elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:
i am SO, SO proud of @kdimerc.
In film school, I was the only girl in a class with 11 male prospective screenwriters.
While we were all workshopping our scripts, I decided to kindly point out the gender inequalities they were including.
They were all honestly shocked to realize they’d done it, it’s so ingrained in our society’s culture.
But the important thing was these guys were all incredibly open to changing.
One guy went from having 1 female character as the ditzy love interest who died ten minutes into the movie, to having a female lead and several female side characters. It passed the Bechdel test by the end of the semester.
I know we give a lot of crap to writers who do things like that. But honestly, part of it is deeply ingrained things they aren’t aware they’re doing. And are in fact horrified to realize they’ve done.
All 11 boys in my class (very talented writers) were essentially writing in full feminist style after the 3-ish months we all worked together. They were proud of themselves for it, and I was beyond proud of them.
Thank you to the person who spoke up at that table read. Thank you to everyone who speaks up.
Just remember to do so kindly and with constructive criticism. It’s very rarely intentional and people are often open to improving on things like that.
*checks notes* *yep, there’s at least one person mistaking hyperbole in the original post for accurate reporting and therefore deciding the whole story is fake*
It is just good writing practice to swap one character’s gender out for a moment and see if the story still works or flows even better. That’s just a good fucking technique. Do it without prompting and for good craft reasons.
And also to be a decent human being and not an egoist who claims they write for everyone.
The Brain Squirrel Monologues 