Eddis, Attolia, Sounis

Of course, right after I post this I find the discussion about the gods. Catching up now. :)

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2. Oh wow, I wasn't aware of this interview, and didn't know that MWT said that about her story. I do agree with you, I find that her stories focus almost entirely on men. We have a bit of Irene's POV in QoA, and a teensy-weensy bit of Helen in ACoK, but I don't think anyone would disagree that her books doesn't have gender parity.

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I saw it posted here a couple pages back. I wasn't reading any interviews until I finished TaT so I went and read them all at once. So happy everyone finds them and links them here. :)

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Welcome back!

1: We covered the gods quite a bit in the JDS thread as well (which is where my thoughts on the matter are) and there was also the Hands of the Gods post like you said.

2: I think to understand this you first have to note Megan saying she still thinks Eugenides is the main character despite his absence during the past few books.

I agree with Megan on both her observations that Eugenides is still the MC and women have had a significant impact on the story and their voices have been heard.

As a woman, I love to read stories told from women's perspective, and I would argue Megan has told parts of the story from Irene's and Helen's perspective. Other female characters, who may not have gotten a ton of screen time, but who's actions still have a major impact on the story include: Phresine, Agape, "Sandy," Heiro, Moira, Ina, Lela, and even Hephestia.

Sure Megan hasn't written a book entirely with a female narrator, but that doesn't negate the females we've been shown who are all unique and wonderful nor the fact that she's addressed misogyny and that it was not once but twice the cause of a major villain's downfall.

I also think much of Megan's inspiration for writing are the stories she grew up with, which largely feature male characters on quests/adventures and that has had an impact on her choice of narrator. I'm sure Megan will write a book with a female first-person narrator one of these days, but if it's her preference to write from a male perspective that's her prerogative and her choice as an author.

Having a preference isn't the same as deliberately keeping woman out of stories or avoiding them as narrators because of sexist beliefs. (Looking at you Marvel.) If that were Megan's intent, she wouldn't have written the two most competent leaders in the story as women.

MWT's books are far more feminist than a story with a female MC who fights crime in a leather bikini and is mainly there for fanservice.

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freenarnian.livejournal.com

1) I'm still leaning towards Immakuk and Ennikar acting as patrons of true friendship, and hence the aid they offer Kamet and Costis. I don't know if helping Gen/Attolia was necessarily a factor. Though, like you discovered, there's been plenty of interesting discussion about it!

2) ^What Lady Jane (ninedaysaqueen) said.

re:"Pay the fastener"... This is about the only thing I caught on my first read. 0:)

Edited Date: 5/28/17 06:22 pm (UTC)

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High five! XD

I would also add that Megan, clearly does not see her narrators as the most important person in the story.

KoA is clearly about Costis AND Gen even though Gen doesn't narrate that story just as QoA is about Irene and her character development.

For example, even though Watson narrates most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the titular character is the driving force of the plot. (But Watson is important too!)

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I like your gods interpretation. I might be focusing too big picture? I'll keep this in mind on my next re-read (and I think I have some more reading to do here for gods speculation).

I was totally laughing at myself about the fastener thing as when it was first mentioned I said to myself "tuck that away to see what comes up" and then - quite literally - it comes up and I was not there (off with Immakuk and Ennikar maybe?). Then I read that comment and of course!

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"... if it's her preference to write from a male perspective that's her prerogative and her choice as an author...
Hear hear!
~Helen

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Hi, thanks! Good to be back and catching up (even if, again tragically, I know I'll have to be more of a lurker than I would prefer).

Thanks for the JDS tip; I hadn't found the Mede gods discussions there so I'll go back and have a look.

I think everything you've said is true at the same time that I think it's true these books are mostly focused on men. I think agh really nailed my view on it: I also love these stories and I love her characters. I love how even the most minor character is clearly the hero of her/his own story - even if we are only brushing up against that story, but I do still think about those decisions of perspective.

I was interested to see that manderelee mentioned Shannon Hale as since she and MWT were recently in conversation it reminded me of the annual roundup Hale does on animated films. She looks at the 20 top grossing (or something like that) and does % female characters on screen and % female characters with speaking parts. Applying that across this series really highlights that it focuses more on male characters than female. For me, that doesn't say anything regarding quality of story/character (which is obv always high and delightful across the QT series) it just really surprised me that MWT wouldn't think her series is focused in such a way. I just can't agree with her there.

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It's been great to see so many familiar icons! XD

1: I think I remember where it is... AHA! (http://ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com/23909.html?thread=158053#t158053) :D

2: It definitely fair to say these books are largley focused on men. I think part of Megan's reasons for saying what she did is that, from her perspective, her narrators are not the most important characters in her story. Like Eugenides is still the MC even though he hasn't narrated since QoA. In additiona to Irene and Helen, there are great many female characters in QT who could carry thier own book.

