And Mindvalve – thanks for reading, and best wishes to you as well. It’s regretful there’s no room in your world for conflicting viewpoints, though I’m having a hard time believing that if you’ve been reading for two years that my point of view about strength and/or complexity in female characters in fiction came as an unexpected surprise to you. I’ve been editing fiction anthologies for women and heterosexual couples for over ten years now, and I do know how to pick a story with submissive females that don’t insult my readers.

As for the Christian, red-state moral play… well, we’ll see where they go with it, but it seems like the clash of values between the family on the farm and the main group is going to escalate, and could play out in interesting ways – and not in a way that really flatters some Christian values. I mean… dude is keeping zombies in the barn b/c he thinks they are still people, and lamented the fact that they killed the zombie in the well… that combined with Maggie’s reaction to the morning after pill thing.. the stage is being set for a major clash here, over these things.

And of course, remember – they are in the deep, traditional south. The stereotypes tend to hold down there (and where I live, to an extent – NC).
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I used to think you were different. I used to think you were reasonable and open minded. Now, with your response, it’s clear to me that you’re neither, except when it comes to the points you defend. If you told me that you just didn’t like it, that would be fine with me, but your reasons speak volumes to me on the kind of person you are – an extremist. You’re just an extremist from the sexual positive side.

I know one person is insignificant, but I’ve been reading your blog for two years now and you just lost me forever.
Good luck with your life.

The female characters are relegated to the same social and agency status as children. Worse, the male children have more agency than the grown women. The female characters exist in their relationships to men, and the relationships have dated and stereotypical threads about what validates them as women.

I was so insulted that I barely finished the season two premiere, and I haven’t looked back. Add to that all the christian religious trappings (I’m not anti-christian or anti-religion, either) and I felt completely like I was watching a red state morality play.

Don’t get me started about Silence of the Lambs. It’s a great movie and I’ve enjoyed it many times, but it reinforced harmful and flat-out wrong stereotypes about cross-dressers, people with kinky leanings and piercings, and cartoonized serial killers in a ridiculous way. It would have been scarier if the killer was more like real serial killers, who are typically *not* kinky crossdressers. It purposely played on people’s fear about sexual outsiderism, and created a raft of new misinformation about sexual outsiders.

I’m all for characters that are true to their own fucked up, flawed and offensive natures. But it’s not a singular issue on TWD, it’s a saturated theme. I will watch *anything* with zombies, but I won’t watch TWD again.

Secondly, she is only doing what many people think is right. That does not mean it’s right or that it’swhat the writers think is right. When a writer creates a character he gives her her own thoughts, opinions, feelings and intelligence. Or do you also think that the guy who wrote silence of the lambs is a cannibal?

You’re being as close minded on this issue as the people you complain about when it comes to porn.