posted
Hello all. I have read threw a few of the posts here including: Male v. Female writing (2003)and guys and sex(2005) and a few other in between and have discovered that most of my questions were answered. However, reading the postings in MvF I have found many interesting concepts of how the MC is determined by the writer, but all of these traits (masculine being what I am looking for) are based on what is concidered to be real, not the SF world... Getting to the point, my MC, male, though not a being from Earth, has many traits of our beloved Earthling men Would it then be too far fetched, if being a woman my MC seems to have a softer side, if you will, yet can be aggressive when someone steps on his feet.
I would appreciate honest voluteers regarding sensitive masculine feelings. Specifically regarding: How long would a man stand by a woman whom he fell in love with, and protect her from a dangers she was not aware of? Are there Men who would wait weeks, months, years?
Thank you all who help with finding the real sensitive man, but not too unrealistic.
Norma If you would rather email instead of post that is fine.
My favorite post, Quoting from HSO "Guys and sex": And one of the more devestating lines a woman can use is: "I only want to be friends." Oh, it seems harmless enough. But if a guy likes a woman, wants more than friendship, those words are the equivalent of a 4-ton Acme anvil dropping out of the sky and landing our heads, squashing us flat, and leaving us permanently scarred.
[This message has been edited by Norma JT (edited January 28, 2006).]
quote:How long would a man stand by a woman whom he fell in love with, and protect her from a dangers she was not aware of? Are there Men who would wait weeks, months, years?
You are not hitting the important factors here.
If the nature of the existing relationship keeps the woman dependant on the man, the man will maintain it indefinately - as long as there is not another man that the woman seems to depend on more. Men are territorial.
There is no need for a romantic relationship to keep a man present. A sensitive, insecure man, will stay in a non-promising relationship as long as he does not think himself worthy of better, but this works for both genders. A perfectly secure individual, in love, will never really think themselves worthy of better because their worthiness or their mates worthiness does not factor in the relationship. But who is really perfectly secure, ever?
I think you need to specify why the man is in love with the woman and what does she do to sustain that. In most cultures, men prize women mostly on their looks, if she stays beautiful, he will stay in love with her. In some cultures, it is all about a rapport of personality, if that is nurtured he will stay.
If there is no nurturing back and forth, a man will not stay, no matter how secure, insecure, sensitive or dense he is. Sane men do not stay around women who ignore their existance.
But a protective spirited man will stay indefinately around a woman who otherwise ignores him if he feels he needs to defend the woman. That is how she nurtures his needs, by needing him to protect her.
posted
Hi pantros. Let me fill in a bit more. I did not want to spill over too much info. I was trying to get realistic views and then work from there. Here is a bit more of the relationship, if it would help with the answering of my original post: He sees a woman, not going to say how he meets her, it will blow the entire thing now and take away the fun, and first falls in love with her, not only physical, but from watching her for days- and nights gets to know things about her, things he may feel vital. After time passes he is litereally forced into meeting her, he has friends who won't mind their business. After they meet he is has doubts of telling her the truth about where he is from, that she may reject him since he is not exactly human. This is what keeps him at bay, with his feelings for her until finally he has no choice.
Did this help define the MC, perhaps clarify. I do not want to give too much info, as I want to learn from real men.
Thanks again pantros, so far I like what you have written.
posted
Just to clarify: Are you looking for readers for your work or just posts?
But as far as my $0.02 goes:
There are, simply put, many reasons why men will stay with women and just as many why they will not.
Generally, it boils down to this: Is the man trying to meet his own needs or the woman's needs in the relationship? If he is in it for his own needs and they are not met, he is more likely to leave, though not guaranteed to do so. If he's looking to meet the other's needs (however those are defined) he is less likely to leave, though again, this isn't a guarantee. People are just way too complicated. I'm assuming there's nothing extraordinary like abuse, desertion, etc., going on.
There are those men who will stay with someone simply because they made a commitment they take seriously (I'm thinking primarily of a marital commitment, but it doesn't have to be). Obviously, this would be something deeply held, like a philosophical or religious belief.
From your original question, the character you propose sounds like he would wait a longer rather than a shorter time. He seems to think his "protection" is somehow serving her. You could obviously make a lot of dramatic hay out of whether she really needs protection and whether his protection serving her needs or his own. My opinion is he would be around for months, if not years.
