Female characters

[katikat]

As you know, reading books is a part of my job. I read them and review them for my boss with a recommendation to publish or not. At the moment, I'm "doing" two books. I'm editing my translation of Salvatore's "The Legacy" and reading Douglass' "Battleaxis" for later translating purposes. And OMG, the chicks in those books are so annoying!

"The Legacy" is the 7th part of Salvatore's "The Legend of Drizzt" series. And one of the Heroes of the Mithral Hall is Catti-brie, the human girl that was brought up among dwarves. And that chick is gorgeous and a great fighter and she's frickin' always right! She's twenty, the other fighters are like scores of years older but she always has to show them the errors of their ways. There is nothing more annoying than a character like that.

And if that wasn't enough. There's the character of the barbarian Wulfgar. Until this book, he was strong and fair and courageous and always respected women. Suddenly, the author turned him into this macho chauvinist who orders Catti-brie, his fiancée, around because in his opinion, she should sit at home, bear children and cook for him. Like really. That's so insulting to the character! And of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that Salvatore drools over the eternal love between Catti-brie and Drizzt. This sudden and completely unexpected twist in Wulfgar's behavior has nothing to do with Salvatore's need to show us how much better Drizzt is for Catti-brie. And then, Salvatore kills Wulfgar, adding insult to injury, really. Let's just say, that fans were pissed!

Now to Douglass' oh so gorgeous heroine - such a whiny twit with a pea-sized brain too! That's not a way to set one of the main characters. Faraday sees Axis one time at a banquet and she immediately falls in love with him. The next week, she spends in her room, sitting at her window, sighing and whining about him. All her scenes are about how she doesn't want to marry Axis' brother, how much better Axis is etc. etc. - chick lit galore! And then Axis has to escort her together with her mother to some estate or other. Over the next two weeks, they talk like three times but Faraday is totally in love with him, the love of her life and all that bogus. Oh, and Axis spends like one paragraph thinking about her and obviously, he's totally, madly, deeply in love with her too. Yeah, that's why she didn't even cross his mind for more than three paragraphs during the last 100 pages. Urgh.

Some authors do know how to write female characters and some don't. Patricia Briggs or C. E. Murphy belong in the former category, Salvatore and Douglass definitely in the latter. Please, Mrs Douglass, either write chick lit or fantasy. Don't mix those two because you're ruining both - the fantasy part is awesome, Faraday's whiny twitiness grates on my nerves! X(

Comments

[misty-writes.livejournal.com]

Eww, that sounds awful. D:

[katikat.livejournal.com]

The thing is that if they toned it down, the books would be great, especially Douglass' "Wayfarer Redemption" - the fantasy part is so interesting! I mean, I have nothing against relationships in books but they have to develop over some time, not wham! they are in love. That shows that the author wanted to get to the "good" parts as soon as possible and didn't take the time to develop the ship properly. And that kinda ruins the book :(

[yami-tai.livejournal.com]

Argh, there's nothing worse than bad characterisation because your irritation with the characters always jolts you out of the story, I find *hugs*!

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I get into the story and suddenly I go all "Huh? O.o" when a character does something that totally grates.

[dragonsinger.livejournal.com]

What language do you translate the books into? Doesn't sound like too bad a job *says the librarian*.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I translate books from English into Czech. It's actually an awesome job but some characters in the books that I work on make me twitch XP

[dragonsinger.livejournal.com]

Ooh...never good when the character makes you twitch.

[bodgei.livejournal.com]

guess I skip those books...

[katikat.livejournal.com]

The thing is that Douglass' book IS quite interesting, the fantasy part that is. The love interest part... not so much. It has no base, no substance X(

[bodgei.livejournal.com]

yeah a lot of time people have trouble combining the two...

[lostandalone22.livejournal.com]

That does sound like it's pretty bad.

[laylee.livejournal.com]

If funny how some female authors completely lack the ability to write female characters well. You'd think it'd be a cinch, but I've read so many badly written female characters by female authors over the years that I really do despair of my gender on occasion.

[lostandalone22.livejournal.com]

You know, I gotta feel for them, though. I write mostly fan fic, but I can't even write female characters. Even though some of the girls get just as much screentime as the guys, I still can't quite capture the female ones.

[laylee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same here. Whenever I try to write female characters they always end up being either incredibly Mary-Sueish or shrill and unpleasant. I just can't seem to get into the female head the way I can with guys.

Woe!

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Yes, sometimes, badly written characters can ruin an otherwise amazing book X(