I'm not a bad girl; I'm just drawn that way

[rolanni]

Over on Dear Author a couple weeks ago, Heather Massey took up the subject of the Extraordinary Heroine, and asks the musical question Is The World Ready? She notes, among other things, that some Urban Fantasy and Romance heroines are introduced as "strong" -- which is to say, The Author Says So -- but then goes on to act in ways that are. . .somewhat less than strong. It's an interesting read, and you should read it; the comment thread meanders somewhat, but, eh -- that's what comment threads do.

Now, I've been thinking about Heather's article, and about some of the comments, and I wonder if it is true that readers would prefer their heroine to be "nice" rather than competent. I'm not a subscriber to the whole Girl Nice Game*, and on the whole I find I prefer people, whether they live in so-called Real Life, or inside a book, to be interesting. If a character is hard-nosed, well, then -- there you have it. She'll act in a hard-nosed fashion, which may not be, particularly, nice or pleasant, but ought, at least if the author is doing her job, interesting and provocative to the reader.

Full disclosure, one of the commentors in the thread brought up the. . .fascinating reader review of Carousel Tides in which Kate is described as "repulsive." Obviously, if I had thought Kate was repulsive, I couldn't have managed having her in my head for a little over a year, but I will agree that she's not nice.

So, discussion question! How do you prefer your heroines? Strong or nice? Is strong vs. nice a false dichotomy? Can a nice girl be strong? Can a strong girl be nice? For more than one date?
__________________
*Girl Nice Game is the game played by militantly sweet females; it has at its core a balance sheet toothier than any Liadens: I'm nice to you, so you HAVE to be nice to me. See "When You're Good to Mama" for clarification of this concept and its workings.

Comments

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

Why does the choice have to be either strong or nice?
I see this kind of heroine a lot where the author mistakes strong and spunky for bitchy and immature. I hate the bitchy heroine, I usually end up hoping she gets killed off. By page 37.
Nice doesn't have to mean that she's a pushover or doormat.

How about strong female character who is also not a snot?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

How about strong female character who is also not a snot?

OK, can you expand on this. I ask as someone who apparently has an Attitude, and who has been certified as Not Nice, so I do associate being a wisehat with not playing the nice game. And a refusal to play the nice game as a marker for a strong woman -- i.e., she doesn't go along with the rest, even though it's not comfortable.

[katmoonshaker.livejournal.com]

My mom almost didn't name me Kathryn because of the nickname "Kathy". She felt it wasn't strong enough for a woman. Fortunately for her I never liked it myself, although I didn't like her choice of "Kate", and have always used "Kat" instead. I have had strong women in my family as examples all my life. I come from a family of female French intellectuals. The women often stayed at home, ran everything, and wrote letters about philosophy as well as how things were going on the home front to their husbands.

In an era where most women did not work (my grandmother married my grandfather in the twenties), my grandmother not only worked as a teacher but had a Master's in English which she obtained while my mother was a toddler. In fact, my mother was rather astonished that I preferred to stay home with my children but because she had brought me up to believe that a woman had the right to do whatever she wanted no matter what anyone else said about it, she just shook her head about it and let it go.

All of the women in my family had college degrees and were were excruciatingly polite. All of the children in our family were expected to take three years of music since it raises math & science scores, change a baby, cook at least one meal, change a tire, change the fluids in a car, use simple tools, iron, sew on a button, and so on. None of us believe in the "Nice Girl Game". If anything, we believe that everyone should be polite to everyone else. My late grandfather always said, "The only prejudice I have is against prejudice." a quote which I keep up on my cafepress shop.

I'm wandering... it's just the pain... but where is it written that competency has anything to do with personality? Seriously. Although I must admit that those people who are most competent tend to be more comfortable with themselves and less likely to try to make up for their inadequacies by being rude to others. I hope that makes sense.

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

I don't see not going along with the crowd as a 'not nice' behavior. A little snarky is also isn't 'not nice' in my book.
You see, one can stand up for herself and her beliefs with out being a snot. Being independent is not being 'not nice'. Being strong and independent is not being 'not nice', that is an excellent thing.

Deliberately doing something to injure someone else (unless it's war or something) or back-stabbing someone is 'not nice'. Having a constantly snotty attitude is also 'not nice'.

