Comics about RPGs and the One Girl

[benlehman]

Lesson of RPG comics: There is One Girl in the gaming group, and there's One Girl in the party. At max.

Case studies:
Knights of the Dinner Table. Sarah is the One Girl. She's an ass-kicker who can out-do any of the guys at their own game but is also less crazy than them.
Order of the Stick. Halley is the One Girl. She is the thief, wears skimpy clothing (despite being a stick figure) and is saucy.
Dumnestor's Heroes. Sue is the One Girl. She is practical, capable, and kinda fulfills the same role as Sarah from KotDT. In the real life portions, her player does as well.
Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic has many different girls and women with different goals and personalities (briefly: Arachne, Charlotte, Maura, Jone, Clover, etc.) However, and this is worth noting, the comic is explicitly about the "bad guys." Among the "good guys" in the comic, there's really only two female characters of any agency, one of whom is a plucky thief and one of whom is a bad-ass fighter chick.

This is just the comics that I read, natch. You will be able to come up with examples and counter-examples on your own.

(The first two comics are written by men, the third by a woman, and the last by a husband and wife team.)

So what do you make of this? Is female agency aligned Evil in D&D fantasy? Is the single girl in the gaming group, and how she acts, a realistic portrayal of the reality of a male dominated hobby or is it the inability of authors to write decent female characters?

Comments

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

I've been guilty of this myself (it always bugged me that I only put one woman in Dave's gaming group in Narbonic), but it probably just reflects the general tendency in fiction to have only one girl in any group of central characters.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

And in Skin Horse, which has a huge diversity of female characters (indeed, it kinda seems like female is the default gender of Skin Horse ... hrm...) the gaming group is nonetheless two guys and a girl. Huh.

yrs--
--Ben

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

My comics usually have about a 50/50 ratio of male and female characters, but people tend to perceive them as being female-dominated.

I should add another member to the gaming group in Skin Horse. We'll see. I don't know how Nick is even handling the cards.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

You're right. The staff is 50/50 split. Huh.

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

Yup, the rule of groups seems to be "females will never outnumber males." So you usually get one girl out of four or five, sometimes two out of five, and occasionally two girls out of four, though that's rarer.

That's one of the many reasons I really like Skin Horse and Smithson-- female characters are not outnumbered.