Oh yeah, Sean McMullen’s Greatwinter trilogy is pretty good, some annoying science fantasy with genetics, but the characters, plot and world-building make up for it.

There’s also Ian McDonald’s books Chaga and Kirinya books, though I don’t quite know if Chaga fits the literary version of the Bechdel test, though he does female characters much better than Peter Hamilton. And also, there’s Ian Irvine’s View from the Mirror quartet, still a bit iffy over the later sequels, plus I’ll throw in Charles Stross, Paul McAuley and Peter Watts as authors to read.

And way too much Alastair Reynold, Sir Terry and tvtropes mean I’m a bit snobby on writing style and structure.

Oh, that film deserves to be there. But what’s sad is the comparison to the comic. That comic had some pretty impressive feminism in it, because even where Sally and Laurie where talking about men, they were also talking about the changing expectations and goals of women in incredibly male worlds, and about the fact that they were, to a certain extent, bound and restricted by their relationships (it doesn’t get more boyish than superhero comics!) It had impressive gender reversal stuff, like where Laurie is the person who teaches Dan the Nite Owl that it’s okay to get turned on by his costume. It had the most impressive examination of the “rape=romance” trope that I had ever seen – as in, I felt like it was in the comic so they could directly engage the systemic problems that produce that narrative trope. All in all, the comic, I felt, if not entirely successful, and not a full pass, deliberately set out to discuss some of the sexism in the superhero world.

And then the movie comes out, and it’s like all that intelligence evaporated and was replaced with B.S. and fight scenes!! It makes me think of Edward Said’s great comment about how everything that isn’t normative is “politics”. And, what? Too complicated? Oy!

(anti -spam word: “character”)

Just one. But the bulb has to want to change.

Which could lead me into a whole other rant about the current “common knowledge” about Austen’s works (I think it was Karen Healey who had a masterful [mistressful?] stab at a comic author who used the phrase “swoons like a heroine in a Jane Austen book”) and the fact that her works *have* been largely reduced to shallow Chick Flicks.

What’s depressing is when you go through modern sci fi which is lauded for having Strong Female Characters and sure, they pass – on the basis of ONE scene or ONE line.

people pay good money to study this

I don’t know how much marketing and promotions result in a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy when it comes to box-office & ratings stats.

But perceptions can change….. on a bit of a tangent:

I few years back, within the last decade, I used to ask anyone who would listen why only men did the voice -over promos for up-coming TV programmes – you know, those annoying voices that drown out the music while credits are rolling on TV. Most people, including quite a few young men & women (teens, early 20s) would say that people just wouldn’t accept it because male voices were more authoritative.

Then one day, a few years back, I noticed that it was a woman’s voice doing the voice-over promo. And after that, I noticed that they would be done sometimes by men, and sometimes by women. As far as I’m aware, the sky has not fallen… in fact I haven’t seen anyone comment on it or complain.

So, the moral is, IMO, the powers that be should just do it, with confidence & in good faith, and people will see all those discrimatory “perceptions” are built on thin air, and of little substance.