This week: Damsel In Distress Edited by: Annette  
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"When I look around the world, I don't see too many damsels in distress. If they're a damsel in distress, they're manipulating some guy to help them." - Sigourney Weaver
"I think that young women and little girls need to see that they don't have to be the damsel in distress. They don't have to not show their strength. They don't have to be whatever the stereotype is or the tropes that we go to in our minds." - Octavia Spencer
"I have a fetish for damsels in distress.” “Don’t be sexist.” “Not at all. My services are also available to gentlemen in distress. It’s an equal opportunity fetish." - Cassandra Clare |
| ASIN: B01IEVJVAG |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 9.99
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Damsel In Distress
Damsel: a young, unmarried woman.
Distress: the modern interpretation of this word usually describes an emotional state. The negative kind of stress that weakens us over time. The state of feeling depressed, sad, lonely, anxious, or sad due to experiencing social or spiritual pain.
The literary damsel in distress may have some of these symptoms, but she is usually going to have physical pain mixed in with emotional pain or be locked up somewhere. Sometimes, she is relegated to such a passive role that she sleeps through her distressed situation and can't even wake up unless saved. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and even Alice in Wonderland (was it all just a dream?) are good examples of women sleeping through their adventures.
The damsel in distress is an archaic female character trope that has painted women in fiction as weak and in need of saving. Young, pretty, naïve, and usually passive, she can't do much without a knight in shining armor to save her from the dragon, the high castle, or even Darth Vader. Princess Leia from Star Wars was given a little more agency than Sleeping Beauty, but even she needed to be saved instead of being an equal member of the team.
On the opposite spectrum of the damsel in distress is the super woman. Black Widow in the Avengers is an example of a woman who doesn't even know how to be taken hostage. The one time we see her tied up and beaten, she takes a phone call and tells the man on the other end, "I'm in the middle of an interrogation." Meaning, she is interrogating the men who *think* they have her tied up. Hearing that she is needed somewhere else, she cuts her interrogation short with a couple of gymnastics moves and leaves with the information she needed.
While fiction doesn't need to be realistic, Black Widow is an extreme example on how to shed the damsel in distress trope.
It's best to avoid the damsel in distress character trope in modern fiction altogether. Luckily, many women characters have broken out of that old, creaky mold. Women are often equal and strong. Writing women characters as competent, intelligent, and simply part of the team is the best way to modernize the role of women in fiction.
Can you use a damsel without making her look weak? |
| | | An Overture (18+)
Clair’s peace is disrupted by a beautiful woman with a life-altering proposition.
#2268148 by K Renée  |
| |  | Emily (13+)
A short story which requires you to think up the beginning of the story. Violence warning.
#2290581 by Cloud  |
| |  | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#2294235 by Not Available. |
| | | Invalid Item
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#2293707 by Not Available. |
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Replies to my last Drama newsletter "Constantly Overreacting" that asked What fallacy are you going to use to drag me into your drama?
Beholden  wrote: You asked: "What fallacy are you going to use to drag me into your drama?"
None of them, I hope. Isn't there enough of such spurious argument going on in real life? Far be it from me to add to that particular drama.
brom21 wrote: I usually write from a religious/spiritual POV that I mix with fantasy. What category would that fall under?-Argument from Consequences? |
| ASIN: B01IEVJVAG |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 9.99
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Drama: May 10, 2023 Issue [#11950]
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