Prince of Thorns
I read somewhere that The Broken Empire series by Mark Lawrence is better than Game of Thrones. Claims like this should not be thrown around lightly. But after reading just the first two chapters of the first novel in the series, Prince of Thorns, it became evident that Lawrence had at least beat Game of Thrones in the brutality award categories, firmly sticking George RR Martin’s head on a pike. A promising novel—I plan to finish it by the time this is published.
As Lawrence claims in his recent blog post about reaching 30,000 reviews on Goodreads, he received a couple mentions on lists for best fantasy novels in 2011, when Prince of Thorns was first released. The follow-up novels, of which there are two more, have received similar acclaim. But not all great fantasy novels are enjoyed unanimously by fantasy readers.
As Lawrence’s blog post details, his book came under some light (but noteworthy) fire for its treatment (or lack of treatment) of women. You can read the post yourself, but the complaints boil down to a general grievance that Lawrence does not introduce female characters into the story, and when he does, they are not the “strong” type. “Is there a band of sisters?” asks one reviewer, referencing the band of “brothers” the novel follows as they rape and pillage their way across what looks like a fantasized Europe-like continent.
Undaunted, Lawrence offered a response to his detractors. A lesser man might have pulled out his rug for immediate and unequivocal prostration, but Lawrence did nothing of the sort. In his blog post, Lawrence makes a very reasonable and measured argument. In essence, he says that if his book doesn’t contain things that you would like to see in a fantasy novel, too bad.
Perhaps write your own book, he suggests, or find a book that does contain those things you would like to see and read that one (those books do exist, and there’s nothing wrong with them). He ends the argument there. A bit like General McClellan in the American Civil War, Lawrence raises and whips into shape a fine fighting force for the North, but then does nothing to advance on his enemies’ positions.
The Quest For Diversity Had Become A Fascist Dictate
Lawrence can remain conciliatory and stake out a neutral tone and position (finding myself in his chain-mail gauntlets, I would do the same for the sake of my own book’s success), but he should be aware that there is no amount of kowtowing or self-castigation that will please far-left fascist agitators. Even if he converts and changes his name to Abdul, they will still take his head, and video-record it for posterity.
Even if his next novel stars a gender-fluid hero-heroine, or if we learn that the butcher Prince Jorg was in fact born a woman but had gender re-assignment sometime before the opening scene of the first novel, Lawrence’s far-left critics will only wonder why he didn’t introduce these aspects into his stories sooner (latent misogyny, no doubt).
I do not speak for Lawrence in any way—his blog post makes all his own positions and opinions clear. He has been steadfast and calm in his view. See his excellent Twitter rebuttals below:
I like kites. I want to read books with more kites in them.
I speak only for myself in what follows. Mr. Lawrence likely sees a couple negative reviews that have a common theme. I see brush fires of a culture war, instigated by what amounts to petulant brats who have been coddled enough that they feel little compunction making arbitrary demands on other people, like children begging mom for a toy in the store aisle.
Every aspect of our culture has become engulfed in a battle between two irreconcilable world views. Unfortunately, fantasy novels are no longer neutral territory–if they ever were. With fascist fervor, the hard left has arrived demanding that even fantasy novels represent, or better yet imitate, the bizarre faculties of the modern Western world.
And a bizarre world it is. We live in both a place and time in history where a casual book reviewer can make the following remark about Prince of Thorns with a straight face: “Women and girls have a tough enough time in real life without being subjugated and marginalized in fantasy, too.”
The Many Ways In Which Women Are Marginalized
To honestly believe that a woman, currently living in the modern West, faces anything resembling a “tough time” is simply bizarre, perhaps a great punchline for a stand-up routine if she weren’t so deadly serious. Never mind that the reviewer (who I will assume is a woman) was lucky enough to be born in one of the richest nations on Earth (unless she writes to us from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which I doubt).
Instead, consider that she not only can afford the time to worry, but further has the ability and inclination to write her concerns on the world wide web —while her female counterparts in North Korea are spending short lives unaware of the existence of electricity before receiving a bullet to the head in a public square for being in possession of a Holy Bible.
Back On Point
The world can be a terrible place. But it is not made worse by a fantasy novelist’s imagination, or the resulting novel, which happens to accurately explore the dark nature of a band of brutal men at a time and place much worse than our own. Lawrence is a human being, likely a decent one who has only written about burning villages to the ground and taking advantage of the farmers’ daughters (likely not based on personal experience).
He is an author of creative fiction, not a sock puppet for what has become an arrogant and intolerant social “movement” perpetuated (mostly) by bored white girls armed with pumpkin spice lattes and social media accounts. The term “movement” gets quotations around it because it confers far too much credit—it often comes off more like a temper tantrum.
I guess some people keep canaries. Other people do “social justice,” whatever the hell that has come to mean in 2014. Buy Prince of Thorns here so you can say you read it before it became a SWPL HBO series infused with strong women who did not appear in the book. Or at least get it before the forthcoming eruption of #FantasyGate.
Read More: How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World
Why doesn’t some woman just go write a whole fantasy series with nothing but strong women as protagonists if that’s what women want?
They can’t play the victim card then so they probably wont
Yes with detailed and graphic lesbian action….
It’s called ‘Kushiel’s dart’
Because activists are useless at doing anything worthwhile
They’re only alive because society has too many soft-headed people who cater to their whining
Sadly most of the best fantasy novelists of our generation are quite beta.
Damn good question. Apply that DIY thinking to like every fucking thing women bitch about not having more women in, or more strong women in, or more fatass women in. Why indeed. WHY. the fuck. Because a) they Love to Bitch. Luv-luv-luv it. It releases feel-good chemicals in their brains. They need to nag like thirsty males need to shag. Bio-programming. b) It’s plain easier to be a Bitcher than a doer. c) Females greatly desire to have men work for them, do stuff for them. Males aren’t human beings to women so much as human doers. We work hard to beat other males to the goal, access to female holes. Women don’t really want to take the lead after all, when it’s all bitched and done.
But then they would have to show results (produce an actual story) rather than just complain.
Because, women being women, nobody would buy it or read it.
Yo dawg, we herd u liek fantasy, so we put fantasy in your fantasy so you can fantasy while you fantasy
Writing anything useful is being opressed
Heck of a lot less work to claim the ‘i was raped’ badge of honor than to muddle away like a craftsman on something like a book..
Economics of expenditure of energy for courting attention rule here.
This obsessesion with eqaul representation has become a farce, it’s as if every work of fiction now has to have the same amount of female an male characters an all female characters must meet a feminist checklist so that they are all ‘strong women’. If they don’t like the work of fiction then don’t fucking read it or write your own. Different types of fiction are more popular with different genders if an author writes a book in a genre that traditionally has more male readers who cares if they have more male characters? SJW an feminists have completely lost the plot.
It’s what happens when people think a tiny minority should be treated equally, which in turn is caused by unchecked empathy and female entitlement to feelings
Exactly, I’m black and I don’t bitch about the lack of black characters in fantasy novels, movies etc. To be honest I couldn’t care less about the ethnicity or the gender of the characters. I care about the character development, storyline, archetypes, psychological/philosophical development etc.
Exactly I could care less what race/gender/religion someone is in a book, an intriguing character with strong character development an a storyline that’s entertaining an makes me think are what counts. They have more female leads in romance novel coz more women read romance yet you don’t hear SJW complaining males are underrepresented there. Also most women in history aren’t strong independent warrior women so why should every female be represented as such when it’s not true? SJW are infecting everything.
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I do care however if they make a woman believable. Rather than a man with a female skin.
I hate that. SF is very guilty of turning women into men. Abaddon’s Gate is a good example of this. Let women be women and men be men.
Also black. There are black sci-fi and fantasy writers out there. I’ve read and supported them if they had good stories. If their stories sucked I didn’t buy more of their books. If women want more women characters, then more women should write. How wrong would it be for me to tell a creative person that they should write what I want them to write! Either I should start a pubilishing company or sit my butt down and write the stories I want to see or take your dollars else where. Be the change in the world you want to see, don’t force others to be that change.
Are you fucking serious? I thought all the characters were black? Shit it ain’t like there’s pictures!
Its just the same thing they’re doing with video games. They come into something and start policing it and telling people how it should be structured because if they made a game themselves or wrote a book themselves it would be shit and nobody would read it except other feminists.
Yep they’re doing it to everything not just books an games
Does anyone remember the South Park episode “death camp of tolerance?” Sums up this whole thing rather neatly I reckon.
Also…
If the SJW’s are gonna call out “things that have more men in them”, then surely we could also call out stuff like male suicide? …or casualties of war?
Additionally:
Every newspaper you read has a women’s section, the majority of people within new media are women, the majority of social media users are women, the majority of college grads are women, the majority of nurses are women, the majority of house wives are women………etc etc.
Haven’t watched South Park for years so I can’t remember that episode but South Park does have intelligent social commentary. SJW will never highlight the negative things males or even white people in general face or things they are underrepresented in, it’s not part of their agenda. According to SJWs when something is predominantly represented by males it’s misogynistic an backwards, when something is predominantly represented by females is progressive an tolerant, just another piece of hypocrisy they push.
The trouble is that in the mind of the SJW, they don’t want to read it and they don’t want you to read it either.
You cannot deal with a person who has this mentality. There is a certain type of person who cannot accept people enjoying things that they themselves do not. And they will use force to make you act the way that they want. People with opposing points of view are a threat that must be eliminated. This is the mind-set that led to Stalin liquidating people in the USSR.
yep SJWs are facists simple as that
Whenever I see a woman kicking as much butt on screen as her male counterparts I think two things. 1 the enemies they are fighting really suck, 2 Even though it is fantasy and fake it seems even more unrealistic. When i saw Predator, and Arnold and his commandos were having a hard time I thought there is no hope if these guys can’t do it. Then I saw Predators and they introduced the “Tough chick” sniper character and i was like yeah they could probably kill these predators if the woman has survived this long lol. Only tough chick done right is Ripley from the Alien franchise, when the women are grabbing grown men and throwing them around it looks fake and cheap.
Some time ago I was warning a sci fi writer about “inclusion” of GLBT characters for the sake of inclusion.
I said something like this:
“Look. We get this all of the time in the USA. It seems like every college student tries their hand at what you are suggesting and I will tell you what all of the rank and file readers out there will do – the ones who are not GLBT or anything: they are going to roll their eyes and read something else. Now before you start in about people being intolerant or something like that, be advised. They won’t stop reading because they are intolerant, they’ll, stop because just about every time a story is written where the writer is trying to show how progressive they are and “work in” alternative lifestyles, there is always the same damned pattern ever.damn.time.
You see I can create a template or an outline of what they are like and apply that to every one of them but here’s a simple list that goes like this:
– the character is always “being ironic” in some passive aggressive way that’s more irritating than funny or tragic or whatever.
– the character is always oppressed by the same people: dad, family, state, church, and former friends and just about in that order. I’m wondering if all of these writers are getting their hands on some “how to work in GLBT characters in sci fi writing guide” and it’s a shit guide too but they all follow it to the letter.
– the character has NOTHING else going on about them, their story, their plot, whatever.
– the reader is being literally browbeaten for not feeling sorry enough for the worked-in GLBT character when it’s impossible because the story is not long enough or the character depth is not there.
