So I started and stopped several responses to this post. I have very conflicted feelings about it and about the use of Tony as the example. I am a Tony fan, however I'm not blind to the character's faults and I have massive issues with how the character has been presented for the past couple of seasons. He's gotten progressively dumber and more juvenile with a few rare exceptions. He's also taken his share of lumps from the fandom as a whole. A couple of years ago there were threads and threads on one of the mailing lists about how he should be fired or in jail.
I'm also one of those people who gets called a Ziva Hater and gets told that it's because I don't want her to hook up with Tony. And that if I haven't ranted for pages about anything and everything that Tony and Gibbs have done wrong then I can't rant about Ziva. Anything else I say tends to get dismissed with that by folks who assume they know better than I what my motivations are. To be clear, I'm not accusing anyone here of that. Just giving a little perspective of where I'm coming from.
I will fully admit that I tend to hold many female characters to a higher standard. This doesn't mean that I want them to be perfect. I would just like them to be well written. With NCIS as the example, there are a total of TWO regular female characters. Perhaps because of the disparity, I have a lot less tolerance for suffering poorly written ones.
With NCIS, I suppose that I should just give up because there have been some pretty hefty gender issues going back to almost the beginning. I guess I just keep holding out hope that the writers will fix them. Sadly, the females on the show (with the exception of Abby who I also currently have issues with) tend to end up in three categories. Love Interest. Evil. Dead. Some can even be all three. (I liked Agent Lee dammit!)
I liked Ziva in the beginning. I liked that she could hold her own against Tony and throw him off his game. Then she started mooning over him and apparently lost all ability to uncover the weakest undercover op in history in the process.
I also have issues with the fact that she was excused for behavior (knocking over a wounded teammate and pointing a gun at them) that would have been loudly decried had the gender roles been reversed. It's like the writers want to tell us that she's kick ass but pull out the "she's just a girl and therefore emotional" excuse when it suits them.
Sorry, I know this went in a different direction than the original post, but I wanted to give one perspective of why in this case I do rant louder about a female character than a male one.
I do want to say that I agree there's a level of misogyny that happens in fandom as a whole that should give many of us pause. The comments I've seen when a guest actress is even announced for some shows is cringe-worthy.
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So I started and stopped several responses to this post. I have very conflicted feelings about it and about the use of Tony as the example. I am a Tony fan, however I'm not blind to the character's faults and I have massive issues with how the character has been presented for the past couple of seasons. He's gotten progressively dumber and more juvenile with a few rare exceptions. He's also taken his share of lumps from the fandom as a whole. A couple of years ago there were threads and threads on one of the mailing lists about how he should be fired or in jail.
I'm also one of those people who gets called a Ziva Hater and gets told that it's because I don't want her to hook up with Tony. And that if I haven't ranted for pages about anything and everything that Tony and Gibbs have done wrong then I can't rant about Ziva. Anything else I say tends to get dismissed with that by folks who assume they know better than I what my motivations are. To be clear, I'm not accusing anyone here of that. Just giving a little perspective of where I'm coming from.
I will fully admit that I tend to hold many female characters to a higher standard. This doesn't mean that I want them to be perfect. I would just like them to be well written. With NCIS as the example, there are a total of TWO regular female characters. Perhaps because of the disparity, I have a lot less tolerance for suffering poorly written ones.
With NCIS, I suppose that I should just give up because there have been some pretty hefty gender issues going back to almost the beginning. I guess I just keep holding out hope that the writers will fix them. Sadly, the females on the show (with the exception of Abby who I also currently have issues with) tend to end up in three categories. Love Interest. Evil. Dead. Some can even be all three. (I liked Agent Lee dammit!)
I liked Ziva in the beginning. I liked that she could hold her own against Tony and throw him off his game. Then she started mooning over him and apparently lost all ability to uncover the weakest undercover op in history in the process.
I also have issues with the fact that she was excused for behavior (knocking over a wounded teammate and pointing a gun at them) that would have been loudly decried had the gender roles been reversed. It's like the writers want to tell us that she's kick ass but pull out the "she's just a girl and therefore emotional" excuse when it suits them.
Sorry, I know this went in a different direction than the original post, but I wanted to give one perspective of why in this case I do rant louder about a female character than a male one.
I do want to say that I agree there's a level of misogyny that happens in fandom as a whole that should give many of us pause. The comments I've seen when a guest actress is even announced for some shows is cringe-worthy.