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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8228917">You are simplifying my position in the same way you are simplifying the Gabrielle Aderre entry to fit the idea you have about it. First, I don't think every female character is built like this in the black box. Gabrielle Aderre is much more than a character who wants those things. I made several posts about the character and how much more involved she is than your bullet points about her suggest. Second, even if we accept this is true, that almost every single female darklord's backstory revolves around "men, children, and/or acting out of jealousy towards women who are pretty, in relationships, or are happy mothers." That doesn't make them lazy writing, bad or even sexist. It makes them somewhat repetitive. Narrow perhaps. Not varied enough. But three of the strongest Darklord's in the RoT box set are Aderre, Boritsi and Renier. I would even argue the three hags and the banshee in keening in RoT were compelling to an extent (though again this stuff didn't get elaborated on until later books). I agree with you, we definitely needed more female dark lords (especially when you consider how good the ones we got were); and I think that would have led to more varied entries. I just think gothic horror connects very well to thins like familial relationships, parenthood, lovers, jealousy, etc.Edit: Covering a lot of the same ground can still be interesting. It is totally besides the point but one of my favorite writers makes tons of cool eccentric characters. Often the characters are very similar, with similar quirks and backstories, but they are all still highly entertaining and fitting to the genre in question. Now someone could consciously come into this writer's world and consciously change all those tropes so they are more varied. But that probably wouldn't make it better: it would just make it more varied (and in this particular case, with this writer, I think a lot of key themes would be lost were one to do that). Sometimes writers just have something like that on their mind. Maybe when Ravenloft RoT was written, the writers weren't being lazy, those themes were on their mind or weighing on them for some reason. I think it is close minded of us to expect works to all meet these kinds of criteria. I have read a lot of well written female characters. We may find different things compelling, and that is fine. I disagree with you, that doesn't make me a bad person or poorly read. I personally like films and books with well written female leads. I just don't take well written to mean "in sync with my politics". And I am pretty open minded about tropes. I think a lot of what is going on here is a rapid judgement, ignoring the context of the times, and judging entries against a list of how well it fits into a given lens, rather than trusting our immediate emotional response to it (which I think is more informative). Finally, I just saw in play that these characters worked. Could certainly have used more. If there is a failing of that original boxed set, it is they didn't give us enough female domain lords, and they didn't cover enough of the female characters in the Who's Doomed section (though there are two other female NPCs in there as I recall that are not domain lords).</blockquote>

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