So you see, do not start “working them in” to your chronicles because that will make them suck and nobody will read them. No amount of guilt is going to force people to read poorly written boring crap.”
Needless to say I did not see that writer start putting them in for no other reason.
Everyone wants to be Mercedes Lackey.
Spider Robinson did a decent job ‘working them in’ in stardancer, but only if you consider them from the point of view of the gut-wrenchingly hyperliberal plotline.
Michelle Obama wrote a novel?
Cheers.
“- the character has NOTHING else going on about them, their story, their plot, whatever.”
Agreed. The whole point to this character existing is “look at me, I am gay. I exist to be gay and am all about being gay.” Now that I wrote that down maybe art does imitate life?
I have read the series, read the reviews, and read the first book in the new series. When I last read the reviews his statement had become “I don’t think i could write a believable female character”. In short he knew he would get attacked if he didn’t write a good enough female character into the story but it would also it would bring down the quality of the story. So he is now being attacked for not having a major female character
To SJW:
Equality = Tall Poppy Syndrome
You can be pro-male and masculine, if you’re weak, irrelevant or invisible, but if you’re successful, and you’re not appealing to them, they come after you.
Too bad a better version of John Norman’s ‘Gor’ series hasn’t come out. The Neitschean concepts were sound, if totally and repeatedly overdone, reiterated, repeated, and reinforced in every….single…book.
The social inquisitors seek to implement their rules in all media, to the detriment of art. Look at what happened to The Hobbit because they had to include strong female characters. It is important to realize that this is not about “inclusiveness” at all. There are plenty of female and gay stories being produced that barely have any real male characters. It is about the censorship of strong masculine virtues.
It’s because “badass” women only exist in fiction.
The “strong woman” who can beat up four men at a time propaganda isn’t just dangerous to the mental health of women, it can be physically dangerous too. There’s lots of cases of women hurting themselves by getting involved in activities where they don’t belong, like fighting, industry, and soldiering.
Great point. Badass chicks certainly exist only in fiction. I take muay thai, and there’s a girl in our class, who is quite experienced, skilled and fast, I’ll admit (even though her hardest hits feel like getting hit by a dodgeball). Well, in a LIGHT sparring session, we were switching partners and she insisted that the guys not go easy on her, and she does have a solid defense. Well, towards the end of the session she took a hit to the stomach that left her crying and breathless for over 5 minutes (not by me, mind you!). Again, despite her insistence, the guys were going easy on her. She was OK, though.
I have also observed that most women turn chicken shit during tense situations, unless it involves protecting their children.
It’s a form of gold digging:
“I’m coming after you because you’re getting paid.”
If he was a struggling writer, most girls wouldn’t even read him, since he wouldn’t show up on their recommended list on amazon.
“It’s a form of gold digging.” That’s a definition of female behavior towards men in general and especially SJWs. They come after guys getting paid.
Hell even guys that don’t get paid in divorce court, more demands on men in general to “man up” and get a “serious job” which means a higher paying job. Men expected to pay for female birth control, etc., etc.
I would be for inclusion if it was natural and not contrived by equalist fags trying to make rainbows where there aren’t any
In a fair world, fiction might feature 1 gay out of 50 characters, and maybe 1 minority out of 100-1000 characters, depending on the fantasy setting
I’m sick to death of the “strong female” stereotype being crammed into every story I read or see on TV. Give me some old school Pournelle and Niven …. in a scene from Lucifers Hammer a woman was complaining about something when her husband slapped her … the narrator srating that feminism died with the apocalypse.
Worst is yet to come. Or worst thing is it will keep coming, these “strong female” stereotypes crammed into every story. And the younger guys will think it is a necessary, normal part of EVERY fucking movie and pop novel they experience.
Canadian Netflix actually has a category ‘Strong Female Lead’. Hadn’t noticed it before and I can’t imagine looking there for entertainment, but there it is.
It’s the narrative they’re pushing. You just have to no longer be a customer to their b.s. Look at Obama; magical negro. He had NO qualification to be our president but after thirty years of the ‘numinous negro’ trope in movies/tv, our culture wanted it to play out in real life. Think of all the Morgan Freeman, Samuel Jackson, Will Smith characters. Leave it to the black man to lay down the wisdom for all the dumb whites. It was a hollywood staple and presto! Now it’s our president. Next in line is the flat-voiced female who projects so much strength that it is comic. Any cop show, detective movie etc. The women are projecting total strength and command. They could stare down a cobra. It’s all ridiculous but look who’s coming? Hillary. Her ‘cop voice’ and projection of pure undeniable strength is ridiculous but she will be president. Hollywood led the way.
Three hollywood cliches in a row
GW–Plain talking Southern wisdom. You’ve seen that in the movies
Obama–magical black man with all the answers. Supernatural ability to just know everything somehow.
Hillary–Feminist without a shred of feminity. She isn’t human at all, just the embodiment of feminists’ fantasies of women being absolutely without fault or even one ounce of frailty.
Ronald Reagan. Actor. Senile old man. The man who proved that the governments of the west are not run by elected representatives, and haven’t been for some time.
Perhaps the most serious problem with the approach regarding what are quite frankly male characters with female physiology is that they are introduced for political reasons. Worse, the treatment is so heavy-handed in the majority of cases that such a book or film quickly becomes a religious screed in the form of left-political activism as opposed an entertaining story.
It is as if they are preaching as a Baptist Fundamentalist preacher would, only via a different theology. Left-socialist thought has always been religious in practice. However, this has only become increasingly more extreme with as its proponents become evermore histrionic.
On a more personal level, I expect a story to entertain me not preach to me. It is why I have avoided virtually all modern books and film. I possess no desire to hand me hard earned money to a religious fanatic. In essence, this is what the Left is despite their protestations to the contrary.
