The Bechdel Test

Female characters and the Bechdel test

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBechdelTest

Women are people too. I know, shocking isn’t it? Thing is, Hollywood needs more prodding to make it seem that way. Women don’t just talk about men (or shopping). They talk about other stuff too. Like other women, themselves, food, travel (especially?), environment, work, money, dreams, fears, hopes, children, marriage, sexuality, sex, sexism (fem rant), crime, violence, emotions, sins, religion, politics (sometimes), technology, science, art, music, screen, books, games, any form of entertainment really… you name it, they do actually talk about it. But some works, regardless of how feminist or misogynist, whatever the genre or quality of the work, only have female characters talking to each other (if ever) about men. Some of them even branch out adventurously to such topics as shopping! (gasp!).

So for a male writer, who wants to adequately capture a scene with two or more women talking about stuff, and not about men, well the above could be a good checklist to aspire to filling out. Hell, it’s a good checklist for all characters to discuss at any point.

Children of Fire sort of passes the test – Jessica said to Sarah that she “always wanted a girlfriend to go shopping with” in a faux-lesbian moment (for comedy value). They’d talk about either common interests (trying to find them) or they’d bitch about being together, or about other women.

I have three women in the series, and three main males. These women are, or at least were, originally designed as the girlfriends of the main characters. Being a boy with no female friends for all of school, reminders that girls have minds of their own too were few and far between (yay internet). So how can I make sure my works include more female interaction?

The main point is that two or more women have to be present, talking, and that it’s about stuff other than men. Men may be present. Talking about men may be present in the work… but if that’s the only conversation, and it’s only about men, then it fails, as does having only one woman in the work (ie: The Chick). See also Token Romance Subplot, which could be removed without damage to the rest of the work, it’s that arbitrary and pointless.

And now here’s a poll.

What do women talk most about?

Stages of Plot

How’s this for a plot outline template? (will be expanded on, this is just as a basic description because I feel a bit sleepy).

 

The hero: Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

The stasis: Life, before anything bad happens. Where you show character as-is before external influence.

The problem: aka the Inciting Incident. Something bad happens.

The quest: to stop more bad stuff happening.

The obstacles (antagonists): everything that stands in the way of success

The villain: the antagonist is revealed…

The climax: …and confronted! Protagonist versus antagonist… fight!

The resolution: the result of beating the bad guy (physical plot, aka adventure) or confronting the demon/s (personal plot, aka quest)

 

Flaws

I distinctly recall someone saying that Jarred, who is serious, can’t be sarcastic as well (bollocks, I say). But there are good intentions in that; for example, you don’t want someone being immensely complicated from page 1. The more complicated someone is, the more flaws they have, the less they can slide – for fairly mainstream fair, you don’t really want that, do you? Point is, you should start simple and work from the beginning. Start small, simple, and develop – be it growing to overcome flaws or devolving into something monstrous. Complexity should build up, not be overpowering from the start (9 times out of 10, anyway – the difference being deliberately depressing, fatalistic or high-brow fiction).

With this in mind I gave my characters one or two basic strengths, and I’m thinking a lot on what kind of flaws they’d have. I think starting with one strength and one flaw is perfectly fine; the actual number isn’t important, just as long as it isn’t double digits, at least for mainstream fiction. Too flawed and it A) won’t be a best seller (unless we really are a sick, sad bunch) and B) will come off being an Anit-Mary-Sue – the flaws will just be too much to handle, the ‘realism’ will be too much to handle, it’ll just end up looking like artifice wherein the flaws are transparent plot devices, and you’d have to be a genius to pull it off at all.

So, anyone familiar with my characters: what flaws do they seem like they’d have? I think they’d have these:

Jarred: irritable, uncaring (result of irritable + members getting on his nerves one too many times, thus a later-book flaw), and resentful of other’s happiness. And maybe develops a bad case of It’s Someone Else’s Problem.

David: lazy, procrastinator, cannot make decisions.

Sarah: cannot spit it out, cannot appreciate her own work (deaf composer), doesn’t like being looked at.

Jessica: greedy, materialistic, angry, proud.

Rachel: she might be a bad liar. So bad that her convoluted responses make no sense and don’t fool anybody. Or maybe not. Nor would she know her own strength. Probably has no sense of direction, either.

Rappers these days…

A friend’s most-recent status goes like this:

”Girls bounce on my lap like a laptop…” Wow, the talent of current musicians just blows me away. Just so great.

To which my response is:

So… they cost $500-1000, they’re heavy, take longer to get going the older they get, are obsolete the next week, and if you keep them on your lap for long enough they lower your sperm count and/or irradiate your genitals?

John Shepherd

I explained something to my brother today: Mass Effect’s Commander Shepherd, default-named John… ie: John Everyman.

The protagonist of Mass Effect is named John Shepherd by default. He’s also the kind of guy who shaves his head more than he shaves his face, and doesn’t look like he knows how to smile (he does, but that’s more if you take Paragon choices and comfort people instead of bashing their face in). Male Paragon Shepherd feels a bit more of a Psychologist than a Space Marine, to me. Kind of textbook at talking to people. Kind of like our Prime Minister, actually… hehe. “Fem Shep” by comparison sounds like a soldier chick should, even as a paragon. Her name’s Jane, as in John and Jane Doe or John and Jane Smith. Johnny sounds textbook because he is clearly a blank slate for adolescent men to project themselves onto (which, let’s face it, is the point of space marine games). He’s the last 20 FPS game’s protagonist. He’s Bella Swan with a gun and ammo – metaphorically and literally. (oh hey, that reminds me… http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally) Fem Shep has a lot more personality, which I know from experience.

