Tags to Meta: Women Being Awesome vs. Women in power

[lea_hazel]

The Women Being Awesome tag on AO3 is very popular, and for good reason. It's a great, searchable tag that's very useful for those times when searching a character tag yields only fics with minor appearances. If a work it tagged WBA along with your favorite character, you have pretty good odds of her taking a major role, being highly competent, and having an emotional arc.

My problem is I don't usually write about women being awesome. I write about women, put an emphasis on their stories especially when canon has not, expand what was implied, and generally try to go deeper than the source material. But, I don't think my stories fill the implied criteria of women being awesome. Awesome as characters, maybe, but that's a little ambiguous, isn't it? What if I write a story to highlight a woman being terrible? Majorly terrible.

Female villains (antagonists, foils, antiheroes, antivillains, supervillains and etc.) need love. Canon won't treat them well. Not if there's an option for the vilainess to reveal that her primary motivation for evil was yearning for the male hero's dick. Morally ambiguous female characters also get the short shrift, a lot of the time.

It's genuinely hard to write about women being awful under the mantle of strong female characters and good role models for girls. Or even heroines for women who feel like the candy-coated power fantasies marketed to the 18-35 male set will never really scratch their itch. I don't want to fill a tag for Superwomen with stories about Lexettes. I want women in power who are affected by power, changed if not corrupted by it, who want it and use it and sometimes misuse it.

That's what I write, and I think it would be unfair of me to label it something else.

Comments

[hagar_972]

*checks* *finds more than three users*

This tag is now filterable and will appear in autocomplete.

[lea_hazel]

I didn't even see that last story until now. Cool!

[hagar_972]

You have a Friendly Neighbourhood Wrangler, darling. Do let me know when you find tags which appear to be in need of attention.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah I have the same issue with the term, so I never end up using it.

[lea_hazel]

I always feel like there's too strong of a dichotomy. Like people either either hate a character or justify everything they do. It's more obvious with male characters like Loki or whatnot, but I see it with female characters, too. I feel weird saying I "like" characters like Jarvia and Branka.

[alias_sqbr]

Godddd yes. And it also gets mixed up with the "defending female characters from unfair criticism" thing and just...ug.

[lea_hazel]

It's just a lose-lose situation. With certain characters I get apprehensive about characterizing them ambiguously, because I know from experience that there will be a contingent of reviewers to jump on with "HAHA FUCK THAT SLUT" which depresses me to hell and back.

Like trying to write a fic with a POV character who's shrewd and political and makes very chilly decisions, vs. a male character who's blustery and honest but kind of aggressive. I want to make a point about the merits and flaws behind military strategy vs. diplomacy, but I'm concerned that it reads like the heroic male and the conniving female.

[alias_sqbr]

You could always make them both women :D

But yes, I totally understand. Urg.