conspicuously clueless. I'll be the first to say that her only REAL enemy is female, and the rest are all more than a little pathetic at what they do... but they're all male. I'm not sure if this was deliberate or not, but it grates as much as having an equal standard for both genders of villanry. As for the powerpuff girls, they do a little better. Most of the strong characters are female, again, though I've read this was unintentional. They had one very clearly "female" villian who stole only Susan B. Anthony dollars (and taught a valuable lesson on sexism). They have a few other female villians like Princess and Mr. Jones' wife. The vast majority of their baddies are male, though... Mojo Jojo, Fuzzy, the Gangreen Gang, Him (who acts female... odd.) and so on. Still, at least the idea of evil women isn't completely unheard of in Townsville.
Going with my trend of female-centered shows, we have the Buffyverse. I can't recall all the villains off the top of my head, but let's start:
Glory: Female. Crazy, but she was evil BEFORE she was crazy.
Dru: Female. Crazy. She was crazy BEFORE she was evil.
Spike: Male. Totally hot. Becomes good.
Evil Willow: Crazy. Generally a good girl. Only evil because she's just lost her loved one. NOT EVIL BY NATURE.
Faith: Starts good, makes a mistake, turns evil in a BIG way, turns good again. She's evil because of her bad family life, however that can be said for most male villians as well.
Evil Angel: Male. Mostly good. Lost his soul again, so he became evil.
The Mayor: Male. Totally evil. No redeeming factors.
The Master: Male. Totally evil. No redeeming factors.
Dracula: Male. Totally evil. No redeeming factors. Not as hot as people in the show thought.
The First: Neuter, can appear as both male and female. Teh evillest!!!111one
The Trio: One evil, two generally good. All male. All geeky. One of them, the evil one, is a sociopath.
Buffy is the most evenly spread out of the other popcultural things I referenced, in terms of female villiany... make your conclusions yourself.
Well, it goes on. Is this because villians are associated with positions of power that women "just can't reach"? Or because women are just "too nice" to be evil unless they're warped? I don't know. Wait for a related rant on evilness in general.
