Let me suggest something that I think could be going on. I may be totally off base and I'm not familiar enough with your writing to know whether it applies there, but based on what I'm getting from your meta --
It seems like you have a higher (or at least different) standard of behavior for women than for men. You want the female characters to be strong, however you define strength, and if they aren't strong you find them less interesting. Also, if their 'strong' behavior manifests in unpleasant ways, you find that a turnoff.
If the above is true, which your meta suggests, you may be restricting your female characters' freedom to act. They don't have as much of a range to make choices -- to try things and fail -- as the men do, because in your head they don't just stand for themselves as individuals but for 'women.' Therefore, writing those characters feels more restrictive, therefore you have more creative freedom with the men.
Using Riza as an example, since she's come up a few times and since I've spent the last six months writing and thinking about her -- she often gets name-checked as a 'strong' character, but IMHO some of her most interesting moments are ones where she comes across as submissive, or when she literally bursts into tears and loses her shit during a firefight. I don't think either of these things keeps her from qualifying as a strong character, or a strong person, but if they were just on an abstract checklist of character traits, I think most writers would hesitate to assign them to a 'strong' character. And since I don't see a lot of fic or meta focusing on these aspects of her, I'm not sure if people who think she's a strong character just think these are embarrassing incidents to ignore and file away and pretend didn't happen, or if they are uncomfortable exploring these aspects of her because they don't fit the 'strong character' mode.
The thought process in the above paragraph has a lot to do with why I wrote the Big Bang stories that I did, but even then I was constantly terrified that I was writing her as too unlikeable -- and honestly, if I didn't perceive the character as being extremely popular (if under-examined) in the fandom, I don't think I could have brought myself to write and post it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zaluzianskya and ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
skylark_photos
no subject
Date: 2012-03-27 05:04 pm (UTC)It seems like you have a higher (or at least different) standard of behavior for women than for men. You want the female characters to be strong, however you define strength, and if they aren't strong you find them less interesting. Also, if their 'strong' behavior manifests in unpleasant ways, you find that a turnoff.
If the above is true, which your meta suggests, you may be restricting your female characters' freedom to act. They don't have as much of a range to make choices -- to try things and fail -- as the men do, because in your head they don't just stand for themselves as individuals but for 'women.' Therefore, writing those characters feels more restrictive, therefore you have more creative freedom with the men.
Using Riza as an example, since she's come up a few times and since I've spent the last six months writing and thinking about her -- she often gets name-checked as a 'strong' character, but IMHO some of her most interesting moments are ones where she comes across as submissive, or when she literally bursts into tears and loses her shit during a firefight. I don't think either of these things keeps her from qualifying as a strong character, or a strong person, but if they were just on an abstract checklist of character traits, I think most writers would hesitate to assign them to a 'strong' character. And since I don't see a lot of fic or meta focusing on these aspects of her, I'm not sure if people who think she's a strong character just think these are embarrassing incidents to ignore and file away and pretend didn't happen, or if they are uncomfortable exploring these aspects of her because they don't fit the 'strong character' mode.
The thought process in the above paragraph has a lot to do with why I wrote the Big Bang stories that I did, but even then I was constantly terrified that I was writing her as too unlikeable -- and honestly, if I didn't perceive the character as being extremely popular (if under-examined) in the fandom, I don't think I could have brought myself to write and post it.