Male or Female Characters?

@nightshade Your comment makes no sense to me. I was just trying to clearly express my view on it, not trying to win some debate. I'm thinking you must've heard a "tone of voice" that was not accurate. Perhaps my sharing my exasperation at some all too common cliches made it seem otherwise.

one eyed chicklet said:
Because I thought they were cool and they got fun weapons. It was just one of those childlike fantasies, my family thought is was quite funny.
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You said you were little so I'm presuming a child not yet in her teens. Since nightshade asks if every child wanted to be one, I'll have to say no. I don't recall even being exposed to the idea.

Offhand, the only spy I can recall from being little (that is preteen) is Carmen Sandiago (it's POSSIBLE she influenced my love for geography, but I had very little exposure to her as a child, and she's also a woman character so not one you likely knew of). Spy Kids and the movies (and merch) it inspired after hadn't yet come out (but they included female spies and spy kids...). I did read a lot of fantasy and scifi even as a kid, but assassins were background characters, and often quite crude, like bullies who kill. So it did not even occur to me to want to be one.

Though I'm sure Mara Jade (Star Wars expanded universe) and Natasha/Black Widow would've inspired me as a child to want to be an assassin (but then they were females so going by what you said you must not have been aware of them either) but I hadn't yet discovered them (though they did exist as characters at the time). Professional spies and assassins with the cool gadgets (not including characters like Inspector Gadget) didn't really enter my radar until I was in my teens. I did play combat games with boys, but that was with toy guns (or water balloons, etc). I'm sure Spy Kids changed that for future generations (and yet by then females seem to be spies and assassins as well in a lot of media so I can only shrug in confusion).
 
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I definitely tend to prefer female characters. I’d say that when I look at my overall favorite characters it’s 75% female and 25% male and I have a lot more female characters that I casually enjoy on shows than male. When I care about a male character though, I really really care a lot.
 
While not a conscious thing, I tend to prefer female characters, maybe because they're often more relatable to me than male characters. If you asked me to list my favourite characters, the list will be 90% female characters. I also tend to love female characters to a fiercer degree than I do male characters (with a few exceptions).

I also find that I tend to love a wide variety of female characters with varying traits and personalities, but when it comes to male characters whom I truly love to the same degree that I love my fave female characters, they tend to have similar traits and characterisations.
 
@thrasherpix I recall there being assassins in the Sarah Jane Adventures, Horrible Histories, M.I High (all of which I watched constantly as a kid). I also did know of the Assassins creed games, there were assassins in The Lord of The Rings etc.
My parents were fairly careful with what I was exposed to as well but since the first shows I mentioned are on CBBC I was allowed to watch whatever on childrens channels.
 
The thing I like about female characters is that they get to expresses part of our shared human-ness in ways that we dudes are restricted from doing. Like, I can't do like Buffy and go cry in my friends lap when a girlfriend breaks up with me. Sometimes watching dudes being dudes and just communicating with meaningful nods and fist bumps can be frustratingly boring. Female characters get to express what they feel, rather than just non-committedly allude to it.

I think it works the same fro a lot of writers. Zadie Smith is a female writer of mixed black Jamaican and white British heritage. But none of her female mixed race characters seem to have much in common with her. Her central characters tend to be male, either white or Jewish/Chinese and they seem to have much more in common with their author.

The great thing about fiction is that it gives us some freedom from ourselves and allows us to transcend our own perspective and look at ourselves and others from a different vantage point.

All that being said, I don't think I have a preference for female characters. I prefer the dudettes to the dudes on BtVS, but on AoS, I like the guys.
 
I just relate to whoever is similar to me. Personally, I have my own gender issues so I have a hard time relating to characters based on that.
 
Men by quantity probably but it's really just good characters I enjoy. If it's a decent ensemble show then I usually like a mix and my favourite overall character is still Buffy.
 
WillowFromBuffy said:
Sometimes watching dudes being dudes and just communicating with meaningful nods and fist bumps can be frustratingly boring. Female characters get to express what they feel, rather than just non-committedly allude to it.
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Lol, that's my favorite thing about male characters! But then, I'm the kind who fast forwards through a lot of 'expressing what they feel' when it drags on too much.
 
Taake said:
Lol, that's my favorite thing about male characters! But then, I'm the kind who fast forwards through a lot of 'expressing what they feel' when it drags on too much.
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Both, I need to feel for characters, I love characters who have vulnerability while being also strong which is why I love Buffy (or Elena from TVD) though people can find characters like that annoying and whiny but not me. I also love a lot developpement and find it fascinating. And the acting is also important.
 
I'm panappreciative. I appreciate all characters; men, women and otherwise.
 
Taake said:
Lol, that's my favorite thing about male characters! But then, I'm the kind who fast forwards through a lot of 'expressing what they feel' when it drags on too much.
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Yes, but that's like the same thing only flipped. We as people are complex, while fiction tends to stick to its tropes and conventions. There are probably many women who connect more to a stoic and stunted Angel than Buffy's never ending eruption of self expression.
 
Stoic? (Stoick) He's a character in How To Train Your Dragon, to think that many women want to connect with him leaves me, well..
 
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Bop
Bop
He’s stoic as a coping mechanism in part
Hmm, when I think about it I would say that most of my favorite characters are female. At least in TV-shows.

I'm a big fan of Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5, Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1, Jo Lupo in Eureka just to mention a few.
Don't think there are any fancy explanation that I can relate to them or anything though... lol
Think it's just a superficial reason that kickass women are just more fun than men in general. 🙂

/SK
 
nightshade said:
In general do you tend to prefer male characters or female characters?
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This is an interesting question to consider! After some thought, I'd say I don't have a preference. I tend to be drawn to characters whose experiences I can identify with, either sex.

Thinking about some of the characters I deeply identify with, they're both men and women. In the case of Buffy, Spike is my favorite character, closely followed by Buffy.
 
^^

@Joan the Vampire Slayer


Yeah, that reminds me. I was a huge Alita fan back in the day (still am somewhat, and as the movie was aimed at actual fans rather than the general public for a change, I love the movie, too, but of course it was hard for many to relate to, even with one grating change they made to it that to me was obviously trying to "westernize" it and broaden its appeal). I had experiences that left me mentally and physically scarred and grew up impoverished, sometimes right on the streets which operates by different rules and standards with regular society (despite many interesting parallels). There were also who found and helped me, and...well suffice to say I got sucked into her story when I discovered the manga at 19 (from the library) and she was a major inspirational character for me. I later found out many other females said much the same thing.

But fairly recently a guy posted his own love for the series, though for him it was as someone autistic who regressed at times, feeling himself fall apart and having to be put back together as well as mental states that he could relate to, so he related to Alita strongly (though of course the manga is designed to be seen from her viewpoint regardless of the demographic of the reader so that helps). I'd say he loved the character and related to her as well as I did, if in a very different way, and for different reasons. What's really cool about that is that despite our many differences, I feel a connection to him for being able to understand and love the series as much as I do, and also how he found inspiration in it to become better rather than wallow in self-pity and despair. An automatic connection forms that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

And that easily works for me because of the game books I read as a child. In the generic kinds, you could be male or female (though almost always White), not that it was important to the story, and I went with it. It was still my choice what the character did. I did get excited when I discovered some aimed at female readers, but they were so...disappointing...that I went back to the generic ones.
 
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