WIR? (Spoilers)

Oh. Well that's a bit anticlimactic.

'Who Will Die?!?'
'Exactly. Who?'

On the topic, when the writers were asking themselves Who to off, surely somebody should have said 'it can't be a woman, or there'll be a WiF thread on the forums within minutes'.

Eco

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Add bullet-time?

Eco

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

This kind of bothers me, to be honest. For some reason, whenever guys talk about what "appeals to girls," they always think about things they'd be ashamed to associated to, which in turn is really not what girls generally find appealing.

When Orange County Choppers decided to make a bike for a biker woman, Paul Jr. spent probably a day not knowing what to do, tossing around ideas like painting it pink, fabricating hearts on it and other nonsense like this. Now, he didn't do any of that - he was just stumped for ideas, but that's what guys think when they think about what appeals to girls. What they finally ended up making was a largely green and black bike with a scale pattern, sort of like a viper bike. After speaking with the woman for a while, they discovered she had a fascination with snakes. The end result was a bike that the lady really liked, and the guys were very impressed with, as well. They didn't have to produce a bike they hated or that wasn't a "chopper" in order for it to appeal to a woman.

The reason I say this is to insist that comic books very much CAN "appeal to girls" without appealing any less to guys. Comic books (and really, most media) don't need to become worse for one gender to be better for the other. They need to simply become BETTER in order to appeal to BOTH genders. Men and women are not different species of creatures. They can enjoy many of the same things, especially when those things are of a high quality.

Obviously, when comic books are sexist, women won't enjoy them. How could they? But then, I'm of the opinion that men should be so gung-ho about seeking sexist comic books, either. As far as I'm concerned, they don't have to change to appeal to both genders. They need to improve.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, this kind of bothers me, to be honest.

Perhaps you're reading a bit too much of yourself into my comment. I don't know. But the basic premises here was that "current comic books don't appeal to girls". I don't think it's that much of a reach to worry, if you're a guy and find current comic books appealing, that changes to current comic books might run the risk of making them less appealing to you than they are today.

Or they may run the risk of making them MORE appealing. Personally, I'd enjoy comic books, comic book movies and comic book cartoons more if they featured more strong, lead female characters without making me worry they'd get humiliated, murdered in a horrible fashion or "need a man." That's one reason why over half of my own City of Heroes characters are female - that's just more interesting to me.

More generally, I didn't really assume what you meant in your specific comment. I'm sure you meant well. There is, however, this tendency among the male fans of pretty much anything to put their "machismo" on the line for their fandom and then see women getting into it as a challenge. Most men also seem to have no real concept of what women actually want and like, defaulting to age-old unfair stereotypes, assuming for something to appeal to girls, it would have to feature pink unicorns, colourful rainbows and lots of cute guys. This is as much a mistake as assuming that for something to appeal to men, it must feature guns, monster trucks and breasts.

Arguing against change - any change in any way whatsoever - for the fear of it making things worse is counter-productive. There's a reason we don't play as many point-and-click adventures these days, there's a reason we have relatively fewer exploitation movies. Tastes change, genres evolve and new ideas are introduced. Obviously, not all of them are good, but being trapped in time as the world evolves around you is a tantamount to absolute doom.

Easy example - most "gamers" who reminisce about old games with fondness and nostalgia talk about the likes of Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog and even Gauntlet, from time to time. They harken back to the "good old days" of aimless side-scrollers and horrible shooters in the vein of Doom. Me, I'm a child of the 90s. Super Mario was more than old news by the time I could read and I only really played Gauntlet once when I was about 5 years old, and it was an old game even then. I grew up on the likes of Tomb Raider (2, not the original), the original Diablo. Before that, at the very earliest of my memories, lie games like Captain Comic, the oldest Prince of Persia and Test Drive 2. Those are the games I reminisce about and, quite frankly, I hold no interest for the accepted "classic" games. I've tried Contra and hated it, I've tried Super Mario and HAAAATED it, I've tried a lot of the old "classics" years after they were no longer relevant, and hated all of them.

I'm not a fan of comic books per se. I find them to be a bit sexist, a lot depressing and far too convoluted. I would never have so much as cared about their respective characters if it weren't for the 90s Fox Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons, or the Batman, Super Man JLA cartoons, and those are... Not exactly true to the comic books, put it like that.