I think it has a lot to do with how a person/character presents their strength and independence. If it is done without the aggressive slap your face kind of attitude it is good but if it is presented wrapped up in a ball of unnecessary abrasive, aggression, well, that's bitchy.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I don't read romances about women who are wimps. (I'm not calling them "nice"; you can be a kind and lovable and loving person and still be strong.) I have no interest in reading about women who are pushed around by Fate, especially women who are pushed around by the men in their lives. One of the joys of Jane Eyre is how thoroughly Jane stands up to everybody in her life, including her would-be lover. She knows what is right, and she demands respect in one of the greatest speeches of all time.

" Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!"

I love romances with conflict, and with male/female conflict, but I don't like it when the "alpha male" simply rolls over the woman throughout the book. One of the things I loved about your Mouse and Dragon was watching the heroine grow into her strength and demand the respect she was due.

There's a reason I read Jennifer Crusie; her heroines kick ass, for the most part. I'm not crazy about her current collaborations, but middle Crusie is funny and sexy and powerful.

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

"but where is it written that competency has anything to do with personality? Seriously. Although I must admit that those people who are most competent tend to be more comfortable with themselves and less likely to try to make up for their inadequacies by being rude to others. "

This is a great point.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

As far as I can see (disclaimer: I'm a White Male 54 years old) strong/weak and nice/nasty are on different axes. Possibly not quite orthogonal (someone who is strong may have to do some 'nasty' things, but they'll have a good reason for them). And of course very few people are anywhere near the extremes.

Oh, and 'likeable' and 'loveable' are on yet more axes. I hope you're having fun with that n-dimensional viewer...

For instance, you come across to me as strong but not intentionally nasty. That is, if you do get snarky and bitchy then you seem to have good reason for it (like That Other Place where you aren't writing). Theo, also, is (at least by Saltation) strong, and not entirely culturally aware (I rather suspect that she has Aspergers or a related ASD), but again isn't intentionally nasty. Indeed, she avoids confrontations when she can, she's just not very good at avoiding them. Miri, similarly, is spunky and sarcastic and knows what she wants ans intends to get it -- but look how she behaves with people she considers 'family' (including Beautiful). She'll give anyone a dressing-down if they screw up, and she'll be plain about it, and if there's a mission at stake she'll get them out before they can do any more damage, but that's because she cares not despite it.

As for the "Nice Game", I really do not like headgames. That sort of thing is associated, to me, with people who know that they are 'nasty' and want to get away with it in a "passive/aggressive" way. And very often they aren't what I'd call 'strong', they often have an inferiority attitude which they are masking, and are in fact going along with the herd (not a behaviour I consider 'strong') and will switch to the 'winning' side if they get a chance.

So IMO please do keep writing about strong but basically nice people (Kate is allegedly 'repulsive'? I think she's rather attractive, and I'm talking about personality). Male and female (and all other variants).

Strong vs. Nice

[cheryl feil (from livejournal.com)]

I'll take a strong, competent heroine any day over a nice one. Nice ones tend to be boring and need strong male heroes to rescue them. When in real life it's often the strong, competent woman that props up the man or finds another strong competent man for her relationships. I like characters who are competent (or at least capable of becoming so through education and growing up like Theo in Fledgling and Saltation). I found Kate to be interesting and reasons were gradually revealled WHY she acted "not nice." I'm hoping for a sequel to Carousel Tides - that's how interesting I found the characters to be for me and when I started the book I wasn't sure I would enjoy a non-Liaden book. Should have known better - I like your (and also Steve's) writing style too much.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

To be prefectly honest, I HATE the word "nice". It is the word that is pressed into use, far too often, when you can't find a single good thing to say about somebody that is specific or even remotely relevant - so you come up with, oh, well, she's "nice". "Nice" is the shallow water that hides razor edged rocks, actually. It covers a multitude of sins. You can SEEm "nice" without ever having to work for it at all. Sycophants can be thought "nice". Honest people who offer unvarnished opinions are frequently "not nice". If someone does something underhand to you and you complain about it, that's not being "nice".

My favoured characteristics: Genuine. Honest. Capable of asking for help if required but having first at least attempted to solve problem to best of given ability. Permitted to fail, but able to learn from failure and build on it until it turns into success. Frequently not-ordinary (and no, I don't mean extraordinary in the sense that can fly or even leap tall buildings - just a different sense of the world, and capable of passing that difference in vision to me).

"Nice" doesn't even begin to matter.

