What type of female character do you prefer?

From reading a bit through the forums, stories and comments I've sort of become curious of whether Chyoa users seem to like different characters than the average internet person. I have the impression we have a high percentage of users with fairly rare fetishes, and maybe that applies to characters too.

Text responses are appreciated!

(NOTE: This is specifically for heterosexual males / homosexual females - I don't want to know what character you like to identify with as a protagonist, but who you most like to romance in a story)

 

I'm a male and write a lot of female protagonist storylines. So, rather than "female character", you're asking about "female object of desire"?

I do have a recurring theme of characters, usually female, breaking past doubt and hesitation to come into their own sexually. I suppose in terms of "object of desire", mostly the characteristic of being game for sex. The "educated and self-confident" box above is actually a specific point of attraction, especially when combined with subverting a position of formal power by being sexually engaged with people she "shouldn't", or subverting the notion of the role itself by sexualizing society, such as Torg's Living Like Bonobos.

 

It's both a really good question and actually quite hard to answer. In my different stories I have gone for a wide range of female protagonists, but after thinking about it, I realize that I have repeateadly come back to the witsy, horny and insecure teenager. The teen age is not the most thrilling one and I think it makes for really good insight and story possibilities.

Another thought just popped to my mind : when I write I do picture myself as the main character so I'm sorry but I like to identify with my protagonists.

 

Most of my female leads are based either on my wife, or things I've done with her or seen her do, so I'm a little biased I think. But often enough in my stories, my female characters are usually strong willed for the most part. I mostly like the ones that are matured emotionally and intellectually due to their experiences. I like to have my characters grow from sweet and innocent into something more. Venus for instance starts a virgin that would do most anything to accomplish her goal, and later becomes (Depending on the path chosen) either very mature or very slutty. I think the slutty and seductive way is most seen in the Orc story arc.

If I had to choose straight out, with no development, I think mature is more my style. I mean this again as emotionally and intellectually mature, not age wise. This kind of person accepts what sex and the consequences are in all its forms and is able to decide with a clear head what they want to do when the option for it arrives. This can lead to mutual pleasure or being able to cope with possible forced sexual situations. I tried a corruptible character in my first story and now I feel it isn't quite as interesting as I had thought it would be.

I like the nurturing and gentle option as well as the romantic one, and I've used characters like that before, but not really as a lead. They have their place, but it isn't my thing.

 

That's how I read it too, and in that sense, nothing is sexier to me than a someone who can hold a conversation, and the more argumentative, the better. (It's terrible. I'm a feminist for all the wrong reasons *sigh*) This translates to female characters who are capable, intelligent, and either subvert or totally discard typical tropes that plague them. In Duskford's "At the Cabin," I have a particular fondness for Heather Ravers in this vein, particularly after Cretan Bull's comment comparing her to Alexandra Daddario's female lead in San Andreas -- a young woman with street smarts, social adroitness, and determination beyond her years and station. (In the story, this is one of the reasons why I enjoyed the Zack/Heather pairing -- Zack, by and large, can keep up with her in all respects, and Heather, for the first time, feels the shoe on the other foot in trying to chase him as opposed to the other way around, humanizing my characterization of her in a sense.)

In the end though, I just prefer women in stories to be on par with the men, and I try very hard to do that justice. Sex is always steamier between two people on the same level.

Development over time is fascinating, in that one sees why they have the proclivities and tendencies they do. (Re: Dahlia from your story, Fallen )For sexual fetishes and preferences, this is largely through conditioning in childhood and adolescence, and that can be powerful in a story if that relates to the ongoing plot. Emotional and intellectual development separate from sex is always entertaining to me anyway. Character-based stories aren't as stressed to conform to a certain moral or allegory as plot-based stories are, and seeing people as act people doing things, no matter how irrational or insane, that people do has a lasting impact. John Carpenter's remake of The Thing will always be the scariest horror movie alive for me, because everyone acts the way I expect people to act if they were being infiltrated by a shape-shifting eldritch horror from beyond the stars. Nobody holds the idiot ball and does something that prevents everyone from being saved à la Gilligan. They're fucked, and the moment they realize that at the end... well, my wife had repeatedly said that it would be her, a pistol, and a spray bottle of Clorox at the end of the world, just like Kurt Russel.

On a side note, one of the first major papers that looked at the development of sexual preferences and fetishes over time -- Relative prevalence of different fetishes from Nature -- looked at a large dataset from Yahoo groups and largely confirmed the conditioning hypothesis, though it did examine claims that such fetishes are inherited. That lead to this fun quote: "It is unlikely that a particular genetic makeup should result in a preference for specific stimuli such as, for instance, coats, balloons, eyeglasses or headphones – all of which we found in our data." Also, good news for foot-lovers, as that seem to be the most common fetish according to the study.

 

I prefer a female character to be... fun. Someone who you don't only want to have sex with, someone who you can hang out with. Someone you can spend four hours talking on the phone about literally nothing until 2 AM on a Wednesday night. Someone who isn't perfect, someone who has their faults and their imperfections. I prefer female characters to be almost like a perfect fit to the main character, one that, when they're together, their synergy illuminates the entire room.

