Entries tagged with f/t

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/563564.html

Entry tags:

you know a work has enough good female characters

when the fics have stats like this:

F/M (4782)
Gen (3796)
M/M (1506)
F/F (899)

That's A:tLA fics on AO3, excluding fics also categorized as Korra.

For comparison Star Trek is

M/M (35089)
F/M (17365)
Gen (15774)
F/F (4157)

Harry Potter is

M/M (118917)
F/M (78012)
Gen (48653)
F/F (15103)

Entry tags:

gender balance in Harry Potter

I was musing idly on why fanfic is in largely part M/M, and on how part of that is the source material mostly having developed male characters interacting, e.g. Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, or LotR. And then Harry Potter:

* The holy trio is Harry, Ron, Hermione

* The Weasleys are Molly and Ginny vs. Arthur and five additional sons.

* The teachers who spring to mind are Dumbedore, Hagrid, Snape vs. McGonnagall.

* The DADA teachers are mostly male: Quirrel, Lupin, Lockhart, Moody vs. Umbridge. (We already counted Snape).

* Even the Dursleys are 2 male, 1 female.

* I can easily think of James's male school friends who are concerned about Harry, Lupin and Sirius, but who were Lily's friends?

I'm not going to try counting the students.

And this is a female-authored series in a high magic setting where there's no particular reason for male dominance. Harry being a boy could skew his peer experience male, but wouldn't explain the Weasley birth ratio or a lack of mom-friends.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/441434.html

Entry tags:

Books of the new year

_How not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking_, Jordan Ellenberg -- already reviewed. Also the only one of these I read on paper. The rest were ePubs on phone or laptop.

(re) means "re-read" in my private book list.
Uh, so I guess minor spoilers below.

_A Thousand Leagues of Wind, the Sky at Dawn_, Ono Fuyumi (Eugene Woodbury translator) (re) -- fan translation of the second Youko novel of the Twelve Kingdoms series. Still good overall, though the ePub I was reading had a lot of text-level errors. I used to send him corrections back when I followed his translations chapter by chapter... oh well. Still funny in several places.

_The Coin_, Muphrid (re) -- A Haruhi Suzumiya fanfic. At 100,000+ words it definitely qualifies as a novel. It captures the feel and tone of the original novels very well, even while making up a voice for Haruhi herself, who is not a POV character in the novels. So doubly impressive. And it's addressing "Haruhi learns she has powers", so triply so.

_A Study in Scarlet_, Arthur Conan Doyle -- The title is familiar, but the content was at best ambiguously so. Not sure if I never read it, or read some massively abridged version as a kid, or just forgot it that thoroughly. To my surprise, it's the first Holmes story, just over novel length (43K); I'd have thought it started as short stories. Serialization, I guess... Notes:
* Holmes wants to go listen to some woman violinist, Norman Neruda
* A ring is found and handed over to the first caller, no "can you describe it" check
* Villainous Mormons! Based on real rumors. Doyle apparently later said "oops" about that.
* Written 1887, set... estimates vary between 1881 and 1884. Putting Holmes stories on a timeline is a sanity-destroying project, apparently.
* I think it's noteworthy how Holmes and the police separately telegraph Cleveland, Ohio, in a rather casual way, to ask about their victim/suspects.

_Dragon Ship_, Lee and Miller. One of the later Liaden novels. I've now read all other than Trade Secret. As usual, a fun read; I think of these books as candy. I dimly recall, possibly erroneously, some fans griping that while the books are steeped in egalitarian romance, it was heteronormantive. No more! There was male-male in _Dragon in Exile_ or _Necessity's Child_, and female-female in this one. Probably in an earlier one I don't remember, given how Theo and Kara fall on each other. That said, I don't recall any same-sex lifemating, or marriage, vs. FWB.

Though if anyone in this series ends up with a harem, Theo seems a good candiate: Kara, Win Ton, and her ship. I guess her dad has posthumous bigamy in his future, too.

Yes, posthumous.

Hmm, I don't have an icon that's specifically bookish. Have a Hodgell instead.

***

Edit to add: f/t ratio!
Nonfiction: 0%

Fiction: a bit complicated
* female author, male translator. Fuyumi wrote the story, Eugene wrote all the words I read. Author hopefully dominates in influence, but.
* fanfic author of unhinted gender. Demographics of fanfic authors and people who hide their gender suggest female.
* Doyle is not complicated
* Neither is a married couple, really

Roughly even?

The POVs aren't:
* 3 girls
* 1 girl
* Watson
* Mostly Theo, but also Kamele and Miri (F), Bechimo, Win Ton, Clarence and Uncle (M).
f/t ~= 3/4 by book, or 5/6 by major character.

