What do female readers think of Hilgya Firehelm?

[DaggerPen]

I don't think Hilgya fits DaggerPen's description. Whedon, however, seems to get a lot of praise for writing "strong female characters," although they're almost all exactly that type of "woman who kicks *** and takes names and is harsh and cold with everyone." And he's fond of proclaiming himself a male feminist, but earlier this year his wife revealed he cheated on her with a number of his actresses (which is troubling in terms of the power dynamic even if you think their relationship is a private matter), and in truly ridiculous, weasel fashion, confessed it to her in a letter where he essentially blamed feminism for surrounding him with these women he couldn't resist.

Joss Whedon is writing you a letter now about how it's not his fault he wrote "strong female characters" in the way you described; feminism made him do it.

Ohh, Whedon was definitely one of the people I had in mind while writing that comment. (Don't forget the time he fired an actress for daring to get pregnant while she was on the show, too... in fact, just gonna leave this whole thing here.)

To be clear, I don't think Hilgya fits into those tropes I described either - it's just very much part of the reason that I find "strong female character" to be a meaningless label these days. Female characters need to be people - complex, imperfect, and three-dimensional, in the same way that the male characters are. There's a hint of a gendered reaction to Hilgya right now mostly because she's coming off as a Flat Female Character in a cast full of deep and nuanced characters, but as I said above, she stands alongside some vastly improved writing on the female characters in this comic and has only been in three pages; I'm willing to take a 'wait and see' approach.

[Emanick]

From a meta perspective, I'm expecting to see Rich do a pretty interesting subversion of the traditional Crazy Ex-Girlfriend trope and am excited to see how it turns out, because given what he's written about gender and storywriting over the past few years, it seems all but certain that he was consciously thinking about the trope and how to avoid falling into it when writing Hilgya's arc. He hasn't always been good at writing female characters, obviously, but it seems hard to believe that he would have chosen to take the story in this particular direction if he didn't feel confident that he could portray Hilgya in a realistic, interesting, non-sexist way. If you're a good, self-aware writer and you are actively trying to avoid being sexist, you probably don't write a character like Hilgya back into your story without a solid plan in place.

[Ruck]

Ohh, Whedon was definitely one of the people I had in mind while writing that comment. (Don't forget the time he fired an actress for daring to get pregnant while she was on the show, too... in fact, just gonna leave this whole thing here.)

To be clear, I don't think Hilgya fits into those tropes I described either - it's just very much part of the reason that I find "strong female character" to be a meaningless label these days. Female characters need to be people - complex, imperfect, and three-dimensional, in the same way that the male characters are. There's a hint of a gendered reaction to Hilgya right now mostly because she's coming off as a Flat Female Character in a cast full of deep and nuanced characters, but as I said above, she stands alongside some vastly improved writing on the female characters in this comic and has only been in three pages; I'm willing to take a 'wait and see' approach.

Oh, I think we're on the same page, although now I know that Joss sucks even more than I thought he did.

the traditional Crazy Ex-Girlfriend trope

Actually, the situation's a lot more nuanced than that.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Oh, I think we're on the same page, although now I know that Joss sucks even more than I thought he did.

I have certainly learned a lot about Joss Whedon today, so hats off to you and DaggerPen for my daily dose of enlightenment.

[martianmister]

Obviously Hilgya is a brave strong female character but also biased, reckless and being played for laughs. But I'd really like to get a feel for what her "sisters" think of her.

For some reason this seems sinister...

[RossN]

I don't think Hilgya fits DaggerPen's description. Whedon, however, seems to get a lot of praise for writing "strong female characters," although they're almost all exactly that type of "woman who kicks *** and takes names and is harsh and cold with everyone." And he's fond of proclaiming himself a male feminist, but earlier this year his wife revealed he cheated on her with a number of his actresses (which is troubling in terms of the power dynamic even if you think their relationship is a private matter), and in truly ridiculous, weasel fashion, confessed it to her in a letter where he essentially blamed feminism for surrounding him with these women he couldn't resist.

I don't want to derail the thread but as fashionable as it currently is to dump on Whedon and as much as an ass as he apparently is in his private life that's a ridiculous oversimplification of his female characters. Yes Buffy Summers could be harsh and cold (looking at you Season Seven) but she's also witty and charming and brave and compassionate. To say nothing of Joyce, Tara, Cordelia hell even Anya.

Anyway if I was to consider a stock "strong female character" in the negative no-personality sense I'd probably cite Black Widow in Iron Man 2 as a totally generic, 'action girl'. Her transformation between that film and The Avengers was pretty startling and showed what Scarlett Johansson could actually do with the character if allowed to.