Also, I don't mean to be blase about the representation of women in film and literature or that a few are "good enough." I'm much less sensitive about this subject with YA and MG as from the data I linked to in a comment below, representation of far more balanced there compared to film and video games. Movies are comprised of 70% male leads and prime time TV only has 37% females leads from the statistic I've seen.

Honestly, like is the case with Marvel, (http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-avengers-why-marvels-refusal-to-make-a-black-widow-movie-is-a-case-of-depressing-hollywood-sexis-17400) I think a lot of the blame lies with major studios avoiding female leads because they think films focused on women won't turn a profit. Hopefully, the new Star Wars films and other franchises like the Hunger Games will start to sway opinions.

Edited Date: 5/30/17 02:17 am (UTC)

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agh-4.livejournal.com

Hey, sgwordy! Good to see you around. :) Sounis does rock.

About #2, I was also a bit surprised to read that. I love the variety and realness of her characters and the individuality and/or agency they get in almost every circumstance, but her stories are definitely mostly about men, as more of the major characters are male and the narrative power in at least 3/5 of the books* sits entirely with them. I don't want the books that exist to be different in that respect, because I love them so much as they are, but mwt has proven again and again that one of the things she's amazing at is developing previously minor characters (Attolia, Kamet, Relius, Teleus, Sophos 2.0 I suppose...). I would love books from Agape, Heiro, Ina, Thalia, or Laela's point of view, but then I would love more books from ANY point of view... Anyway, yeah, her storytelling decisions wrt gender and focus make sense, and I love the resulting stories, but they are still decisions, which are always affected in some way by conventions and biases.

By the way, I'm holding out for that Gitta Kingsdaughter novel that's apparently definitely not happening. IT WOULD BE SO COOL!

*as in "who gets to tell the story" of TT, KoA, and TaT.

Edited Date: 5/28/17 09:12 pm (UTC)

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Anyway, yeah, her storytelling decisions wrt gender and focus make sense, and I love the resulting stories, but they are still decisions, which are always affected in some way by conventions and biases.

This! Been following Shannon Hale's twitter quite often lately (though I'm not on Twitter), and it's amazing how aware she is of this whole issue. Like you said, I wouldn't want the books to be any other way, but just because I love them, it doesn't mean that I get to pretend they're /not/ about men most of the time, you know? And there's nothing wrong with that, I like her male characters. They're cool. And I also agree with the list of female characters you wrote above; I'd personally really really want to see a book from Ina's POV!

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Yeah, there's nothing wrong with writing from a male perspective and Megan does a great job with that. There are so many great female minor characters that I hope at least one of them gets their own book someday.

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Yeah, definitely. MWT's male characters are also respectful towards women, which I think is really nice. Knowing now that MWT thinks Helen or Irene's perspective would be too "perfect," I think writing from a female minor character would be a great option instead.

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celebrilomiel.livejournal.com

Do you think there are any current female minor characters that could carry the perspective of a whole book? As much as I'd love to hear Ina's or Heiro's narrative voice, I think they're a little too sheltered from the action.

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I actually think Ina would be able to pull it off. I get a resourceful, adventurous vibe from her stint in ACoK. I think Agape might also pull one off. She's always being sent to marry some dude, it would be *so* entertaining to see what she thinks of that. I bet she's a clever little thing herself, with tricks up her sleeve.

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Considering she was left to deal with a disgruntle Gen, there's a lot more to Agape than meets the eye!

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celebrilomiel.livejournal.com

I certainly think Ina is capable as a POV character! She is resourceful, adventurous, clever, and strongly opinionated. It's just that she isn't in the thick of things in the Attolia court, like Costis was in KoA, and she's less likely to run around adventuring in the way Gen and Sophos were in TT, QoA, and CoK. So, circumstantially, locationally, is she in a position to carry a Gen's-plan-centric, Mede-vanquishing narrative? I think a book with her as the narrator would deviate from the main underlying thread of action. It'd be more of a side-journey, but without the same plot significance as Kamet's. I'd love, love a story from Ina's point of view, but I'm thinking it hasn't happened and probably won't happen because it'd be more of a detour from the plot arc. Is there something I'm missing about the plot, though, that would allow for her POV?

Agape is a much more likely POV candidate, if she's sent away to form an alliance and gives us an image of the world from another angle. That'd be a lot of fun, and I can see how it would work with the plot arc: she'd probably have been given an agenda to carry out and she would keep in touch with her connections, so we'd be able to see Gen's plans unfolding.

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Having just read a book about a minor, foreign character from 2 books ago who was enslaved I think MWT can write a book for ANY character and I can't think of any of her female characters who couldn't carry their own novel. That's the great thing about MWT's side characters; you know we're just hitting the tip of the iceberg. We don't know what those crafty ladies are up to but I'm convinced it's something great. ^^

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I was also thinking of Shannon Hale since she and MWT were recently speaking. Have you seen her annual breakdowns of animated films and m/f character ratios? That's really what I was thinking of when I was surprised MWT doesn't think her series is mostly focused on men. The m/f ratio makes it impossible for me to agree with her.