“Strong female character” should mean a vividly painted female character with a memorable personality. Shakespeare and Jane Austen had strong female characters. To the SJW, strong female character means a bull dyke in plate armor swinging a warhammer around like a man, or a foul mouthed waif who can take out a squad of linebackers with her awesome martial arts. Ridiculous.
To this day I still find Ellen Ripley to be a great and believable female character. She started out as a by-the-books woman who was above average intelligence and managed to survive the first Alien movie.
She then comes back in Aliens and is forced to adapt to the Marine Corp which is made up of a nice mix of characters. She gradually earns their respect through merit and joins the clan. There is a climactic ending where her mother instinct kicks in and she faces off one on one against the Alien Queen. I don’t remember ever watching that movie and being like “Oh here we go again.. another Go-Grrl movie.” Instead I believed the narrative that Ripley really kicked ass… Ripley fucking rules… a classic character for the books.
Ripley was always portrayed as an outlier and exceptional woman. But always a woman… not a “Not man”. A character that women could look up to in some ways. Aliens didn’t come across as hokey where OBVIOUSLY they needed a girl to save the day… I don’t think guys really mind female leads or in movies.
Its just that nowadays in pop-movies it comes across like it is being shoved down our throat. It is portrayed now as though OBVIOUSLY a woman had to save the day duuuuuuuuh… in more and more unbelievable scenarios… Nowadays it more often comes across as insulting, and there are very few redeeming male characters or celebration of male virtue.
This movie came out in 1986 but for some reason I don’t ever remember mention of Ellen Ripley in feminist rhetoric… probably because she’s actually cool.
I agree she’s one of the few believable female leads in an action movie she also doesn’t look like supermodel which so many action girls look like nowdays, another good female lead is Sarah Conner from the 2nd Terminator movie but that’s about all I can think of. The female leads in action movies now days are so unbelievable it’s cringeworthy.
You mean a scrawny chick like Zoe Saldana taking on three or four dudes and kicking their asses?
One GOOD example of the ass-kicking girl was in the awesome, under-rated DREDD where Olivia Thirlby takes out a couple of big dudes. It’s VERY quick and just takes a couple of crippling moves to realistically take them down.
She doesn’t fight them for five minutes, get repeatedly punched in the face with ham-sized fists and all that ridiculous other shit that ‘strong’ female characters do in Hollywood movies.
Yea exaclty the type of character i meant, action movies with female lead nowadays are just a supermodel who acts like a man an can take down multiple guys in a fight without their hair getting outta place an can take exorberant amounts of pain. It’s stupid an not a true representation of women at all. I did like Judge Anderson in Dredd coz she had some good character development going from not will in to kill to realizing she had too an she wasn’t ploughing through hundreds of guys with ease, she would also has not survived without Dress.
Don’t forget the Stieg Larsson heroine who was written as a sub NINETY pound female but yet would take on 200 pound males in boxing class and ‘give as good as she got’. The Dragon Tattoo girl. That book was the most extraordinary bit of pandering to feminists that I’ve ever seen.
I actually liked the movies, both the Swedish and US versions. Both actresses had strengths and vulnerabilities that seemed plausible.
I didn’t read the book but that boxing shit sounds ridiculous.
Anderson in the 2000 AD books is a compelling female character mainly because she seems to *struggle* with the idea of being all manly, authoritarian, and judge-like when her natural inclination (and gifts as a Psyker) is to be intuitive and pay attention to her feelings and whatnot. It’s not where she knows in her heart she wants to be. The Childhood’s End/Shamballa/Satan sequence of stories were some of my favourites out of that franchise and write that theme large.
When she and Dredd are paired together it’s a wonderful combination of personalities that just play off together beautifully, playing Dredd’s taciturn, by-the-numbers manliness against Anderson’s more intuitive, slightly more emotional approach. One of the best buddy cop pairings in the genre, I’ve thought.
And Great Grud, Hollywood, give us a fucking sequel to Dredd. In Karl Urban they finally got someone who comes as close as you probably can to how the character should look and behave on screen.
I never watched the movies because I was so disgusted by the book. It was a readable book and he was not too bad as a novel-craftsman. But between every chapter was a completely unrelated ‘fact’ about violence against women. I mean it had NOTHING to do with the story at all. He was using his chapter breaks as a kind of advertising space which he filled with activism—Kissing the ass of feminists shamelessly. Pick it up in a bookstore one day to see what I mean. Don’t buy that shit though, just glance at it and it won’t take you long to see what I mean. I’ve never seen anything like that. I don’t know if he did the same thing with his sequels as I won’t touch them.
I’ve only recently started reading The Jidge Dredd comics an graphic novels so I can’t really comment on how she’s portrayed there. Unfortunately Dredd didn’t make enough money at the box office for them to make a sequel which is a shame coz apparently they were gonna base the sequel on the Amerika storyline.
Dredd was a great movie and you are quite right about Olivia.
I have boxed chicks. Its like playing with kittens.
Sigourney Weaver even said that most people who try and write for that character seems to try and make her a ball-buster or like the coach on a sports team, but that’s not at all how she sees Ripley.
She said that Jim Cameron is pretty much the only person who can write her properly.
Reposting from a comment I made on a Reaxxion article. Ridley Scott, who made the original, was asked in an interview about Ripley. “She” was originally scripted to be male in the original “The Star Beast” that went on to become Alien–
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/17/ridley-scott-opens-up-about-prometheus-kick-ass-women-and-blade-runner-2.html
“Q. You’re often credited with giving birth to the modern Hollywood female action hero with the Ellen Ripley character in Alien. She was a new breed of woman onscreen—an androgynous ass-kicker.