[lornastutz.livejournal.com]

Personally, I prefer competant. (unfortunately) this rarely comes across as "nice". Probably a reflection of my own personality - I'm professionally competant,say please & thank you, help others when I can but at the same time don't invite familiarity so come across as being not nice.
Cannot abide silly, inane women.
Lorna

[adriannem.livejournal.com]

I thought _Carousel Tides_ was your best book yet. Kate has issues. They make her interesting to read about. She is strong. She makes decisions based on what she thinks is honorable. Those decisions have really fascinating and often not-happy consequences.

Is she nice? I would like to know her. She's someone who gets things done.

IMHO, the women who are always "nice" are either such pale depictions of humanity that they have no character, or they're actually real bitches underneath.

[aspidites.livejournal.com]

Very good question.

I definitely prefer "interesting" to just about anything else in my characters. That being said, I don't find characters who are always strong (or weak, or mean, or nice) to be very interesting. Or realistic. All of us out here in the real world have moments of strength, weakness, pettiness, grace and spite, and what makes us interesting is how we use what we have, flaws included, to deal with what the world throws at us. The same goes for fiction - one-dimensional characters aren't very interesting.

[saruby.livejournal.com]

I think it is telling that the original discussion deals with romance rather than other genres. Paranormal romance is very popular right now. My experience is that many of the heroines in those books ultimately depend on the intervention of the strong hero to save them from their dilemmas. One the other hand, urban fantasy (similar, not the same) often has strong heroines that save themselves. The difference may be the target audience. Romance readers want a hero to save the day and true love to conquer all. Fantasy readers are more interested in getting the job done.

My preference is for interesting and believable women. One of the things that totally killed the last Star Wars movie for me was that Padme who was strong and willing to fight for her beliefs, suddenly becomes this wimpy, weeping woman who can't stand up for anything. Huh? (this isn't the only problem with that plot, just one of them).

Having said all of that, I don't think that being strong and competent means doing it all myself even when there is available and skilled help. It isn't, necessarily, wimpy to admit, "I can't do this alone, I should accept help from someone who can." I also don't think that being strong and competent makes a woman bitchy. Just self-aware.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I was raised by my Grandmothers, all sweet church ladies who gardened, and they could take you out in a moments notice with the hoe if you threatened them. Polite didnt mean Victim to them.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

My definition of "nice" is different from your definition. Mine is "a person who doesn't intentionally or carelessly hurt others without good reason." By that definition, yes, I prefer nice characters. Priscilla is a nice person, though Miri occasionally does some not-nice things, though she usually has survival as a goal. Most of the protagonists in the Liaden novels are nice by my definition. They aren't careless of the lives or even the feelings of other people, though they will damage both if Necessity Exists.

Having said that, I'd rather have not-nice but interesting characters than nice but bland. Watching the British show Torchwood, I once commented that there wasn't one of the characters who I'd want to be friends with or trust to look after my cat for a weekend, but that I continued watching them because they were interesting. They hurt each other, themselves, and complete strangers, often for no good reason, but in ways that made sense for the lives they were leading and the stress they were under.

Strong is an entirely separate axis, again subordinate to interesting. The character Cat in Diana Wynne Jones's Charmed Life is not a strong character for most of the novel--he lets other people, most notably his sister and sister-analogue push him around with at most a sort of passive-resistance dragging of his heels. Cat isn't a heroine, of course, and his passivity might be annoying in a female protagonist (though I think DW Jones would pull it off), but he's a realistic sort of charaqcter, he's interesting (that word again), and he grows and matures across the novel. (Maree from Deep Secret and Roddy from Merlin Conspiracy are two female examples of DW Jones's "not strong" characters who are still complex, realistic, and interesting.)

strong

[furballtiger.livejournal.com]

IMHO the Girl Nice Game is a spectacular mode of "not nice", and I also hold that there's no necessary relation between nice and strong (other than lazily repeating societal biases for women to stay in certain boxes...whether that is in the interest of advancing our collective degree of enlightenment is, at best, arguable!). If one sees no other choices one has failed to transcend the cultural biases of the day (and potentially failed to contribute to our collective stumbling towards greater enlightment). Writing nice, competent, strong women that remain interesting while avoiding several obvious pitfalls seems a worthwhile challenge. To the extent the character appeals (results in empathy and/or affection rather than more negative responses) to the reader it opens the door for the reader to more personally internalize the proposed cultural instance. We define our culture by the stories we tell ourselves...and every author shapes the future to some extent. Fiction is serious business! PS: I think Miri is nice. Given half a chance she'll be decent to someone (or as decent as they prove they deserve). But she's not willingly a victim, nor is she helpless.

