A few days ago, prolific author Adam Lane Smith put up a blog post defending the much derided “male power fantasy” as a worthy form of storytelling. In the post, he argues that such fantasies encourage men and boys to overcome obstacles, stand up to bullies and abusers, and live out their principles. He explains that such stories are mocked and belittled today because those who fund entertainment want men and boys to become weak, emasculated cowards to make them easier to control.
Reading this post made me think of another aspect of male fantasy that is equally derided: the idea of a woman devoted to a man.
A tweet (thread archive) from Twitter user @SirDemiface highlights a very important aspect of boys’ manga, one that is too often overlooked:
Something Anitube/Anitwitter never acknowledges
These are Shounens.
They come out in the same magazine as One Piece and Hunter x Hunter, they’re for the same demographic,.
They are Shounen manga pic.twitter.com/2gwmI3qwUR
— Demiface (@SirDemiface) July 14, 2020
So why do none of these series ever come up in the discussion about Shonen?
Because the West does not comprehend Romance as a possible mainstream genre for men, despite all of these series clearly being written for a boy to enjoy.
— Demiface (@SirDemiface) July 14, 2020
Most romance films today get referred to as chick flicks, because they’re right, they’re written mostly for women or centered around how the woman feels, she’s the protagonist.
So why do so many people not write anything like that for teenage boys beyond parody?
— Demiface (@SirDemiface) July 14, 2020
I have a theory, and it’s that filmmakers and writers are scared of writing a girl who feels like a fantasy, or a “manic pixie dream girl”
You can’t write a fantastical or unrealistic relationship from a boy’s perspective, that’s sexist.
— Demiface (@SirDemiface) July 14, 2020
I read many articles attacking the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope. I also read a criticism of a related trope, the “cool girl” who is one of the guys.
Note what all the critiques attack: the fact that such a character cares about a man’s emotional needs.
Instead, men and women should be free-floating units, allying with and discarding each other when one is no longer useful. She can’t actually care about him, she has to cast him aside when it suits her ambition. He doesn’t deserve a romantic companion that cares for him, for he’s an entitled, toxic male.
As you can see, this extends well beyond the specific archetype of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. If these articles are any indication, it is common knowledge among pro screenwriters that writing women who strongly, ferociously care about their men is Bad Writing™ and must not be done.
And writing a fiercely loyal, stunningly beautiful girlfriend or wife who wants to emotionally support her man as he strives for greatness? Absolutely forbidden.
Note that none of this has to do with sex or sexual availability. The critics specifically consider “a woman meeting a man’s emotional needs” as a backward, regressive trope that must be stamped out.
These critics don’t want men fantasizing about women loving them. Wrap your head around that for a moment: it is considered Bad Writing™ to show a relationship in which a man actually gets what he wants and needs from a romantic partner. Like Black and White Morality and Good Guy Heroes, supportive women are one of those things that just isn’t done.
So I agree with Adam. Let’s appreciate the male fantasy in all its glory.
A female character can be emotionally supportive of a male character without being subservient to him. One of my favorite examples is Betty Sorenson from Heinlein’s The Star Beast. She is very much the dominant partner in their relationship, not by being more masculine than he is, or by intimidating him into obedience, but by having the best interests of the two of them as a couple in mind. He follows her lead because she’s right most of the time.
That’s quite a good example. Thanks for your input, Misha. And you also hit upon something else — even where the woman emotionally supports the man, the woman can be better than him at things of interest to him.
Another example from the genre where one would least expect it. In the 1930s pulp story “Queen of the Black Coast” by Robert E. Howard, Conan and the pirate queen Belit fall in love, and she is the captain of the band of corsairs of which he, brutal and savage hyper-masculine barbarians archetype or no, is her subordinate officer aboard ship, and follows her lead, even in her ruinous decision to follow a poisonous, monster-haunted river to an accused ruined city. She is loyal unto death, and, so great is their love, after.
Indeed it is. I actually felt a bit sad after I listened to it on audio. The depth of feeling truly was there.
This is a really good article!
I’m glad you think highly of it.
My husband likes to say that in The Lord of the Rings, you don’t even KNOW the guy is doing everything for the girl until the end. Every. Single. Thing. Conquered the entire world, helped topple a demigod-type-being, and restore a lost throne of two lost kingdoms. And for one reason: to show he’s worthy of her. Meanwhile, she’s sewed him sails for his ships (romantic, eh?) and pined for him for hundreds of years. In the movies, though, she rescues people, faces off against demon kings, and then pops out from behind banners and SURPRISES HIM BY STILL BEING AROUND.
They do get one romantic scene in the first film, although he whines through some of it. I don’t want to hijack this into an “everything wrong with LOTR movies” post, but Jackson undid ALL the “men doing things to gain the love of or backed by supportive women” parts of the books, which were very import parts of the characters (if rather short parts of the action). And made the one actually strong woman character into a whiny one. People who make movies and write mainstream books today just don’t get it.
I’m not surprised; this style of writing women was well-established by the 2000s, when the LOTR movies came out. Even then, “supportive woman” was seen as dated and backward.
I read a part of Jeffro’s Appendix N book last night about this very same point, about the entire genre of planetary ROMANCE was dead by the end of the ’60s. I think this was his essay on Leigh Brackett,.
Sounds believable; the cultural changes were already in motion by then.
