![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I was listening to the author of I Wear The Black Hat do a radio interview yesterday, and what he said convinced me to not read his book.
There were two strikes against him. The first, he assumed that everyone relates more to the villain or that relating more to the villain as one gets older is a natural progression. (Not true.) Second, he completely blew off the question about why there were more male villains than female villains in his book.
The answer (that he didn’t give and is SO OBVIOUS) is that there are more epic, relatable male villains because female villains because, LIKE IN EVERY ASPECT OF STORYTELLING, on average, male villains get more varied, more interesting, more conviction-fueled villains backstories than female villains. Lady villains are often less evil and are evil because of lost/rejected/etc love.
I’m not going to say more on that, because, duh. Obviously. It doesn’t take a genius to see that.
What I am going to do is talk about how fucking much I love revenge narratives. ESPECIALLY lady-centric revenge narratives. Especially lady-centric revenge narratives that do not involve rape.
There is nothing I love more than a woman channeling her anger into a righteous violence.
Of course, having said that, my mind went completely blank on any other examples besides Kill Bill and Colombiana and True Grit. Thinking about it, I noticed that while a lot of female characters have revenge as part of their motivation, it will often get mudded. (I'm thinking of Regina and Alexandra Udinov, who have vengeance as part of their motivation but don't have that clean inciting incident>revenge quest>bloody satisfaction arc.)
Discuss.
There were two strikes against him. The first, he assumed that everyone relates more to the villain or that relating more to the villain as one gets older is a natural progression. (Not true.) Second, he completely blew off the question about why there were more male villains than female villains in his book.
The answer (that he didn’t give and is SO OBVIOUS) is that there are more epic, relatable male villains because female villains because, LIKE IN EVERY ASPECT OF STORYTELLING, on average, male villains get more varied, more interesting, more conviction-fueled villains backstories than female villains. Lady villains are often less evil and are evil because of lost/rejected/etc love.
I’m not going to say more on that, because, duh. Obviously. It doesn’t take a genius to see that.
What I am going to do is talk about how fucking much I love revenge narratives. ESPECIALLY lady-centric revenge narratives. Especially lady-centric revenge narratives that do not involve rape.
There is nothing I love more than a woman channeling her anger into a righteous violence.
Of course, having said that, my mind went completely blank on any other examples besides Kill Bill and Colombiana and True Grit. Thinking about it, I noticed that while a lot of female characters have revenge as part of their motivation, it will often get mudded. (I'm thinking of Regina and Alexandra Udinov, who have vengeance as part of their motivation but don't have that clean inciting incident>revenge quest>bloody satisfaction arc.)
Discuss.
Tags:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1){kind=small}