Everything changes. Whether it's for the better or for the worst isn't always clear, but to insist that any genre should never change is, in my opinion, absurd. Comic books have already changed greatly from the golden age to the silver age to the dork age to these days. And frankly... The Golden Age was REALLY stupid, at least looking at it from where I'm sitting.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

[EDIT: Fixed misattributed quote]

This is why I made the point about Teen Paranormal Romance and similar genres. There are super powered characters and who are appealing to female fan bases. They just have a different aesthetic. Compare the plot of a Sookie Stackhouse novel to a comic book arc. Can you tell the difference?

There are plenty of reasons many women don't read comics. One that hasn't been brought up yet is that, let's face it, comics are a socially tainted genre. They are associated with juvenility and geekdom. Women may not read many comics, but neither (presumably) do "alpha men" in the language of mainstream social hierarchy. Reading comic books is often interpreted in society at large as something to be ashamed of. (Comic book movies on the other hand seem to be more allowable.) When women are attracted to something like Twilight or True Blood, it could be the case that part of that is explicitly because it is not a comic book. If you took the same stories and made comics of them the appeal may be questionable.

In the long run the question may not be how to get more women into comic books, but why is the barrier draw at "superheroes" specifically and not "people with super (sometimes supernatural) powers."

This is what I disagree with. I get that men and women don't have the exact same tastes, even though I'd attribute that to peer pressure more than anything else. But you speak as if anything women like is necessarily and entirely opposed to what men like and as though it's impossible to create a story which appeals to both men and women without gutting it. That's simply not true.

First of all, "women" are not a monolithic whole that shares the exact same tests and sensibilities like a race of shared consciousness aliens. At least, no more so than one can define what "men" like. I dare say the differences in preference from person to person is far greater than the differences in preference between ALL women and ALL men. A person's tastes are not shaped by the type of genitalia said person was born with, not solely and only, and not even primarily. A person's tastes are shaped by that person's personality and that person's life experiences.

In fact, this fear of comic books being "ruined" by making them more appealing to women because women don't read comic books and would want something completely different is a lot like the belief that women don't play video games and to make video games appeal to women, they'd have to be My Little Pony Online or Hello Kitty Online, because women obviously don't like "male games." Yet here we are, playing an online game that is pretty much all about punching other people in the face and earning points for it... And we have an enormous female presence. Clearly, both the men and women who play City of Heroes like some of the same things. Right?

---

Actually... Let's go back to peer pressure. When I was younger, about the age when kids play with toys, I actually preferred to play with Barbie dolls over action figures, and for one simple reason - Barbie dolls were very high quality, very well articulated and very well engineered. Action figures, by contrast, were cheap plastic casts with shoddy painting and stiff, awkward joings. And they broke a lot. A Barbie doll at the time was simply a superior product with greater functionality. But a Barbie was a "girl's toy," so it was wrong of me to want one, and this was told to me by my friends, my parents and quite literally everybody. I didn't even like the "Barbie" aesthetic anyway, I just wanted a more mobile toy, but boys were expected to be dumb and play by slamming their toys together, whereas girls were expected to pose them, so I got garbage to play with. Feh!

Similarly, I got a few cool Lego sets when I was a kid, but nothing really big as those things were expensive and you don't spend huge money on toys where I come from. Your kids basically play with whatever's left from their older siblings. Well, over the last couple of years I realised that, being an adult, I no longer had to have Lego sets given to me as presents, so I went out and bought the ones I'd always wanted. So far, I've spent close to $300 on Lego sets. The last I acquired (as a present, no less ) is a smaller scale Millennium Falcon which cost $150 on its own.

Peer pressure would tell me this is stupid. I'm no longer a child, so why am I buying toys for myself? Why did I pay the equivalent of $50 to buy Nerf Maverick toy gun? Why did I pay $120 for Lego's Space Police III Galactic Enforcer? Why, indeed, have I sunk probably close to $1500 into City of Heroes over the last five years? To people who try to apply peer pressure on me, that's money out the window. I've had to argue with people and I've had to fight to justify my right to spend my money however I god damn please, paying for things other people find "silly."

All of this is to say that "girls" and "women" don't like any one single thing unless we buy into what peer pressure says they should like. You don't have to make a product "girly" in order for it to appeal to women and you very much CAN make a product which appeals to both men and women without disillusioning either side. Hell, W.I.T.C.H. is pretty much a girl's show entirely, but because it's actually GOOD and well-written, it's still one of my all-time favourites, certainly a lot more so than A.T.O.M., which seems to have been written for mindless boys and is just hollow on the inside.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sure, that's a "risk." I just don't think it's very likely (at least, I can't think of any examples where that has actually happened).

