A recent post on Neocolours got me thinking about books...

This 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 ( Cut for length )

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 ( Cutted for length )

There's also shows which are very pro-female on TV. ( Cutted )

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.

Lizziey has a site with many of Seth's pictures on it.

http://www.shutterfly.com/os.jsp?i=67b0de21b345cef00528&open=1

Click on "slideshow". Some of them are pixelated, but most aren't. Jenn, she wants you to join too, and so do I... ANA PICS!

A general explanation...

( And a clarification of what had originally been a friends-only rant )

I honestly did not mean to upset anyone. I had been venting to people who shared my opinion (preaching to the converted, really) and had only unlocked the post because I thought the person in question would never read it... why should she? We'd been back to arguing on NC for the past month! The idea that we might mend fences again never occured to me at all, and I'm sorry about that. We all feel like ranting at times, that doesn't mean we should let the rants get out of hand and wander to the person in question.

Now, to be even more fair, there's reasons people think NC is so critical. I suspect the big one is that it's easier to remember criticisms than compliments. However, if we're complaining about something that's not your fault, and you think we think it is, we won't quit because people get mad. Better to just say "look, this is what actually happened". Or if you just disagree, point out why. It definitely doesn't help to comment on the complaints so much that people only see you doing that just like you only see them complaining. This leads to me ranting in my journal, and that's just not a pretty picture.