However, that's not always the case. Sometimes, they're close. They're missing something.

Kinda like the letters F and E. They're similar, but not completely the same. And that's what happens sometimes in stories. It's not bad, but they don't seem right for another. And that's how stories go sometimes. Like in mine, picture the main character is a V. That V can get with a B, a C, a G, a K, even a W. But nothing works with that V like another V.

But that's with a lot of background, a lot of context, etc. etc.

With no development, I prefer Female Characters to be shy and quiet, but absolute submissive sluts when provoked. Kinda like the story Training Meghan. Definitely a favorite of mine.

 

I usually like to have one of each in my stories, though I like to bend each a little or put them out of their comfort zone which is always fun.

 

I like innocent girls corrupted into sluttiness or dominant women corrupting/manipulating others (especially if magical tg is involved)

 

This is actually an interesting question, and one that I can't really give a straight answer to.

I'm a big fan of a smart girl, or at least practical ones. Innocent yet playful always gets me excited, though slutty can be fun too. A lot of it depends on my mood at the time, but girls within those ranges always appeal to me.

 

I feel that my wife is an interesting mix of both inoccent/Playful and slutty. She bounces between them fairly quickly. Most of the time, we can act like children around each other and go from simply talking to a tickle match that has us both rolling on the floor. We play silly jokes and tease each other playfully all the time.

Then there are times I look at her and can see she has turned on her slutty factor just from the look in her eyes. I've watched her sashay through our house and look at me and a friend of mine and casually mention how she's going to take a shower, and the tone of her voice and sway of her hips made it clear she didn't intend to shower alone. Luckily for my buddy, we are swingers and I was feeling up to sharing. Its odd seeing her go from being like a little girl one day to having two grown men (And on more than one occasion two grown men and another woman...) eating out of the palm of her hand.

Soooo for my answer, I suppose I like a woman who can balance playfulness with sluttiness.

 

In my own stories I talk/narrate from the male perspective only, I'm not comfortable writing a complete story from a female perspective. I pretty much decided I had the female characters nailed, mainly because I observed the characters I'm writing about in real life, easy, right? Well as it turns out assumption can be a fickle thing. Since joining Chyoa I've written chapters for three stories, two I've adopted and taken over and one belongs to the original author. Requires a female & male pov in one story, a pov male story about two strong willed female characters (Fell into that one, it only had one strong female character when I took over the story the second one was all my doing - Idiot!) and a third person narration of the two female protagonist's in the third story. In each I've had to check two things (well that I can identify, there's probably more I'm just not that smart!) first is the need not to male-ise the female character, I've rewritten that case a few times. The other is not to over-feminise the character, you know, make them stereotypically biased (Geez hope I'm not insulting any of you out there). Anyway what I'm saying is I now get a mental block when I'm writing in the female pov, I'm unsure with a lot of what I write from that perspective and what I'd previously thought was an easy do ain't so anymore, seeing it from a female perspective ain't easy, or is it.

 

Time and again it comes back to one thing for me, "Willingness". IDC if the woman is Black, White, Red, Asian, Hispanic, or GREEN: but if she's not game for it \ That's it, I'm done here...

 

There's just something about the green ones....

Personally I prefer Asari Blue, but that's just me....

Willingness is certainly a factor for me, but I enjoy stories where the girl may not necessarily have been happy about the sitation, but gets seduced into it and becomes EXTREMELY willing by the end.

 

Pssh, Miranda best girl!

 

Smart, snarky and throwing banter. Much banter. As a matter of fact only banter, all day, every day.

My favourite type of story (Corruption) sadly has little to no ladies that fit that description, but those are the type of people i find myself attracted to in reality.

 

Hmmmm, now there's something to think about, cool, yep definitely cool, now for a story to surround it!

 

If you want a story with bants at the centre you need a group of friends that regularly meets up to have the social dynamic that allows such intimate insulting. While the highschool/college setting suffices for such an act it is rather boring. The next easy setting that comes to mind is the bar or club group. One can take that and hammer it into overdrive, making that club a swinger for example. Bants are rather easy to achieve a setting for. Writing the dialogue itself on the other hand....

 

Agree on the group/social dynamic thing, needed for that kind of character to show-off, Idea: maybe slightly self-opinionated, definitely self obsessed neighbourhood theatrical group bumping into a normal everyday couple or alternately just coercing in the group environment, cheating, romance, group genre, err don't know may be a bit too literotican with the couple thing. Like the basis of it all though, definitely intrigues.

 

I love sweet, friendly girls. No question about it. I'm not against gays at all, but I am, though I hate to admit it, straight as it gets, and feel sick at the idea of fucking another man. Thus, I hate masculine women, who try too hard to be tough so that they end up like men without cocks. Also, I'm not a fan of really innocent and shy girls. I like my women to be sweet and friendly, and one thing I've noticed is that I always love short girls. It could be patriarchal societal propaganda, but I like to be the big man, and I hate being mollycoddled, so I've always liked sweet but not over-loving women.

 

It depends on the situation