A. Ripley was androgynous, and she didn’t emerge until she shouted at Yaphet Kotto to “Shut the f–k up!” and that was well into the second act. This rather pretty woman who everyone assumed in the first act was going to be one
of the first ones to cop it gradually starts to take up the mantle, and the weapon. To me, it’s always organic and not a specific decision to make her female, but afterwards, there’s always 20/20 hindsight, isn’t there? I read with slightly raised eyebrows the surprise and the power
about having a female lead instead of a male lead, and it refocused my awareness about what we’ve done. It was a calculated risk as well in a film that’s fundamentally a traditional “who’s going to be the last one standing in a big, dark house.” In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which
was significantly frightening for me at that particular point cause I looked at it just prior to making Alien,that girl was still standing at the end covered in blood, but she’d survived rather than won. The difference with Ripley was that she had won and survived.
Q. What draws you to these strong female protagonists?
A. I’m used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo. I think there are a
lot of men who feel they’re being emasculated by having the woman be in charge; I’ve never had that problem. All the relationships in my life have been with strong women, from childhood. The relationship I’ve had in my life for the past 30 years is with a very strong Costa Rican woman. Oddly enough, I find it quite engaging to be working with a
female when I’m directing. It’s kind of interesting.”
In the comment I suggested Scott might well have an unresolved Oedipus complex; he had an overbearing mother and an absent father that imprinted on him how women ought to behave. Ripley’s gender strikes me, then, as chosen to inject suspense – to play against a cliche of haunted house movies which John Carpenter made his career on. And it might be noted that the film still supports patriarchal standards to some extent: the men in Alien are the ones taking the risks, coming up with shit to fight the Alien, and getting themselves killed in favour of the women.
Jim Cameron, now — he’s sort of the reverse, a seemingly-go-grrrrl champion who actually just relies on traditional gender role models. Aliens certainly does. Hicks is played as a father figure throughout the film, and the other women in the cast are variously masculine in appearance and behaviour, usually crazed and not willing to listen to reason – Ferro ignores Spunkmeyer’s concerns about an alien on the dropship; Vasquez tries to pull in Drake after it’s too late, even when Hicks is yelling at her that he’s dead. These are indictments against women acting like men, not supporting female protagonists. Again the men are rational, take charge for the most part (well, unless you count Hudson’s freakout, Gorman’s incompetence, and Burke’s treason, but they’re in there to make Ripley look commanding and to give the audience more reason to hate the Company and Army bureaucracy, respectively).
And further in favour of Jim Cameron, you see much the same thing throughout T2 and even bloody Titanic. In T2, the importance of a father figure — Arnie, naturally — is paramount. When Sarah tries to impersonate a man – going out to kill Miles Dyson – she’s not portrayed sensitively, even the T2 looks human by comparison. In Titanic, there’s maybe one line that stays with me: “We’re women. Our choices are never easy.” Albeit that’s choices available in 1912, but insofar as it echoes the fact women are stuck with hitting the Wall early and being unable to have it all — career and child — there’s a fair Red Pill spirit hiding under the female protagonist. Hell, Jack Dawson is almost MGTOW: he lives pretty much on God’s good fortune and isn’t one whit concerned about it. He suffers from a bad case of oneitis and rescue syndrome, but ah well.
I’ve always thought that Kate Winslet was responsible for most of that movie’s box office. She is absolutely wonderful in it.
The legions of women who saw TITANIC multiple times may have convinced themselves that it was DiCaprio that they were there for. But it was unquestionably Winslet’s performance that brought them back again and again.
And it was Winslet’s performance on the bed, er, the couch that kept the guys coming back, and wore out the most VCR tapes since Stone’s leg-crossing scene in Basic Instinct.
Helen Hunt getting Kate’s oscar was a travesty. It’s instructive to watch thier talk-show appearances: Helen with her bland pasted-on hollywood smile; and Kate’s mobile and expressive actor’s face.
That Kate will cheerfully nude up at the slightest provocation is icing on the cake.
Her performance on the bed was average. She is not a particularly attractive woman.
That said I do like her as an actress and a personality.
Actually I think Game Of Thrones has lots of realistic and influential female characters just as it was in reality. Some women in the Medieval world did have influence. Some of the greatest monarchs and leaders in Britain have been women. Many of the Kings that ruled had Queens that would have had great influence directly or indirectly through various politicking. Where Game Of Thrones is good is that these female characters are likely to be just as good or bad as male characters and make errors and misjudgments just as frequently as the male characters.
Even Brienne Of Tarth is an acceptable character as she is looked on as an exception and oddity by the other characters.
Remember even today there are female Kurdish Soldiers fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. There were plenty of female snipers in Eastern Europe and the USSR during WWII and plenty of female agents working for the allies throughout the war. Also there were female guards at the concentration camps who were as brutal as any men. Women were used to fly deliver the aircraft from factory to airbase and man the factories. Arguably Britain’s greatest Prime Minister was a woman and we have a history of strong Queens from Elizabeth I, Victoria until the present day Queen.
As Clark Kent says, we have no problem with tough female characters, as long as it’s a genuine part of the story. Where we all object, is when a story, book, film is used as propaganda to brainwash the population and pressure is brought to bear on authors and writers to portray female characters in a way that conforms to the feminist agenda.
By the way we should also realise that all fiction is fantasy and it caters to the fantasy of the readers. So it’s quite acceptable for someone who is writing teen fiction for aimed at girls to write for their audience. I actually like Harry Potter and Hunger Games, I think they’re good films. I understand Hunger Games is a fantasy. Like all films there is exaggeration. At the same time don’t write off women as weak or stupid. They can be just as tough, aggressive and calculating as any man.
For the most part you are correct, but the TV show does cross the line a bit. It’s one think with Brienne being 6’2″ and an outlier, but another her beating the crap out of the Hound who is 6’4″, much heavier then her with probably twice the muscle mass and is as good a fighter as her if not better, due to far more experience.