That said, fear of rejection/failure is a huge issue with men, so I'm guessing that has a lot to do with his initial timidity in approaching her and later reluctance to reveal his "not exactly human"-ness. I'll even go so far as to guess how he ultimately handles that is pivotal to the story. We'll learn a lot about his internal character by how he resolves it. If his commitment to this woman is strong enough (for whatever reason), then I'd think he'd risk telling her the truth and let the chips fall where they may.
posted
Yes survivor, he is an alien. Though that word always rolls off the lips as being harsh. She, the woman who he desires, obviously does not know this and this is what causes his personal conflict: will she reject for being different or simply accept? What is plausible is my goal for this topic. I have created a character from a different planet who is male, but I do not want him to fall into the too unrealistic realm of how guys really aren't, emotionally speaking that is. Did that last phrase make sense? I do not want any given reader to think the time span he protects her is pathetic. Which brings me to ask what men would do or feel? This time frame was set up based on lengths between occurences. Thank you Survivor. Norma
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posted
krazykiter your words are taken well, not considered rammblings at all. I will be looking for readers in the near future, however I need to touch up parts. I am the halfway point, making minor adjustments/corrections. Rating is "R" Reading through your post- Yes he has made a commitment that only other of his kind are aware of. Abuse, no. Desertion? There might be what we would call desertion, or rather his betrayal, marking him as a triator. I had thought about changing when he tells her what is needed to be told, but it does not seem to go well. His commitment is strong, but his personal conflict, which I mentioned earlier, (above post) has been over powering his actions.
posted
I have a few thoughts on the matter (that likely will not help any).
Every guy is different. Although we like to think that we are all the same, we are not, especially when it comes to love and reasons for staying or leaving a relationship.
Your plot reminds me a bit of a cross between current episodes of Smallville and the movie Cyreno de Bergerac. In Smallville, young Clark Kent loves and protects Lana Lang, but cannot bear to tell her the truth - that he is not human. Eventually the relationship will be terminated because he will never be comfortable telling her who he is. In Cyreno, Cyreno is in love with his cousin (this takes place during the renaissance, so marrying a cousin was not uncommon or unacceptable as it is today), while his cousin is in love with a soldier in his command. Cyreno loves the cousin so much he puts her desires over his own and teaches the young soldier how to woo her. The soldier eventually dies in war and Cyreno never has the heart to tell her that the poems and lines she fell in love with were his. He spends the remainder of their lives protecting her and taking care of her. It's really a sad flick.
Anyway, my point is guys are different enough that you can probably get away with whatever you want, but you must consider your audience. The above examples cite a story for men, while the other is a story for women. Guess which one is which.
Are you writing for an audience of men? If so, you will want to make sure that he gets enough out of the relationship to justify him staying in the relationship. Frankly, there aren't very many guys who could handle being in love with someone and then settling for only looking at them from afar for the rest of whenever. However tough we think we are, for most of us, our hearts could not take that kind of pain. We would leave if there was no hope of reciprocation.
Most guys have been faced with this very situation. We get a crush on the popular girl in school. We fall in love with a cheerleader, when we belong to a lower social "class". It inevitably causes enough despair and pain that we move on to a more attainable relationship. Most guys don't want to be an emotional martyr. We want to be loved just like everyone else, and if we aren't getting that, the vast majority of us would go somewhere else to find it.
If you are writing to a female audience, then maybe write your MC so that he would stay at all costs. Perhaps women find the martyred heart something believable. Is that something a woman would want to read?
To answer your original question of how long, well that depends on the guy. It depends on the significance of the love (infatuation versus love and the degree of intensity), the details of the relationship (does he get anything out of it - the pleasure of protecting some one wouldn't cut it for me, not by a long shot). But more importantly, it depends on you the author and the audience. It's your story. do what you want with it. If someone throws up a complaint just say "He's alien! I can do whatever I want with him!"
posted
I repeat, he's an alien. Look, things vary, and the reasons vary. You're going to have to invent the entire motivation structure of this character. I think that even a human man could feel committed to one woman, maybe without seeing her again, for decades or a lifetime. How about that guy in Millenium Actress? Yes, she chased him for decades with only a couple of lapses, but he...oh, that's a spoiler, isn't it? Okay, so what about the producer who goes to interview her for the documentary about her life? He loved her as an unattainable icon for decades, without even the expectation that she would ever so much as speak his name.