Did you also know that Stargate Atlantis has a John Shepherd? Crazy ain’t it.

On another note, today I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was okay, not great. My only real complaint was it was hard to follow in a confusing way, not a complex one. There’s a different: complex is good, confusing isn’t. So feel free to be complex, just make sure it it’s clear. The action was enjoyable, the slow-motion bits near the end awesome visually, though the dialogue felt like it was squashed in. And in a bout of brain-fail I got my ticket, drink and edibles an hour early. I failed Maths today, and apparently English too when I updated my Facebook status. Sigh. At least I wasn’t using my own money.

What? I got a gift card for Christmas. It wasn’t like I pirated it. Though speaking of pirates, I found a very fun book at Pulp Fiction last week, and got another in the series today at my second-favourite still-in-business bookstore, Dymocks. The staff asked if I needed a hand just as I found exactly what I was looking for. Talk about timing!

Dinner tonight was a sausage roll with tomato sauce (the only kind you need), leftover stir-fry chicken and apple sauce. Mmmm, I love me some apple sauce…

Books and stuff

I don’t really have a lot to say at the moment. Except for maybe two things.

I went to Pulp Fiction this week. That basically means I’m out of pocket $80. But I think I bought a good batch of books. I just finished one of them today, The Iron Jackal, and enjoyed it. Another one, Patrick Rothfuss – my latest favourite – says “It’s like it was written just for me”, which was my impression of Name of the Wind, his first book. So that should be damn good.

I got back to playing Skyrim the last couple days. It would be helpful if the main quest was highlighted somehow – with all these unfinished ones lying around, it’s confusing. Modders could help with that, but I don’t have it on pc, because I’ll need both a new graphics card and a new cpu – surprise surprise – and I just don’t feel like getting new ones. It’s not a major problem anyway. Back to Skyrim. I’m not sure I necessarily like having to join a certain shady group to advance the plot, but on the other hand, I don’t mind collecting money for said group. It’s actually kinda fun being a mafia guy, in a way. Bloody hell they’re making me do a lot of leg work to meet one guy though. Ah well. Game’s still fun. Rage is fun too. Dead Island is kind of a flop. Might trade that one in. Lord of the Rings: War In The North is good. And my brother and I have finished a marathon of Stargate SG1, and we’ve moved on to Atlantis – about half of that to go, then we’ll probably watch Universe 2 or 3 more times because it’s pure awesome and I don’t care what you say, it’s the Stargate that isn’t lame at all. Well, okay, the part where the scientist named the planet Futura was pure lame. But aside from that…

Oh yeah, I explained Firefly to my dad today. He didn’t really react, as per usual, so I don’t know what he thought of it from that.

Past blast

Today, while taking the bus to the shops so I could get a new USB stick, it passed an old crush from 2007. Yeah, her. Well, I’m 99.99% sure it was her. And I felt basically nothing further. Good to know I’ve completely moved on. Still single mind you – that ain’t going away any time soon – but definitely no longer fixated on this girl. The ties are definitely severed.

I did walk past a real cutie in the shop-I-knew-her-from uniform at one point, though. *notes the time and date*

So, NYE 2011. Friend’s party on the coast. 2 hours to decide to get a cab, 2 hours waiting, giving up and getting the neighbour to drive 8 or 9 of us in a 4wd, a mad dash to a crowded bus and a half hour wait for an even more crowded connecting bus. Arrived at Surfer’s beer garden half an hour till midnight. Band rocked, but then an hour of club music made me feel homicidal because fuck club music, that’s why. Hour and a half wait for cab back to their place and heaps of pressure to keep drinking. Dickheads changed their minds about me when I told them my personal story though. So yeah… interesting night.

The bar-tending girls in schoolgirl outfits was just the icing on the cake.

A little something from the next book…

On New Year’s Eve 2039, Tesla Squad broke into an office building for a document, only to find the place rigged to blow and an employee about to trigger an explosion.

Showing poetry some love

I recently wrote a bit of a sort of love letter to a girl I sort of really admire. Obviously, the sentence structure in it was much nicer than the previous sentence. But I found the experience kinda cool, actually. You know, in a dorky, mushy, quasi-romantic way. Then I discovered she doesn’t have a letterbox – so much for that idea.

Anyway, after reading up on the TvTropes (there’s that site again!) definition of a Five Man Band, somehow I winded up on advanced characterization or something – terms with more depth than ‘Hero’, ‘Lancer’ (sidekick), ‘Big Guy’, ‘Smart Guy’ and ‘Girl’; terms like ‘Boistrous Bruiser’ and ‘Spirited Champion’ and even one for ‘Warrior Poet’ which I found cool (not a new concept for me, but one I haven’t so much as thought about in years).

So, to better flesh out the character I think I’d like to make evolve into a Warrior Poet, I thought I should start learning poetry. So I will. It’ll be nice to see what I come up with in the way of “poetry of the booze and bullets variety”.