Worth 50,000: Day Ten - Is It Me That Makes You Sweat?

[momebie]

I write a lot of stories about boys. I do this for a myriad of reasons, but the one that's the most problematic is that I am hyper aware of the fact that there is a way to Write Women Wrong, and if I do it someone is going to call me out on it. On one hand, I am all for challenging societal expectations and progressing towards a more accepting and balanced world. On the other though, I think characters should be whole people, and some people are just terrible people, regardless of gender. The thing that makes me the most nervous about the almost violent backlash to what people perceive as Wrong is that, by identifying certain traits and weaknesses as Issues, we are telling people who identify with or are in possession of those traits and weaknesses that they are also wrong. Not to mention the fact that womanhood, like art, is open to some amount of interpretation about what it consists of these days. In the Locke Lamora fandom, for instance, there are people who complain because Lynch's female characters are too kick ass. This seems like a rather backwards complaint to me as someone who spends a lot of time side eyeing comics fandom for how they react to what they feel are regressions in female character development. Who doesn't want a world populated by kick ass women who hold their own? Even when you do it 'right', it seems, you can't make everyone happy.

One of my favorite animes is Black Lagoon. That story is full of women who kick ass and take names, but it's also full of women who are just people and who have pasts and weaknesses. It won't stop them from shooting you in the face, but they're not ignored entirely, either. It's how I'd like to write all of the women I tell stories about, but that type of woman doesn't fit in all stories. Sometimes you need someone who's passive or still learning or willing to use her body to get what she wants. It's a fine balance, writing believable women. Of course, I usually feel like it's a fine balance writing any believable character, and I should worry about gender a lot less.

All that said, I feel like this woman probably kicks some serious ass. Tell me about her, would you?


[This is my new favorite Tumlblr.]

Write. Comment. Repeat.

Comments

[soundandvision.livejournal.com]

Sooooo, I wrote a thing for once. :x This might just be the procrastination talking but I kinda like it.

- - - -

Katarina lowered the gun and let her arm rest against the cold metal of her motorcycle. The man before her was no longer a threat. He lay slumped against the side of a rusted dumpster, breathing shallowly.

"You shouldn't have followed me," Katarina said, swinging her leg over the bike. The man's eyes widened slightly at each step she took nearer. He tried to move, scrambling to get away, but the gunshot wound to his chest stopped him.

Katarina squatted, resting on the balls of her feet in front of him and admired her handiwork. The wound was fatal, there was no doubt. It had broken a few ribs and ripped through his lung. She could already hear the death rattle in his struggling breaths. She always was a good shot, even when moving.

"You, you have the timepiece," the man gurgled.

Katarina pulled out the pocket watch and dangled it in front of him, "What's so special about this little metal box, John?"

In the reflection of the man's eyes she saw a figure come up from behind her. Without a moment's notice Katarina twisted around, side-swiping the stranger with her leg, knocking them momentarily to the ground. She reached for her gun. It wasn't there. Panicked, she searched the ground. In the brief time she was distracted by the other figure, John held the gun in his hand, aimed directly at her head. The laser sight colored an ugly blemish on her forehead.

"I can't let you do this," he breathed and pulled the trigger.

The noise of the gun was deafening in the alleyway, forcing John to momentarily close his eyes. He opened them and saw Katarina begin to fade. Her mouth was wide open in a scream, her ebony hair floating around her, moving in an invisible wind. Her hand though, her hand clutched the watch, depressing the face, activating the manipulator.

And then she was gone.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

A girl and her little metal box. I like it.

[soundandvision.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :D

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Nice.

[soundandvision.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

[gisforgreen.livejournal.com]

I don't really write women either but I think it's because I don't usually relate to other women very well.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I sometimes feel like I don't either, which is what I feel is the silliest part of the whole thing. I AM a woman. Why shouldn't I be able to UNDERSTAND women? I mean, in real life I know a lot of wonderful women. I know a lot of obnoxious women too, but that goes the same for men, both ways, and I never hesitate to write about men. I think that partially it's because I was raised on stories about men. I've been shown men and how other people assume they react in every possible situation. But great female characters have been few and far between in my experience. In most fandoms I default to slash because the women in the stories just aren't as compelling and I don't feel a need to know more about them. I don't know sometimes though, if that's because I am simply more interested in the point of view characters because I get more of them, or if the writer really has failed to give the women compelling traits.

[earlofcardigans.livejournal.com]

There was no way she was going to find another living person. Not for at least 600 kilometers. But she had her Hawk, and her Hawk had wheels bigger than anyone ever had a heart.

She hadn't been left so much as she had turned around and realized it wasn't where she wanted to be. Not with people she couldn't trust, not with winds carrying disturbing secrets she couldn't ignore.

What she had to do now, what she knew she always had to do, was set out on wheels like rocks over the places the new buried everything she had known, and return herself to the time where no one ever questioned.

There wasn't enough distance. There never would be. But it hadn't stopped her before.

[yachiru]

I can write women and men but relationships I suck at. >_>

There were holes in the sky. Something like stars. Deep holes etched into the skin of the universe. She fell into one quite by accident. She was out to buy a bar of chocolate for her father. The special kind. The kind you bought from stores with gold leaf on their doors.

She tripped over a homeless man's battered boot and fell to her knees. She remembered a drop that shouldn't have been there. Her stomach turning over like she'd eaten something nasty.