The “romance” in “planetary romance” refers to the broader genre derived from medieval chivalric romance. The elements of love story are a logical accident.
Yup, romance used to mean “adventure,” oddly enough.
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From my own perspective as a writer who’s tried to have romance plots or at least subplots in a few of my stories, I think the ideal might be a man and a woman being mutually reinforcing. As in they are stronger and more capable together, than if they were acting as atomized individuals, or if one was dominant over the other.
In most traditional fiction, it is actually women who have the real power – the power to get men to work and build and do great deeds for the benefit of women. In the real world men spent thousands of years building and defending civilizations for the instinctual goal of getting a worthy mate and family and provide for them.
It shouldn’t be too much to ask that a female character show a bit of appreciation for the man that would probably try to move Heaven and Earth for her. Or at least launch a thousand ships or take on a bunch of terrorists in a skyscraper by himself.
The problem is the Marxist-inspired social engineering program i.e. message fiction. It’s gone on so long that in the real world young people barely know how to relate to each other to form meaningful relationships.
You have to be able to imagine something is possible before you can attempt to do it yourself. Hence we as writers should try to show some functional relationships in our fiction as an example to readers. The problem is trying to recapture the male audience that tradpub and Hollywood drove away.
From my own perspective as a writer who’s tried to have romance plots or at least subplots in a few of my stories, I think the ideal might be a man and a woman being mutually reinforcing. As in they are stronger and more capable together, than if they were acting as atomized individuals, or if one was dominant over the other.
Agreed. Both have to meet each others’ needs, in fiction and in real life.
In most traditional fiction, it is actually women who have the real power – the power to get men to work and build and do great deeds for the benefit of women.
I believe this is true of real life as well.
The problem is the Marxist-inspired social engineering program i.e. message fiction.
It’s conflict theory. In that paradigm, most social issues can be explained by who has power over whom. “Good” and “evil,” therefore, are based on what preserves a ruling class’s power; according to the theory, they are not objective.
You have to be able to imagine something is possible before you can attempt to do it yourself. Hence we as writers should try to show some functional relationships in our fiction as an example to readers.
I like this idea. It seems like every hero nowadays has a dysfunctional family or a bad relationship with a lover.
The problem is trying to recapture the male audience that tradpub and Hollywood drove away.
That will be a challenge, but one I think is doable.
Jagi is right (heh), this is a good article.
Where do you place harem stories? A good example of this is the Japanese army recruiting series Gate. It almost crosses the line to tawdry, (and has more fan service than a gal really appreciates) but it’s clear the hero is motivated to help the women in his life, and they’re devoted to him.
A side note: Both Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart, both of whom wrote romances, were as popular with men as women back in their day. But their men were of a heroic cut, and their women were womanly. They were tender and kind, and capable and virtuous, and they appreciated a man who was strong &etc. And they would need to be rescued, and their men would, and could, and did rescue them.
And, like Odysseus and Penelope, they were greater than the sum of their parts: A joy to their friends and a terror to their enemies.
Your best SF examplar of this (sorry team Wright) when his story called for a romance, was James H. Schmitz. He also wrote convincing female action figures, many of whom were exceptionally effective – and couldn’t fight.
And one of the fun parts of The Middleman series was having the gal rescuer as the hero’s sidekick, while the gal rescuee was his love interest.
P.S. Hollywood loves manic pixie dream girls, and they’re the exact opposite of “devoted to their man” – they’re usually raging narcissists. The most common devoted-quirky-female trope the mad woman: Harley Quinn or the crazy gal vampire with Spike on Buffy (that dates me!)
Where do you place harem stories?
They squarely fall under the idea of a positive male fantasy, and as Adam Lane Smith said in his own article, the men usually care greatly for the women who are with them, even if it can get a bit silly at times.
A good example of this is the Japanese army recruiting series Gate.
I’m only familiar with its anime incarnation, which I didn’t enjoy.
A side note: Both Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart, both of whom wrote romances, were as popular with men as women back in their day. But their men were of a heroic cut, and their women were womanly. They were tender and kind, and capable and virtuous, and they appreciated a man who was strong &etc. And they would need to be rescued, and their men would, and could, and did rescue them.
And, like Odysseus and Penelope, they were greater than the sum of their parts: A joy to their friends and a terror to their enemies.
Sounds beautiful. I’ve always believed that men liked romance — just not the same kind of romance as women. Male-oriented romance has the girl be attracted to him for carrying out some heroic deed.
P.S. Hollywood loves manic pixie dream girls, and they’re the exact opposite of “devoted to their man” – they’re usually raging narcissists.
While that may be the case, the critic set objects to them because on some level, they meet a man’s emotional needs. It’s not just MPDGs; any female character who does this is considered “poorly written.”
The most common devoted-quirky-female trope the mad woman: Harley Quinn or the crazy gal vampire with Spike on Buffy (that dates me!)
Harley Quinn strikes me as a sociopathic fantasy — an agent of chaos devoted to destruction. And I’ve heard of Buffy, though I’m not familiar with that show. It was the talk of the town back in the 90s, though.
What a great article and even greater series of comments!
Where else can I find a discussion of women loving men that ranges from The Star Beast to Queen of the Black Coast to Leigh Brackett to James H. Schmitz to Odysseus & Penelope to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Well said, everyone and thank you.
You’re quite welcome.
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