Women have always had inherent value owing to their ability to birth children. By contrast, men have always had to accrue value unto themselves by their works and deeds. I think this fundamental reality is reflected in our media depictions of male versus female protagonists.
The hero’s journey is essentially the coming-of-age story of boys becoming men via trials and suffering. We become worthy of our stations in life, and our women and our families, through accomplishment and overcoming challenges. Or we fail, and we die, literally or spiritually. Either way, it’s interesting.
Women don’t experience the same climb. They begin the game with tremendous, society-sustaining value. It literally cannot be overstated. It is, however, automatic and requires no effort. There’s no progression or arch or triumph. The only potential for drama is the tragedy that results when a woman squanders her greatest value.
Injecting women into traditionally masculine “hero’s journey” stories is a recipe for boredom. Because women begin the story with all of the value they require to be accepted and promoted by the tribe. Whatever motivations are concocted for these female protagonists are inevitably shallow and pointless. Their arcs are flat and uninspiring. The most they can muster is obnoxious and entitled subversion; they rebel against the “unfair restrictions” placed upon them by nature - as if men are so privileged in their mandatory pain and labor.
I think this theory maps pretty well onto modern girl boss characters. I’m sure it has been explored. Just connecting my own personal dots on this one.
I'd argue you're mostly right as women have their own archetype that is just as action oriented as men's hero's journey: vengeance
The phrase 'hell have no wrath like a woman scorned' is there for a reason. Many great stories come from women losing everything they had and coming back vengeful, whether something like Kill Bill or you could include The Ring for a supernatural element. They hold long standing grudges for what they lost, they are vindictive, merciless, spitful, making it appear that we have unleashed pure wrath because we ripped everything away from this woman.
Now THAT is interesting for a depiction of a female character if you don't want her in a supportive role. It's better to have this for women and the Hero's journey for men as they play off each other beautifully, whether opposing each other or actually mutually working together.
"Fury" for that expression, not "wrath".
Don't know if I agree, I picture Roberta from Black Lagoon as an archetype of this.
She wasn't crazy (in blood trail yeah but not the standard one) she was essentially 'terminator in a maid's outfit' cold, calculating and vengeful. Fury doesn't fit that for me as more emotional, it's the difference between your mom yelling at you and your mom staring at you dead silent.
The modern female hero's journey, is everyone around her declaring she is great after she's been bragging about it throughout the story.
The male hero's journey which has stood the test of time for thousands of years, is a man overcoming to actually become great.
Women are human beings. Men are human doings.
A man has to grind out life like an old Final Fantasy game in order to attain value. He starts out in the low level town and has to repeatedly struggle.
A woman by contrast starts out in one of the later high level locations, and passively gains XP. The only downside is that her level gets capped lower than the man's, but that's what happens when nature hands you your place instead of you having to earn it.
The ones you listed, forced conscription or desperation-sign-up mages, are almost always deconstructions.
Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha has an interesting blend of the Hero's Journey and what is proposed up-thread as the "Woman's Journey": Nanoha, in tandem with Fate, basically co-op the Hero's Journey together... And once that journey is completed, almost seamlessly they blend it into the "Woman's Journey". Went to hell, gained respect, self-actualized, mended relations with parental figures... Then raises some kids, becomes a trainer of magical girls and a mentor-as-a-job, and how she overcomes THOSE trials and tribulations where the real journey is the social one and raising the next generation, not the introspective one of raising yourself.
Usually, but it depends on the type of journey. In Labyrinth for example it makes sense for the heroine to be female because it's a very feminine journey she's on. But yes, these days in most cases it's a masculine journey that some Hollywood woke cultist crammed a female into in an attempt to colonise masculinity.
True, but she doesn't go through a journey to overcome flaws and become stronger in order to gain value in her character, she goes through a journey to recognise that she needs to be strong to retain her value.
For me, it's not so much the "journey" being inherently masculine but I do think that's an issue. For me, the issue is that female characters are depicted in how they go through the journey as if they were a man. I think a woman in a masculine journey could work if she acted through the journey as a woman would act.
