(Untitled)

[zevazo]

My friend Marissa is missing the "Let-me-make-it-better" gene.

Now, when I think about that statement, it isn't really true -- she reacts to most characters just as most women readers react to them -- but she also shows a curious lack of sympathy for some people.  Take Draco Malfoy -- she went from "I hope he actually scores points someday" to "Oh,

Comments

[gyutto]

here from the daily_snitch :)

I think your theory has certainly hit the mark. But another hidden part in both parts of the theory is the element of control and power. The average woman, pitted against the average man in a fistfight (excluding any weapons or dirty tricks), would probably lose for physical reasons. So what recourse does a woman have to get her way in life? Negotiation. Furthermore, from the mothering perspective, as mothers, we are going back to a time when the male in question depended and needed you, and was for a time, also physically inferior. That dependency gives the female the upper hand in the relationship

[zevazo]

Hey, thanks for kicking it off! I do agree that it's partly a power "thing." Do you suppose there's also an element of ... I don't know ... you know that joke that goes, "Women are like computers, they remember everything you've ever said and can bring it up against you at a moment's notice"? Could it also be partly a matter of, "I now have power saved up for later, if necessary?"

I'm now thinking of Nora in A Doll's House, if you've read that. She knows of her husband's vulnerability and is saving that knowledge for just-in-case.

[gyutto]

exactly! a woman's best weapon is often her mind...seeing a person emotionally vulnerable often gives you more info about that person than you'd get in a physical confrontation. And we store that knowledge away, for use in future strategizing for purposes good or evil. :)

[koikana]

Here from daily snitch

[zevazo]

Maybe the real attraction of it is that you-the-reader can identify with both the character's suffering and the desire to help ease that suffering? I've always found that sort of magical, how stories let you become the character and yet still observe the character.

[soawen]

Here from the daily_snitch.

Personally, I read H/C when I need something cheery. Confused?

See, even if the main character suffers terribly in all ways, there is comfort and usually a happy end of sorts. The character doesn't suffer alone or unnoticed. As someone said, the whole knight in shining armor-thing. In H/C comfort is guaranteed which is far from the case in real life. It's pure escapism with a healthy (or should that be heady?) dose of 'at least I could be worse off'.

And let us not forget the thrill of watching someone else suffer. You can't have a car crash without a crowd of on-lookers, and in H/C you get every little detail spelled out. It is, I think, also a way of facing something bad albeit secondhandedly.

[skilfullycurled]

Link may not talk but he does make this "ughaahh" kind of noise when he's about to strike with his sword. I may be imagining this.

Anyway, I agree with soawen -- I read H/C when I need something cheery.

See, even if the main character suffers terribly in all ways, there is comfort and usually a happy end of sorts. The character doesn't suffer alone or unnoticed.

[zevazo]

Of course, the conflict must be resolveable (is that a word?), because if it wasn't, that would shake our faith in ourselves as the Universal Mother who can fix it. (Thank you for making me think of that concept!)

Maybe this also relates to the mother-goddess concept that pervades so much of fiction. The female concept of deity is usually either the mother, the healer, or the keeper of the hearth. Then, of course, there's virgin goddesses, but essentially they're mother-goddesses-in-waiting. She can fix it. She can make it better.

Yes, Link has sound effects, of course, but my brother and I have decided he's actually deaf and reads lips. He can hear his fairy (or whoever) because she's shrieking into his eardrum. "HEY! LISTEN!" :p

[darktail]

http://bancomicsans.com/

[zevazo]

"Clearly, Comic Sans as a voice conveys ... irreverence."
--aforementioned Web site

Thanks for the link, though ... a new place to procrastinate!