Women, women! And darnit, my only complaint about Jeremiah

[Tefazipipo]

[/quote]

And have you seen this thread?) kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9080][/quote]

Oh, now that was FUN! Thanks for showing it to me!

...
Now, though, Anele's passed his last-hope-status to Jeremiah. So, it was sort of cumulative me. All of this is starting to hinge on Jeremiah.
...

And how is Jeremiah alone less female than Anele + Jeremiah?)

It's not really about the sex. Anele + Jeremeiah means action is distributed to two characters rather than funneled into one. It seems as though everything will hinge on Jeremiah, now. Linden and perhaps TC are just there to help.

My analogies often fail for either being too complex or too off the mark.

Once there was this comic. The main protagonist is a 10 (11?) year old boy, one of six hundred or so students whose grade school is suddenly transported into a barren landscape. One of the teachers goes off his rocker and starts murdering people. The boy becomes a leader and has to deal with such things as impending starvation, protecting the kids and fighting monsters (and other kids), plus psychic communication with his mother.

The comic is made into a movie. The kids are junior high age, their international school is suddenly flung into a barren landscape. The teachers are confused and befuddled, and eventually all of them die. The boy is a leader and, while starvation doesn't quite become an issue it looms, fighting other kids pretty much doesn't happen, but the rest remains the same.

The comic is made into a tv series. The kids are high school seniors, in school for tests over the winter holiday so only twenty or so are there when the high school is suddenly flung into a barren landscape. There is a good male teacher, there is a wonderful former female teacher who happened onto the grounds before the incident. While another teacher does go mad and starts killing people, the role of the original boy (there is a boy with his name amongst the students) has been distributed to the man and woman, who must deal with the threat of pending starvation, monsters, and messages from the woman's father.

[deer of the dawn]

The comic is made into a tv series. The kids are high school seniors, in school for tests over the winter holiday so only twenty or so are there when the high school is suddenly flung into a barren landscape. There is a good male teacher, there is a wonderful former female teacher who happened onto the grounds before the incident. While another teacher does go mad and starts killing people, the role of the original boy (there is a boy with his name amongst the students) has been distributed to the man and woman, who must deal with the threat of pending starvation, monsters, and messages from the woman's father.

The movie is made into a musical. The roles of the male and female teachers have undergone further mitosis to include a male and female teacher (married, but estranged) and a teen boy (Goth, depressed) and girl (popular, parent issues)....


My projection is that based on the high tension built up around the Thomas/Linden relationship, it will be both of them who "save the Land". "Saving" however may involve some very unexpected rebooting of the Arch, the Earth, etc. Too much has happened and been lost and sacrificed. It will have to be Covenant/Linden/Arch/Earth 2.0.

That's just my pet theory.

[Tefazipipo]

I like it, deer of the dawn.

[shadowbinding shoe]

Thinking about it, was there any truly evil female character in the books so far? 'She' for example doesn't count. She's a victim that's not at fault supposedly.

I think the ravers and the Sarangrave are more male than female.

So is Donaldson chauvinistic in his evil characters composition?

[Tefazipipo]

That's sort of brings us to "The female characters who do evil are all victims, the male characters who do evil are all perpetrators."

I've felt the Unfettered to be horribly abused, too. *grin* I don't mean unfairly. They weren't harmed any more or any less than any of the other characters in the books. The first Unfettered we knew of rescued the Wraiths in Andelain from the uv-vile attack. The second we hear of is the healer Llaura tried to find, and I'm pretty much 100% she is the one in TPTP. We know of the Unfettered who lived up beyond Revelstone and interpreted dreams. I have to guess that he came out of it all right. Then there was the fellow living in caves whom Triock went to in TPTP. *sniffle* Poor old fellow! Anele reminds me of him. I think the last we hear of is Sunder's distant ancestor, whose calling as an Unfettered led him to inflict a complete madness and lack of freedom on a succession of (presumably) male descendants.

Esmer also was a victim and I would be interested in his backstory. Did he know his father? Did Cail live long enough to raise his son? Or did his mother(s) teach him that hate?

Kastenessen... he loved that woman, and now her being is part of She. There's another opportunity. Can Kastenessen, if he knows where she is, be brought around to a kind of sanity or have the love it would take to attempt to save her?

[Ananda]

It doesnt really matter that some baddies are men because most the goodies are men, too. It is just a sign of male dominance in thinking and social construct, really. Like someone mentioned darth vader being a man. Luke and that other guy are men, too. Star trek voyager was a bad show, but it was nice to have the main goodie and the main baddie both be female (Janeway and the borg queen).

[deer of the dawn]

SRD has a way of taking pity on his characters so that, if they stick around long enough (sorry, Harrow), their evil actions are explained away as self-despite in response to bad feelings they had as a kid.

I like the depth of character he invests, but I do have to wonder: how is he going to resolve/redeem Foul in that way? So far he is really the character with the least layers of humanity. And yet so central to the Chrons. SRD kind of owes it to A-Jeroth at this point. Not that we have to know how he was picked last for baseball when he was a kid, but it just seems like that shoe has never dropped. Am I mistaken?

[shadowbinding shoe]

SRD has a way of taking pity on his characters so that, if they stick around long enough (sorry, Harrow), their evil actions are explained away as self-despite in response to bad feelings they had as a kid.

I like the depth of character he invests, but I do have to wonder: how is he going to resolve/redeem Foul in that way? So far he is really the character with the least layers of humanity. And yet so central to the Chrons. SRD kind of owes it to A-Jeroth at this point. Not that we have to know how he was picked last for baseball when he was a kid, but it just seems like that shoe has never dropped. Am I mistaken?