Video games are so obsessed with "equality" that they write the female and male characters as equals more-or-less in their overall demeanor, goals, way of thinking, what they are happy about or upset about, their behaviors with respect to social interactions, their thoughts and moral values on the story at hand, etc... It just makes the female characters entirely unrealistic so no one likes them.
Here's a good test. Imagine a video game and imagine a female character. Now imagine that same character with the same dialogue, role, story-arc etc... was a man. Minus all the "romance" scenes and dialogue where they mention their sex, if you replaced the female character with a male model, would it seem out of place? If the answer is mostly no, then that's a bad female character. You should be able to tell right away the character is female because of how she behaves. However, this is a big elephant in the room problem with modernity. No one wants to admit men and women are significantly different in how they behave because that's sexist.
The female characters in video games aren't written like females. They're written like men. We all know why this is. Women hate it when men point out all their behavioral stereotypes because every woman wants to think she's the exception when she's really just like all the other girls.
I must be tired. I realized Mr Darcy goes through the heroes journey to win the main character. She doesn't go through it except to realize he has won her over
Men make content that a lot of men and women want to see. Western Women... make content that very little people wanna see.
To go a little deeper ...
The whole male journey thing stems from the fact that they don't have any natural way of displaying "I'm an adult now" beyond their balls dropping. So the Vision Quest or other young male initiation rite (on which the Hero's Journey is based and an extension of) serves two purposes:
and these quests are dangerous because
Females don't need artificial weeding, death by childbirth takes care of that.
There is a reason romance movies that hit the spot have this formula :
Young woman falls in love for a strong man who cares about her and protects her and they make a family he can provide for and she lovingly supports him by keeping the home welcoming.
Other women try to damage her reputation but she out-competes them in the opinion of people that matter. The other women who wronged Marie Sue get punished by loss of social standing.
Women LOVE those stories.
As much as people complained about the new Little Mermaid, the old one was shit too. Girl wants things, daddy doesn't "get" her, girl gets everything she wanted in the end. This is considered a "classic." Cinderella, Snow White - also shit. Sleeping Beauty literally did nothing but exist.
Women rejecting their passive role in society because it's not "good enough" for them has been the single greatest catalyst of the past century's suffering, far more than any other one factor.
It's so bad I don't even watch modern movies with female protagonists anymore. I'm sure there's a few good ones I'm missing out on but I'm just burnt out of the concept. I know she'll be fine, will have all the plot armor needed to make it through, and will dunk on men at least a few times with an awkward self-insert lecture or unrealistic fight scene. No thanks.
Accurate. You also notice how female heroes become masculinized to the point of being lesbians, and since they have all their value intrinsically, the only "challenge" they face is lack of validation. Invariably all female led stories revolve around getting everyone to praise them and acknowledging their inherent superiority. It's tiresome.
Not just "can't be shown" fucking up; shouldn't be fucking up.
The woman's journey involves avoiding the fuckup in the first place. A man can fuck up and fix it, but when a woman fucks up, in an archetypal sense, she's just screwed.
That's why so many women stories are about realizing inner strength or embracing her own wisdom, rather than learning and growing; a woman's path is laid out for them. They don't need to change. The change happens to them and all they need to do is accept it.
What can a woman become that's better that the progenitor of life for her species, her family, and herself?
Or worse, a woman doesn't need to change. She's already a perfect being, it's the world around her that needs to change and accept her perfection.
Basically the "How many narcissists does it take to change a light bulb?"
One, they just hold it in place and expect the world to revolve around them to screw it in place.
Sort of.
She's going to change, whether she wants to or not. She's going to become valuable without any act of will or sacrifice.
The challenge of women is understanding what this means.
A woman could take this to mean she is perfect and everyone should worship her, but that's a bad idea. Being valuable does not mean you are powerful, rather it actually detracts from your agency and puts a pretty big target on your back. Using your inherent value to play suitors against each other can obtain pretty bad results.