I wouldn't hate more strong lead female characters, but the presence of a strong female lead doesn't mean instant girl appeal. It takes more than a main character to appeal to girls, in my experience. Like an entirely different story focus. I have no statistical data, I just have three very different sisters and I'm pretty confident I wouldn't enjoy a comic book written for any of them as its core audience (such as the Wendy example).

Which is fine. I don't expect to enjoy their comic books. I don't need to enjoy their comic books. And I certainly wouldn't want to campaign for their comic books to be made more enjoyable for me.

If that is how it is coming across, that is not what I mean. I don't think I've said anything about TPR that other people haven't said about comic books. It is a genre that appeals primarily to females. I haven't said anything about it being impossible to create a genre that appeals to multiple audiences. Since you agree with me that "comics" are primarily a male genre the rest of your post makes little sense to me. My point was that we don't have to look far for content involving super powered beings that has strong female appeal, because it already exists. It's just rarely classified with comic books, perhaps in part because just being associated with comic books and the dorkiness involved there might turn off some potential readers.



Yet you feel comfortable talking about how comics are a men's genre and need to do more to appeal to women. I don't understand where the above statements are coming from at all. I also feel that by giving me a lecture about Sexism 101 you are implying something very sinister about my motives. IMO it's inappropriate and offensive.


[EDIT: Changed to correctly respond to a misread of the final question. When I originally responded I read the final question as a rhetorical "Clearly men and women like different things.]

I have no idea how you got this out what I wrote, when my entire post about similarities between comic books and material popular with women! IMO this is guilt by association at best. I'm not going to respond to it because it's framing both what I wrote and me as a person in a way that is IMO inappropriately charged with sexist implications.




None of that is in question. Again I don't know how you got that out of what I wrote.

Of course it's possible. I'm sure there's no particular male or female bias towards, say, The Da Vinci Code or A Song of Ice and Fire (though actually I know more women who have read and enjoyed ASoIaF than men, which surprised me), or the 'trendy Swedish crime novel of the day'.

But this thread isn't about that. This thread is essentially "guys like this, girls don't. Thus it much change." Which I strongly disagree with. Don't change it. Add to it. If you have the great idea for a comic book that all boys and girls will enjoy equally, then go ahead and write it (or inspire someone else to).

Watchmen is a good example. That series seem to have a pretty broad cross-gender appeal, perhaps because of a more mature in scope. Which might actually be the key.

But that's not the issue I'm reacting to. I simply don't think that the comic book genre mostly appealing to boys is because the comic book industry is evil and actively discouraging girls from reading (Calvin grew up, didn't he ). I think it's because being geeky is more of a masculine trait, and comic books are just a geeky hobby. No offence. (This is actually something of a personal study of mine, that ties into my dad's work on autism... let's not get sidetracked.)

Wait, when did I say that? All I said is I feel comic books can appeal to men AND women at the same time.

I'm not accusing you of sexism at all. I'm just saying that to speak about what appeals to "women" and what doesn't appeal to "women" requires one to assert that there is a set of tastes that all or at least most women share. The problem is I disagree with the idea of things which appeal to men vs. things that appeal to men, seeing it as a false dichotomy. As I said before, the "noise" among the tastes of both men and women is, I'd wager, far greater than the difference between the two sets of tastes.

If we're going to speak about tastes as though we have statistics, it would be better to separate people into more consistent subsections, such as background, age group or even specific fandom. If, for instance, you tell me that Twighlight fans are not going to appreciate WH40K Space Marine, or that Meg Ryan fans might not be fans of Cryss Abyss, then I could potentially agree with you. After all, people's tastes do often have their internal logic, at least to some degree, so it's possibly to guess at some tastes knowing others.

But to assert that there is any one thing which "appeals to women" and any one thing that "doesn't appeal to women" - and I'm talking about things that aren't universally appealing to people of any gender (like happiness) vs. things that are universally reviled by people of any gender (like torture) - just seems wrong to me. And I'm not crying sexism here. If anything, I'd call it harmless generalisation. On the whole, I'd honestly like to move away from trying to guess "what women want," as that one movie put it, simply because I don't think there IS any one thing that women want. It's a question what each woman - and each person in general - wants specifically.