[Chronos]

If all of this comic's female characters were crazy ex-girlfriends, then that'd be a sign of a real problem. But we've got a wide variety of female characters now, both heroic and villainous, with many different personalities. And there really are some crazy ex-girlfriend types in the real world, so why shouldn't there be one in the comic, too? I think that Hilgya really is what she appears to be, and there's nothing wrong with there being such a character.

[Darth Paul]

Anyway if I was to consider a stock "strong female character" in the negative no-personality sense I'd probably cite Black Widow in Iron Man 2 as a totally generic, 'action girl'.

Which I don't believe Joss had anything to do with, did he? (Not saying you said he did, just that the "Whedon sucks" vibe has been running pretty strong and that line appeared immediately between two remarks regarding some characters he did have direct involvement with. I likes me some clarity, me. I personally think all his characters are pretty well nuanced and 3-dimensional.)

And at the risk of even further thread derailment, I wasn't around when Sabine was an active character. What was the general impression of her, at the time? I always thought she was a strong character (who also was female)...

What's the difference between a strong character, who is female, and a strong female character?

[Metahuman1]

In so far as I know, Whedon didn't get in on Marvel till The Avengers.

[Dragonus45]

From a meta perspective, I'm expecting to see Rich do a pretty interesting subversion of the traditional Crazy Ex-Girlfriend trope and am excited to see how it turns out, because given what he's written about gender and storywriting over the past few years, it seems all but certain that he was consciously thinking about the trope and how to avoid falling into it when writing Hilgya's arc. He hasn't always been good at writing female characters, obviously, but it seems hard to believe that he would have chosen to take the story in this particular direction if he didn't feel confident that he could portray Hilgya in a realistic, interesting, non-sexist way. If you're a good, self-aware writer and you are actively trying to avoid being sexist, you probably don't write a character like Hilgya back into your story without a solid plan in place.

I mean, if Hilgya continues with her odd delusions and revisionist history I doubt there will be much to subvert, and I do not grasp how in the multitude of characters of various genders he has written having a woman be a bad person is suddenly sexist.

[MesiDoomstalker]

I mean, if Hilgya continues with her odd delusions and revisionist history I doubt there will be much to subvert, and I do not grasp how in the multitude of characters of various genders he has written having a woman be a bad person is suddenly sexist.

Especially considering the number of female villains he's written so far.

[Emanick]

Actually, the situation's a lot more nuanced than that.

Well, yeah. Again, I expect a well-written subversion of the trope, not the trope itself. I don't mean to imply that the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend trope actually describes the current situation well or accurately.

I mean, if Hilgya continues with her odd delusions and revisionist history I doubt there will be much to subvert, and I do not grasp how in the multitude of characters of various genders he has written having a woman be a bad person is suddenly sexist.

Oh, I'd never claim there's anything sexist with portraying a woman as a bad person. Rich seems to be consistently depicting Hilgya as one and I have no issue with that. Bad writing is what I have an issue with, and writing a one- or two-dimensional character that fits into a well-known stereotype with some sexist characteristics would be bad. I expect Hilgya to be a three-dimensional character who seems far more like a real person than a stereotype, so I don't foresee any issues.

[Ruck]

Well, yeah. Again, I expect a well-written subversion of the trope, not the trope itself. I don't mean to imply that the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend trope actually describes the current situation well or accurately.

Aw, I was afraid that wouldn't get recognized. I was actually referencing the CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, specifically the season 1 theme song.

[Emanick]

Aw, I was afraid that wouldn't get recognized. I was actually referencing the CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, specifically the season 1 theme song.

Huh! I thought it might be a reference to something, and considered asking if it was, but then thought, "Nah, probably not."

[RossN]

Which I don't believe Joss had anything to do with, did he? (Not saying you said he did, just that the "Whedon sucks" vibe has been running pretty strong and that line appeared immediately between two remarks regarding some characters he did have direct involvement with. I likes me some clarity, me. I personally think all his characters are pretty well nuanced and 3-dimensional.)

Sorry, my fault there I should have been clearer. I didn't mean the imply Whedon messed up the film version of Black Widow - if anything he did the opposite taking, the stock badass but harsh action girl of Iron Man 2 and giving her a personality.

[Euclidodese]

Actually, the situation's a lot more nuanced than that.

Yeah... I think if you consider what we've seen of Hilgya so far to be 'traditional,' then I feel you're throwing the net very widely.
The question then arrises is if this isn't an appropriate way to portray a heel ex-partner then what the hell is?

[martianmister]

Wouldn't it actually be kind of cool and fresh to have the woman with a baby in her arms playing a heelish role?

That's, like, the most cliche Soap Opera trope ever.

[Euclidodese]

That's, like, the most cliche Soap Opera trope ever.

