Glad someone else noticed it, because one of the first things I noticed was a lack of women. This is almost always a matter of internalized sexism on the author's part. Don't misunderstand me, the author is probably a swell guy that doesn't even think about it, and sexism is nothing out of the ordinary and doesn't make someone a bad person. But it always strikes me as creepy how many creators envision a world completely devoid of women, aside from bit roles as love interests or eye candy. As a woman, and one that spends her day surrounded by as many other women as possible (women's studies minor and all) I just can't buy into any world where people like me aren't...well, people. That's not the kind of fantasy that's fun for me.
You can make arguments like patriarchy, and they're all in the kitchen, and so on, but if you actually study history you'll learn that women have always existed right alongside men, doing fantastic and awesome things. The idea that women have never done anything but housework circa 1950's is, itself, just a patriarchal myth and a result of interpreting history through our modern, patriarchal perspective. If anything, there's a lot of evidence that primitive hunter-gatherer societies were more egalitarian. Even without that, though, you've got to consider that this is fantasy, and something like rigid gender roles are easily changed in a world where kobolds and elves reside. It comes back to a matter of importance to the author.
Or fault could be like me- I have almost no female characters in my story because I can't write them for shit.
I used to feel the same way and never wrote female characters for that reason, and that
despite being a woman myself. Having grown up in American society where women don't get many cool roles in movies, it took a number of revelations before I made the simple connection that women were actually a lot like men and vice versa. For example, any of the characters in this comic could be made female without changing anything. But because we're used to thinking of women as mysterious and alien or shoved into these love interest roles, our imaginations fail when we try to think of them as people with the same basic motivations and personalities as men. One of the things I love about dwarf fortress is that it actually has a realistic, 50/50 ratio of men to women, even for enemies. It makes me all warm and fuzzy to be punched by a female troll.
Aside from that, what I read was nice. The line art is on the crude side and could stand to be cleaned up, but the author has a unique style that's charming. I approve of the dwarf fortressy-ness of it. Unfortunately, yeah, I don't go out of my way to read anything without women, though, 'cuz of the deficit of life experience it speaks of on the author's behalf and in general it makes me feel like crap.
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Topic: EFFIGIES - Dwarfy Fantasy webcomic [DEAD] (Read 75159 times)