[katmoonshaker.livejournal.com]

::nods:: By that definition, those of Korval are 'nice', which I also prefer. But hurt them or theirs or just show yourself as being 'not nice' and rest assured that you'll face the consequences. I approve of that.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

This discussion reminds me of a lady I knew once, long ago when I lived in Texas. She was one of those classic silver-haired Texas women who think that wearing any more jewelry than her engagement and wedding rings and a single strand of pearls is showy and ostentatious. She also broke her own horses well into her sixties and was her gun-club's defending skeet champion three years running. Yes, she had married well and moved easily among the rich and powerful. But she'd also grown up on a working cattle ranch in the days before electric power.

As keristor has already noted, "nice" and "strong" are on different axes.

[greylady.livejournal.com]

I prefer my heroines to be strong and nice. They aren't mutually exclusive, and "nice" is a completely inappropriate way to say "passive aggressive to a fault"... because that's anything but nice.

But, if there's a choice between being nice and politely letting someone do terrible things to someone or something that doesn't deserve it or being strong and stopping the madness, nice can be happily traded in for a good pair of jack-boots.

On the other hand, true strength is shown in the ability to be nice to people who are weaker in some respect... so you really can't have a strong character who the antithesis of nice. Humans don't work that way - meanness is invariably a front for weakness. Apathy is kind of the closest that true strength can get to anti-nice.

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

I'll take my heroes and heroines (to use a phrase of Christopher Stasheff's) "Good, but not nice". They attempt to better the lives of those around them/close to them/have responsibility over/etc, but are not sweetness and light. They will have their good points, and bad, and may be difficult to get on with. This has no bearing on competence or goals.

That said, spicing that particular dish with the occasional nice and good makes things interesting, as does having the occasional converse of both axis. In particular the Not Nice Not Good while still Heroic is an interesting twist.

Miri

[muehe.livejournal.com]

I like Miri, so whatever she is -- i like them that way.

I'll third that

[bookmobiler.livejournal.com]

Miri has come up several times as an example of nice usually, and definitely strong.
For contrast consider Dagmar(?} who tries to pick on Val Con.

[berneynator.livejournal.com]

I think that nice and strong are not mutually exclusive, but that it is probably more difficult to make a 'nice' character interesting. Starting an argument or going against normal or expected behavior tends to grate on people, and be considered 'not-nice' whether the action is morally right or not.

However, the same person could be considered nice in circumstances that don't require them to stand up against some issue or injustice. There's nothing wrong with conforming to societal expectations, just as there's nothing wrong with defying them, in general - it depends on the specific expectations. If those expectations are oppressive in some manner, a perfectly good character (or person) might strike others as not-nice for rejecting them. I guess I would correlate a perception of being 'nice' pretty strongly with being agreeable.

I myself am generally considered nice, but then - I am mostly in circumstances where speaking my mind is perfectly acceptable and normal behavior, and my opinions are for the most part in common with those of my social circle.

Hmm. I've rambled a bit, but I don't think there's anything wrong with nice, or that it's incompatible with strength - but I think that in a circumstance in which one must show one's strength, agreeableness is not likely the foremost consideration. A lot of people have mentioned Miri as nice - and I would agree, but her enemies certainly wouldn't. I can't think of the name, but the security guard she dances with, and whom she later threatens with Val Con, in Agent of Change probably wouldn't consider her nice either, on balance.

[katmoonshaker.livejournal.com]

I've read some paranormal romance and I'm curious about which ones are like this. I like Kim Harrison & Patricia Briggs. But I agree that having a heroine 'saved' annoys me most of the time. If it's a case of a partnership between the two, that's one thing. Or if she's able to one-upmanship him (or her friends give him the Gibbs smack that she didn't really need the help) that's another.

My preference is for interesting and believable women. One of the things that totally killed the last Star Wars movie for me was that Padme who was strong and willing to fight for her beliefs, suddenly becomes this wimpy, weeping woman who can't stand up for anything. Huh? (this isn't the only problem with that plot, just one of them).

Having said all of that, I don't think that being strong and competent means doing it all myself even when there is available and skilled help. It isn't, necessarily, wimpy to admit, "I can't do this alone, I should accept help from someone who can." I also don't think that being strong and competent makes a woman bitchy. Just self-aware.

I totally agree with this. There is a major difference between people needing help and people needing to "be saved".

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

Off topic, but here's another Savage Chickens strip about work that made me think of you.
http://www.savagechickens.com/?p=7061