: Re: Is it bad to have no gender variety? The majority of stories, movies, shows, comics, and other media I've read or seen have a pretty even split between men and women, and that's fine, I don't

@Kaufman555

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It is such a wonderful idea, I am doing it right now.

My story is 3 female protagonists who uncomfortably team up – frenemies. I made them all women because I wanted to see more women adventurers in sci-fi. And probably because I watched too much Charlie's Angels as a child, so … 3 women in spaaaace.

One of them I cheat and plot as male, then "Ripley" back to female. One is hyper-feminized, the third is cerebral and asexual. They are balanced across other spectrums too. One is action, one is guile, one is lawful. I wanted them to contrast because the story is really about their power dynamics in a rock-paper-scissors way. Making them all female somehow equalized their status so there is no "leader", it made the negotiations of power more transparent.

Just because everyone is the same gender, doesn't mean everyone is the same type.

Look at Sailor Moon – there is the smart one, and the fighting one, and the comedic one. Women can easily cover the full narrative range: hero, villain, sidekick, matriarch, vain, dumb, smart, good, evil, scientist, truck driver.

If you kind of want to do it, but it seems hard, or weird, or controversial, that is probably a good reason to try to do it.

Experimenting with reader expectations is a good thing. Deliberately breaking tropes, and discovering how a scene reads with a different cast, is going to stretch your skills as a writer. At the very least you will write characters with their personalities and archetypes first, and gendered baggage second.

What is the worst that could happen? The women get bored and hire a male receptionist.

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