There's not enough bitching

[Jon]

It is indeed a common problem. Anastasia's right, though. You have to keep iterating, and keep getting criticism from people who know what your character should sound like. See point one, here.

[Arakawa]

I can't really blame the people on this forum for not pointing it out / calling me on this / noticing; with the field being dominated by male otaku with moderate writing ability at best, it logically seems like it should be a common enough problem that it's not even worth giving grief about it? I don't know.

(Although it was distinctly pointed out that the character doesn't really feel like Mikuru, which should have been the giveaway for me.)

I remember sarsaparilla mentioned struggling to cross the gap in the other direction to write Kyon narration. Should have paid more attention to that, as well.

[Brian]

...I'm not the best person to say this, but I'm not sure that's an entirely valid criticism, Arakawa.  The gender-bias bit, I mean.  The issue on getting the character, maybe -- the gender....  If you have the character, doesn't that just come with it?

I don't know--  Maybe I'm horrible at it and have never actually managed to capture gender notions in my writing correctly--  Maybe it's all hugely masculinely biased and I just don't know it--  But I don't see that as a crippling bar to storytelling.

I agree with parts of not worrying about it too much.  But specifically where it gets to that point; the goal is to tell the story.  Obviously, the presentation and capturing the character is important, but worrying about hugely strong gender implications feels kind of....  For an eight year old?  Really?

It's more off that she mentions going to a bar and having a beer (an age slip, if you will, instead of a gender one) -- but that was intentional on your part, so.  Maybe that's just me.

Anyway--  I've got a pile of unused ideas.  I doubt you'd like any of them, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of them gave you the inspiration for a better one.

Edit: For what it's worth, I don't think Sarsaparilla's portrayal of Kyon feels 'feminine'.  Maybe I'm just blind to this issue--  I dunno.

[Arakawa]

Part of it was that the person was unfamiliar with the Haruhi series, so they built the character in their head as male (based purely on the prose style) and then described being surprised to see the narrator refer to herself as a little girl. Maybe just bad luck? This is someone I'd assume to have a nose for these things.

So the situation was completely different from opening up a Haruhi fic knowing in advance that it's going to be narrated by, say, Kyon and that Kyon is a guy. (So you immediately adjust the prose to sound male in your head, I guess, even if the particular writer gave it female aspects.)

(This also has to do with the last thing I was blocked on, trying to transfer bits and pieces of the Doctor's personality to Haruhi, while having her remain recognizably Haruhi.)

I'm going to take Brian's advice and not worry about this particular aspect of things that mch since it's a complete and utter blind spot for me at the moment. (I'm not even sure I can estimate how large a degree of difference exists between the genders in prose style.) If I was a professional writer like the guy linked by Jon I could afford the time and emotional drain of studying the problem and pestering women to read my drafts, but at this stage...

EDIT (seeing Brian's edit): to summarize, trying to understand the difference between genders in writing (in complete isolation from character), is something I'd be inclined to do if I was paid to write. Since this is fanfiction... I think I'll settle on just getting one character right at a time.

Which I still need to work on...

[Arakawa]

Regarding sarsaparilla's writing, I'm referring to her complaint at one point that she has an easier time getting Kyonko's voice right than Kyon's, not to any of my observations of her writing style which on this point aren't exactly going to be clear or accurate. (The Kyon/Kyonko thing was cited as frustrating since the genderflip universe isn't really a goldmine of inspiring premises, to put it mildly... whereas conversely most of my interesting ideas happen to involve girls in prominent roles, so I seem to have an analogous difficulty. I'd have better luck writing male characters, if I weren't interested in premises which don't feature them.)

I assume sars just treats the issue exactly like you said, like one of many attributes of the character to get right.

[Muphrid]

Part of it was that the person was unfamiliar with the Haruhi series, so they built the character in their head as male (based purely on the prose style) and then described being surprised to see the narrator refer to herself as a little girl. Maybe just bad luck? This is someone I'd assume to have a nose for these things.

I think this is something to highlight in fluorescent yellow marker and tack an exclamation point on at the end.  I think the power of the preconceived notion has a lot of influence toward filling in the gaps that the writer takes for granted--whether by choice or by necessity.  Simply thinking "this is a boy" and then finding out it's not can be enough to taint one's perceptions.  Readers aren't writers--I tell myself this a lot.  A reader trying to tell you what's wrong with a piece is like a patient trying to tell a doctor what's wrong with them.  They can say what hurts or doesn't feel right, but that's not a diagnosis, and it doesn't tell you how best to fix it.

[Brian]

No REM phase on account of Shami deciding that two hours of sleep is plenty for me.

[sarsaparilla]

For what it's worth, I didn't find anything in the fic that was particularly indicative of Mikuru acting like a boy. I'd tend to disregard that remark as largely a case of male being the default gender if not told otherwise.

Concerning my problems with the portrayal of Kyon, it wasn't a fear of writing a feminine character as much as a fear of writing a neutral and/or flat one. My portrayal of Kyonko contained several little details that allowed me to make an emotional connection with the character; however, those details would have been out of place on Kyon. I understand the basic gender differences on a mechanical level which allows me to suppress any improper tendencies that my mind suggests for a character, but I have a hard time trying to come up with substitutes that would allow me to feel the kind of connectedness that I need for a convincing portrayal. As an example, in The Shadow it was a conscious choice that while Kyon described girls' clothes to a certain degree, he never described his own beyond acknowledging that he was wearing some. While that was a plausible thing to do, it didn't help me 'feel like Kyon' and I had to wonder what I might be missing. On the other hand, I could very easily connect with, e.g., the alternate!Mikuru (as I observed the whole chapter through her eyes), and people remarked that my portrayal of her seemed to have a greater than average degree of depth.

I think that I've had some progress in this issue, but it's still all too easy to slip out of Kyon's PoV in any situation where he's interacting with somebody I find easier to connect with.

[thepanda]

Got to wok last night and the moment I stepped into my work area I vomited everything in my stomach up.

Got sent home, but couldn't actually drive because the nausea was so intense. I end up sitting in my car for an hour hoping the nausea will die down. Once it did I tried for home. Made it three blocks or thereabouts. Pulled into gas station and thankfully they had some stuff to keep the nausea down enough for me to get home.

This is my third sick day in the last two weeks.

[Brian]

Today is one of 'those' days.  Inadequate sleep, poor meditation, my right hand is bleeding in three places (only two for the left), the meetings I cared about all got canceled, and my plans to work from home tomorrow were suddenly interrupted by my boss rescheduling today's 1:1 to tomorrow.

At least I was able to get my laundry money and pay my phone bill.

[DY]

Broke my Pc today. Bought a new processor and tried to install it. In my excitement and stupidity, I bent the pins. Shit, that's money down the drain. Also, turns out my old processor was stuck to the bottom of the old heatsink. Thus when I pulled it out, the processor came out incorrectly and the pins in that one are bent too. Dammit.

[Yuthirin]

RMA it anyway. 90% chance they'll only check I it's in the box before try send you a new one.

[DY]

Alright, will give it a try.

[Brian]

I recall tedious hours of manual pin-straightening with needle-nosed pliers in similar situations before. -_-

If plausible, you may want to try straightening them at least cosmetically -- enough to pass an 'at-a-glance' inspection.

[DY]

I might write this one off as a loss, depending on if my motherboard was damaged. Sadly, can't test it out now to see if it works. Would an improper removal of a Cpu damage the motherboard?