Revive! ...inspired by:
The new Granny

Sorry if some bits are a bit repititive.

Hm, okay, reviving an unfinished discussion... although I have to admit I am a little bit at a loss here. Basically, I agree to many points already made – that a stereotypically weak character is as bad as a stereotypically strong one, that realistic characters are the most important thing, that in literature, a character with weaknesses is not the same as a weak character.

Mind you, compared to most fantasy literature I know, Pterry’s female characters are, of course, still good.
But I do find this discussion interesting, because in his later books (some of them still being my favourites despite critical points) there is a pattern of women who kind of annoy or slightly dissapoint me, so to say. Well... more women than there used to be, who aren’t strong female characters, but female characters without weaknesses.

I’ve just recently seen an old children’s film, and thought, so that’s one of those stereotypically weak female characters I don’t miss at all – by default more stupid and more helpless than the boys of the same age, always in need of guidance, and very pink-ish.
So, what exactly did I not like about.... hm... the later Susan, Sally from the Watch, Adora Belle? It’s not even that I totally disliked these characters. They were still entertaining, but they all were a let down compared to their male counterparts. Lobsang and Jeremy in Thief of Time read more alive to me than Susan, who I kind of lost when her inner conflicts faded into the background, didn’t transport anymore, and stepped far behind from her extra powers. So, by actually being portrayed stronger as a person, she became to me weaker as a piece of literature.

Maybe one of these characters, Adora Belle, has one disadvantage: The story isn’t being told from her point of view (yes, obvious, sorry). We only get as much of her background story as she tells the main character, and as much of her thoughts as the dialouges have room for. She necessarily stays "flatter" than Moist. Buuut.... somehow what he does see in her, what he finds so fascinating except that her dress sits tight, somehow isn’t being transported – at least not to me.

I just re-read Going Postal and Making Money. Everything he writes about Adora Belle’s attitude could have been more cool as annyoing, it clearly is intended to be, but it doesn’t come across.I sometimes have that feeling as if, when dealing with female characters who get no part in the story where it is told from their point of view, he tries not to do anything wrong with the character. And if he does write silly scenes for them, they suddenly end up mudfighting – I am still puzzled about those girl scenes in Thud. Not as in “Eugh...”, more as in “Why? What was the point? No one would miss this scene at all if it were erased from the novel. Actually, no one would miss the new characters as well.” (Maybe Angua was another proof that it’s not about women showing as much flaws as male characters, but about how credible they are, because she was displaying insecurity and all, just not in a way that fit her earlier portrayals...)

In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter if the character is written as a strong woman or a weak one, but if the character is well written. (That was the repititive bit, by the way.) A good writer can afford dislikeable, flawed, or passive female characters as much as he can afford dislakable, feeble male characters.

PS: Sybil should get more room again if there is another Watch novel to be written, or any room at all. (Did she appear personally at all in “Nightwatch”? Or only through being mentioned by others?)