I’m still irked that they call Titania “king” instead of “monarch.” The story goes to great lengths to use they/them pronouns for the faeries then opts for a male ruler’s title instead of the gender neutral one. :thonk:
I just did a quick search and it seems like Titania is a queen in French and a king in German. Usually the English localization is super sharp so I’m not sure what happened with the fae folk’s leader!
If you really want to sex it up you could even go with "Ms. Dracula", implying that the minx is not even married. I imagine the resulting erections would snap more than a few suspenders, but it might make the whole book too needlessly pornographic.
I feel like every woman should be referred to with Ms. Bullshit that women are categorized by whether they're married or not but men aren't
Lithuanian literally has different surname endings for married and unmarried women.
This isn't really related, but I've been re-reading the Wheel of Time series and it drives me crazy how the author makes every relationship between men and women a struggle for power. I'm super glad I didn't internalize that after reading the series so much in my teens. And it's weird how every new woman he introduces is more beautiful and buxom than the last. :cringe:
Not quite all of them. I haven't re-read any of them except the first one as an audiobook to help me sleep as an adult, but I still remember from my own teen years the character of Faile, whose defining feature was her nose. With every mention it grew in my mind, and while reading the books as they came out I spent some of my teen years imagining Perrin's absurdly long hunt for his kidnapped wife as him just following the furrow ploughed by her "strong Saldean nose" as she was being dragged across the landscape.
Wheel of time, where everyone is a woolheaded idiot, luckily the forces of darkness are even more idiotic.
Love those books, gonna have to read them again soon.
Love how light wins because every single remaining evil character is carrying around a massive idiot ball they can't throw away.
It's kind of strange, but it also kind of works because its a very 18th century noble view of gender dynamics, like Madame du Pompadour is constantly 3 steps away from couping the Crown from the Queen or something.
no no no everyone is a straight white male by default and you make a character not that only for a specific reason
"This important historical figure is trans now. She will also continue to flex all of her past deeds and titles and give up absolutely none of her clout to be recognized as her actual gender. I will also make the fact that this was her choice blatant. There will be no further discussion."-Zun while casually ascending to basedhood
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Toyosatomimi_no_Miko
I've thought of doing this, not because it necessarily makes for a good female character (I think it depends on the author), but just to subvert subconscious tropes and reader expectations.
I'm re-reading the Wheel of Time right now. It's still a great series but it's really jarring on a re-read when every female character is referred to as "bosomy" like 6 times per chapter.
You can tell that Robert Jordan really wanted to link breast size to strength in the One Power, but an editor held him back
The alternative would be to write all the characters as female then switch some of them to male, and just have lots of discussion of what their balls are doing at any given time.
I'm getting really tired of the boobs to balls joke, because they are not even remotely treated the same by society or camera, nor are they physiologically similar.
