Gender and Sexuality Representation in OOTS

[The Giant]

Every time Roy loses a team member, on the other hand, several people rush to reassure him of his leadership capacities and continue believing he's an excellent leader despite it,

Every time? You mean, "once." I don't remember anyone telling him he was a good leader when he got himself killed. In fact, I remember the exact opposite.

We could discuss, for example, how the Giant could have achieved his goals while empowering Haley as a strong leader (or, perhaps, if he could have achieved his goals while doing so, or if the goal of empowering the male leader necessitated that his replacement was not nearly as good as him in order to lend him confidence when it faltered, as per #881), and many other topics.

The goal, in this case, was to keep true to Haley's previously-established character. And her established character was a rule-breaking individualist with trust issues and a moderate contempt for authority who self-selected herself as second-in-command by swindling the other party members with no expectation of it ever coming up. It would have made no sense to violate that existing character 60% of the way through the story just so we could tick the "Strong Female Leader Depicted" box for the comic. That's not who Haley is, and I don't need to force her growth in that direction because it's OK to not be a leader. Not everyone in the world is good at the same things, and I take exception to the idea that only leadership positions "count." Chaotic is just as valid as Lawful in this story, it's just that Lawful tends to be a lot better at working in groups.

If you want to rag on me for not having other female leader characters, fine, whatever. Fair point. But I stand by my depiction of Haley. I am very much in favor of representation, but it doesn't help anyone for me to throw out my female character's entire personality just to satisfy an arbitrary desire to fill a role. If I do that, aren't I saying that who she is as an individual doesn't matter as much as which gender she is?

Also, Haley reunited the party and resurrected Roy. I'd take her track record over Nale's any day, and I don't see anyone questioning his legitimacy as a leader.