We'll, assuming mexican wrestling doesn't count, I've never watched a soap-opera so I admit that's a big gap in my pop cultural awareness, but I must say the concept is quite new to me. In the film's I've seen, books I've read, TV shows I've fallen asleep in front of, I'd struggle to think of many examples, if indeed any at all, in which a clearly devoted, single mother isn't at least assumed to be the good guy.
If your telling me it's right up there with Guy-trying-to-buy-the-youth-centre-and-turn-it-into-a-condo and Ambiguously-British-aristocrat then I can only apologise, but that's massively contrary to my experiences so far.

(Incidentally, when I first saw Hilgya had a baby, my first response was a sigh of: 'Eh, too Soap-Opera'... I hate Soaps)

[King of Nowhere]

unfortunately, with all the fiction we have produced in our history, there is pretty much nothing that can be done that doesn't fit into some archetype or another.

There's nothing more annoying to read than something written by someone who thinks a character being strong is the same as a character being flawless.
Although I feel the list of flaws you can give female characters without them being accused of reinforcing one negative gender stereotype or another is getting awfully short these days...
Male characters can have any flaw and no one ever complains, which must be quite liberating when designing them.

If you took every character in a chosen fictional universe and flipped their genders, but changed nothing else about them, it would be interesting to see how many of those previously male three-dimensional characters would now be classed as 'negative representations of women' for one petty reason or another.

I almost always design the character first and roll a die to determine the gender afterwards (the sole exception being characters who's names are puns) I started doing that as a conscious effort to avoid even accidentally following male or female gender norms, since the gender binary can go sniff itself.

+1 on that

I mean, if Hilgya continues with her odd delusions and revisionist history I doubt there will be much to subvert, and I do not grasp how in the multitude of characters of various genders he has written having a woman be a bad person is suddenly sexist.

+1 also on that

Also, what does it say that most people replying to this thread are men? there are different possible interpretations, one of them is "making fuss about female characters is not productive"

[Dragonus45]

Also, what does it say that most people replying to this thread are men? there are different possible interpretations, one of them is "making fuss about female characters is not productive"

I would imagine that if you forced every reader to fill out a questionnaire about OOTS you would see that opinions are roughly equal between genders as opposed to being split by them. Its true of many many things despite the image people have of gender being a monolithic decision deciding force.

[wumpus]

Actually, the situation's a lot more nuanced than that.

While I'm confident that such will be the case, we can hardly say that as of comic #1107 [babysitter club]. We know that Hilgya's hate of Durkon knows no bounds. The only nuance is that it is possible that Hilgya's choice of baby protection may be sane. All we know of "Durkon's side" is that he chose "bein' a dwarf" over Hilgya. We have no idea if she bothered with sending nor what she said (we don't know if the stickverse has a spell to block sendings. RAW doesn't appear to (could Durkon have been inside a cloister spell when Hilgya found out she was pregnant? I don't think the timeline works but it is an obvious way the Giant can tie things up).

If Durkon rejected Hilgya to "be a dwarf" and then rejected "bein' a [dwarf] father" to run and play adventurer, Hilgya might be in full "woman/mother scorned" mode. Don't forget that the "undead are icky" is a weak reason to break the rules on turning undead: Hilgya may have converted to good and now is also duty bound to punish the "fallen" Durkon (for breaking troth, although presumably being undead compounds the felony).

But so far there isn't much nuance at all. Hildya a psycho-ex, and while I expect a trope inversion you have to set up the trope to invert it.

[Liquor Box]

Of course not every female character has to be rational. I'd love for more fictional women who get to be silly in the way that Elan gets to be silly (Veldrina for instance!). That doesn't make the Hysterical Woman Whose Interiority We Don't Get To See Chasing Her Child's Deadbeat Dad not an overdone trope that I really hope Rich is going to steer away from. The issue isn't really that she's not a rational person, the issue is if she's a two-dimensional stereotype or not.

As I said, I'm waiting to see how this plays out, but I've seen enough hysterical women written poorly by men to feel justifiably wary when it appears that it might be showing up here, even given how much Rich has improved in writing women.

I'm not sure that is a widely recognised trope, I don't see it in the long list of parent tropes below:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...TheParentTrope

At most this might be a variation on a trope with many aspects to vary it from the norm (mother seduced father, father didn't know about child, father now dead, mother evil, mother powerful person in-universe etc).

Personally, I think it is damaging to female representation in media that there's an outcry (I realise this isn't an outcry, just an answer to the OP) whenever women are depicted in a flawed way (really flawed not just amusingly goofy like Elan) or when female characterisation touches on a stereotype. It leads to Mary Sue characters which are removed from reality, and thereby makes female characters less interesting and decreases their popularity (and thus the commercial success of media featuring them).

Surely the point is that female characters should be varied, with some being intelligent, some being unintelligent, some adhering to stereotypes and some averting them - this reflects the real world where some people to adhere to stereotypes and some avert them.

