Male or Female Characters?

nightshade

nightshade

Your grandfather is a cat
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In general do you tend to prefer male characters or female characters?
 
Without meaning to, I find that I'm drawn more towards male characters. Perhaps because media still isn't great at giving women real depth, at least in the shows and films I watch; men still seem to be given the most juice when it comes to character arc and emotional storylines. I always get so excited when I find a well-written/acted female character in a show, because of how rare it feels.
 
About 50/50 I’d say, I don’t feel it is hard to find female characters with depth, what can be a problem for me instead is the actors. I tend to either be drawn in by an actor’s charisma immediately (and have a weak spot for them no matter what) or I take a dislike to them immediately (and forgive their characters nothing)

So yeah, pretty much an even split
 
I think I prefer male characters just because they don't tend to get as bogged down in romantic triangles as females do ie a bloke doesn't have to choose between two women but a woman has to choose between two men.

I agree with @Taake about the actors being a problem but I also think the writing can also play a major part and work against the actor. For example, in Once Upon a Time, I was a fan of the RumBelle ship and so I absolutely hated the Hook character because of what he did to Belle. Any time where I almost liked the character was then swiftly ruined when the character would do something that made him look like a dickhead. Then of course the writers started pushing CaptainSwan which is when the writing of Emma Swan (the main female lead) went rapidly downhill. Put it this way, from Season 2 onwards, I strongly disliked Hook. In Season 6, I felt sorry for him and thought he could do better than Emma Swan. Hook was written a bit more sympathetically in Season 6 (plus the fact he genuinely apologises to Belle for what he did to her and tries to help her out earns him brownie points) but Emma Swan was essentially written as a kind of Bunny boiler- she practically forces Hook to propose to her because she went rifling through his stuff when he was out and found an engagement ring, despite the fact Hook wants to confess a dark secret to her (he killed her grandfather) because he doesn't want to lie to her (he only just found out it was her grandfather he killed). In Season 1, Emma Swan was a good written female character, in Season 6 Hook could do a lot better than her.

I dislike Brie Larson, there's no specific reason as such, but there's just something about her that's unlikeable. I can't wait for Captain Marvel to be killed off by Rogue when she eventually arrives in the MCU.

Also sometimes a character can make me dislike an actor. I have nothing against Jenna Coleman but I absolutely hate Clara Oswald. I hate Clara Oswald more than I hate Kennedy (which says a lot). Unfortunately now I can't watch Jenna Coleman in anything without seeing Clara Oswald. I was so happy when that character was finally killed off then so annoyed when they brought her back. I was rooting for the raven big time.

One major thing that bugs me about female characters, and is a big reason why I dislike Spuffy so much, is how a female character is kind of placed upon a pedestal and is too good for a male character until he changes to be "worthy" of her or she is "desired" by almost every male character she meets. I strongly dislike what they did to Spike's character in the name of Spuffy and in some ways it actually makes me dislike Buffy a little, mainly from Season 5 onwards.
 
As a woman, it’s easier for me to identify with female characters but I like the best written characters regardless of gender- The Walking Dead’s Male characters are better written than the female ones so I tend to prefer them because identification isn’t all about gender.
 
I guess I prefer male characters. As a straight male, it’s easier for me to identify with them, but I do love some female-led tv shows and films such as Buffy (of course), Don’t Trust the b in Apartment 23, Mean Girls, Clueless, etc. Find it hard to like female characters that get bogged down in relationship drama. BtVS got the right balance imo (well, most of the time anyway).
 
I don't think it matters.

I will echo that the romance drama really bogs it down more often than not rather than adding spice for me, and that is more likely to happen with female characters (and female writers). Even when a female character is working just fine they'll throw a guy in with some drama "just because that's real" (no it's not, especially in life threatening situations, and especially at how fast it usually is with smoldering glances and background music, though it does make a writer's life easier for some quick drama and having more stakes, something the comedic Terrible Writing Advice guy makes so much fun of and even has a symbol of 3 hearts in a triangle just to save words for the inevitable love triangle when writers get lazy or desperate), like they did in Daria by throwing Tom into the mix and really dragged the show down (movie aside). And in the case of Daria I feel I was in the majority for a change, because that's not why fans watched the show (though that fandom has, or at least had, its rabid shippers as every other fandom, but even then I don't recall any passionate shippers involving Tom though I'm sure there were).

I've seen it happen to male characters as well, though it feels odd that they get the girl at the end but in the sequel or next season or whatever it's over, though the ex may show up for quick drama and maybe to be the prize again (The Zorro movies come quickly to mind, as does Indiana Jones).

A lot of times, romantic drama turns both males and females into idiots who lose all rationality and proper sense of priorities (though this can work in comedies as long as comedy is its primary goal), and I've become irritated (often in the Jossverse) to downright hateful to the protagonist (male or female) because of this at times. Male and female writers can both be terrible about this so that I think they must learn to write this way in whatever specialized school they went to (or copying others who have gone to those schools).

It helps if it doesn't demand too much of the story, or that it's understood from that they've gotten close long before the show starts (though if it's any kind of soap opera or drama then in this case it feels certain one will die, or one will cheat on the other, by the end of the first season that will continue to drown the series in angst for as long as the series is allowed to exist, and that's become too cliche for me to even tolerate anymore, but it doesn't always happen).

But there are times that this can be done very well that actually augments the story for me, but usually not. One of the few times it worked to improve the story for me was Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese in the first Terminator movie.