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YES! Her report was exactly what I was thinking of when I saw this post! You know it's a big deal when Dwayne Johnson retweeted it, hahaha!

I keep seeing arguments (in general, btw, not exactly in this thread) that it doesn't matter how many female characters there are, so long as the ones that do appear are great characters. And I heartily disagree with that; representation is important to me. It's more important to me to see several female characters who are weak and are shown how they struggle to overcome their flaws, than have a single female character that has everything and does everything and be everything *ahem Vin Venture ahem*. The fact that we even have to defend the need to have female characters sort of already underscores the problem anyway... after all, I haven't seen many debates on whether we should have male characters.

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I think its easy for writers to just make most to all of the minor characters male by default without really even thinking about it. That's big problem in movies, esspecially. There's also a lack of female protaganists in certain genres. Superhero *cough* movies *cough* ~~How many moives are you gonna make Marvel before you make one with a female lead? I know Joss Wedon said he wanted to make a Black Widow film!~~

The weird thing is that the ratios on Shannon Hale's reports seem to be either sorta equal or mostly all men. I don't think I saw any with mostly all women? It's something like 70% of all movies that have male leads.

Oh, and I do think number of female characters in literature and film does matter in the big picture! Characters like Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Gamora, and Pepper Pots are great but there are so few female superheros in the Marvel cinamatic universe in general.

I see a massive studio as an entirely different beast than a single book author. If MWT prefers to write about male characters? That's fine! If the Marvel writers who have worked for them so far prefere to write about male superheros, then they can just hire someone who wants to make a Black Widow movie. So, writer preference doesn't play into that equation as much in large studios, who are more concerned about what will make them money than what artists are creativly intererested in. (They are making a Miss Marvel film right now, so progress...)

In YA literature, there are so many more stories told from female perspectives than films. At least, it seems so to me. Enough to start a trend of puffy dress covers. I think QT is one of the few on my favs lists that is almost entirely male POVs. *goes to play with Google for data...

Our sample was limited to the Fall 2014 issue of the Guide, which reviewed all hardcover books published in the first six months of 2014 by U.S. publishers listed in LMP. Mariesa coded each fiction review in the Intermediate and Older Fiction sections for gender of protagonist(s): male, female, both, neither. The numbers for Older (books for 12-18-year-olds) were not surprising, except maybe to that zealot at Bookriot: 65% of the protagonists in YA novels were female, 22% were male, boys and girls shared main-character duties in 13%. I thought the numbers for Intermediate (roughly 9-12-year-olds) would be about the same but NO: 48% boys, 36% girls, 16% both. -Horn Book (http://www.hbook.com/2015/03/blogs/read-roger/gender-by-the-numbers/#_)

Also, HERE (http://booksofamber.com/2014/02/why-i-dont-care-about-the-female-to-male-ratio-in-ya.html) and HERE. (http://ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/38016.html)

Okay, it's not just me! That's interesting that MG has a much lower ratio... Huh.

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The weird thing is that the ratios on Shannon Hale's reports seem to be either sorta equal or mostly all men. I think that's her point, that most children's animated movies that came out didn't have gender parity. And she only counted characters who had, I believe, at least 3 lines. Shannon Hale also talks frequently about this issue with books and publishing, so while that specific report was the one that came to my mind, it comes within a larger context of the conversation about diversity.

But in my 2nd paragraph, I was actually referring to the publishing industry, not the film industry which is another can of worms (and one I'm not as invested in, because I don't watch movies often). As a writer myself, I don't want to take creative license from authors, so I mean, if they think their story works best with a mostly male cast, that's their choice. I don't think we should burden particular writers to cater to our tastes. To add to that, I think some of the responsibility falls on us as readers to ensure we're reading diverse things, things that push us out of our comfort zone anyway. I don't think a single writer or even a single book can do that. So yeah, read MWT, but don't read *just* MWT. We should also read authors who write stories in female perspectives, and like you've sourced, there's a great many choices for that especially in YA.

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Oh, I understood the purpose of the report, but I was surprised that not even one has a female majority. Then again I'm really not...

Mostly, I keep bringing up Marvel. because of how annoyed I am with them. *glares in the general direction of Marvel Studios

YES! (to the last paragraph)

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Oh, and I just wanted to add...

Did you notice the freak out when Rouge One was coming out about how Star Wars was being taken over by female characters? XD

Uh, in what world does four films equal six? Two of which haven't even come out yet. Also, Jyn was one female in a group of men. And even Rey is mostly surrounded by men.

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Yes, I have, even I who has never been invested in the Star Wars franchise, have sadly noticed the freak out. *le sigh*

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