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[Bobby Isosceles]

I like the way Onstad writes women. The strip is a boy's club, sure. But female characters, when included, help drive the story and are not at the mercy of anyone or anything. They have agency. And they serve as foils to the aimless flailing of the male protagonists. It works.

Why are the ladies of the board the ones who are the most cool with this?

Also, while a lot of my conversations pass the Bechdel test, many do not. Do you know why? Two reasons: 1) Most of my friends are men, so I don't have conversations with women very often, and 2) I am a woman who likes men, and I like to discuss their finer qualities with my best lady friend. What kind of world would we live in if people got upset every time two straight men talked about a girl on screen?

One of the problems with the Bechdel test is that words and communication are often divorced. Two women chattering on about a man may not be talking about a man. They may be using the words as cover fire for body language and jockeying for social supremacy, as we primates are often prone to do. (Witness two men talking about their golf swing.) The words may be about a man, but the thoughts are about each other, and ways to come out as socially superior from this otherwise jejune conversation. This fails the Bechdel test in the letter of the law, but passes in the spirit.

Conversely, a man and a woman who have been married for 60 years and whose marriage has fallen into a rut, but who are both afraid of dying alone, may look at each other over their morning paper during a silent breakfast. Maybe it's a glare, maybe it's a look of longing or yearning for something long past. No words are spoken - but they have each other in mind, constantly. Whether they are kind thoughts, malicious thoughts, or a mixture is yet to be seen, but you can be damn sure they're thinking about each other.


 

[colmore]

I think it's kind of conspicuous that there aren't more female characters that aren't attached to a single male character through either motherhood or romance.

I live a pretty Achewoodish life.  I have a lot of social free time and relatively minimal responsibility for someone my age.  Athens, Georgia is a cousin in spirit and lifestyle to the kind of Bay Area and Portland hangin' out that Achewood depicts.  I'm a lot like an Achewood character.  I hang out, most often with a close group of male friends in their 30s, drink beers, smoke pot, and crack jokes, it's pretty much my primary thing after going to work and staying alive.  And yet all the time, I find myself in situations where it'll be me and two really funny women having a conversation and I'm not trying to sleep with either one of them and they're not trying to sleep with me and nobody is stressing out about the tensions between the sexes and what not.  We're just drinking cold ones and telling dirty jokes or making fun of some commercial or something.

And I feel like that sort of thing would happen to guys like Ray and Beef and Teodor.  It's pretty darn weird that none of them have any female buddies.

But lots of writers don't write certain types of people well.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But it is sort of a failing of the strip.  And the fact that culture-wide, so MUCH entertainment fails in this respect speaks to some bigger problems.

And it's made worse by the way that so MANY writers make up for not having any female protagonists by creating female characters that wait around in the wings of the narrative to nag and hold the protagonist back.  Why is every rogueish anti-hero married to some uptight wet blanket.  The guys I know who like getting into trouble tend to date girls who also like getting into trouble.  This kind of thing pisses me off.

But please don't get me wrong.  Achewood is my favorite non-printed comic strip ever, and I don't mean to suggest something like... Octopus Pie... with better written females is automatically better art, it isn't (but I do love Octopus Pie).  But being awesome doesn't make Achewood perfect.

[dejavroom]

Ah, the "completely ignore examples that counter your point of view" gambit. A time-honored tactic, if I may say so.

Consensual sex my ass, what really turns me on is some old-fashioned consensual reality. Too bad I won't be getting none today, it's been ages since I got some of that sweet action.

[colmore]

No, it's more the completely ignore a too-long-for-a-forum rant that seemed like it comes from an unbalanced dude.

[dejavroom]

Fuck, spotted again! Damn those structured paragraphs and cogent argumentation! Damn them all to hell!

[pmcd9]

No, it's more the completely ignore a too-long-for-a-forum rant that seemed like it comes from an unbalanced dude.

And here I was taking you seriously until I read that.