I can say that the one of the things that hooked me into RWBY (warts and all) is that it focused on female protagonists and villains which was refreshing, and at least for awhile the shipping was kept very light at best (okay, there was one, but it was doomed, and though important, it wasn't central to the story). Interest was shown (like one of the characters having a crush on a boy that kept being frustrated by a clueless friend and the boy's own insecurities and lack of interest back), but not all consuming passion or angst (at least not for long), and all that showed that character development could come from that alone (and good gods could it use some then). It doesn't mean that's why I prefer it, though, just that it was refreshing to see so many females and they WEREN'T obsessing over passionate, romantic love. Even the rare time passion became an issue it didn't derail the plot (it probably helped the writers didn't have enough budget that they didn't have time for that, though others will point out they sure wasted a lot of time on side characters that never really went anywhere).

And maybe it helped that I didn't see the original Battle Star Galactica first but I preferred the female Starbuck to the male one, and thought she had more depth to boot. That said, this is one of the rare times that switching the gender of a character actually worked for me, rather than coming off as a cheap gimmick that adds nothing to the story as it usually does.


But that aside, it just doesn't matter. I LOVED The X-Files, and the interaction between Mulder and Scully was a huge part of that (I quit watching before Mulder disappeared), but I'm glad I missed most of the romance between Mulder and Scully. And to bring it back to the original question, I can't really say either character was my favorite, but that the show would've suffered without both being in it to play off each other, and there's a bit of Mulder AND Scully within my own psyche.
 
nightshade
nightshade
Of course it doesn't matter, it's just a question! There's no right or wrong answer
Female characters. If they're genuinely badly written, I think I just empathise with them more.
 
Are the female characters in question written by Jane Austen? Because, it's not about the characters, it's about the writer.
 
ILLYRIAN
ILLYRIAN
I'd have to disagree totally. It isn't about the writer it depends on the character.
I don't prefer characters based on gender because I identify with them. I really forgot that was a thing and I didn't really think much like that as a kid. I tend to prefer either the warriors or the really cutesy characters, there are some general tropes which put me off both male and female characters though.

With female characters, you get quite a few Bella Swans where the have no personality but multiple guys chase her around like she's the best thing in the world, that really turns me off to the character straight away. I also see a lot of characters that were either girly and weak or masculine and strong, that was partly the reason why I never identified with female characters that much. I'm not very feminine, but it doesn't mean I don't like some feminine things, which is why I liked Buffy, she was very feminine but also very strong at the same time, still not something I see that much.
Male characters have two popular tropes, in movies geared towards males you tend to get the action hero type, with a seemingly limited range of emotions. Then as the romantic interest in romances or movies geared towards a female audience they tend to lack personality.

When I was little I didn't really identify with many female characters, because you know, I wanted to be an assassin. And as I grew older I didn't identify with female characters because I'm not as girly anymore, and I love powerful characters. There do seem to be general personality traits my favourite characters have in common, which are pretty gender neutral. A lot of characters I love I barely identify with either, I love Darth Vader but I'm literally nothing like him.
 
@nightshade, What was the question about? Characters in films or character in books?

A work of fiction has had the author of the book/ screenplay deliberate if a male or female character more believable as the lead. Will the character be better accepted as a male or female.
If non fiction is written of or displayed in a film the writer of a book/ director of a film / writer of the screenplay will have no say in the matter. If writing about the lead of the suffragettes, the main character is likely to be a woman.

In the story I'm writing at present Of Mermaids and Sirens I had to decide if the lead was male or female. But it wasn't really up to me as the general perception is that Mermaids and Sirens are females, males can be introduced later.
 
nightshade
nightshade
Either
Asking the assassin to contact you, probably not a good idea,
oh its you, carry on then and one eyed chicklet, happy hunting.

Just 'cos I smile does that mean folk won't believe me?
 
It is best when the writer knows how to write for the gender of the character. I have been married for 45 years and someday I may understand women but it hasn't happened yet, although I might understand more than a bachelor.

Similarly, women project their ideas of what a man is onto the page and I can usually tell the gender of the writer without looking at the spine of the book. Writing for someone of the opposite gender is always awkward and usually based on what we electrical engineers call "black box parameters", that is, we see the inputs (the situations women find themselves being subjected to) and the outputs, (how they react to what happens to them) but we don't know the circuitry or programming inside, so we cannot predict what the response would be to another input. Opposite gender characters usually seem flat and stereotypical unless the writer can delve into the mind of a character much better than most or has a reader of the opposite gender who can say, "Yeah, I would do that" or "That doesn't sound like anything I would do or think".

It all depends on the skill of the writer.
 
T
thrasherpix
You might be surprised by all the male writers who wrote scripts for Hannah Montana, who at one time was bigger than the Beatles to many tween girls.
This is a very interesting question, and one that I have never really given much prior thought to.

I think in general, I relate way more to female characters, because, well, I'm a female. I do on occasion, find myself relating to some male characters though.

I just checked my top 25 favorite Buffyverse character list, and it's 14 female to 11 male. That is of course with me counting both Glory and Illyria as females, (since that is the form they took on the show.) If I look outside of the Buffyverse, I still have a healthy mixture of both genders. I'm definitely drawn more to multidimensional characters.

So I think for me, I don't have an actual preference of gender when it comes to characters. I have a preference with how a character is written, and how the actor, or actress, portrays that particular character.
 
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I usually find myself preferring female characters, because I identify with them more. However, gender isn't a primary factor for me when it comes to liking/disliking characters. Most of my favorite characters are female, but that doesn't mean that I don't love male characters.
 
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