Any World (That I'm Welcome To)

sollers

• Does she have only one defining trait or concern, or act as a symbol for some idea/trait (like Innocence or Home or Victim), despite supposedly being a somewhat major character, while the male characters do not? (If the male characters are equally poorly developed, it's probably a problem with characterization as a whole, not just the women.)


• Is her entire character and character arc based on her romantic status, sex, gender presentation, and/or motherhood - and this is not a romance or a work specifically commenting on female concerns? Especially if the male characters aren't totally based on being male (or they are, but it's presented as being "universal")?


• Is she less as well developed, in terms of background information, variety of motivations, actions, character arc, etc., as male characters with comparable screentime?


• Do all her thoughts, speech, and actions revolve around another character, while those of male characters with comparable screentime do not?


• If she steps outside the conventional bounds of feminine behavior for her culture, is she punished (e.g. taunted for wearing "unfeminine" clothes, condemned to loneliness and misery for wanting a career, harassed or worse for showing her ankles outside her home after 6 pm, etc.), and is that portrayed as natural and right? (E.g., is the happy ending how she became happy once she started wearing skirts and makeup and hairspray as nature intended, or how she was properly shunned for wanting to make partner at the law firm while a male character was lauded for the same?)


• Does she do things that make no sense just to titillate viewers, like skimpy clothing while climbing Everest or going into battle while the male characters wear cold weather gear/armor? And this does not lead to frostbite/battle wounds and no characters think it's odd?


• Do characteristics that affect male characters not affect her? (E.g. if she is black, is that never significant while it is for male characters - or conversely, do male characters come in a range of races, sexual orientations, etc. while only white straight middle-class able-bodied cisgendered female characters exist?)


• ETA: Is she introduced as a highly capable character with some special training/talent/authority, yet somehow is never able to use it and/or always needs help from a male character of equal or lesser training/talent/authority? (And does he inexplicably get a power-up and become ten times better than her despite having no training or practice?)


• Is she inexplicably the only female around? (E.g., even if the show is set in the modern-day US army, about 13% of the army generally and 17% of the officers ought to be women. She should at least run into a few female walk-ons, and the crowd scenes should reflect this demographic distribution. See here.)


• If there are other women in close proximity, does she seem not to notice they exist while noticing the most minute details of what minor male characters are up to and having long conversations with them? (Yes, you can insert the Bechdel Test here.)


• If there are multiple female characters in the work, do they all meet most or all of the criteria listed above, including the protagonist if female?


• Bonus Question: And do most or all of the female characters in this writer's entire oeuvre meet most or all of these criteria? How about most or all of the female characters in the whole batch of shows this season/movies this year?

Pity the poor internet executive who runs foul of the fan-fiction community, one of the internet's most bizarre tribes.

So far, just another tedious free-speech case.

Those who care can discuss, forever, whether there's a difference between the promotion of pedophilia and "slash" fictional accounts of sex between teens, sex between aliens, sex between teens and aliens, sex between teens, aliens and Captain Kirk., and all the other permutations that spring from the minds of the internet's freakier fanfic obsessives.

One can't accuse these companies of cynicism: the community, in each case, came before the corporate ambition. But all three companies now have business objectives: Fanlib has big-money backers to satisfy; Six Apart wants to go public, and has other more respectable units;; and Linden Lab needs the blue-chip marketers to fund, indirectly, its tremendous technology costs. The freaks will have to go. But, if they do, what's left?