But a discussion of what is normal for a human male has no bearing on this question. You aren't depicting a human character at all. What if, for various reasons, this guy can't enjoy sex with a human woman? Not that he can't perform, I mean that she just can't satisfy his instinctive desires the way a woman of his own species would. How does that affect the picture, if he's basically all alone here anyway, regardless of whether the woman he chooses to love is interested in him? Or, let's be a little less nitpicky and just make him physiologically incompatible with humans, despite having similar mental/emotional characteristics. Why would it even matter to him that the relationship is one-sided in that case?
Or let's get really basic. He's not able to fertilize a human woman's eggs, so if he had a relationship with her they'd never be able to have children, and he knows that's something really important to her. Or maybe he could fertilize her eggs, but gestation of a hybrid would definitely (or at least probably) kill a human woman.
What I'm saying here is that the reason a human male pining over unrequited love can seem pathetic is because there's lots of other fish in the sea (a girl said that to me when I was just a kid, I didn't even know what it meant at the time, even though I'd grown up listening to that song). You'd really need to show that she was really different from all the other fish.
But in this case, she doesn't need to be different. It doesn't matter that there's lots of fish in the sea, because he can't eat fish (for whatever reason). The fact that he loves her even though they aren't the same species makes her special enough.
quote:Would it then be too far fetched, if being a woman my MC seems to have a softer side, if you will, yet can be aggressive when someone steps on his feet.
Okay, am I crazy or is there a gender agreement problem in this sentence? I've tried to read this thread a couple of times and couldn't figure out why it always made me dizzy. I think this might be the problem.
quote:How long would a man stand by a woman whom he fell in love with, and protect her from a dangers she was not aware of? Are there Men who would wait weeks, months, years?
From this am I to infer that she does not know of his feelings for her and so he is, in the common parlance "carrying a torch?"
I know a lot of guys who will easily do this for years, afraid to put their feelings into words lest they be rejected. But if they do not observe a boundary of some kind, they are going to be creepy/stalkerish rather than sympathetic. A boundary would be the woman becomes committed to another man that the flame-bearer genuinely believes will make her happy, or gets married. Or he realized that he is never going to have the courage to approach her with his feelings.
We traditionally think of women not having as much freedom as men when it comes to initiating relationships, but there are considerations of class or what have you that keep men apart from the objects of their desire. This is a pretty common theme in superhero stories, that involvement with the superhero would endanger the woman. The division by class is nicely illustrated in Twilight Samurai. Then you've got your King Kongs and your Quasimodos. There was the TV Beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton.
The besotted beast is quite a literary archetype. I'm not sure where it comes from, though. Didn't Delilah string Samson along for quite a bit? In Greek Mythology there is Orpheus and Eurydice, in terms of someone carrying a torch. But he wasn't extra burly or fierce.
posted
If he's really alien, then what human men are like will be pretty much irrelevant. Replace our feelings about women with something more alien, like: Is she good to eat? Does she have enough eye-ended tentacles to make me happy? Is she going to insist that we reverse sexes after she lays a few eggs?
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posted
First, I need to apologize for making franc li dizzy. The line you quoted was indeed supposed to say "being a man may MC..." wbriggs, thank you for the laugh, you may have been serious, but when I imagined eye-ended tentacles I could not help chuckling. My MC is alien only by being foreign, not in the physical sense that he has different characteristics. From all of your input, I believe it is safe to say, that it does depend on the man and the given situation, as long as there is something there, whether the gratification is physical or mental, it is feasible for my MC to be patient.
I thank you all for your help and words of masculine wisdom.
Norma
[This message has been edited by Norma JT (edited January 31, 2006).]
posted
So he's basically a human, but from another planet?
Well, in that case, throw out most of what I said. But not all of it, you should still watch Millenium Actress. FL's superhero comparison is apt too, since there's a secret identity issue here. If the thing keeping him apart from her is that he's just too honest to lie to her but really can't tell the truth (not that he merely fears her reaction), then he sells. Will everyone find him believable? I already don't believe you're trying to sell me an extraterrestrial human, so don't worry about something like that.
posted
Almost, Survivor. Through one's eye he can pass for human, there are differences beneath the flesh. I am not sure If I will have a chance to see Millenium Actress any time soon. It depends on the success of the film. We seem to only have classics and big hits. I live in a city has a high tourist population and the residents usually got to the beach or clubs, not too many go to BB video. But I will see if it is available. If everyone will find it believable, I do not know. Without a doubt there will be some readers who think it is impossible-- unbelieveable. I know I have come across many, in fact last night I found myself complaining about how the show I was watching had a good plot, but at a few points the scenes had become ridiculous. He is going to stay apart for sometime, then finally give in just in time...
posted
As a hard SF reader, I have a serious problem with beings from other worlds that look human. There's no reason for them to. If he's to look human, give him human ancestry. (Some don't -- Star Trek, for example -- but hard SF readers like me lose patience with this.)
