lovecraft68
Bad Doggie
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2009
- Posts
- 43,464
I don't think you're much of a horror fan, but let me take a second to drop the name Jack Ketchum, most well known for Offseason one of the most horrifically brutal books of all time.Your thread raises a huge issue that is hard to do justice to.
It's certainly true that many women characters in erotic stories are written in a flat or stereotypical way.
It's an issue that extends to "good" fiction outside the scope of Literotica. For instance, I enjoy the novels of Philip Roth and John Updike, but I think they have women issues. I think their women characters come across as projections of the author's male fantasies or quirks or insecurities rather than as fully authentic real people. It's a big flaw in the novels of both of these authors, whom I like in many ways.
If authors want to write stories that remedy this problem, I think that's great. I support that.
And yet at the same time, many people WANT to read erotic stories based on flat, stereotyped characters, because that's what turns them on.
Some men want to read stories about bimbos with big tits.
Some women want to read stories about controlling assholes with big dicks.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I don't think there's any right or wrong on this issue at Literotica.
I think the right way to frame this issue--which is a legitimate issue--is to steer away from suggesting that others "should" be doing things a certain way as you want them to do them and instead say "Here's what I want to do" and invite supportive and useful commentary about that.
It's a hellaciously complicated subject, because the reality is that so much of our sense of self worth and what we want is tied up in how those we sexually desire perceive us. And I don't know if there's a way out of that.
My basic answer to the initial question is: come up with a motivation for your character, give it verisimilitude (enough facts to give it the appearance of reality), and run with it, whatever it is. In art, a little goes a long way. Not that much is needed.
From all accounts of people who met him (His real names was Dallas something) he was a sweet guy. But no one, and I mean no one, has ever demonstrated more of a hatred of women in his novels Everyone of them features nothing but abuse, degradation, rape and gory deaths of women. Once is a device, twice a coincidence, every book is catharsis for what lies beneath.
So I agree with you on how some male authors push their feelings or ideals of women onto their characters.
I do it, in the form of being the antithesis of Ketchum, my female leads slaughter men in ways that make I spit on your grave's revenge deaths look tame. Because I have a deep seeded hatred for certain types of men, so I project that in my serious work where the men are disgusting trash and can't die slow enough, and the women are dangerous enough to give them the death they deserve because society-looking sidelong at you, Loving wives section-think domestic abuse and rape are still a joke.
My writing of female leads may not be perfect and always convincing, but they are gloriously vicious and vindictive. Part of that is because although there is more of that material around these days, growing up I saw very little like that, and once I started writing I decided to to do it myself.