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Do you mind reading stories with a protagonist that is the opposite gender as you?
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Post by
Alkony
Many of my favorite authors are women who write stories with both genders as main characters. I do not find any difficulty relating to either gender of protagonist in most books I read, regardless of gender.
I find the "helpless" mode for the protagonist's love interest/best friend very off putting, no matter the gender. The most recent example I can think of for this was the latest Transformers movie. I've found the series fairly fun, and Sam is a believable character, but the treatment of women in the last installment was horrific. There was the girl friend who was damsel in distress (with perfect hair and artful smudging) the whole movie except for causing drama with Megatron in the last 10 minutes (she never even slapped her boss when he kidnapped her). I was further aggravated by the three other female characters in the movie: over-protective inappropriate Mom, Ice Queen government big shot and her assistant Mini-Me. Ugh.
Trying to think of male authors I've enjoyed who wrote female leads. Larry Niven was involved in an ensemble cast story in
Lucifer's Hammer
that had relate-able women in it. Tad Williams'
Otherworld
had several well developed female leads. Heck, Shakespeare wrote some good female characters.
I guess it comes down to: The story and writing style matter to me, the gender of the main character does not.
Post by
cloudp
Although I don't really mind myself, the protagonist's gender has influence, but my belief is that it's not on the reader, but on the writer.
For example, in Naruto, it seems every major villain is male (I'm discounting episodes not based on the manga), and most female characters are supporters. The main team, for instance, consisting of a girl and two boys, is HORRENDOUSLY focused around the males (who are infinitelly more powerful than the female). Heck, there's a character that enters halfway through the plot (episodes 30ish of the second season, so, technically, episode 250+) to Naruto's team with a more interesting backstory than Sakura (the female) ever had. Her family is never seen (despite being the only one with an actual living family), thus far she's had ONE decent fight (most other random characters have way more...), and all her plot relevance is strictly related to the two males in her team.
Lee's team, composed by 3 elements too, has solid backstory on Neji and his relation to the village, decent backstory on Lee (though not particularly in depth), and, guess what... No backstory on the female, Tenten. And I mean it, all she has for a backstory is "I want to become the best, like that other famous ninja woman!". There is nothing else, we know that's her resolve, but no clue on
why
that is her resolve. There are
a lot
of other things I could refer, but I think I've made my point.
When it comes to the main character taken as an isolate matter, it's harder to spot this sort of things, but the point I wanted to raise is that who writes the story has a tremendous influence on the depth of female/male characters.
Post by
880913
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Post by
91604
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