Poll: Fiction quantity and protagonists
Via ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
woldy I came across ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tenwomen and found it a little surreal, since (having counted now) I may have only written eleven non-drabble fics with female protagonists since January, but that's out of thirteen stories total (and the other two are m/m and m/m/f).
Maybe I've been in Dragon Age fandom too long and am just used to female protagonists being the norm! Anyway, I am curious about other people now, not just about the number of female protagonists they've written but how many stories in general. Thus, a poll, and to make it more inclusive I haven't made it just about fanfic.
This isn't meant as a "Wow you people who find making ten fanworks about women hard are weird and bad" thing, you can't help what you're drawn to do and we're all different. For example, I failed pretty badly at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc and 12films_poc (though they were instructive and rewarding failures) and I'm sure a lot of people manage both challenges without trying. I just find it interesting.
You can define the terms "written", "stories" "focus" etc and decide what to do with numbers ending in 5 however you like, as long as you're consistent. I've asked about m/m relationships since obviously if you're writing m/m it's very difficult to have a female protagonist and I'm curious to see what effect that has on the numbers.
I realise that dividing the average of the second and third answers by the first isn't quite the same as asking people to calculate proportions themselves, but I assumed people would rather not asked to do maths more complex than counting :)
I create a lot more art and comics than prose, but they're much harder to define the "protagonist" of. Anyway, I'd say I'm more like 50-50 with art, partly but not entirely due to drawing lots of other people's prompts. What about other people?
And for those who create original and fannish works, is there any difference? I'd say my original pictures are more likely to have female protagonists than my fannish ones.
The next question to ask is: what about disabled protagonists? Or non-white/POC, lgbt (especially trans), old etc? I think where I may focus next, artwise at least, is overweight characters, since they are particularly underrepresented in my works and there's this very deep "only skinny people are worth looking at" prejudice especially in comics and other stylised art. Of course there's more to diversity etc than simplistic quotas, but they can be helpful pushes in the right direction.
woldy I came across tenwomen and found it a little surreal, since (having counted now) I may have only written eleven non-drabble fics with female protagonists since January, but that's out of thirteen stories total (and the other two are m/m and m/m/f). Maybe I've been in Dragon Age fandom too long and am just used to female protagonists being the norm! Anyway, I am curious about other people now, not just about the number of female protagonists they've written but how many stories in general. Thus, a poll, and to make it more inclusive I haven't made it just about fanfic.
This isn't meant as a "Wow you people who find making ten fanworks about women hard are weird and bad" thing, you can't help what you're drawn to do and we're all different. For example, I failed pretty badly at
50books_poc and 12films_poc (though they were instructive and rewarding failures) and I'm sure a lot of people manage both challenges without trying. I just find it interesting.You can define the terms "written", "stories" "focus" etc and decide what to do with numbers ending in 5 however you like, as long as you're consistent. I've asked about m/m relationships since obviously if you're writing m/m it's very difficult to have a female protagonist and I'm curious to see what effect that has on the numbers.
Poll #4399 Proportions of female protagonists in fiction
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15
How many prose fiction stories have you completed in the last year? (round to nearest multiple of ten)
View Answers
Mean: 14.00 Median: 10 Std. Dev 13.56
Mean: 14.00 Median: 10 Std. Dev 13.56
| 0 | 3 (20.0%) | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 8 (53.3%) | |
| 20 | 2 (13.3%) | |
| 30 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 40 | 1 (6.7%) | |
| 50 | 1 (6.7%) | |
| 60 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 70 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 80 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 90 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 100 | 0 (0.0%) |
How many of those stories had female protagonists? (round to nearest multiple of ten)
View Answers
Mean: 10.67 Median: 10 Std. Dev 11.81
Mean: 10.67 Median: 10 Std. Dev 11.81
| 0 | 6 (40.0%) | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 5 (33.3%) | |
| 20 | 2 (13.3%) | |
| 30 | 1 (6.7%) | |
| 40 | 1 (6.7%) | |
| 50 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 60 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 70 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 80 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 90 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 100 | 0 (0.0%) |
How many of those stories had an m/m relationship as the central focus? (round to nearest multiple of ten)
View Answers
Mean: 1.43 Median: 0 Std. Dev 3.50
Mean: 1.43 Median: 0 Std. Dev 3.50
| 0 | 12 (85.7%) | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 2 (14.3%) | |
| 20 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 30 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 40 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 50 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 60 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 70 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 80 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 90 | 0 (0.0%) | |
| 100 | 0 (0.0%) |
How accurate are your answers?
View Answers
Completely
3 (20.0%)
I know it all averages out but this rounding makes me uncomfortable
10 (66.7%)
I would have clicked "over a hundred" if it was there
0 (0.0%)
I would have clicked "other" if it was there
1 (6.7%)
They're as accurate as I can manage but I'm really not sure of the exact numbers
5 (33.3%)
They're ALL LIES
1 (6.7%)
Other
1 (6.7%)
I realise that dividing the average of the second and third answers by the first isn't quite the same as asking people to calculate proportions themselves, but I assumed people would rather not asked to do maths more complex than counting :)
I create a lot more art and comics than prose, but they're much harder to define the "protagonist" of. Anyway, I'd say I'm more like 50-50 with art, partly but not entirely due to drawing lots of other people's prompts. What about other people?
And for those who create original and fannish works, is there any difference? I'd say my original pictures are more likely to have female protagonists than my fannish ones.
The next question to ask is: what about disabled protagonists? Or non-white/POC, lgbt (especially trans), old etc? I think where I may focus next, artwise at least, is overweight characters, since they are particularly underrepresented in my works and there's this very deep "only skinny people are worth looking at" prejudice especially in comics and other stylised art. Of course there's more to diversity etc than simplistic quotas, but they can be helpful pushes in the right direction.
no subject
I've finished eleven stories in the past year; three had female protagonists and four were m/m. (So that's not going to look like much on the poll!) One of the m/m pieces was with an asexual character. Two of the stories with female protagonists were f/f. And two of the gen stories also had queer themes.
I've done fairly well in the past with representing mental illness, not so much physical disability. Nor with non-white characters. Older characters interest me a lot and I think I write them fairly frequently.
One of the main characters and love interests in my
no subject
Now I feel like making a poll asking people about art vs writing!
I have done ok with physical disability but haven't touched mental disability (at least not explicitly, some of my characters definitely have serious psychological issues), which is something I mean to try and fix. And yes, the narrow fandom ideals of hotness definitely need exploding.