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In the entire original Star Wars trilogy, no two named female characters ever spoke to each other.

In fact there, were only four named women across the trilogy, throughout six and a half hours of content spread across multiple worlds, and for most people they can only name Leia.

I'm not bringing it up as a criticism; just an observation. Sometimes guys wonder why their girlfriends/wives don't love their favorite fiction quite as much as they do.

It's not to say a given story *should* have more characters of XYZ demographic, but basically if a guy tunes into a movie and no two guys ever speak to each other in it, and it's ladies everywhere with hardly any men around, you'd basically just get the vibe pretty quickly that this wasn't written with you in mind at all. If you like it, that's great, but it's kind of by accident since you just weren't really considered as part of it being put together. I do like Star Wars, for example.

I love the Breaking Bad show, too. The premise didn't appeal to me on the surface (middle-aged guy with cancer, young drug maker guy, and to the extent that there are women in the show it's mostly the wives of the important characters), but my husband told me it was great so I watched it with him and loved it. Wouldn't change a thing about it.

And then of course, since we can't have nice things, over the past decade the attempts to put more diversity into fantasy or science fiction have been pretty ham-fisted. Rey is a trash character, basically. Almost any attempt with this sort of stuff is lazy. Books have generally done it better because it comes from one author's mind rather than some committee.

I think part of why the TV show Arcane was so well-received (especially the first season) was that it had a ton of different characters in it but it wasn't *about* that diversity. It just happened naturally as a byproduct of good writing and care. A bunch of very different characters dealing with themes that are about technological progress vs safety, economic disparity and sovereignty, extremism to achieve goals, etc. Young and old, male and female, rich and poor, all different colors. Rather than feel forced, it just seems obvious in that setting.

I've put some thought into this when writing fiction. Men and women, and people of various cultures, do have a ton in common in the fiction they like. Probably more than most realize.

-My number one priority is to just write good stuff and tell the story I want to tell. By default there are a broad range of characters in a story like that, at least in my head. Otherwise it would feel boring. Unless I was writing a specific period piece (something like Saving Private Ryan set in WWII battle zones where obviously it would almost all be men), I'd have to go out of my way to write a story where no two men ever speak to each other, or no two women ever speak to each other. That would take effort.

-My second consideration is to of course think about my audience (which a lot of current media trends ironically don't do- they just create a piece to fulfill their own grievances and forget about the main demographic that would actually want to watch/read what they made). How would different people experience it? That's where beta readers are helpful, but also just a basic 101 test of imagining like five different people reading it and getting the vibe of whether it's written with them in mind, or not. The goal in that case is certainly not to write for everyone (eg most stories I think of tend to be quite dark and violent, and with substantial complexity, which is a combo that already excludes a lot of people), but to at least be aware of the types of people I might be writing for. The natural state of things in a sufficiently complex setting is a broad range of character types.

Basically when I exclude types of readers, I want it to be a conscious decision rather than "huh, I hadn't considered that."

a source familiar with the matter 4mo ago 💬 1

> Basically when I exclude types of readers, I want it to be a conscious decision rather than "huh, I hadn't considered that."

I think this is part of the attitude that produces poorly executed diversity.

If your idea is you want to make a good story (that speaks to universal or at least widely shared human values), probably you'll wind up with a better story than if your trying to track exactly what sort of people will like your story and pander to everyone.

Star Wars (specificall A New Hope) is about war, faith, adventure, and courage. Those are all things that human universally can relate to, albeit probably more so men than women. If it was mostly about social dynamics (even if the characters were men) probably a lot more women would be interested.

My understanding is that a lot of old gangster movies (a genre I never watched much) were family drama as much as crime, and this contributed to the appeal to women and the financial success of these films. But "family drama" is a human universal rather than a specific representation.

See also: young black men love Dragonball Z. The fact that the characters are Aryan Japs seems to be less important than the underlying human values of courage, resilience, and chivalry. Those values aren't very important in women's lives and so the show doesn't appeal to them as much (but this has little to do with the color or shape of the characters' genitals).

