[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I seem to notice even more female fans of Tolkien than ever before! It has to be something deeper than the Legolas effect.

Nah. We were recently discussing Tolkien's work in my comp class in comparison to The Saga of the Volsungs. My class has perhaps ten girls and five or six guys in it. Only one guy was in class this day (not counting the head of the writing department who was sitting in that morning), so my unofficial stats are based entirely on girls.

Two students had read the LotR. Only I had read the Silm (though the head of the department enthusiastically raised his hand when I jokingly asked that question to my classmates). Maybe six of us had seen the movies, and five of those six had been lured there by Orlando Bloom (or, in one case, peer pressure to see... Orlando Bloom).

If the girls in my dorm get to talking about movies, we can talk at length about the artistic merit of Finding Neverland. We can discuss the historical importance of Schindler's List. We can go on about the incredible animation of Finding Nemo, or the books that The Princess Diaries movies are based on. One mention of The Lord of the Rings and you will hear a widespread sigh over how gorgeous Orlando Bloom is. "But the story..." I say. "Who cares?" they respond. "Orlando Bloom is hot."

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Of course, but it would be nice if there were girls doing the driving for a change, rather than squealing in the backseat

True. As long as they have well-developed characters that don't rely alone on "she's a female kicking butt". My favorite girl-power movie's got to be Mulan. I mean... she's got character development, the plot is good, she works really hard, almost fails, and then KABANG! she succeeds and all of China is bowing to her. Mulan rocks. And that Lee Chang... No, seriously though, I agree totally with Lalaith that more movies and books need female leads. They just need to be strong leads that don't rely on gender alone to captivate an audience. Eowyn is an excellent character, though not really a lead, because you actually feel for her. You see her grow and change, becoming a strong, independent woman, instead of a care-taker niece. She knows what is important to her, is willing to give her life for it, and she succeeds and lives happily ever after. Go Eowyn.

I said my next comment once already, though I'll say it again: if women are so upset by the distinct lack of women in literature, they should go out and fix the problem. Do we really expect it to suddenly fix itself? Are we going to sit back and demand that men write books about women? After we sit around and laugh about how men are so clueless about us? Yeah right. Professor Hedgethistle, if your ladies are so upset by the lack of girl books, challenge them to go write their own. Every good female author of good female adventure stories I've come across has been quoted as saying something along the lines of "I write what I want to read."