Personally, I reject the whole notion of things that appeal to men vs. things that appeal to women, largely because that's a vicious circle. Society teaches young boys and girls what they're supposed to like and what they're supposed to be ashamed of, then they exhibit those learned likes and dislikes, forming the generalisations we speak of, which then further encourages people to produce content for those generalisations and feeding the loop right back into society.

I only ever want to group people by the conscious decisions they make, not by the physical characteristics they share. I want it to be acceptable for men to like "girly" stuff and I want it to be seen as less of a spectacle when women like "guy" stuff. We managed to accept girl gamers as a concept, even though games were seen as "guy stuff" for the longest time, and we really didn't have to change games all that much to do it. Why is it so unbelievable that women might actually like comic books as a concept without having to change them, other than just shooting for better writing and artwork?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Bluntly: what the heck are you talking about? I wasn't talking about women's and men's tastes in general. I was talking about a specific genre that appeals heavily to women. Do you disagree that Paranormal Romance appeals more strongly to women than men? If not, why are you blowing the issue up from a specific observation about the genres to a statement about people in general?


You're right. It IS a false dichotomy, and one I haven't written about at all.


It does to me too, which is why I didn't write anything like that.


Why is it so hard to believe women have the agency to select what they want to read for themselves? Obviously ALL women don't like Romance novels, but it will take a heck a lot of evidence to show that it's not a genre more typically enjoyed by women than by men.

As far as motivating women to read more comic books, I don't care either way because I don't read comic books. I just hope we don't get a thread soon with posters who wrap themselves in pink flag trying to convince people comics need to recruit me without consulting me first about why I don't read them or considering that I have the agency to select what I want (in my case, paranormal romance before comic books for sure).

That may well be, but I'd be interested to know WHY that is. What I refuse to accept is that women, by virtue of biology and nothing else, are inherently more drawn to these novels than men are. I'm not contesting that they are. I'm sure you know what you're talking about. What I'm contesting is whether this is inherent in "being a woman" more so than an instance of upbringing, culture, peer pressure and so on. In essence, is it something hardcoded in women by rule of birth, or is it something that can be chosen.

Frankly - and I apologise for saying this again - the way you describe the tastes of women (and by biological extension, of all people) scares me a little bit. You postulate that these novels are popular among women, but were I born a woman, would I like it? Obviously, I have a choice to deny my biology, but would I be facing the biological compulsion to find this kind of novel compelling to begin with? How much of that can be changed, and how much of that is "written" for us, is my choice? Because when people suggest what men or women or children or people of a specific descent want, it makes me feel that this suggest, if by unintentional implication, that people's choices are not their own.

The reason I make such a fuss about this is that I prefer to see people, their mentalities and their personalities as largely independent of what they were born as. In essence, I prefer to see the mind as independent of the body, even if that's not entirely true in terms of physiology. So when you suggest that these novels are more popular with women than they are with men, I am compelled to ask what it is that's common among all women of all cultures, all races, all descents and all upbringings that makes "women" more likely to appreciate them than men?

When anyone describes what men like or what women like, it makes me feel like men in general and women in general are being robbed of their personal choice and lumped into a common whole, forced to be exceptions if they don't conform to the statistical expectation. Having lived my life pretty much entirely as the exception, this is actually concerning to me as a basic concept.

And again - I'm not accusing you of sexism, unfairness or anything of the sort. I'm trying to discuss a concept that I'm hoping we can discuss without turning it into personal attacks. That's not my intention. What I say is just my perspective, not an accusation.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's actually a pretty interesting approach. There's a preconception in Western cultures that men are supposed to be masculine and women feminine, and those who explore the side they supposed to reject are seen as weird. Divorcing concepts of taste from that kind of loaded terminology is actually not a bad idea. In fact, if I had to go ahead and use my own terms, I'd use the "physical" vs. the "psychological."

Guns, explosions, fast cars, sexy people - those are all primarily physical, even if they have the potential to be more. By contrast, drama, romance, mystery, discovery - those are all primarily psychological. Once you see things in this manner, it's actually very quickly apparent that both the physical and the psychological are almost always intermixed, just to different degrees. A movie about overmuscled men and fighting can still focus on drama and self-discovery, as with the movie "The Wrestler," whereas a movie about mystery, spirituality and philosophy can still have a heavy physical focus, such as the Matrix.

In the end, I firmly believe that most people would benefit by embracing both concepts, even if not to equal degrees.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think the nature vs. nurture debate belongs in its own thread (and very possibly on its own forum).