In OotSs Hilgya is the only character who is irrationally angry at the absent father of her child. She has a number of other aspects to her character (indeed the bulk of her characterisation to date occurred before she even had the child), and there are a wide variety of female characters in this strip, most of whom are very different to her. In that case, surely it is not a bad thing if we get one female who (among other things) conforms to this stereotype?

[unbeliever536]

Also, what does it say that most people replying to this thread are men? there are different possible interpretations, one of them is "making fuss about female characters is not productive"

That men are a significant majority on the forum?

[Euclidodese]

Personally, I think it is damaging to female representation in media that there's an outcry (I realise this isn't an outcry, just an answer to the OP) whenever women are depicted in a flawed way (really flawed not just amusingly goofy like Elan) or when female characterisation touches on a stereotype. It leads to Mary Sue characters which are removed from reality, and thereby makes female characters less interesting and decreases their popularity (and thus the commercial success of media featuring them).

I really can't stand those sitcoms where the female characters' sole purpose is to shake their heads and tut whenever the men do anything dumb, humiliating, gross, conceited, and therefore they never get any damned laughs!

Part of the reason why I love 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' is that Sweet Dee is as much a broken-bunny as the boys are, and therefore just as funny.

---

And on the thought of parent tropes, all the negatively portrayed parents so far have been dads right? Haley's, Elan's, Roy's...

So Hilgya's not only the only irrational ex, but she's also the only irrational mum.

[King of Nowhere]

That men are a significant majority on the forum?

I know, to get a statistically significant result we'd have to get the ratio of men to women in the forum, then confront it with the one of this thread and see if the difference is significant with a 95% accuracy. But that would just be too much work

[zimmerwald1915]

And on the thought of parent tropes, all the negatively portrayed parents so far have been dads right? Haley's, Elan's, Roy's...

To the point where there was at least one thread trying to suss out why, and whether there was a theme to be found behind the recurrent element.

[eilandesq]

[QUOTE=Liquor Box;22651615]I'm not sure that is a widely recognised trope, I don't see it in the long list of parent tropes below:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...TheParentTrope

The appropriate trope would seem to be http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...rAbandoningYou with this language in the introduction being rather on point:

Frequently the reason turns out to be Mum never informed Dad of their baby's existence for reasons that can range from not being sure which partner was the father (a My Two Dads scenario), a desire to keep said infant all to herself, misguided 'kindness' of the 'a baby will ruin his life' nature or unresolved hostility towards him or all men.


One Sending spell would have let Durkon know what was going on, and given the epic levels of devotion to duty he has shown in the past, he would almost certainly have immediately arranged to meet her at a location outside the Dwarven homelands to make appropriate arrangements to care for the child.

[Liquor Box]

Also, what does it say that most people replying to this thread are men? there are different possible interpretations, one of them is "making fuss about female characters is not productive"

On a quick count 14 out of 40 replies (excluding those by the OP) to this thread prior to your post were by people who identified themselves as male in their profile. Admittedly that is counting each reply rather than each poster (which would require not counting the same person twice), but I'm not sure that most responders are men.

[LadyEowyn]

I have no problem with a female character being evil (which she is or was, based on her trying to kill her husband) or with her being unreasonable, as plenty of male characters are both.

Beyond that, I haven't seen enough of her in the current book to draw any firm conclusions. I'm happy to see more female characters in OOTS. I expect that, in time, we'll learn her reasons for not contacting Durkon about the child; she's only been in three or four strips of the current book so far.

[Jasdoif]

And on the thought of parent tropes, all the negatively portrayed parents so far have been dads right? Haley's, Elan's, Roy's...

To the point where there was at least one thread trying to suss out why, and whether there was a theme to be found behind the recurrent element.

And which got a response from the Giant:

I wish I could claim that this was some sort of statement about men and fathering and such, but the fact is it just sort of happened that way. The roles of the three human characters' parents were decided within the first 50 strips, long before I had even conceived any of the plots that are happening now (or even the main Gate plot). Haley told us that her father was a thief back in #8 in what was a throwaway joke; Roy's dad showed up just seven strips later. I have no idea why I used fathers for both, but it didn't matter at the time. There was no plot, no inner turmoil, just a bunch of D&D characters out to fight a lich.

Then Elan finds out his dad is an evil warlord in #50, but even then, it was intended simply to explain the differences between Nale and Elan. I suppose I could have made Elan's father the happy-go-lucky waiter and his mother the warlord, but that didn't feel right. Not so much because of Elan, but because of Nale. Nale has the sort of damaged ego that would force him to try to surpass his father at all costs, which of course would fail and thus lead to his presence in the dungeon. If Nale had been raise by an evil mother, I think he would have been more of a "corrupt prince" sort of character rather than an angry rebel looking for a magic doodad to go back and seize power. In this case, plot dictated characterization.

(The whole post's a good read, but it's rather long to include in its entirety)