[wombat]

No, it's more the completely ignore a too-long-for-a-forum rant that seemed like it comes from an unbalanced dude.

Now, now, this is what a polite "TL;DR" was invented for.

[theinevitable]

I mean, that whole rant at the top where he pretends he doesn't know what Colmore was trying to say was a pretty big turn off. I almost closed the screen right there. Give me a break.

But here:

Every one of your examples is a bad example. None of these examples contain a fully formed character.

Women according to Achewood: "The lady is the mountain behind the tiny flaming fis.hing cabin of the man". Can you read that metaphor? What do you think it implies (not in terms of how interesting female characters are in the strip, but in what might be the author's opinion of them -- which can't help but colour how he's gonna portray them)?

If you don't get how putting women on a weird pedestal is part and parcel of misogyny and sexism then I don't know what to say. A woman saying a correct thing in a strip does not mean anything in re: sexism/not writing women well unless our main sexist idea about women was "they are incorrect about things." The idea of a nagging lady who is or is not correct is pretty firmly established as a lady-hating trope. Molly exists only as a foil for Beef. Which is, I guess, fine. The strip is about Roast Beef. But pointing it out, and pointing out that this is true of every other female character, is not equivalent to censorship by a totalitarian government, or even "the germ" of it. That is completely asinine. I didn't come in here and say that your thinking has the "germ" of saying that Minstrel Shows are OK as long as they're well done-- because slippery slope arguments (or is this more reductio ad absurdam?) are not very effective or helpful. I don't see anyone "demanding" that onstad meet an invisible sociopolitical goalpost. I see some people saying, hey, it's too bad he does such crappy female characters. I don't think that that is tangential to the matter at hand, or irrelevant. It's half the damn human population.

But reading your following paragraph, we are not going to agree, because you think Art and Thinking About Art are very important. I don't. I think it's a damn comic strip.

[dejavroom]

I mean, that whole rant at the top where he pretends he doesn't know what Colmore was trying to say was a pretty big turn off. I almost closed the screen right there. Give me a break.

If you think what I said in the first paragraph doesn't apply to what colmore was saying, there's not a lot I will be able to do for you. Do you think "thought experiment" is some sort of magical phrase that can excuse speculative scenarios from, you know, making sense? Yes, colmore was doing a thought experiment. A very shitty thought experiment, because thought experiments ungrounded in reality yield results similarly disconnected, and so are useless. I find it surreal that I have to explain this.

But here:

Every one of your examples is a bad example. None of these examples contain a fully formed character.

Again, typed very slowly: A peripheral character (i.e., by definition not as fully formed) doesn't have to be badly written.

If you don't get how putting women on a weird pedestal is part and parcel of misogyny and sexism then I don't know what to say. I like honey muffins.

Now who's ranting? At least my rant was germane (brought to you courtesy of TLAD School) to the matter at hand. Mysoginy is a sad fact of the world, and it's a fine subject for discussion, but I have to insist in directing the topic towards the original point: female characters in Achewood, despite not being protagonists, are well-written and have funny, quotable dialogue. I provided examples. You tried to disqualify them by saying the females are not fully formed characters, but that was never my contention.

But reading your following paragraph, we are not going to agree, because you think Art and Thinking About Art are very important. I don't. I think it's a damn comic strip.

Allow me to clarify: When I mentioned Achewood as art, I meant "art" as craft. There's a very blurry line there that I'm not willing to try and define at the moment, and my post didn't get into that in detail, but I certainly don't think of Achewood as belonging to the same circle as an Eliot play, or Mahler's works. You read so badly, you misread even this: Like you, I also think that Achewood is a damn (fine) comic strip (I do think that Art and Thinking About Art are very important things, so at least you got that).

[wombat]

It's interesting how the men who are arguing about how women are portrayed in Achewood seem totally uninterested in the women's reactions to how women are portrayed in Achewood.

Was that trolling? I'm not sure, I've never done it before.

