Just finished reading Angelhawke (took me a week), it's one of the most detailed and thorough stories I've ever read. The main characters were written with a rare sense of humanity, they felt so much like genuine men rather than the usual biased perception of them. And women written as human rather than innocent victims and saints, so many fics have such a condescending attitude of women, and an insulting, inaccurate view of men and treat them as rivals rather than partners. Yet you're only 20?
took me 18 days to think of an answer for this I'm sorry
...and I still don't know how to answer
I don't feel like my age should be any indication of how decent a human being I am, or the importance of the opinions put into my work. I know that what gets consumed on the internet is as important as published work; fanfic is written by our peers, and we take our peers' opinions seriously. Therefore what I put in my fics must reflect the kind of people I believe the world does have, and the kind of way the characters of the world can change, for the better or the worse. I like the journey, because life is a journey omg
I'm comparatively young, maybe, but I've had enough time to ignore everything other [probably male] people assume about women and how to write female characters, and just write people doing things. Flaws and positive traits and backstories bubble up out of all my characters while I write, and I wouldn't stop it happening.
Innocent victims and saints are all well and good - hey, they have their place in a story, like any character, so long as they're still written like there's a person in there, having thoughts. I like to write with feeling, and you don't feel much unless what you're destroying is real. I like crushing things with my bare writerly hands c:
And as a woman, I'm unsure why I would even attempt to write a woman and not make her a valid character. I've done it wrong before, and I regret it - I've seen the error of my ways, and I'm really glad I never published that shit. I think my subconscious knew what was wrong and told me no.
So far, all my stuff is Dean/Cas centric, but I make an effort to have at least half my supporting characters be women. It's difficult to do when basing on a show that has like 15 women total in a cast of hundreds, but I do try.
I don't leave the house much, maybe once or twice a month. I haven't met new people for years. I have one male friend, and my dad, and I don't really know any other men personally. So basically, all my perceptions of men are drawn from fiction - mostly TV and other fanfics. Men make up the majority of characters (because that's the world we live in, sigh), but you know what I noticed? There are some male characters who act or say things that an actual person would do or say. That's the point, right? Well, that's how it works for women, too. Everyone is a p e r s o n, wow
(sorry that was overly snippy, it was directed at society and the media, not you)
I get that men in real life don't always say the same things as women would in any given situation, and they don't always think the same way. But I don't write for gendered accuracy. I just write people. Like I said at the top of this reply, I write how I want to shape the world to be. So I write the things I want men to be saying. Setting an example, maybe. Decent things; intelligent, non-misogynistic things. Sure, it's fantasy. It's fanfic. But all fiction is fantasy, in exactly the same way. We writers make shit up. I'm not going to lower that standard if(/when) I publish something original, either. If I make a character say or do something sexist/misogynistic/racist/homophobic/generally offensive/etc., I sure as hell am going to explain why that was wrong. Readers learn from it, even if it's subconscious.
But thank you. I read somewhere once that writers write not from experience, but from empathy. I guess I'm an goddamn empath, hell yeah!
