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ladybirdsleeps
2010-10-20 06:06 pm UTC (link)

I've heard this accusation before, but only from people repeating it, and haven't yet seen why some people think her fics are misogynist.

I know it's not on to demand explanations when someone feels offended, but at this point I would really, really like one. I'm not in all of her fandoms so I haven't read all of her fics, but I haven't noticed anything in the ones I have read. Not beyond things that can be attributed to the original canon failing, anyway.

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	fashi0n_mistake 2010-10-20 06:22 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah same here. The fics I've read by Pru didn't have any glaring issues so I'm a bit lost on what the problem is. But, then again, I haven't read her Hikaru no Go fics which seem to be the fics everyone has a problem with. (Reply to this)(Parent)

dana
2010-10-20 10:43 pm UTC (link)

I think one of her Hikaru no Go stories was a bit dodgy, the way she portrayed a OFC.

But not enough for me to say anything, because that's fairly common in fanfiction and it might also be a canon thing, I could see a reading of the text where the OFC was a victim of the culture.

It's the only story I can recall of hers where I went 'hang on.' Otherwise I can't recall anything misogynist about her other stories.

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herongale
2010-10-21 05:52 am UTC (link)

I've read the fic they are talking about(Inertia, a Hikaru no Go slash fanfic), and there definitely is some room to be critical of how the OC female (Akira's wife) is portrayed. She basically is written to be an obstacle for Akira to get over rather than a person in her own right. Here, from a review of this fic that I wrote privately for a friend of mine:

Personally I have a hard time reading stories where the female OC is such an emotional basketcase and kind of an unintentional villain, because even though I know there's a emotional honesty to this kind of post-partum depression story, it really bothers me when a female character is created primarily as an obstructing force in some male character's life, the obstacle he must overcome before finding peace with his one true love. So I am not especially objective about these kinds of things.

Still, the writing on this is impressively strong, with great dialogue and covering an expansive sweep of time, and I get the feeling that Natsumi was a carefully considered character on the part of the author, so I can forgive the fact that she's written to be dead-in-the-water from the first moment she appears. Also, it just simply makes sense that such an emotional wreck as Touya would end up married to someone like her (kind of like how it makes sense for Abe [*] to marry into a similarly picture-perfect but emotionally soul-killing relationship), because he's the kind of person who is so in denial that he goes looking for someone who is in her own way the same... someone who he thinks can understand him because she is of similar temperament, but who in the end simply helps to facilitate the mutual drowning that the two of them do to each other. So I like Natsuke, and appreciate her for what she is, and oh is she so sad.

As far as I'm concerned, the OFC in this fic is problematic, and there are some legitimate issues to discuss about it, buuutttt... to say "this fic is offensive" goes kind of too far, imho. The difference between "problematic" and "offensive" is vast and I tend to only label things as offensive if I feel that they come from a place of callous indifference, not well-meaning ignorance. The author of this story was trying to tackle a difficult subject-- post-partum depression-- and I think she was truly trying her best to flesh out this character. But not everyone is good at writing original characters, particularly ones in extremis in terms of emotional complexity. It's hard to be offended when the author clearly cares and is trying. She may have missed the mark, but so what? I write too, and I miss the mark all the time. It's hard to be perfect and all you can do is try your best, and when that fails, try harder. :/

[*] Abe Takaya, from Ookiku Furikabutte fandom. MY CURRENT OBSESSION (as if anyone cares lol)

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ladybirdsleeps
2010-10-21 06:47 pm UTC (link)

Aha, now I remember that story.

I reacted to it as a subversion of the woman-as-obstacle trope, not as just another repetition of it. As you said, Akira's wife was more than an object; the author attempted to draw and understandable, human character. In the end, I thought that she was more sympathetic than Akira.

In slash it's almost a foregone conclusion that the male-female pairing will break up somehow. I suppose that for me that how it happened was more important than that it happened at all, in deciding whether or not I thought the story was sexist. When I think of woman-as-obstacle stories, I think of stories where the women are just obstacles and nothing else--they exist only to hold the male character back. I didn't even put Inertia into the same category because I don't think you can say that's true of the female OC.

Well, now I at least understand what some people are thinking.

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herongale
2010-10-21 07:23 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, in the end, that was kind of my conclusion too. Initially I felt pretty uncomfortable with the character as she was written, but I got over it. It's not the kind of story that goes into lots of detail about every little event, so it would have been hard to find a way to fit in all sorts of little characterization details to show who she was outside of the PPD... I don't really see how to do that, without either 1) making the story significantly longer, thus completely changing the nature of how its told, or 2) changing the entire thrust and point of the story, which... I can't see why she'd want to do that.

The POV of that fic isn't neutral anyway... we're only getting Touya's side to begin with, and so in the end I realized that if we are getting a limited and not entirely fair assessment of Natsuke as a person, that is kind of the point. Touya is definitely not the most reliable narrator, and he probably was never primed to give his wife a real shot from the very beginning, since he was in love with someone else before he even met her, and was in denial.

(also, when I say that I'm not especially objective about these kinds of things, mostly I meant that I've had personal experience being the fallback girl, the replacement woman for a man who refuses to admit he's gay... so it bothers me to see a woman placed in that role, but the reality is that it happens, and it sucks, and so the marginalization of the female character also fits that particular issue... and I'm glad the author decided to tackle it, even though it makes me uncomfortable to read about it sometimes.)

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	tetradecimal 2010-10-21 07:00 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, the passive-aggression wafting off that excerpt. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	herongale 2010-10-21 07:12 pm UTC (link)
	Um. Sorry? That was just my opinion of the story. :/ (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tetradecimal 2010-10-21 07:24 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, sorry. That'll learn me to C&P with ten tabs open. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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