I love me some female characters. I really really love me some well-written female characters, but the badly-written female characters are the first step to them. New authors need encouragement and gentle criticism and eventually they will be writing original female characters well. BWOCs are a pain, but they're a passing pain (and a lot of ficcers will keep writing, look back on their first fics and roll their eyes. But they'll still be in fandom and they'll still be writing, and that's a good thing.)
That is the big thing - writing a character that I find insulting - for anti-feminist stuff, or offensive depictions of child abuse, or whatever - I realise that my younger self saw them as somehow deliberate. I could see it, and therefore they could see it, and included it anyway, and so it had to be a deliberate inclusion - they know it is wrong, and want to rub my face in it anyway. Having matured I can recognise that mistake, and feel guilty at my inclusion in things like the MSTs. They felt gentle at the time, to read and laugh at, especially in comparison to the PPC stuff which was too much for me, but that might not have made it any less hurtful.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-04-13 01:28 pm (UTC)I love me some female characters. I really really love me some well-written female characters, but the badly-written female characters are the first step to them. New authors need encouragement and gentle criticism and eventually they will be writing original female characters well. BWOCs are a pain, but they're a passing pain (and a lot of ficcers will keep writing, look back on their first fics and roll their eyes. But they'll still be in fandom and they'll still be writing, and that's a good thing.)
That is the big thing - writing a character that I find insulting - for anti-feminist stuff, or offensive depictions of child abuse, or whatever - I realise that my younger self saw them as somehow deliberate. I could see it, and therefore they could see it, and included it anyway, and so it had to be a deliberate inclusion - they know it is wrong, and want to rub my face in it anyway. Having matured I can recognise that mistake, and feel guilty at my inclusion in things like the MSTs. They felt gentle at the time, to read and laugh at, especially in comparison to the PPC stuff which was too much for me, but that might not have made it any less hurtful.