Do we really empathize with Kasreyn of the Gyre for example? He was vain, selfish, cruel and petty in the extreme. Does his fear of death justify his actions in any way?

[Vraith]

Hmmm....
I don't know...I think there's a difference between explained, and explained away.
And also a difference between acknowledging effects/affects and justifying.

And for my money, what could possibly be more boring than char's. being evil just because...well...they're evil.

[Darkdenubis]

Linden is the most pathetic lead female character I have ever read. Constant whine, self-centered, emotionally clinging, wont shut up, etc. "Oh please love me! Why wont he love me?!?! He told me not to touch him!" Maybe because you have the mental maturity of a 14 year old, Justin Beiber loving, girl?? No wonder Jeremiah refused to come out of his "closet" for so long...cue South Park, "Jeremiah is in the closet. Roger is in the closet too."

Sigh, I really hope she suffers a completely horrid and INANE death in the final book. Then Covenant can ride off into the sunset with his real love, the woman who guarded him and died at the Battle of Soaring Woodhelven, after he brings her back to life, of course...because otherwise that would just be gross. He can finally learn what her name was too

[Tefazipipo]

Darkdenubis, you made me laugh. No, no! He has to bring back the Unfettered who died saving the Wraiths of Andelain! If we're going to ship, ship big!

[deer of the dawn]

Gehhh... too close to slash for comfort...

I love Linden because I relate to her, and in spite of her weaknesses she kicks butt. When she finally gets past her emotional gridlock. Don't we all know people like that? I would rather have a multilayered, emotionally charged, conflicted, possibly menopausal heroine than Superwoman.

[dlbpharmd]

Linden is the most pathetic lead female character I have ever read. Constant whine, self-centered, emotionally clinging, wont shut up, etc. "Oh please love me! Why wont he love me?!?! He told me not to touch him!" Maybe because you have the mental maturity of a 14 year old, Justin Beiber loving, girl?? No wonder Jeremiah refused to come out of his "closet" for so long...cue South Park, "Jeremiah is in the closet. Roger is in the closet too."

Sigh, I really hope she suffers a completely horrid and INANE death in the final book. Then Covenant can ride off into the sunset with his real love, the woman who guarded him and died at the Battle of Soaring Woodhelven, after he brings her back to life, of course...because otherwise that would just be gross. He can finally learn what her name was too

The ranks of THOOLAH continue to swell.

[deer of the dawn]

"What is popular is not always right. What is right is not always popular."

[Vraith]

The ranks of THOOLAH continue to swell.

And like all things that swell, will either eventually heal, drain, or blow itself up.

[Savor Dam]

...or just detumesce from flagging interest.

[DrPaul]

A very interesting discussion!

I think Donaldson tries to do better, and to a large extent succeeds in doing better, on gender than most male writers born in 1947. That said, the Chronicles are a series written by a man born in 1947 and conceived by him in the early 1970s, first published in 1977, and which bear the imprint of gendered assumptions which he would quite possibly not even have been aware of, let alone fully interrogated, when he began the series. The First Chronicles in particular bear that imprint, and inevitably the First Chronicles laid down many of the key organising assumptions which the later Chronicles have had to remain faithful to (such as the Creator and Despiser both being male, the Ravers being "brothers", etc.). It is therefore not difficult to find elements of the Chronicles that are problematic from a feminist perspective. It's quite likely that if he had the chance to rewrite the Chronicles from scratch today, SRD would write a series that differed considerably in these respects.

That said, in a large, complex, interesting and challenging series of books, an author is going to have to create a lot of different characters with a range of strengths, weaknesses, virtues and vices, and inner struggles with them. SRD could have written a series in which all the male characters were like Mhoram and all the female characters were like The First, and thereby spared himself some of the criticisms which have been raised here about some characters who don't present a flattering example of womanhood or manhood, as the case may be. However I don't think any of us would consider such a series worth reading. It would be like one of Marge Simpson's attempts at an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon in which both characters were nauseatingly nice to each other.

[DrPaul]

Just to clarify, I love Mhoram and The First.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

I'm sorry, but it is simply not possible to read TCTC as anything other than an act of feminist penance.

A WHOLE lot to take in in that thread and I can't agree with most of it.

The strong and masculine characters are the women? Ummm. Nope.

Only place we see this played out with named characters is among the Ramen, but I don't think the Manethralls are females. Maartiiir springs to mind as more recent evidence of that.

ONsondrea was a bit of a tough ol' gal, true. Elena's strength comes from the the fact of her parentage as much as the fact that she was just as insane as Lena, just in a much more subtle, slow to discover way. Triock had her figured right. Broken from the beginning.

Linden is carrying bags and bags of guilt, from whence comes her Covenentian power

If the Giant society is revealed to be matriarchal, it must have happened in the last book and I missed it. Just because the gals carry the swords doesn't make themthe Queens/bosses, per se. They are a saling race, and the only captains we have seen so far are Grimmand Honninscrave and ???

I do not believe Donaldsson plays these games. If he does, he does it as he does with Elena's madness. In subtle, subtle ways.

There are only FOUR irredeemably GOOD characters in all the books.

Mhoram. Foamfollower. Sunder and Hollian. Sunder's guilt is ALL in his past and we only here tales of it, it is not his present. So of the four, three are male.

But I woudn't read much into it.

[Tefazipipo]

Manethrall Lithe. Manethrall Rue.