Based on age and mental development, what kind of female protagonist do you prefer?

[l8rose]

Late adulthood - elderly mothers (40 - 65 years): women who have had their fill of life experience, accept their lives as they are, and (if married) usually already have teenage children.

I'm not elderly! Not yet! I mean... my kids tell me I'm old...


I prefer stories with female protagonists around their mid-twenties. In my mind, people at that age are still old enough to have begun to settle in the world but without things being completely set in stone. Kind of like the "fresh from college and ready to take on the world" kind of protagonist. Anything younger just makes me think they shouldn't be doing these dangerous things while anything older is like "no, I know what it's like at 30, there is no way your legs are handling running from monsters".

 

[A_the_king_of_all]

Totally Depends like like i usually write from the birth of the character but I mostly write Male mc focused stories so only female characters i write are female leads so i usually keep them around MC's age

 

[Eldoria]

I think this might be a west and east difference, in my experience in the west we don't really make a distinction of gender in protagonists until they are slightly older for those dynamics. In fact most children's literature is dominated by male protagonists making most of culture place women and men on a universal childhood scaling in terms of being catered to in stories. Basically if you're a kid you're not going to be distinguished by the sex that you are especially in modern context with equality.



That example sounds more like a reincarnation premise.

Yes there is distinction in characterization of age and development of the protagonist but the western consensus is more or less the same regardless of the sex of the character in younger demographics, meaning boys and girls act mostly the same in different lenses with minor differences. Because for the most part in the west you want a story accessible to anyone not just for sales but also for impact. That's only the case in the teens and below though, and also based on the intention of the author. You can have a teen character who struggles with deeper issues that's in the young adult section, and they will be far more dynamic and distinguished than a teen character written for children and teens.



No, you literally said "The world of fiction is no longer dominated by male protagonists; female protagonists are beginning to find a place in fiction, each with their own life stories written in novels."

And it's weirdly sexist since it's an implication that there's not been a place in fiction for female protagonists until now. Which is not true. And your personal opinion which I'm not really judging against you still makes it seem further misguided. Like are you saying you'd like male protagonists more if they exemplified what you liked about women protagonists? Or is it a case where you want the whole story from the perspective or eyes of a woman? I say this because it sounded less like an opinion and more like a proposition, specifically the portion of "male protagonists rarely display", which sounds more like an out for you to have deniability that part of it is sexist if not directly misandrist. Basically what if there were more male protagonists that displayed those traits would your opinion change?

At the end of the day your opinion is valid, you don't like male protagonists because they don't have the qualities of female protagonists that you like or don't display them enough which is fair. I was just pointing to the portion of it which sounds like it's opinion based on false dichotomies.

Well, perhaps we're speaking from different perspectives: East vs. West. The West upholds gender equality and neutrality. My statement, even based on personal experience and personal preferences, could be interpreted as implicitly sexist. Perhaps my Western literacy is too limited.

However, if you frame the initial premise of my thread as the experience of the reader from Eastern literature, it might make more sense. In manga/light novel/anime culture, female protagonists rarely received the spotlight, and if they did, they were only present as love interests or minor characters. Furthermore, male protagonists rarely showed tenderness, warmth, compassion, vulnerability, and weakness (if any, they were merely setting elements, not characters of male protagonists). Just look at the Big Three manga! Therefore, my statement should be understood within the framework of the literary 'experience' of the Eastern reader and should not be generalised to literacy in general.

Ultimately, the differences in Western and Eastern literary traditions lead to differing perspectives, experiences, and preferences, particularly when it comes to reading gender and sexist discourse.

 

[Mystic_Grasshopper]

Well, perhaps we're speaking from different perspectives: East vs. West. The West upholds gender equality and neutrality. My statement, even based on personal experience and personal preferences, could be interpreted as implicitly sexist. Perhaps my Western novel literacy is too limited.

However, if you frame the initial premise of my thread as the experience of the reader from Eastern literature, it might make more sense. In manga/light novel/anime culture, female protagonists rarely received the spotlight, and if they did, they were only present as love interests or minor characters. Furthermore, male protagonists rarely showed tenderness, warmth, compassion, vulnerability, and weakness (if any, they were merely setting elements, not characters of male protagonists). Just look at the Big Three manga! Therefore, my statement should be understood within the framework of the literary 'experience' of the Eastern reader and should not be generalised to literacy in general.

Ultimately, the differences in Western and Eastern literary traditions lead to differing perspectives, experiences, and preferences, particularly when it comes to reading gender and sexist discourse.

That makes sense but it's kind of backtracking. You used words/phrases like "The world of fiction," meaning all fiction regardless of medium, and "Females in fiction in general". Those two statements means anyone reading it would assume it's encompassing all literature and beyond and specifically about women in those stories.

Like, yeah now I know your bias is coming from an eastern perspective, which means if I had to continue the discussion I'd have to either tell you more about western fiction or discuss eastern fiction which I'm more limited in regards to the content I decided to consume and would need to research myself since I'm not as confident on that knowledge.

But that wasn't the premise of your post initially based on what you said, and it's not a case of "choose your words more carefully" or "I'm still offended"(not that I ever was), I just didn't know where you were coming from with such statements and discussion limited to age and perceived mental development of women characters. As in, your question alone is a discussion itself about whether marketing or trying to characterize based on a demographic alone is good storytelling and if I the reader have a preference or lean towards a specific demographic when I encounter such works. However, it was marred because you added personal details that made me question the sincerity of the post in some ways.

Basically I interpreted what you said as "I like women characters because they're more expressive than male counterparts, and it's been enough time to say they fit in well in fiction as protagonists and even equal the dominance of male protagonist influence that was once a monopoly. So guys tell me what ages you prefer the woman to be based on my own demographic explanations and assumptions of archetype by age."

All this to say I'm not critical of you or anything you said on the basis that this is what discourse is for. I simply wanted to say I find that literature as a whole has more variety and although there might be more of one character archetype popular right now there's always more out there to be found and discussed beyond basic attributes like age or sex. And cultures evolve to such a degree that even the archetypes of age differ greatly now than they have before, which is why I don't like to place a preference for something that could change in another quarter century.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

Toddlers can be really fun to read if written well. A paperback example I recomend is "Dragon on a Pedestal". However I find that most authors struggle with a young child's perspective and few even attempt it.

 

[Tyranomaster]

Infants/toddlers - babies (0-5 years)

Who exactly is this demographic. What is going on.