For example, if a woman sleeps with a dozen men and picks the best fuck, it's highly unlikely that she will pick the best man to protect her. Worse yet, the man she picks may not respect her at all given what she values.
It's up to women to set the game properly, to choose for loyalty, competence, social standing, etc, rather than superficial qualities. The men around her must take risks and make sacrifices, but her goal is wisdom and resilience, not courage or strength.
Exactly, women can go through the hero's journey no problem. Sometimes women really do have adversity to overcome. It's rare, but it happens.
It's just that part of the hero's journey is being flawed and useless by definition. Being born amazing and then saving the universe with zero effort isn't a hero's journey, it's self-insert fan fiction.
The Galbrush paradox is responsible for 90% of bad writing in the past twenty years.
You put your finger on why By The Grace of the Gods is trash isekai story.
The main character is reincarnated near perfect child. His flaws are "low-key-bragging job interview flaws" ( patting yourself on the back about how you're a perpetual self-improvement genius ).
He does everything too easily and flawlessly and with uttermost apologetic good manners. He's just perfetly "existing" through everything like a hot knive through lukewarm butter.
Alot of isekai cartoons are like this. Still, most do it better.
I ran out of good stuff to watch I guess.
The other reason it's fake is that "overcoming your own fuck ups by effort and grit" is much more of a male value than a female one. Not to say that women can't do it, but their usual response to "overcoming their own fuck ups" is to find the nearest man to fix it for them. So people can sense that female "hero's journey" stories aren't that realistic.
I wouldn't call that a hero's journey, necessarily.
She survives while those around her perish but doesn't really grow at all. In the end she does the hard thing and saves the child (not counting Aliens 3, cause it's dumb).
That's the "woman's journey": to keep yourself alive, push through a situation that, while dangerous and painful, is within your existing abilities, and bring forth new life.
She was never timid, though, even in the first film. Everyone on that crew was resourceful -- she just got the luck of the of the draw that she was never in the same place with the xeno as the other crewmates, otherwise she would have died.
But Weedle's point is more-so that she didn't have to overcome some inherent flaw to recognise her worth. She essentially had to muster courage to fulfill her maternal role (in Aliens 2) to save Newt (her surrogate daughter).
As many people have pointed out, the movies (at least the first two) are stringently about maternity, fear, and acceptance. Ripley fears the xenomorph at the beginning, but eventually comes to understand it, and even accept its role (notice how at the end she flames the queen's eggs but doesn't kill the queen -- she recognises and respects the queen's role as a mother, but also defends herself and Newt from the eggs looking to use them as hosts).
Ripley as a flamethrowing "bad ass" is just a consequence of utility, rather than a purpose of intent (Ripley doesn't seek out xenos to kill them in Aliens 2, she equips the weapons to defend herself to find Newt).
I know this all seems pointless and wordy, but the point we're trying to make is that Ripley didn't have to overcome a bunch of flaws, pitfalls, setbacks, and hurdles to grow and become a badass like Luke, or Rocky, the Karate Kid, or Frank Dux in Bloodsport. She just had to fulfill her maternal instincts for survival and the survival of her surrogate daughter (which fits in nicely with what Weedle said near the top of the thread about the importance in differences between men and women and how men have to work to earn their value, and women simply need to work to retain their value).
I’d draw a similar parallel to Sarah Connor in T2. She toughened up and went all female Rambo not because she was trying to out man the men but because she devoted her life to a singular purpose: Keeping her son safe and preparing him for the future.
Alien [1] Ripley wasn't written with a man or woman in mind and as others point out it's more dumb luck not being in the room with the space gribbly that led to survival. That's why the motherly themes don't show until Aliens [2].
Heroine's cycle
The first one was a horror movie though, Hero's journey's involve, well a journey and.or adventure not run for your life to survive. The sequel was closer to it, in that she was in a comfortable(ish) place and willingly (ish) chose to chase danger. It was a good movie because every character was their own person and not merely a punching bag/comic relief. Aside from the company guy of course.