The short answer is: it's a little bit of both. Completely dismissing biology is as naive as completely dismissing cultural upbringing.

And that's all I care to say on this particular tangent.

Oh, I agree strongly. However, I begin to wonder when you have a book with multiple female characters who all spend a lot of time functioning as fanservice if they all are also going to be strong female role models. I don't know that I can justify it objectively, but there's something about that I find hard to reconcile.

Basically, there's something about spending every image frame with your rear hiked up in the air (yes, an exaggeration, but not that much of one) that doesn't jive well with notions I get from my female friends about what a woman they would look up to would be doing. One of them? Sure. All of them? That's a stretch to me.

Let's fact it, those characters were being frequently being visually depicted as sex objects. Now, let me be clear, I'm not mentioning that because I object to it, per se. I just find it hard to believe that most women (assuming most women would read it to start with) would consider that a depiction of something to look up to.

I don't know about women, but Master Midnight would certainly approve!

We can't ignore either that there frankly are biological differences (on average) or that those differences only affect (but do not absolutely dictate) behavior. Both things are true. There are hardwired differences in the way women and men view certain things, but those biological influences cannot be assumed to be absolute limits on what women and men will think and do within some gender-specific boundaries. There is overlap.

Clearly, we must be on guard not to let ourselves fall into the false notion that gender tendencies are the whole picture and we therefore are safe to pigeonhole individuals into limits defined by their gender. But neither should we, in our efforts to avoid that trap, deny that any real tendencies toward differences really do exist. The truth, as with so many things, lies somewhere in between the extremes.

Of course we can't deny such existence. That would be foolish. But it strikes me as avoiding the subject to just say "Well, men and women are different and like different things and that's that." which is what I see in a lot of these discussions. I've never enjoyed just stating that "women like X, men like Y" without actually stopping to think which parts they like and why they like them. This is obviously different for different people, but treating it as a black box only makes the problem worse.

Obviously, I'm not a genius. Obviously, I can't know why people feel the way they feel. But what I really want to emphasise here is that people would benefit if they questioned why they like the things they like. It's easy to say "Well, I like guy stuff because I'm a guy" without actually specifying what "guy stuff" is, which of those things you like and why you like them.

My point in bringing this up over and over again is to foster understanding. Even if we assume that, at some fundamental unchangeable level, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Fine, let's roll with that. Even then, if we could pinpoint where that difference lay, we could still produce content that appealed more to everybody.

How this reflects on comic books is that if comic book writers actually took the time to figure out what part of their writing was alienating female readers (per chance that's a trend), then they may find it's a part that male readers aren't all that interested in anyway. Blindly dumping more women in comic books in the vein hope of garnering female readers is as silly as putting pink unicorns in them. It's just random stereotyping. But that's not to say there isn't a way for comic book writing to be cleaned up so that it still appeals to men as it always has, but appeals to women more, as well.

What "men" want and what "women" want are questions that cannot be answered, but as men and women, we can answer those at least for ourselves. And that's the point at the base of all this - if we care to answer these things, we might just end up helping produce more widely-appreciated entertainment.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Why would we want to do that?

Because we're very nice people, most likely. Also, because the wider the appeal of a commercial piece of entertainment, the more money it brings in. As a fan, I'm not ashamed to say that I want the businesses whose entertainment I enjoy to see great revenue and grow and prosper. And, yes, this includes Paragon Studios. I may be cross at some of their decisions, but I vote with my money and I do wish them much success in the future. My entertainment depends on it

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And yet you don't worry about it happening to a male character? And really, you let that be what stops you from enjoying such things, is because you worry it may happen?

Could just read it untill it does happen.

Though, now I wonder. Spinnerette was defeated, had to be resusitated, and was left tied to a tree.

Does that mean she's WIR now?

Nope; still active, still appealing. That was just character development.

The Fridge takes you out of action for the foreseeable futures, such as when Wonder Woman was killed for a year or so. Her earlier depowerment that lasted for a decade also doesn't count because she was still portrayed as a likeable and capable character during that time.

Barbara Gordon went into the fridge for a while after the Killing Joke, then came back out when she became Oracle.

I'd say that it takes at least 3 months of 'this is a permanent change, and this character can no longer function as a hero' to count as a fridging. Changing to a villain does not count as a fridging.

I am only talking about death/depowerment here, not various forms of violation.

The above is IMHO.