unpopular opinion but i like it when tv shows have women in them
what annoys the shit out of me about this post is how many times i've had to read "and i like it when they're actually well-written" because i've never had to read about a male character being badly written. ever. even when they're inconsistent or made up of one-liners or only there to be shipped with another male character. but yeah sure your critical skills suddenly flare up when it comes to women tumblr user. sure
There are generally fewer female characters in media, so when one is badly written it's a big deal. The male character who is nothing but quips and one-liners is probably surrounded by other male characters who are better written. (Or, the writing style specifically calls for a character like this; James Bond-esque characters aren't written poorly if they are wooden and live for their jobs and the chance to throw out a witty quip while looking cool but otherwise seem to have no interior life, because the genre has established that that's what kind of main character this genre uses.)
In Star Trek TNG, after the first season, we had between 5-6 main male characters depending on whether you considered Wesley a main, and 2 female characters. So when the counselor with the ability to sense emotions is constantly crippled by her abilities rather than being able to use them to do cool shit, or the doctor is mostly shown in her role as mother to one male character or love interest of another and not as a doctor, this matters more than Riker being kind of one-dimensional most of the time, because there are 4-5 other main male characters being interesting all around him.
I grew up on X-Men written by Chris Claremont, where almost all the female characters were written to be more interesting than almost all the male characters, so I have pretty high standards. I do in fact notice when the female characters in a show are generally wooden and one-dimensional and the main male character is not, although his friends might be. But I have to say -- if you're watching American or British streaming SF/fantasy, nowadays there are a lot of interesting female characters, and you'd still never know it from reading the fanfic. The fanfic always prioritizes the male characters no matter how good the female ones are, in an ensemble cast. I don't know about stories where the main character is female because frankly there are so damn few of those anymore. (I was in my prime in the era of Buffy and Xena.) Lots of ensemble casts with great female characters nowadays, tho.
I do agree, I like shows that have badly written women better than shows with no women. Even if the women irritate me by being badly written, that's better than the entire environment of the show irritating me by having no women. (Didn't watch Red Dwarf for years because I couldn't be bothered to watch a show that didn't think casting a character of my gender as a regular was important.)
Looking at modern TV shows, the gender balance is actually a lot more equal than you might think.
Looking at the drama shows currently airing on CBS, pulling from the list of main characters, we see:
- NCIS: 9 male main characters, 9 female main characters (current season seems to have 5 male main characters and 2 female main characters, with an additional female former main character in a guest role)
- FBI: 3 male main characters, 7 female main characters (current seasons has 3 male main characters and 3 female main characters)
- Fire Country: 4 male main characters, 3 female main characters (current season seems to have 3 male main characters and 2 female main characters, with an additional female former main character in a guest role)
- Tracker: 2 male main characters, 3 female main characters (current season seems to have 1 male main character and 1 female main character)
- Elsbeth: 1 male main character, 2 female main characters (current season has 1 male main character and 1 female main character with the other female former main character as a guest role)
(etc.)
If we want to talk about The Main Character being female, both FBI and Elsbeth have the primary character as a female character.
If you want sci fi or fantasy shows with female main characters that came out sometime after Xena, Buffy, or Star Trek: The Next Generation (the latter of which aired from 1987-1994 and may not be particularly reflective of modern television), options include:
- DC shows such as: Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman
- Marvel shows such as: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, WandaVision, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Echo, Agatha All Along, Ironheart
- Star Trek: Discovery
- Invasion
- Silo
- Pluribus
- First Kill
- Fate: The Winx Saga
- The Vampire Diaries / Legacies
- Orphan Black
- Lost Girl
- Fringe
My point here is that 1) if you aren't finding TV shows with main female characters and are only finding ensemble casts with male main characters and female side characters then you probably need to look in other places, and 2) I think the idea that we must judge how well female characters are written more harshly than we judge how male characters are written because there are just so many more male characters isn't necessarily reflective of the modern media landscape.
We can and should absolutely judge how female characters are written, but to OP's point, people tend to only judge how female characters are written, often fairly harshly, while cheering for male characters no matter how poorly they are written.