[dejavroom]

...the men... seem totally uninterested... in the women's reactions

Speaking of people not being interested in other people's opinions, wasn't it funny when colmore admitted purposefully ignoring my post (which she promptly dismissed as a "rant")?

[colmore]

Oh, for clarification, I am a middle-class southern white hetero cis male well past the age when one is surrounded by 20 year old idealists.  And proud of it, like everyone should be proud of who they are.  But I'll take that "she" as a complement, given the context.

I didn't really mean to start such a thing as this, and I don't like trying to "win" internet arguments so, I'm going to say my last piece on this subject and that is:

If this storyline results in punk-rock Penny becoming a regular and fun member of the gang and joining in both Stellas and adventures in amusing and likeable fashion, I'll be pleased as punch.

[edited to say a second thing]

[dejavroom]

But I'll take that "she" as a complement, given the context.

Haha, dude, you just failed the Bechdel test.

(Disregard if the pun was intentional, in which case congratulations, it was a nice pun.)

[theinevitable]

wombat, I am interested in your opinion. But you are expressing it too reasonably for me to know how to respond to it. It is definitely making me question whether part of the problem is my own reading of the characters, since you are both a woman and a person whose opinions about writing I trust. Deja don't read that previous sentence.



No, I do actually know what a thought experiment is. You are incorrect. You wrote a paragraph explaining why his thought experiment would not occur in real life. A thought experiment is imaginary. Colmore's suggestion is this: if roles were reversed, would you still have the same opinion? I don't see anything insane or unreasonable or worth condescending to about that. If, instead, this state of affairs were to happen suddenly (maybe a secret cabal of hyperfeminists take over all media), do you think most people would be upset and think this was unfair? If it helps you use your imagination, you can think about how blood-shitting mad society gets about women achieving equality in some spheres, and how even in our tilted-towards-men society people like Men's Rights Activists exist because they are so threatened by the progress of women.

Again, typed very slowly: A peripheral character (i.e., by definition not as fully formed) doesn't have to be badly written.

Yes, they don't have to be, but they are. The things I said about misogyny and (muffins?) are germane because creating female character after female character who is a misogynist shortcut does not seem like lovingly devoting time to each and every character. Maybe this is my own failing and I am not seeing the brilliance of "mean welsh lady who says a correct thing one time" or "punk chick who likes Teodor" or "witty stripper lady who likes cornelius." You keep pointing out that they are peripheral characters, but I think that is part and parcel of the issue. How many male protagonists do we have? Beef, Pat, Ray, Teodor, Cornelius, Phillippe, Lyle. Maybe Todd, Nice Pete, Liebot, and Vlad as something in between, as they have definitely had their own little plotlines (***** plotlines, murder plotlines, whatever) that are sometimes independent of the big guys. The male characters are developed, and each have at the very least their function/niche-- Liebot is a tricky guy, Vlad's joke is that he is a ***** who acts like The Love Guru or whatever the appropriate reference is, Nice Pete kills people. What is Molly's "function" in the story? Or Polly's? Penny's? Onstad only brings in a female character when he needs a love interest or a mom. When, for instance, he introduces Rod Huggins, Rod has a series of storylines as the funny gay porn guy before he becomes Pat's love interest. The ladies only appear when it's time for one of the male characters to get lucky/get loved. Unfortunately to act as a foil for RB's depression and anxiety and feeling bad about himself, Molly has to be so, so, so boring. Her whole character is "too good for beef, so perfect, and sometimes she gets mad or upset but oh boy does he deserve it."

And I guess I must be real bad at reading, because I am looking at that paragraph again, and you said the words Art and Artist about twice per sentence. Including talking about Art as an organic whole, and referring to the (film) artist Tartovsky. You even mentioned people not understanding what "Art is and what it exists for (your capitals)." So what am I misreading there?

[colmore]

I've never found Molly hateable.  Just boring and one-note.  She's the lone normal dull person in a world full of amusing personalities.