When I didn't notice
Matilda
Julio
De amor y de sombra ~ Isabel Allende
Dreams of Gods and monsters ~ Laini Taylor
Silver linings playbook (2012)
Rango (2011)
Big Fish (2003)
Sweet Tooth
Loki
Little America
The Owl House
Rick & Morty
GO WATCH THIS SHOW, HONESTLY IT IS SO AMAZING.
IF THIS POST CREATES 1 NEW PUSHING DAISIES FAN MY LIFE = MADE.
Anushia Kandasivam: So, Brandon, you just introduced a really amazing female character [Spensa] to us. Your female characters throughout all your books are resourceful and independent. Some of them are leaders, some of them go through very interesting journeys of growth and self-discovery. Some of your female characters, like Vin and Sarene, they have mentors and teachers who are men, but their decisions about who to be and what to do are always their own. They always have agency. Was it a conscious choice to write these female characters and their journeys like this, and can you tell us if the process was easy or difficult?
Brandon Sanderson: So, there are a number of different responses to this. One is, I came into fantasy by way of some excellent female novelists that I highly recommend. Barbara Hambly was my first experience with fantasy, and then Anne McCaffery, Melanie Rawn, and Jane Yolen were kind of my introduction to fantasy. It's how I got pulled into it. To the point that when I was first given a David Eddings book, I was hesitant, because I was like, "Is this a genre guys can write?" was my honest reaction to that.
So, when I started writing my own books, I knew I wanted to do a good job with this, but I was really bad at it at the start. It was very embarrassing to me as a writer. And this happens to all new writers. There are things that you want do that, in your head, you imagine yourself doing very well, and then when you start out, you just do poorly. And the later in life that you start writing your stories, the more you're generally able to recognize how poorly you're doing things that you want to do well. And my very first book, that I didn't publish, particularly the female lead was very generic, and written very much to fill the role of love interest rather than to be a character. And I recognized it, even as I was writing it, but I didn't know how to do it differently. And it took practice. It took a lot of work. It really shouldn't, on one hand, right? Write the characters as people. rather than as roles. That's what you have to learn is - everybody is the hero of their own story in their head. They're the protagonist, whoever they are. And writing the characters so that they view themselves that way, and so they have autonomy, and they aren't being shoved around by the plot or by the protagonist, or things like this, but it's just very hard to do. I had a lot of early readers who were very helpful. I often credit my friend Annie as being one of the big reasons why Sarene eventually ended up working in Elantris. And she gave me some early reads, and things like this.
But, you know... it is hard to abandon our own preconceptions that we don't even know are there without practice, effort, and somebody pointing them out to you. And it was just a matter of practice and trying to get better. And I still think that there are lots of times I get it wrong. And you mentioned Mistborn. And I was really determined that I was going to do a good female protagonist. I try to stay away from the kind of cliched term "strong female character." Because we don't talk about "strong male characters."
We talk about characters who are distinctive, interesting, flawed, and real people. And I was determined to do this with Vin. And I feel like I did a pretty good job. But, of course, I had a completely different blind side in that I defaulted to making the rest of the crew that Vin interacts with all guys.
This is because my story archetype for Mistborn was the heist novel, the heist story, and my favorite heist movies are Ocean's Eleven and Sneakers and The Sting, and these are great stories. I absolutely love them. But they all are almost exclusively male casts. And that's not to say that, you know, someone can't write an all-male cast if they want to. But it wasn't like I had sat down and said, "I'm intentionally going to write an all-male cast." I just defaulted to making the rest of the cast male because that was the archetype that was in my head, that I hadn't examined.
And so, when I got done with those books, I looked back, and I'm like, "Wouldn't this have been a better and more interesting story if there had been more women in the cast?" And I absolutely think it would have been. But becoming a writer, becoming an artist, is a long process of learning what you do well, what you do poorly, what you've done well once and want to learn how to replicate, what you've done poorly and want to learn to get better at. It's a very long process, I think, becoming the writer that we want to be.
My sociology professor had a really good metaphor for privilege today. She didn’t talk about race or gender or orientation or class, she talked about being left-handed.
A left-handed person walks into most classrooms and immediately is made aware of their left-handedness - they have to sit in a left-handed seat, which restricts their choices of where to sit. If there are not enough left-handed seats, they will have to sit in a right-handed seat and be continuously aware of their left-handedness. (There are other examples like left-handed scissors or baseball mitts as well.)
Meanwhile, right-handed people have much more choice about where to sit, and almost never have to think about their right-handedness.
Does this mean right-handed people are bad? No.
Does it mean that we should replace all right-handed desks with left-handed desks? No.
But could we maybe use different desk styles that can accommodate everyone and makes it so nobody has limited options or constant awareness that they are different? Yes.
Now think of this as a metaphor. For social class. For race. For ethnicity. For gender. For orientation. For anything else that sets us apart.
I just saw a gifset that split the word "beautiful" into 3 gifs and I think this one may be the new t hanos
my gender is bees. thats it. just bees thats all there is to it
Bill: I’ve never smoked marijuana. I ate a brownie once at a party. It was intense. It was kind of indescribable. I felt like I was a floating. Turns out there was no pot in the brownie. It was just an insanely good brownie.