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/438283.html

Entry tags:

tie-in and fanfic and gender demographics, f/t f/m

Speaking of Star Trek novels... I had a thought. Fanfic's reputation is of heavy dominance by women, as both writers and readers. F&SF published authors in general tend to be male, especially in SF. James Nicoll has a f/m tag bean-counting this for various publications.

But what about tie-in stuff? It's basically officially approved (not necessarily canonical) fanfic that's been contracted by a publisher. It's also lower status, which could mean "we let women do it because it's low status" or "it's low status because women do it". So, if I count lots of authors, will I find demographics more like fanfic, original fic, or something in between? I see no point to making a prediction, since I'm about to go count.

Methodology: so there's two variables of interest: number of unique authors of either sex, and books by either sex. I'll give both. For the record, it's easier to count books. If co-authorship was split between a man and a woman I counted it as half for each.

Star Trek novels

Source

Bantam original 1970-1981:
Authors: 3 f, 8 m. Doesn't include the New Voyages collections. f/t 0.375
Books: 4 f, m 9, f/t 0.31. (0.40 if we counted the mostly-female story collections:)
New Voyages: stories authors 8 f, 0 m, f/t 1.0
New Voyages 2: stories authors 8 f, 2 m, f/t 0.8

Wanderer + Archway 1982-1984:
Authors: 1 f, 3 m. f/t 0.25
Books: 0.5 f, 5.5 m. f/t 0.0833

Pocket Books 1979-present:
Authors: 34 f, 45 m. Not counting ST:TMP by Roddenberry. f/t 0.43

So majority male. But what I noticed going down the list is that there's been a huge surge of men in recent books. The most recent 26 books are all by men, and the last one by a woman is Unspoken Truth in 2010. That period contributes ten new male names; before it, the ratio is 34 f, 35 m. f/t 0.49

I picked the 20 year period from 1981 to 2001 as a likely breakpoint. There was apparently some editorial change: most of the books before 2001 are numbered, only the first one after it is.

Authors -2001: 33 f, 25 m, f/t 0.57
So there's been only one new female author since 2001, and 20 male ones.
Authors 2002-: 1 f, 20 m, f/t 0.04
Books -2001: 67.5 f, 42.5 m, f/t 0.61
Books 2002-: 11.5 f, 44.5 m, f/t 0.20

Yeaaahhh, that's a pretty big change.

E-books: Mere Anarchy (2006–07)
Authors: f 1, m 6. f/t 0.14
Books: 1 f, 5 m; f/t 0.17

The Next Generation 1987-present:
Authors -2001: 21 f, 31 m, f/t 0.40
Authors 2002-: 3 f, 11 m, f/t 0.21
Books -2001: 26 f, 59 m, f/t 0.31
Books: 2002-: 4 f, 35 m, f/t 0.10

Deep Space Nine (1993-present):

Authors -2001: 11 f, 22 m, f/t 0.333
Authors 2002-: 5 f, 8 m, f/t 0.38
Books -2001: 15.5 f, 23.5 m, f/t 0.40
Books: 2002-: 11.5 f, 19.5 m, f/t 0.37

Not much change here, and better than the other lines in the 2002- period.

Voyager 1995-present:

Authors -2001: 11 f, 12 m, f/t 0.49
Authors 2002-: 2 f, 2 m, f/t 0.50
Books -2001: 19.5 f, 12.5 m, f/t 0.61
Books 2002-: 14 f, 2 m, f/t 0.88
Worth noting that 12 of the later books are "post relaunch" and by two authors. But, not surprising that the series with a female captain gets -- or is allowed -- more female attention.

Enterprise:

Enterprise starts in 2001 so I'll just count it as one.

Authors: 3 f, 6 m, f/t 0.33
Books: 3.5 f, 14.5 m, f/t 0.19

There's also New Frontier, 21 books by Peter David, and the Titan (2005-) series following Riker, which is 14 books entirely by male authors, and Vanguard (2005-), 9 books by male authors, and Seekers (2014-), 4 books by male authors.

I refuse to do the work to find the set of all the unique authors, but it's easy to combine books for the whole franchise:
Books -2001: 133 f, 152 m, f/t 0.47
Books 2002-: 45.5 f, 169.5 m, f/t 0.21

Babylon-5 from here

Authors 4 f, 7 m, f/t 0.36
Books 6 f, 12 m, f/t 0.333

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures Source

The featuring the Doctor list:
Books: 5.5 f, 55.5 m, f/t 0.09

Welp. And it's just one woman, Kate Orman. "Featuring Bernice Summerfield" isn't much better, one other woman gets in as a co-author, out of 23 books.