unnoticed-and-necessary:

Because this is still on my mind even after sleep, shower, and food…

It makes me kind of mad how often female characters are invalidated or marginalized in fandoms. And by “kind of mad” I mean “sometimes edging on furious,” because it’s really not fair. It’s damn near impossible to write a likeable female character because female characters, much like real life females, are always going to be scrutinized too harshly.

If a female character is sweet, compassionate, loving, etc., then she’s judged as weak, as a doormat, as stupid.

By contrast, if she’s a tough, no-nonsense sort of gal who has a lot of power (physical or otherwise) then she’s a bitch.

If she doesn’t have much going on for her, if she’s sort of ordinary, then she’s boring, bland.

If she’s a badass mofo who can fly and shoot lazers from her eyes and is really good a playing the violin and painting and has a lot of money, then she’s a Mary Sue.

And no matter what she is, it’s likely she’ll be called a skank, a whore, a slut, etc. And now that I’m thinking about it, that “bitch” title is pretty versitile, too.

I’m a writer. I dream of writing novels and I have a thousand stories running around in my head, and most of them have female leads. And I’m worried about this. These characters are very near and dear to me and I think they’re wonderful.

But female characters are always judged so much more harshly than male characters. For every decision, every mistake, every action or inaction, every word. Anything a female character does can be taken negatively, and it often is. It’s like there’s no way out, no way to win.

It’s all very misogynistic and it pisses me off.

I don’t know where I’m going with this other than just trying to vent my frustrations. I think it would be nice if, instead of being quick to judge a character, any character, people would try to put themselves in that character’s shoes. You won’t always be able to understand them this way, because, even though they’re fictional, sometimes their experiences just differ too much from your for you to understand.

I know I’d like it if people would, when finding themselves disliking a female character, step back and ask themselves why, and if they would still dislike this character if she were male.

I’d like that a lot.

THIS. SO MUCH.

…And that’s not the only reason, IMHO, female characters get fandom hate also because of how a majority of the fandom does pairings. From what I’ve seen in about 2+ fandoms, I keep seeing female characters that have a love interest being hated because they aren’t male. Most of these people have almost all their OTPs be MalexMale pairings. It’s very sickening because some of these female characters can be/are likeable. So I get really peeved when a female character gets hated for doing something, but a male character gets loved/sympathy for doing the same thing just because they’re part of some yaoi OTP. It’s not that I hate Yaoi/Same Sex pairings, but the fandom’s tendencies to bash a girl for not having a penis to have buttsex with another guy keeps me on the verge of hating it.

So TL;DR: Female Characters get fandom hate due to Sexism AND pairing preferences.