Something I've just noticed about my Epic Supernatural Bechdel Project. I keep creating characters for my ladies to talk to, because we had what, two speaking female characters in Mystery Spot? Doris the waitress and Hasselback's daughter. (My personal canon says Tony the mechanic, mentioned but never seen, is actually Toni the mechanic, which brings us to all of three.) So because Ms. Hasselback's entire focus is, reasonably, on her missing father, I invented a female character for Doris to talk to. This character isn't named. This character doesn't even get a pronoun—she's just 'the supplier'—so the reader only knows she's female because this project requires two speaking female characters per microfic. So this project is less an exercise in how to get conversations between female characters and more an exercise in why walk-on characters need to be female. If Cal had been female, would it have changed the story of Mystery Spot any? Cal would still have the gun and would assume Dean was unarmed (ditto Toni), and presumably still be under Gabriel's influence to shoot Dean. Having Callie instead of Cal would probably mean hitting the 'homeless junkie prostitute' stereotype instead of the 'homeless junkie' stereotype, but that's not a given, and the "Can't stay unless you order something, Cal[lie], you know the rules," "Coffee," exchange would make the episode a Bechdel pass.
Or in Red Sky at Morning. Yeah, I know, it's Red Sky at Morning. But that ep had multiple female characters. We know 'Alex' and Gert talked about Sheila. That would have been a Bechdel pass conversation if we'd seen it. Bela and Gert talked about tickets to the fancy dress party, too, which probably passed Bechdel, but again, we didn't see it. And because my prompt for that ep was 'camping', I couldn't write either conversation, so I invented a front desk person at Bela's hotel. She doesn't rate a noun, never mind a name or pronoun, so again, the only thing that assures the reader she's female is her presence in a Bechdel project.
There was a point to this post when I started. Anybody know what it was?
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