FKA parkershawty

in d&d you have a bunch of other young women making their debuts. I’m sure I’m not naming everybody, but all of the women (except briar, I guess) are either outright antagonistic (bowman and holloway) or semi-antagonistic and depicted as dull/silly (sutton.) among the older women there’s a little more variety (I guess because they can’t be your direct rivals;) you’ve got your mother (conveniently dead,) your grandmother (semi-antagonistic,) and countess henrietta (antagonistic, petty, and cruel.)

with the men there’s a range--marlcaster is similarly dull/silly, westonly is a lecher (whose disability is played entirely for laughs,) chambers & konevi are friendly and have their own subplot, woods isn’t present much but is friendly and involved with briar. even if you include romantic options (who I would consider primary characters) you have 1 potential female friend to 3 male ones.

this isn’t limited to d&d (it’s just what I’m playing now.) in pretty much every book (caveat: I haven’t played freshman/HSS/lovehacks,) female characters are much more likely to be written as petty, antagonistic, or rivals of the MC and to have their causes/interests depicted as silly or misguided. every other actress in RCD is an enemy or rival; for most of TRR the only women you meet are your rivals or the queen, who dislikes you. other people have written about how female romantic options, especially ones depicted as nonwhite, are more likely to be rivals/to not be present for big parts of the story/to be cruel to MC or to have pb allow MC to be cruel to them; it’s just extra depressing when you extend that to the rest of the cast and realize it’s true of basically every female character. obviously women & girls can be mean or petty or cruel! but when that’s the default characterization it’s really tiring.