So I'll assume he's human but of a different culture. So we can look at existing cultures.
Some have a sort of quasi-religious thing about admiring a woman from afar (the courtly love of medeival France).
Sometimes it's economic or political: I need to marry into this family. A commoner? Forget it.
But all over the world, there's love. Jacob didn't work 14 years to marry Rachel because he wanted a rich father-in-law. (He got that in 7, when he married Leah.)
I think there are 2 forces on a man in love: what he wants *for* her, and what he wants *from* her. If there's a compelling reason that she mustn't be with him, and he's understanding, he may decide to be content to admire her from afar. (Or it may be a bogus reason, such as, he thinks he's not good enough for her.) But if there isn't, and she says no, he's apt to move on---or if they were already involved, he may be hurt and angry.
A man torn in two directions on something like this certainly makes for an interesting character.
posted
Survivor, the differences are what makes him not like us. Differences that will be known only as the story progresses. wbriggs, culture difference plays a big part, but they are still not human as we are. As I mentioned in my answer to Survivor, there are differences, but most are within the being. I do not want to go into too much detail. It might spoil for anyone who might want to read after I edit what is necessary.
posted
And alien culture wouldn't be worth much if they couldn't come up with some method of looking like us in order to move freely about among us. Though it certainly provides a compelling reason for him not to get physically involved with his beloved, if his human appearance is only skin deep or he is a "parasite" that has taken over the body of someone it would be taboo for her to get involved with (though that gets a little Star Trekky). It depends on whether your story is going to end with them getting together or if his interest is merely a complication in the actual plot. Like he's here to blow up something but it will injure her if he does.
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quote: Differences that will be known only as the story progresses
Proximity alarms!
Are you planning to hide from the reader that this character is an alien? What POV are you employing? You want to know deep innermost thoughts but don't want to reveal the truth to the reader? It sounds shaky.
If you are planning to hide it from the reader, then your readers may feel cheated.
What makes you assume the alien race is sexually dimorphic? What about trimorphic? Or asexual? Is the love platonic? Is it genetically related to humans? (As in a Homo extraterralis the whole star-seeding concept.)
Personally, I would persist only until it became too painful not to tell her the truth. I would question whether I didn't tell her the truth because I enjoyed living in my own little romantic fantasy. But hey! Its an alien! FCOL
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited February 02, 2006).]
posted
Okay, I was being witty rather than clear. Do any of the differences make any difference in terms of his ability to have a relationship with this woman?
For instance, does he have any unusual powers? Perhaps he reads minds, or lives far longer than a human, or turns invisible when things get exciting. On the other hand, does he have any unusual liabilities? Does he die immediately after mating, or weigh three hundred pounds despite looking like an average guy, or melt when you lick/kiss him?
On a more subtle level, is his romantic/sexual response entirely like a human's? Or a more straightforward question, what specific reasons exist preventing him from having a relationship with this woman? You don't need to tell us, just ask those questions of yourself as you're writing.
posted
No, hoptoad, I am not hiding anything from the readers, only the woman of his desires. I like your idea of a romantic fantasy, but I am not sure how it would flow into this sci-fi. I do not class this as a hard sci-fi. Not that I am a sci-fi expert like many of you, but this came into my head several months back and won't let me be so I am having fun with it. AS for romance he will get to a point that he can't take no more... Yes he can mate with her, quite successfully at that.
The rest I am not going to answer as it will blow the fun. I will only say yes to some and no to others-- Does he melt when licked? Good one! Thanks for the help. this answers have helped a lot more than I imagined. Norma
[This message has been edited by Norma JT (edited February 02, 2006).]
posted
A couple of considerations for you Norma: Your MC may have different erogenous zones both emotional and physical ones? Also the MC will be shackled by the expectations customary to his native upbringing - is he painfully aware of the differences between his and hers? Good luck! Best Wishes John Mc... Posts: 140 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Thank you John Mc. The differeneces in his upbringing is brought up at times when it is relevent. And Survivor... no comment. Norma
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