Women really are just for breeding. Even fictional media says so.

[meridian_rose]

Tumblr is filled with 'Hunger Games' gifs and macros and spoilers and the media is filled with reviews and book/movie comparisons. Some of the conclusions are 'crappy Battle Royale ripoff' and others decide 'OMG BEST BOOK AND/OR MOVIE EVER'. As always I suspect the truth is somewhere inbetween.

I was even thinking about making an effort to try and the read the books and maybe later see the movies due to the hype. Then I saw this post on Tumblr in which an anon said 'The epilogue was SO important to the entire story. It showed that SHE HAD CHILDREN. That she felt safe with Peeta'.
The respondent says 'I never even once read Katniss not wanting kids as being too scared to have them. I read it as her not wanting kids. Also you may recall in the one page shitty excuse for an epilogue that Katniss said she did it for Peeta, not because she wanted them because “he wanted them so badly” once she was pregnant and felt the child kicking her she decided she liked the idea of having kids but not till then. It was nothing to do with her feeling safe, it was Peeta wanting to be a father.'

So fuck you, Collins. Is this the fate of all female fantasy writers [see also Rowling], to write crappy epilogues to their stories that force otherwise outside-the-norm females into monogamous heterosexual marriages and to become mothers? Are they bowing to publisher pressure or they can honestly not just imagine that there are women out there who do not want children under any circumstances?

What's even worse here than in the 'Harry Potter' piece of shit ending is that at least one of the two readers sees Katniss as childfree but she gives in to please 'her man'. That she gives up her bodily autonomy and commits to a lifelong role of motherhood because he wants to be a father. Great message to send to the teens these books are mostly aimed at! Remember, you must please your male partner at all costs and give into sex and reproduction whenever he desires it.

So that's another book series I'm reluctant to read which is a pity because I think I'd have rather liked Katniss [also maybe Gale and Fennick?] until the Shitty Epilogue of Doom just as I was rather enjoying 'Harry Potter' until the cis-heternomative-childed-monogamy-for-all-important-characters epilogue.


I'm also falling out of love with 'Castle' because, while the episodes are still pretty good, Stana Katnic, who portrays Beckett, can think of nothing more interesting or important for her character's future than to 'make babies' with Castle. I usually blame the [mostly male] writers for having nothing better to do with a female character than make her pregnant but now female actors can't think of anything else they'd like to happen?

I want to write fanfic where Castle, who in canon already has a teenage daughter he raised pretty much on his own, tells Beckett he's had a vasectomy and/or does not want to start having babies again at his age [he's older than Beckett]. But I'd probably get no readers for such a fic because the Castle fandom seems to be 90% 'Beckett and Castle need to get married and have lots of babies' and 9.9% 'Ryan/Esposito slash because men can't ever just be close friends'.

On a similar note I'm glad I quit watching 'Bones' before childfree Temperance went batshit for asshole Booth's sperm.

Add this to reasons I find it hard to relate to a lot of female characters. Even the canonically childfree ones, including the lesbian childfree [Arizona, Grey's Anatomy] give in eventually. Even Cara [Legend of the Seeker] had to be given a shoehorned back-story son.

So, here's the thing. In the outside of realms of possibility I ever get published I swear that I'll never write shitty epilogues where everyone is forced into heterosexual couples who breed like rabbits. If I have a childfree protagonist she'll remain that way. There will be gay/lesbian couples. There will be threesomes and open relationships and the happily unattached. There will be adopted children. And my commitment to these things are probably just one more reason I'd never find a publisher in the first place because there's this obsession with pretending that m+f=biological children is the best and only suitable life path.

Comments

[pristineungift.livejournal.com]

I think I have less omg why children rage, because I do like kids and want kids, so I can relate to wanting kids, but it still bothers me that it seems to be the fate of every female character because I have a lot of friends who -don't- want kids and good for them, that's fine, it means I'll have someone I can pay to babysit without worrying if our kids get along!

I actually was having a lot of rage about how women are treated in media yesterday, because with my internet down, I've been playing a lot of video games, and I noticed something I hadn't before. I was on a level where you have to answer riddles, and the answers were like 'love' 'jealousy' 'greed' etc - Well on all the riddles with a negative answer like 'sin' - one of the potential answers you could give was 'woman.'

Now, it's worth mentioning that 'woman' wasn't the CORRECT answer to any of the negative riddles and you had to fight a monster if you selected it, but it just made me mad that for every riddle that was something like "I destroy man from within, what am I?" one of the potential answers was 'woman' and 'man' wasn't a potential answer to ANYTHING. Man could have at least been a potential answer to the riddles where the answer was 'war' or 'pride' since woman was a potential answer for 'sin', 'jealousy', and 'betrayal'.

ANYWAY, long comment is long, I meant to say that if you would like to read some fantasy stories about women who don't want kids, or if they have kids aren't really comfortable with motherhood, I'd recommend Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey. Both of them are very good about portraying the full range of womanhood - there are characters who are 'traditional' women, characters who are anything but, and all kinds in between. Tamora Pierce in particular makes a point of emphasizing that traditional women don't have to feel threatened by non-traditional women. Wanting children and a husband doesn't mean you can't be friends with someone who doesn't.

[meridian_rose]

I used to have an icon uploaded of MTV's Daria with her famous quote 'I didn't even like kids when I was a kid' which I can identify with. Daria was subversive and cynical, a real alternative to other animated females, but I wouldn't call Daria mainstream. And while many people rec Lackey and Pierce and I may well read them at some point and enjoy them, I don't think they're truly mainstream either.

Mainstream media is where we're beaten over the head that women are bad, and sinful, or they're angelic mothers or they exist only for a man's pleasure; the virgin/whore dichotomy. It plays out in movies, on tv, and in video games, and it might be more forgivable if it didn't happen all the time. I want mainstream characters who exist outside the norm, and women who aren't evil who don't want children. Women who don't change their minds to please a loved one. Women who stay childfree without resorting to barrenness which requires angsting over.

What especially gets me about these novels is that they're written by women for a teen audience and what message that is sending. I don't even get why they include these shitty epilogues that are hated by large portions of the audience. I've seen the HP ending described as 'bad fanfic' which to me it is, where everyone couples off and has babies named after all their friends. Why not just leave things open so the audience can imagine their own endings. On the other hand I know good fanfic has given us alternative endings and gay characters and slash pairings rather than the token 'Dumbledore was totes gay, I just never mentioned it in canon'. Where mainstream media does fail, fans can subvert the tropes and tell stories where they can recognise themselves and their loved ones. But we shouldn't have to keep subverting mainstream media to find characters we recognise, who are asexual and gay and bisexual and genderqueer and polyamourous and childfree and atheist and all the other 'abnormal' qualities we embody.

[pristineungift.livejournal.com]

<_< Not really sure where all of this came from because I thought I was agreeing with you? I completely meant to be agreeing with you, and just point you in the direction of some books that might make you less angry because they -do- have canon characters who embody more than cis-male/female relationship, that's all.

[meridian_rose]

Oh, I appreciate the rec (although I worry that these books get rec'd so often they'll never meet my expectations for them now!) It's more that any 'here, this is better' rec always falls outside of the mainstream, such as niche fantasy, rather than major motion pictures or prime time tv. And I apologise, I was mostly still blowing off steam. You can't control what the media does. And I wouldn't expect you to write craptastic 'fifteen years later' epilogues any more than I'd expect all your characters to be heterosexual :D