When she looked up the sky was dark. All dark, no stars. Her head was full of holes. There was something in her hand. A thin bladed sword with a red striped handle. She blinked, gripping it tight because it was the only thing she could grip. In the distance she heard low rumbling growls. Yellow lights blinked off and on. Coming closer to where she knelt. Her knees trembled and shook but she stood and stayed.

There was no light but the light they made.

There was no sound but the sound they made.

She was a sacrifice, she thought. Something to be eaten and gnawed on. Played with, like a doll. She pictured the noises coming from overgrown puppies with teeth too sharp for their mouths. She held the sword tighter as the howls got closer and closer. White bled into the yellow until she could see their shapes.

White. Rabbits. White fluffy howling yellow eyed rabbits.

One of them hopped towards her, baring its sharp yellow fangs. Her sword cut through its neck. She watched the head roll around until the other rabbits devoured it whole.

Come and get it you cute fluffy bastards!

[mrsquizzical.livejournal.com]

♥

[pocky_slash.livejournal.com]

There's a motorcycle in one of the Xavier garages.

"It was my stepbrother's," Charles says when he sees Erik looking at it with raised eyebrows. "Although, I honestly don't think he ever rode it. I think he just enjoyed being able to tell people he owned it." That really raises more questions than it answers, first and foremost being that Charles has a stepbrother, but Charles says, "You can take it out, if you'd like. Might as well get some use out of it."

Erik hums noncommittally and continues to follow Charles through his impromptu tour of the grounds.

He finds himself back in that garage later, giving the bike a long once over. It's dusty but not rusty and, as far as Erik can tell from following the internal mechanisms, it still runs. He approaches it slowly and lays two fingers on the closest handlebar.

"Do you ride?"

Erik has spent seventeen years steeling his body and mind to be ready for anything. That's really the sole reason why he doesn't jump five feet in the air at Moira's question.

He turns around, crossing his arms.

"Excuse me?" he asks.

"Do you ride?" she repeats. "The motorcycle, I mean. It seems like something you would do."

"Something I would do," Erik repeats flatly.

"Yeah," Moira says. "You know, leather jacket, sunglasses, killing people with your bare bands, riding a motorcycle."

Erik fights back a smirk.

"No," he says. Then, because he's trying to be better about being civil to Moira, he adds, "I've wanted to learn, but never had the time. I can't imagine it's difficult."

"Well," Moira says, "if you ever have an afternoon free, I can teach you."

Moira is wearing a conservative purple dress, a grey cardigan, and heels. Erik blinks a few times, trying to imagine her on the seat of a motorcycle and...no. It's still not working.

"Oh, come on," she says. "I work for the CIA. Sometimes I have to sneak into strip clubs in my underwear and sometimes I have to chase spies across Venice on a motorbike." She shrugs. "You're right--it's not hard. It's all about balance. I can--"

"Erik? Moira?"

Charles pokes his head into the garage, grinning his usual benign grin.

"Hey, Charles," Moira says. "Erik was just offering to teach me how to ride the motorcycle." She smiles at him, innocuous and charming, the way she has of making people forget that she's a competent CIA agent. Erik shouldn't have been fooled by the dress and the pearls for a second.

"Wonderful!" Charles says, clapping his hands together. "I'm so glad to see the two of you getting along. I was just coming by to see if Erik wanted a game of chess before dinner."

"Sure," Erik says. "I'll finish up here and see you in about fifteen minutes?"

"Brilliant," Charles says, and the benign grin is replaced by something softer and sweeter. "I'll see you then."

He leaves, hands shoved in his pockets, and Moira is smirking when Erik turns his attention back to her.

"Thank you, Moira," she says, "for earning me good points with my boyfriend."

"Yes, well," Erik says.

"Bet you anything he asks you to teach him," she says. "So we'd better start those lessons as soon as possible."

"I would almost think you were looking forward to it," Erik mutters.

"Looking forward to make you superbly uncomfortable?" Moira asks. "I can't imagine why."

[ladyluna529.livejournal.com]

Sometimes running was better than staying.

Elle never forgot that little snippet of advice. It was one of the last things she'd heard her mother say to her before They came. Elle was seven and hid under the bed while the men in paper masks dragged her mother away. They never realized she was there.

When she turned seventeen, They came for her. But she'd learned a few tricks. She'd had to, living on the street. She'd done things that the idealized version of her mother would have berated her for. But she was old enough now to realize that she was doing what her mother had. Survive.

So when They came, she was ready. She had a pocket full of cash, a full gas tank, and the keys to her pimp's cycle. She was gone before They even knew she'd left the rickety hotel she stayed in.

But she stopped and turned the bike as she crossed the border into the neutral ground between warring city-states. Her fist clenched as she looked towards the city's crumbling skyscrapers.

She'd be back. And then They would learn that there were no more people to take. There would be no more victims.

And she could finally let the silent scream of the child she'd been fade from her mind.

*****

I have the complete opposite problem than you. I have issues understanding men. When I'm reading or writing, it's the female characters I seek out. I identify more with them. I've given up on caring what the Right Way is to write woman. There isn't a Right Way as long as she's a fully drawn and realized character. Look at Molly Weasley - I 'heard' so many complaints that she was just a nagging, overbearing housewife, but I don't know of one person who didn't cheer her on in the confrontation between her and Bellatrix in Book 7. And she showed that housewives can be just as awesome as say, Hermione.

There's a double standard out there in writing. You can't write "bad female characters" but its almost impossible to write "good female characters" because no one can agree on what the definition actually is. I find I don't much care and just let my characters be who they are.