The Brienne vs Hound scene was utterly moronic and clearly forced down viewers throats to pander to feminists and manginas. That could never happen in a real medieval sword fight, and could only happen in modern times if the woman is juiced and freakishly large (maybe). The book version of the Hound was one vicious SOB who could only be matched by the Mountain or Khal Drogo.
“there are very few redeeming male characters or celebration of male virtue”
I hate this the most, its very rare to see. Typically we get the opposite, with the “strong female lead” beating all the men, outwitting them, and belittling even the men on her side.
Funny. I actually thought the Ripley character was fucking annoying and basically trying to be a man. Perspective I guess.
You mention Aliens, in which ironically the toughest marine was a female. That aspect of Aliens ruined what was otherwise a classic movie.
I don’t know man. In my opinion, Aliens is one of the most feminist, women with balls movie franchises in existence.
Nobody seems to mind that sitcoms portray men as weak and buffoonish.
Sitcoms and advertising are responsible for the retardation of the modern man.
Since that crap is primarily aimed at women it panders to their fantasies of being smarter and better than their oafish, infantile husbands.
I mind.
IMO in recent times, the fiction book industry turned into something that seems mostly female-dominated and aimed at female readers. A lot of recent popular book series like Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games and a countless number of imitators are written by women.
Although these female authors often enjoy putting SJW crap into their books, they have no problem adding a bunch of perfect idealized male characters whose function is only to please girls.
Stories like Hunger Games make me laugh when they have teenage female characters that fight to death against boys and we are supposed to believe they actually have a chance or that it’s even believable.
I am not even sure if teenage boys even read books anymore, knowing that most books are aimed at females these days. Something like Tolkien’s stories (the greatest author of all time by the way) could not even be made or released today. There are barely any female characters in his work and that’s considered misigynyst or whatever.
By the way, the word misogynist.
I was trying to do search on google where you search the definition of a word and then also see a graph about it’s increasing or decreasing use over the years.
I can’t seem to do it though, can anyone remind me how to do this search?
You are after google trends.
https://www.google.com/trends/
thanks…i was just thinking i hardly ever heard the word until the last few years
actually that was useful…but it only seems to show search terms since 2004…i have used something in the past that stretches back a few hundred years and uses google books etc to do this…can’t seem to find it anymore
80% of the fiction market is controlled by female readers. Not sure about non fiction, but it’s likely more balanced
Agreed. I am doing everything I can to ensure my re teen sons are educated. This includes regular reading of fiction and non fiction works. I would estimate that 80 percent of new fiction is aimed at a female audience. They end up reading classics rather than modern books, which is probably for the better anyway.
Tolkien had a great talent for writing. He is my inspiration for writing a midieval fantasy.
Just kinda reminds me of Buggin’ Out going to Danny Aiello’s pizza shop in ‘Do The Right Thing’ , and busting his balls about there being no black dudes pictures on the walls. Just go somewhere else.
I think Lawrence showed some balls by not caving into the ‘strong women, gender bender’ bullshit bring propagated nowadays
From the afterward of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (for those who don’t know, a book written about censorship and book burning…):
About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.
But, she added, wouldn’t it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women’s characters and roles?
A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn’t I “do them over”?
Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped.
Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader. In my story, I had described a lighthouse, late at night, having an illumination coming from it that was “God-light”. Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature, one would have felt that one was, “in the Presence”.
The editors had deleted “God-light”, and “in the Presence”.
Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture?
How did I react to all of the above?
By “firing” the whole lot.
By sending rejection slips to each and every one.
By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority…. feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosine, light the fuse.
Fire Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.
Sounds like a book worth reading.
My favorite author of all time hands down.
The first chapter of The Martian Chronicles (“Rocket Summer”) would be a great name for a rock band 🙂
My favourite new(er) fantasy novelist is Joe Abercrombie and he wrote a book, BEST SERVED COLD, where the protagonist is a bad-ass female mercenary. It’s basically a medieval KILL BILL.
That book is extremely violent and the lead character of Monza Murcatto has a horrific past that follows her everywhere and threatens her life at every turn.
If these bored, entitled feminazis want brutal, ass-kicking female leads in fantasy fiction they should start with that book.
The feminazis want a perfect character not a flawed one as Monza was.
I hate a book, movie or tv show where they’ll go out of their way to make a woman character who is stronger than all the men in a way that isn’t relevant to the plot. Like Leela in Futurama.
I have a few ideas for novels and none of them include female characters. Deliberately.
It’s cropping up in RPGs too. There is now a whole series from Pathfinder, Wrath of the Righteous that has a big sub character plot about a transgendered “man” who was a woman in love with another woman until she received her “real” gender after some magic spell. Seriously, when even RPGs are infected with subplots involving feel-good gender bending it makes the whole genre more off-putting to the original fans. Only when the “gamergurlz” get involved does it have to switch from fantasy to gender diversity.
true. even the new World of Warcraft expansion has a strong female as one of the leading characters
This is an example of how far feminists have to go to find something to be angry about;
–They couldn’t find anything in real-life to be angry about, so they…
…went into the world of culture
…but not just culture, they went into entertainment
…but not just entertainment but fiction (you know, made-up stuff)
…but not just fiction, it’s fantasy fiction
…but not just fantasy fiction, it’s extreme fantasy fiction
…but not just extreme fantasy fiction but extreme fantasy fiction that so clearly shows that it really only wants to deal with male characters.
This is how far they had to sniff around for some scraps of unfairness in our culture. The very fringe of extreme fantasy fiction. Never occurs to them that the culture must be a good one to them if they had to search so far and wide for their daily shot of pseudo-rage.
