Bechdel-test testing

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:37:04 GMT

Yuletide has been kicking my butt, but that's another story...

Now that I have twenty fics up, which is a nice base-10 round number, I went through them to check for Bechdel test passing. Nine of them pass Bechdel. Eleven of them pass reverse-Bechdel. (Many of these overlap, and six fics which are F/M romances or F/M main interaction don't pass either one.) I'm fairly happy with this.

What I'm not so happy with is that for seven of those nine fics, I had to make a conscious decision that it was going to pass Bechdel. Two of those seven I actually had to be told by a beta that one of the women characters was not fleshed out enough (independent of whether it passed Bechdel). (The two where I didn't have to make a conscious decision were both written for rarewomen. All hail rarewomen!)

In exactly none of the reverse-Bechdel passes did I think about it at all. They just happened.

Yeah... so... I think I see the problem.

(Also, if it weren't for the Misses Clause challenge the first year I did yuletide, last year, I am not sure how much I would have thought about it at all.)

comments

raspberryhunter

Bechdel-test testing