While not directly related to the current video I’m working on, there is some obvious overlap in the way that a lot of current modern women’s “Romantasy” novels are evolved out of the past 25 years of fan fiction.
Greg Owen explores some of this, as I do in my own way with SP fan art/fan fiction, but he’s coming at it from looking at source material that makes major bank and trying to understand why Hollywood has not been able to fully translate certain modern “female-centric” films into significant revenue-generating properties by cramming their “strong female characters” into basically stories written with the woman using typically male traits.
I know there are certain parts of modern society that will disagree with me, but there are indeed key firmware differences wired into males and females of Homo sapiens sapiens that don’t allow for inserting a male character into a character written as a woman and vice versa.
Such stories ultimately feel wrong and off, losing all nuance to our sexual differences and losing all verisimilitude on screen.
And nobody needs shitty representation in fiction that does a disservice to the intended representation.
You can probably get away with it more on the printed page, but not in a typically linear narrative in film or television.
Hollywood studios have spent the past 10 years trying to do it this way and it has more or less failed, as all it has done is end up riling up the whiny-ass “Go Work Go Broke Crowd” and yet has not delivered any truly satisfying characterizations because women written as if they were men just do not work. It is a lie to women. It is a lie to men. It is laughable.
Yet, as Owen clearly shows, women writing stories through women’s eyes hits on many things that Hollywood specifically just has not gotten. (And that includes many women screenwriters, directors, and showrunners!)
Anyway, I found it an interesting watch.
Will I purchase one of these Romantasy novels? Probably not. But I’m happy that they are clearly finding a successful audience that enjoys them.
In fact, I left a message on my mother’s voice mail this morning as I was trying to get a hold of her to see exactly why she read all of those Danielle Steel novels during my teens. There was always a Danielle Steel novel around. And now that my eyes and mind have been opened to how women write fan fiction and such (especially the smut), I suspect there’s a lot of smut and such in those Danielle Steel novels. I NEED TO KNOW!!! (Katarzyna… get back to me!!!)
NOTE: Jeebus Christ! Danielle Steel’s full name is “Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel”!!!