I feel the need to point out the existence of Bernard Cornwell, and his history novels.
Agreed. He is my favourite historical fiction writer. There are hardly any females in his books. In the past I would have assumed that it was because women are mostly irrelevant in history, but now I understand it’s because he’s a misogynist.
Tyranny in the western world will come under the banner of “Justice and Equality.”
Someone pointed out that the reason The Hobbit does not have a group of women setting out on a dangerous journey to reclaim their lost gold from a dragon is that is simply not the kind of thing that women typically do.
No, because dragons tend to be female.
Grendel’s mother; the Spider in It; Medea; Medusa; The Wicked Witch; Lady Macbeth; The Weird Sisters; the list goes on.
These are just female antagonists and villains (none of whom are actual dragons) with not much in common from what I know of them.
Elaborate, please?
I actually spoke to the “no women in the Hobbit” in a post a few years ago, pointing out that in general groups of women don’t band together for anything more adventurous than spinach salads and chardonnay. I’ve found a few good “traditional” fantasy writers around, lately, some of whom were recommended by Vox and other folks in the Manosphere. I was sent a copy of one of the Spellmonger books on Kindle last year that was almost textbook Red Pill. I think the tide in fantasy fiction might be starting to change as the market asserts itself.
It’s not that fantasy writers are against strong male characters, it’s just that feminism requires industrialization, and most “dark ages” cultures are pre-industrialization. Interesting, in other words.
Some people have a hard time dealing with “interesting”.
On the subject of violent fantasy, I strongly urge anyone with the stomach for it to check out Tim Willocks historical fiction:The Religion, and The Twelve Children of Paris
*Cough*Fifty Shades of Grey*Cough*
Bought this trilogy for a family member for Christmas, think i’ll get another set for myself!!!
If it were me writing this I’d introduce some “strong female” role just to spark an interest in the all these feminist window lickers and then have her killed off in the most fucked up unceremonious way possible within 8 pages of her introduction lol, just like big “fuck you”
I’m sick and tired of “strong women” from a purely artistic point of view they detract from the quality of a work. First, “strong woman” characters are all the same, cut and paste, their “character development” isn’t the work of sentient imagination but a that of a committee residing in the bowels of women’s studies departments. As such they’re predictable (queue the “strong woman” prop); tv shows today are all the same the only difference is the setting and even still its limited – cop, hospital, lawyers. Thus the insistence to integrate these add-on’s only act to make them seem out of place all the more. Second, its just not consistent with reality, period. Regardless of the so called “changes” that have occurred over the very recent years women simply do not fit the part. And someone please explain to me why women or feminists are obsessed with this new fad of being portrayed as warriors? As a former marine corps officer and war veteran, I’m perplexed by the hypocrisy, ignorance and, done-right, incoherence of this new trade-mark image of women. The hypocrisy is that we know these machinations come from the left, which also vocally hates the military and houses radical pacifists? Along with the environment, save the blank, equal signs…you tend to see “war is not the answer” on a liberals bumper sicker? Ignorance…the people behind women warriors are ignorant dolts that remind me of over zealous boots (recent boot camp graduates) spouting off about wanting to kill and loving war without any first hand knowledge or experience. Accept that these creatures are even worse having zero real world knowledge of the military. War, as covered by many left leaning authors and filmmakers, is NOT fun, glamorous or romantic. And being a warrior is a disciplined way of life; to cry over under or misrepresentations in novels, or just general sjw behavior is contrary to the warrior ethos. Finally, its just incoherent. The whole thing. We want to stop war and men are the root of war and so is masculinity…blah, blah. But then in the next sentence it why can’t women be warrior, why can’t they be tough? Well, shit-for-brains, if you want to end war then maybe its not a good or consistent idea to let more people participate in war that weren’t before?
Right on. On a related topic, certain people in my family seem to really like the Tea Leoni vehicle “Madam Secretary”. I literally cannot stand to watch it, partly because Leoni makes me want to put a bullet through the screen, partly because I don’t like overt attempts at popularising the idea of Hilary Clinton as President, but partly because even in the snippets I’ve seen the show is revoltingly preachy and Blue Pill. Good political TV in my view begins and ends with “The West Wing” if you want fantasy, and “House of Cards” if you want catharsis and reality.
Another thing on this cultural “strong women” meme. Kind of reminds me of the people that always have to speak up constantly to reassure everyone (themselves) that they’re, in this case, “tough”. Only to find out that a test or two reveals they’re just pussies. Alternatively, its the not so verbose, reserved, many times quiet types that don’t constantly ask for adulation that you have to watch out for. So what’s that same about our “strong women” today…its actually says the opposite.
Have you seen the movie “The drop” with Tom hardy and James Gandolfini ?
Because this is exactly what you describes.
To the author of the article, which does Prince of Thorns have more in common with: Game of Thrones or Poetic Epics such as the Iliad? I mean in terms of themes, principles, etc. .
I’m writing a medieval fantasy about Angels, Demons, Dragons, Elves, Humans, etc. The Elves live in a Patriarchal society deep within a magical forest, for example. The women are kind, humble, and have long hair. The men are trained from birth to wield longswords and longbows, and to become honorable knights. Elven culture forbade women from becoming knights. In my story, even if a woman knows how to fight, she still has long hair, knows how to cook and clean, and knows her place in society. All of this “strong independent woman” bullshit pisses me off. Fiction writers should avoid caving in to the PC police.
I’ll be happy to proof that one for you!
Thanks!
Fiction represents an exaggerated reality. Most criminal masterminds are men.
Most heroes risking their lives are men. Most geniuses are men, most extreme people are men.
SJW’s can waaah all they like, but until women start taking bullets for men or inventing the next great breakthroughs, then there won’t be a whole ton of books and movies about 90 pound women kicking a 250 pound 6 footer around.
