They just go by instinct (or at least ingrained habit) and do it the way that "makes sense" to them.
That "what makes sense to them" is exactly what I mean when I say "genre convention" -- it's a series of expectations, assumptions, and basically rules that declare you must do X, have Y, and go Z in this genre. Vampires who walk around in the daytime and aren't susceptible to being staked through the heart and don't even drink blood are, well, not vampires: you're not fulfilling the genre conventions, and unless you've very good (or your audience is particularly gullible), you're probably going to have some confused readers. Same thing would happen if you had a shonen-genre story where the hero has no power, never actually participates in a battle, isn't pushed to the limit, and gets defeated by the big bad... it'd be a pretty crummy story by most fans' standards, because it's going against every genre convention.
This is not to say you can't flip genre conventions (ie, having the blonde bimbo turn out to be an astrophysicist, or the shonen-hero have dreams of growing up to be a patissier) but you can't just ignore all genre conventions, because these conventions also often help define (for readers, and for marketers) what kind of story it is. You do sort of need non-human elements of supernatural or fantasy to be considered urban fantasy, after all, or else you're really just writing a contemporary fiction piece. If you write a story that takes place a hundred years ago, it might be a mystery or a western or a steampunk, but it's probably not Cold War Espionage, y'know?
What disturbs me is that in some ways, genre conventions also have a dark side, because of their nature of being things that we take for granted as definitions of this or that kind of story/world -- we do the exact same thing when it comes to sexism, racism, or homophobia or xenophobia or whatever other ugly part of human nature. There are plenty of people, still, who'll tell you it "just makes sense" that a woman would have kids and stay home to be a mother, or that it "just makes sense" that black men would be better as athletes than white men, or even that it "just makes sense" that Asian kids would have higher math scores or play an instrument better than WASP kids. When authors leave their genre conventions unquestioned, they're doing the same thing -- especially when a lot of those genre conventions contain some pretty racist and sexist and heteronormative crap in there:
-- the boy rescues the girl; the girl doesn't rescue another girl -- the hero must be hetero-white, though the sidekick can be non-hetero or non-white -- if the sidekick is gay, s/he will automatically be single, or end up single anyway -- if the sidekick is non-white, he'll be expected to sacrifice himself on behalf of the white hero at some point -- if there's a girl, she's the hero's purpose for fighting, or a sacrifice that spurs him to fight harder -- getting the girl is the ultimate stamp of approval on the hero's actions, ie, the trophy after the win
and so on.
A side-note to the "girls as healers" nonsense (really, have these authors never met a NURSE? they may be healers but all the nurses I've known are NOT nurturers! -- okay, Tsunade's bedside manner is the most nurse-like I've seen in any anime, but she's an exception) -- is that once a girl gets past adolescence and/or attractive-young-woman stage and into middle age or older, then (and only then) does she start to show some really amazing powers. Yu Yu Hakusho's Genki does that, as (we're told) does Tokine's grandmother in Kekkaishi, along with Chiyo in Naruto -- and I think this is because once a female character gets to a certain age, she's more mother than lover (in the eyes of the hero/audience), so it's okay for her to be pretty fierce.
That whole stereotype of the wolf-mother or bear-mother defending her young, and all that jazz, where genre convention says that if a woman has children to defend, she can, and will, be ruthless and vicious and probably take down an entire regiment of heros all by herself. And it's textually seen as okay; not as scary (in the way that a young woman is scary) because, in a nutshell, the older woman's fight is effectively on behalf of the hero -- which means, really, that she remains focused on the hero, but she's just not sexualized in the same focus as the young female character.
Which really reduces all women's fighting skills to "something that is for, by, and about" the hero, yet again. Sheesh.
no subject
Date: 28 Sep 2010 09:35 pm (UTC)That "what makes sense to them" is exactly what I mean when I say "genre convention" -- it's a series of expectations, assumptions, and basically rules that declare you must do X, have Y, and go Z in this genre. Vampires who walk around in the daytime and aren't susceptible to being staked through the heart and don't even drink blood are, well, not vampires: you're not fulfilling the genre conventions, and unless you've very good (or your audience is particularly gullible), you're probably going to have some confused readers. Same thing would happen if you had a shonen-genre story where the hero has no power, never actually participates in a battle, isn't pushed to the limit, and gets defeated by the big bad... it'd be a pretty crummy story by most fans' standards, because it's going against every genre convention.
This is not to say you can't flip genre conventions (ie, having the blonde bimbo turn out to be an astrophysicist, or the shonen-hero have dreams of growing up to be a patissier) but you can't just ignore all genre conventions, because these conventions also often help define (for readers, and for marketers) what kind of story it is. You do sort of need non-human elements of supernatural or fantasy to be considered urban fantasy, after all, or else you're really just writing a contemporary fiction piece. If you write a story that takes place a hundred years ago, it might be a mystery or a western or a steampunk, but it's probably not Cold War Espionage, y'know?
What disturbs me is that in some ways, genre conventions also have a dark side, because of their nature of being things that we take for granted as definitions of this or that kind of story/world -- we do the exact same thing when it comes to sexism, racism, or homophobia or xenophobia or whatever other ugly part of human nature. There are plenty of people, still, who'll tell you it "just makes sense" that a woman would have kids and stay home to be a mother, or that it "just makes sense" that black men would be better as athletes than white men, or even that it "just makes sense" that Asian kids would have higher math scores or play an instrument better than WASP kids. When authors leave their genre conventions unquestioned, they're doing the same thing -- especially when a lot of those genre conventions contain some pretty racist and sexist and heteronormative crap in there:
-- the boy rescues the girl; the girl doesn't rescue another girl
-- the hero must be hetero-white, though the sidekick can be non-hetero or non-white
-- if the sidekick is gay, s/he will automatically be single, or end up single anyway
-- if the sidekick is non-white, he'll be expected to sacrifice himself on behalf of the white hero at some point
-- if there's a girl, she's the hero's purpose for fighting, or a sacrifice that spurs him to fight harder
-- getting the girl is the ultimate stamp of approval on the hero's actions, ie, the trophy after the win
and so on.
A side-note to the "girls as healers" nonsense (really, have these authors never met a NURSE? they may be healers but all the nurses I've known are NOT nurturers! -- okay, Tsunade's bedside manner is the most nurse-like I've seen in any anime, but she's an exception) -- is that once a girl gets past adolescence and/or attractive-young-woman stage and into middle age or older, then (and only then) does she start to show some really amazing powers. Yu Yu Hakusho's Genki does that, as (we're told) does Tokine's grandmother in Kekkaishi, along with Chiyo in Naruto -- and I think this is because once a female character gets to a certain age, she's more mother than lover (in the eyes of the hero/audience), so it's okay for her to be pretty fierce.
That whole stereotype of the wolf-mother or bear-mother defending her young, and all that jazz, where genre convention says that if a woman has children to defend, she can, and will, be ruthless and vicious and probably take down an entire regiment of heros all by herself. And it's textually seen as okay; not as scary (in the way that a young woman is scary) because, in a nutshell, the older woman's fight is effectively on behalf of the hero -- which means, really, that she remains focused on the hero, but she's just not sexualized in the same focus as the young female character.
Which really reduces all women's fighting skills to "something that is for, by, and about" the hero, yet again. Sheesh.