I think a major source of failure of female action heroes is that they don't show "action values" like courage and resilience. Instead they're often written to be unstoppable badasses, which removes the need for the virtues that an ordinary person might relate or aspire to.

> My number one priority is to just write good stuff and tell the story I want to tell.

As it should be, but "the story I want to tell" is obviously going to be a lot more likely to appeal to people whose values and priorities are much like your own.

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Discussion

Lyn Alden 4mo ago 💬 1

I think there's a difference between accidental decisions, intentional decisions, and pandering to everyone.

-For example I don't think it was a particularly intentional decision to have so few women in original Star Wars. It seems to have just kind of happened, which was pretty common in that era. And having a few more probably would have been a net positive given the setting (unlike, say, Saving Private Ryan where it would make no sense and would just make it worse). And just using the few existing women with tiny roles a bit more like Mon Mothma (the literal leader of the rebel alliance with near-zero screen time) would make sense. In fact, as more content for the expanded universe was written, more women were included throughout it, because in that setting it naturally makes sense.

-In contrast, modern movies usually do one of two things. Either they try to be generic and appeal to everyone equally (bad decision) or they set out trying to exclude from the start (eg something written for everyone except specifically straight white men to preach about that as main plot which most people aren't too interested in) which is also a bad decision and usually lazily/poorly done.

When I refer to conscious exclusion, it's not really setting out with the goal in mind to exclude someone, nor is it intentionally trying to write to everyone. Instead, it's trying to be aware of decisions made. Like yes, it will exclude people who don't like complexity, violence, or bad language. And that's because eliminating those things would directly detract from the story that's being told, which is the audience it's for.

As an example, in one of my stories, a character refers to another character as a retard pretty early on. No beta readers personally had a problem with it, but about half of them specifically highlighted that it *could* be a problem for some readers. I'm aware of it, and consciously sticking with it. Because that's how that character thinks. She's a pretty mean person. She wouldn't change her language for others, and so as a writer I'm not going to change her language for others either. That'll likely get me a 1-star review somewhere on Amazon in this environment, but it is what it is.

Dragonball Z is an interesting case. A show written mainly for young Japanese men, but like most Japanese content it has a global following. As you pointed out, plenty of black men like it (along with plenty of non-Japanese men in general), though it has a pretty tiny female audience. Bulma was a main character for a while but gradually became less important as power levels creeped up. Android 18 was somewhat relevant for a period of time. Eventually there were so many characters but hardly any important women anywhere. That might have been part of why I gradually lost interest in it; I don't know. Just a few more would have been helpful, especially given that the characters all basically fight with magic anyway.

Dragonball Super eventually introduced several more women including super saiyans, probably to more consciously address that a bit, to my original point. That's a case of adding something without really detracting from anything, since it didn't really detract from Goku or anyone. It's like, a fighting-focused Dragonball plot is naturally going to appeal to more young men than young women, but there's some low-hanging fruit to pick of having a few prominent female characters to bring in the subset of potential women watchers that are into fighting-focused plots too, kind of like Naruto and Bleach did and as Dragonball Super did.

a source familiar with the matter 4mo ago

I'm not sure whether you've taken the core of my criticism or not.

If it was Lucy Skywalker (but otherwise the same) maybe women would find it compelling but really I doubt it. I think the character's behavior and values are more compelling than their physical characteristics. That was the point of my bringing up DBZ - young black men with a full head of hair can relate to Krillin. Another good example is Avatar - where a lot of people (especially granola-eaters) relate much more strongly to the blue alien cat-people than to the literal humans.

I'm (spoiler) a man, but I think the issue with women and these franchises is deeper than who checks what identity box.

I think the issue with Star Wars (probably also DBZ) is that's a coming-of-age story for a young warrior and most women are just drawn to that role much less than men are (for perfectly understandable evolutionary reasons). I would be curious to know the viewership of modern Star Wars (which seems to have women in much more prominent roles) and whether the audience is more female than the 1970s theater-goers.

Another way to ask the underlying question is whether romantic comedies with a male lead have a disproportionately male audience. I would be willing to bet the audience is mostly women.