Ever noticed how today you can make historical films that portray almost any group in a negative light but women? You can make a movie set in the slave period and depict Blacks being beaten, tortured, yelled at and called nigger all the time. Why, it’s OK because that’s how it was back then, right? But forget about showing main female characters doing what they used to do: stay at home cooking, taking care of the children and serving the males around. No, they are all sassy, defiant and always standing up to the males. Truth is, in those times such an attitude would have promptly warranted a bitch slap. You think they’d forget about gender equality for a minute for the sake of historical accuracy, but it’d seem like they are committed to rewrite history.
I’ll have to try a couple of Lawrence’s books. I’ve grown rather tired of writers’ pandering to the Left, especially the feminists who demand that the women be the leads in any and every sort of adventure.
That having been said, there is a place for what I’ve called “tough chick lit” featuring powerful, adventurous female protagonists. Urban fantasy and science fiction are probably the best places to stage such tales, as the unreality of those genres makes the “tough chick” more credible. (And that having been said, I have to admit to having written a little “tough chick lit” myself!)
Literally the only criticisms of literature there IS anymore is a criticism of whether the work “helps” or “hurts” women. It is a farce. Prince of Thorns is just case #1billion.
The funny thing is that strong female characters might not even inspire girls. In my personal life, most girls were inspired by their fathers.
The obsession with having every single movie bow to the awesomeness of women is obviously rooted in certain women’s insecurities over their own accomplishments in life- and in the fact that they are invisible to men. “If only men saw women/me as heroes, then they wouldn’t watch sports/play video games all day, and would give me ATTENTION!!!” A psychologically healthy human being isn’t going to give a flip if a movie happens to be about males. Most girls don’t care that much.
And then the white knights come along, and support the shitshow, because it helps them get positive attention from the insecure women, because these women are the best they can get. Gosh, our whole world is full of pussies. smh.
Finally a man who stood his ground!
Here in Canada on the ultra-PC CBC there’s a new 19th century western drama called Strange Empire which is the most implausible revisionist feminist fantasy to be shown on TV. To sum up the show, the western town is all run by strong women (sheriff, doctor etc.) and all the evil people are heterosexual white males. Gun slinging girls shooting dead the evil white males every week…….
Needless to say the public has rolled its eyes because the ratings stink. No surprise to those who “get it”
Hey, compagno! Why all the hate!
Me ne frego!
Hey, compagno! Why so much hate!
Me ne frego!
It’s like taxation without representation, with the little difference that the groups who claim to be represented in all areas of life, including fantasy novels, do not pay any dues. To make these claims in cultural products such as novels, movies, series, etc. is totally absurd, it’s basically mentally raping the artist/producer. A hilarious satire about the effects of feminism (incl. other subjects such as Broadway shows, AIDS, etc) is Frank Zappa’s album Thing-Fish from 1984. In it, Harry outs himself as gay in front of his girlfriend Rhonda, a briefcase feminist, blaming his turning-gay on feminists. If any of the SJW were aware of this politically incorrect album, they’d burn Zappa at the stake. There are definitely not enough artists with balls around to piss off morally superior groups.
OK, I just bought his book, so far it’s quite good. I’ve been looking for something to read and I’ll continue on with the rest of his stuff. Thanks for the recommendation to this author. I suppose I should thank the feminist critic for leading me to this guy as well – so, thanks bitch!!
I think the problem comes with this belief that you can be racist or
sexist by omission as well as commission. As dubious as their standards
for outrage are, they should only be applied to something you actually
committed. Either a statement or an act.
Fear of being racist by
omission results in these ridiculous ads and movies where everyone must
be included. Why must there be a gay interracial couple in an ad for a
double quarterpounder from MacDonald’s? Why were some of the gods in the
“Thor” movies black and Chinese, when the nordic culture is
predominantly white? Why are movies routinely remade so that they can be
cast with all black actors?
Such actions always fail at
diversity and succeed only at creating an attempt at art that rings
absolutely false. They say to write what you know. If your a blue collar
white guy write about that, gay activist write about that, wealthy
black son of a rapper write about that. I don’t think there’s any part
of the human condition so alien that people won’t relate to it if you
write it well. But if you feel coerced into haphazardly including
EVERYONE’S experience and EVERYONE’S problems what message is left?
I ordered all 3 books in the series after reading this article and I just finished Prince of Thorns after 2 nights of reading. I am refreshed to read a story about someone so unrepentant about going after what he wants with very little moralizing about his actions. There’s no pretense of anything happening for a greater good. It’s unbelievable in parts, but that’s fantasy for you, and it’s unbelievable in ways that make for good entertainment. Prince of Thorns leaves a few questions to the reader that entice further reading of the series.
School of Resentment by Harold Bloom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Resentment
Have you seen the state of most fantasy and science fiction stories? They all want grey moralities when it comes to things like incest, sexual torture, torture, and sexual orientation.
Your bad guys must be a rapist, capitalist, puts babies on spikes, and hates gays.
Your good guys should love communism, adore the “brilliance” of women, lick the feet of his female counterpart in the story, and question his sexuality every now and again.
And when they say “strong” female they should really say, “completely illogical bimbo who gets captured and saved by the guy but yells that she doesn’t need saving”.
I think that books and movies should “organic casting” which basically means the creator does what comes naturally. If he/she creates an all male cast don’t try and crucify him/her for what they probally didn’t notice until the first chapter was complete.
Black dude chiming in here. Not a voice for the whole just myself.. I grew up reading comics and fiction, I didn’t see myself in most of it. So I put pen to paper and published my own work. Solved my problem.
Check out the genghis series by conn iggulden another series with mostly male characters and some good red pill wisdom.