That's the bunny. thanks CJ

"If I wanted to read Wuthering Heights, I'd shoot my self."

I don't know what the deal is with chocolate... I'm about to get blasphemous and say I don't like it much, its too sweet and gives me a headache (but I do love my dolmades and other savouries )

The chocolate thing for me was sort of stereotypical female behaviour which was vaguely offensive, in that it implied that all women are morons around chocolate... It wasn't particularly satirical or making any grand social statement, it was just chocolate. ALthough I'm not as anti-Susan as you are, I find her blackness and lack of softness sort of appealing, in the way of I wish I had a bit more of that in me sometimes kind-of-way...

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli

That point about sums up my position. And I've never liked Susan, either, apart from her appearance in "Soul Music". Seeing the whole series, though, and with no particular book in mind, I can imagine how the original question popped up. There seems to be a slight tendency in PTerry's books to let girls rather start out as relatively tough know-it-alls, and boys rather as anti-heroes and partly naive. Especially when its the coming-of-age-category of heroes (aka, the ones starting out young): Tiffany, Conina, Esk, Susan, Annabelle, Ginger.... contra Mort, Carrot, Teppic, Eric, Victor... The background characters, like Agnes, the junior witch covens from Lords and Ladies and Hat full of Sky somehow don't have much weight.

Most male roles mentioned here grow a lot, and that makes them interesting all by themselves. The girls start out smart. If most of them weren't still interesting characters, that might make them shallower.

I didn't mind the chocolate thing in "Thief of Time", mostly because it apllies to me, too, and I thus refuse to see it as stereotypical. Which demonstrates the truth of Garner's theory on how we perceiva characters.

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)

I do intend to get round to answering this thread eventually!

Mrs G
The Garner who cares.

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?)

It's funny, I've got these two friends and one of them is like Nanny Ogg and the other one is like Granny. I guess that makes me Magrat... hmm...

Granny and Nanny Ogg always remind me of the two older women in Anne of Green Gables (mostly because Magrat= Anne Shirley, right down to the flowers in her hair) Mrs Lynd isn't really like Nanny beyond her size, but Marilla Cuthbert could give Granny Weatherwax a run for her money, magic or no magic.

I must say, I liked Susan from the first (I encountered her in Hogfather, as the Anti-Mary Poppins) but her character got weird in Thief of Time. I get the chocolate thing, but it shouldn't be something THAT obsessive. It was creepy, the way he wrote it.

Tiffany started out as a strong character, too, but it works because we do see her insecurities from inside and her weaknesses as a person. The strength feels more like a personality trait than in other characters- possibly because she's a younger character, somehow it works better.

I think Twoflower's daughter is a pretty weak character, not Butterfly, the other one (forget thr name )

But she was a bit of a bit player in the whole book and was very young... it seemes more of a case of naivete based on ignorance...

I have to say of all the characters the one I didn't get was Sally. I mean if you were goig to let e a vampire in the watch why not just make it male... besdies the whole fight over Carrot there reallt wasn't any point to Sally being female and she had no discernible personality. She was just there. Hell a pole cut to look human would have had more comedic effect than Sally's character...

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli