How the heck is Katniss a Mary Sue?

[Thaluikhain]

Don't forget that pretending they were going to commit suicide at the end with the poisonous berries was her idea

Were they pretending they were going to do that? I thought it was a last act of defiance instead of having one kill the other, the only thing they could do against the government.

Katniss bet they wouldn't let them kill themselves (and she was on-the-money). Peeta didn't, and felt betrayed at the end of the book when he learned it had been just an act from her part.

Ah, ok, only read the book once years ago.

 

[Catnip1024]

Here's the thing though. Luke never actually fights Stormtroopers with his light saber. Like ever. (Unless he does it in Last Jedi, never got around to watching that movie) He fights some of Jabba the Hut's goons with his lightsaber, but when he's fighting storm troopers, he always goes blaster to blaster with them. Also, Luke, despite being a barely trained rookie, actually manages to land a hit on Darth Vader during their first lightsaber fight. Pretty much every time Luke fight's someone, with the exception of Jabba's goons, it's in a symmetrical fight. He shoots at Storm troopers and light saber battles with Vader.

Also I really don't see the difference between Luke's "plot armour and cinematics" and everything going on with Katniss.

Well, I would point out that, if we are bringing immersion destroying realism into Star Wars, it's a bit odd to expect that a quadriplegic like Anakin Skywalker to still have the reaction times and lightsaber skills that he does.

I have to admit, my memories of the OT are a little vague. I do remember the feeling that the whole sense of character invulnerability and unexplainable skill / luck got a lot stronger as Star Wars went on, though, first with the prequels and then the new trilogy. Maybe it was just me ageing and getting more cynical.

 

[wizzy555]

I have to admit, my memories of the OT are a little vague. I do remember the feeling that the whole sense of character invulnerability and unexplainable skill / luck got a lot stronger as Star Wars went on, though, first with the prequels and then the new trilogy. Maybe it was just me ageing and getting more cynical.

I don't think the prequels had a feeling of invincibility except when they were perhaps running from stormtroopers.

I mean Luke is DEFEATED by Vader roundly and loses a hand. Even when he is "Mr. Invincible Jedi" in RoTJ he still gets shot in the hand through carelessness.

 

[Catnip1024]

I have to admit, my memories of the OT are a little vague. I do remember the feeling that the whole sense of character invulnerability and unexplainable skill / luck got a lot stronger as Star Wars went on, though, first with the prequels and then the new trilogy. Maybe it was just me ageing and getting more cynical.

I don't think the prequels had a feeling of invincibility except when they were perhaps running from stormtroopers.

I mean Luke is DEFEATED by Vader roundly and loses a hand. Even when he is "Mr. Invincible Jedi" in RoTJ he still gets shot in the hand through carelessness.

The prequels being the ones with Kid Anakin and Jar Jar Binks. Pod racing champion, jumping from flying cars several hundred metres in the air, taking out half of the droid army through feigned incompetence. R2D2 dispatching a bunch of armed droids despite previously showing no signs of weaponry.

Those prequels.

 

[Erttheking]

Here's the thing though. Luke never actually fights Stormtroopers with his light saber. Like ever. (Unless he does it in Last Jedi, never got around to watching that movie) He fights some of Jabba the Hut's goons with his lightsaber, but when he's fighting storm troopers, he always goes blaster to blaster with them. Also, Luke, despite being a barely trained rookie, actually manages to land a hit on Darth Vader during their first lightsaber fight. Pretty much every time Luke fight's someone, with the exception of Jabba's goons, it's in a symmetrical fight. He shoots at Storm troopers and light saber battles with Vader.

Also I really don't see the difference between Luke's "plot armour and cinematics" and everything going on with Katniss.

Well, I would point out that, if we are bringing immersion destroying realism into Star Wars, it's a bit odd to expect that a quadriplegic like Anakin Skywalker to still have the reaction times and lightsaber skills that he does.

I have to admit, my memories of the OT are a little vague. I do remember the feeling that the whole sense of character invulnerability and unexplainable skill / luck got a lot stronger as Star Wars went on, though, first with the prequels and then the new trilogy. Maybe it was just me ageing and getting more cynical.

My point is not to tear down Luke, my point is to point out it's kinda dumb to give him a free pass while acting like Katniss is somehow worse than him. Hell, it's a LOT dumber to give Vader a free pass but people adore him.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

When was it ever said that Stormtroopers were highly trained? As well as this is something that can be waved with the simple explanation of "He's a part of the hero party", certain things you have to accept.

A) Obi Wan: "These blast points; too accurate for Sand People... Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise."

B) So let me get this straight: When it is Luke who does the Protagonist stuff it is because he's the hero. When Katniss (or Rey, you calling female protagonists Mary Sues is sort of a recurring theme on these boards) does the protagonist stuff it is because she's verging on Mary Sue? I think this categorization says more about you then it does about Luke or Katniss.

Actually Luke is often held to be a pinnacle Marry Sue. He's a country boy from a backwater, no water, planet with no military training, and yet is as good a starship stunt-fighter pilot as his father, the trained pilot and war hero.
Only Rey is a higher up Sue than him, and even then not by much. Rey took on a dark lord after 5mins with a lightsaber, look spent a weekend training with Yoda before his fight.

 

[Baffle]

Except you also have to remember that women have been written as primary, secondary, and tertiary protagonists by men very well. The Eddings' stuff, WoT

WoT isn't Wheel of Time is it? Because those women are shockingly badly written. They're pretty much all Robert Jordan's nagging old bag of a mother, who he hated, plus one hot girl who looks a bit like a boy that he considered asking out one time. Jordan's men are go-getters with a side order of mope; his women are interfering busybodies with a side order of blaming men for everything.

Unless it all changes after book 7, I think that's about where I gave up waiting for something to actually happen.

 

[Redryhno]

When was it ever said that Stormtroopers were highly trained? As well as this is something that can be waved with the simple explanation of "He's a part of the hero party", certain things you have to accept.

A) Obi Wan: "These blast points; too accurate for Sand People... Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise."

B) So let me get this straight: When it is Luke who does the Protagonist stuff it is because he's the hero. When Katniss (or Rey, you calling female protagonists Mary Sues is sort of a recurring theme on these boards) does the protagonist stuff it is because she's verging on Mary Sue? I think this categorization says more about you then it does about Luke or Katniss.

A) You have to take into account the comparison "Too accurate for Sand People". Ya know, the weird guys in sand robes that would rather beat you over the head with a rifle than shoot you with it. And again, you ignore the actual important part of the paragraph so you can have your gotcha moment, "He's a part of the hero party, some things you have to accept". I've yet ot see anyone try to dispute Han or Leia surviving their own "should be dead" moments.

B) No, Luke does the Protagonist stuff because he's a Protagonist that becomes a Hero through adversity and actually having his shit kicked in countless times before he does a literal handful of hero things in New Hope(saves the princess and kills the big bad, that is the limit of his heroic things).

The other characters you're trying to bring up as proof I'm whatever you want me to be is they have no build-up, no getting their shit kicked in before their extraordinary feats, they just sorta get dropped into them with maybe a throwaway sentence far earlier in the book. Most everything you have to fill in yourself because there is no prologue or introduction for them, they basically just get dumped into it all and you've gotta deal with it. Kat wins not because of her own abilities, ideas, or intuition, she survives because everyone else actually interacted with each other. The SCL schtick was the publicist's idea that Peta actually played up more than her until the end when she finally realized that she existed too. The closest you have is her ignoring strategy constantly and being rewarded for it despite the build-up of Legacy Tributes that were trained to win.

And Rey is a completely different can of worms I have no interest in opening up around here again, because she's worth less than the designs behind her non-sellling toys in my opinion.

Also I never said Katniss was a Mary Sue, just that she can be easily mistaken for one. She's just a shitty character that needs to stop being put forward as good writing because mediocre characters that get praise don't help improve either writing or the perception of female characters as being able to stand by their male counterparts. In three different posts I believe.

And yet she comes out of everything basically without being harmed.

The film fails to show it well, but unharmed? No. Beyond the psychological damage, here is a abbreviated list of things that happened to her on the first book:

1. Almost died of dehydration
2. Got second degree burns on her leg
3. Got stung by wasps with lethal hallucinogenic venom
4. Got her eardrum ruptured
5. Got slashed with a knife on her face

Also she wasn't the only one with nothing more than basic woodsman skills and managed to survive over most of the others (and no, I'm not referring to Peeta).

Don't forget that pretending they were going to commit suicide at the end with the poisonous berries was her idea, and a major plot element in the second book.

With the exception of the super-wasps(because they don't exist here really) and the dehydration, those are things I ran into on various Scout trips when I was a kid. They're not nearly as bad as you're acting like they are. Burns and cuts are nasty, but if you can find some clean mud, you're most of the way through surviving those. Especially when you have to factor in that second-degree burns has a very wide range of definition and I don't remember them talking about how they were about to burst at any point in the book, which is where burns start getting dangerous without meds.

That's sorta my point, kids that were trained from childhood to survive these things, yet somehow they're outdone by the slightly spunky siscon. She built these somewhat titanic walls with her description of them, and then just tapped on it and it just collapsed.

And again, she only did it because she would feel guilty if she killed Peta. She does not do things for others that aren't family, she acts on her emotions and how they might affect her. Which again, could be an interesting character trait, if any time had ever been spent on it. But no, it's just all about her and how she might feel.

My point is not to tear down Luke, my point is to point out it's kinda dumb to give him a free pass while acting like Katniss is somehow worse than him. Hell, it's a LOT dumber to give Vader a free pass but people adore him.

Again you are ignoring genre being a factor. Hunger Games is dystopian recent-future Sci-Fi of our current world(or at least a potential future), Star Wars is Future Fantasy in a galaxy far away. The latter is alot more forgiving when it comes to small inconsistencies simply because "realism" is not as big of a factor as it is in Sci-Fi of any sort.

It's like comparing Myth to Foreign Journalism and expecting everyone to read and appreciate both for the same reasons.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

That's another thing I don't like about her - she's given a bow and hardly ever kills or indeed shoots to kill anybody. Most of her victories are just her lucking out, maybe having an indirect hand like shooting down that hornet nest. I don't ask that she have bloodlust but rather act like her fucking life is on the line. Pretend you're not the star of a kids' movie series who needs to be a role model and completely blameless for 3 or 4 movies.

 

[CaitSeith]

That's another thing I don't like about her - she's given a bow and hardly ever kills or indeed shoots to kill anybody. Most of her victories are just her lucking out, maybe having an indirect hand like shooting down that hornet nest. I don't ask that she have bloodlust but rather act like her fucking life is on the line.

Avoiding combat is behaving like her life is in the line. In battle, she is really good with the bow and... that's it. She can't handle a group of opponents coming in all directions at the same time, or even fighting at close quarters against armed people trained for close combat. And remember she doesn't have unlimited arrows (she still isn't freaking Legolas). Her plan of action was to destroy their food supply and outlast them while she survives by hunting in the woods; until they get desperate and start killing each other and are weakened enough to be easy kill.

The winner is the one who survives; not the one with the highest body count.

 

[CaitSeith]

snip

So, the David vs. Goliath trope is bad now?

These trained kids were there to kill each other too. They were trained for combat, but not in surviving in the forest.

 

[Redryhno]

snip

So, the David vs. Goliath trope is bad now?

These trained kids were there to kill each other too. They were trained for combat, but not in surviving in the forest.

Never said that, I said that if you're going to build a wall, do it the service of the hero having to scale it.

Everyone only remembers that Goliath was a giant and David was young and small, but the thing they're forgetting is that Goliath had feats to his name and had shown how terrifying he was before David came into the picture. Allegorically, David didn't win because he was the hero, he won because he stood up against the Philistines and their false gods when nobody else would.

 

[Terminal Blue]

snip

snip

So, those questions were rhetorical. I was pointing out the intellectual laziness of deciding that a character is a Mary Sue just because they possess features which are actually perfectly normal in a protagonist, like being unusually competent, fortunate or well liked. I was illustrating how watered down the term Mary Sue has become that it could theoretically be applied to almost any protagonist.

Except you also have to remember that women have been written as primary, secondary, and tertiary protagonists by men very well.

I agree, and I believe most women who read a lot of literature will be able to pick out examples of male writers who depicted female protagonists well (not particularly with your choices). But even if you disagree with them you have to acknowledge that many extremely lauded male writers (even writers who are praised by other men and media for writing strong female characters) really do have problems with writing female characters. The reverse is not true.

And to act like it's something that's only been attempted over the last decade or so is complete ignorance, whether real or feigned.

I didn't say that.

What I said is that our culture has a very strong idea of what a "male" story looks like, one which can be traced back centuries if not millennia. When it comes to female characters, people don't have that immense storytelling tradition to draw on. They have a few genres, like romantic fiction in which women have always been well represented as both characters and writers, and they have a few standout examples. The point is that everyone knows how to write a male character, but even women are struggling with what it means to write a female character, especially a female character who can be important and who can be a "hero" (in Campbellian terms).

My sentence talking about the female monomyth was simply to give an equivalent to the heroic idea of the male monomyth you were talking about not coming about without criticism being taken as criticism and not as sexism. That if YA novels like Katniss, Bella, the Grey what's-her-name, are going to be put forth as strong female characters written by strong female writers, it's never going to happen.

Why would you lump those three together?

Is it because they are all female protagonists written by women? Because they have very little in common beyond that. Literally noone describes Bella Swan or Anastasia Steele (lol) as "strong female characters" or "mary sues" unless they're stupid or joking. What they are, however, is female characters, in a very traditional and very conservative sense (they are literally in the romance genre). Noone would read a gender flipped 50 Shades of Grey or a gender flipped Twilight. A gender flipped Hunger Games would have been fine.

And yes, I do actually think the absurd reaction to Twilight (including the pro-feminist reaction) has an element of ingrained sexism in it. There are plenty of much more obviously "bad" stories aimed at teenage boys or indulging traditional "masculine" fantasies. The singling out of Twilight as the worst story ever does seem to have a lot to do with a kind of macho disdain for the romance genre and that girly shit. This is not the same as implying that Twilight is good, only that criticism of Twilight was weird, hypocritical and motivated. The same is true here.

Heck, much as it actually physically hurts me I'll even entertain the possibility that the same is true of 50 Shades. I wouldn't piss on E.L. James if she was on fire, but I don't think her book would have got a fraction of the backlash if it was just an absurdly heteronormative and clearly abusive BDSM fantasy aimed at straight men, and any backlash it did get would have been screamed down by a bunch of angry men crying "feminazis".

 

[Terminal Blue]

Also, anyone who is like "oh, X character can't be a Mary sue because things are hard for them and they lose sometimes". Here's the original story, a Trekkie's Tale, which introduced the character (and therefore the phrase) Mary Sue to the world.

Spoiler: Brace for impact

"Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her.
"Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?"
"Captain! I am not that kind of girl!"
"You're right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us."

Mr. Spock came onto the bridge.

"What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?"
"The Captain told me to."
"Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind."

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott beamed down with Lt. Mary Sue to Rigel XXXVII. They were attacked by green androids and thrown into prison. In a moment of weakness Lt. Mary Sue revealed to Mr. Spock that she too was half Vulcan. Recovering quickly, she sprung the lock with her hairpin and they all got away back to the ship.

But back on board, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Mary Sue found out that the men who had beamed down were seriously stricken by the jumping cold robbies , Mary Sue less so. While the four officers languished in Sick Bay, Lt. Mary Sue ran the ship, and ran it so well she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood.

However the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the Sick Bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott, all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday of the Enterprise.

Again, the story is taking the piss out of the author's relationship to the protagonist, not the excessive competence of the character. Mary Sue gets thrown in prison. She has a moment of weakness. Mary Sue literally dies at the end. Based on the logic of some people here, I could use this to claim that Mary Sue herself isn't a Mary Sue.

But she is.

 

[Redryhno]

I agree, and I believe most women who read a lot of literature will be able to pick out examples of male writers who depicted female protagonists well (not particularly with your choices). But even if you disagree with them you have to acknowledge that many extremely lauded male writers (even writers who are praised by other men and media for writing strong female characters) really do have problems with writing female characters. The reverse is not true.

Since when? I've yet to see you bring up an example of anything yourself. Only seen you bash the examples others bring up.

And to act like it's something that's only been attempted over the last decade or so is complete ignorance, whether real or feigned.

I didn't say that.

What I said is that our culture has a very strong idea of what a "male" story looks like, one which can be traced back centuries if not millennia. When it comes to female characters, people don't have that immense storytelling tradition to draw on. They have a few genres, like romantic fiction in which women have always been well represented as both characters and writers, and they have a few standout examples. The point is that everyone knows how to write a male character, but even women are struggling with what it means to write a female character, especially a female character who can be important and who can be a "hero" (in Campbellian terms).

You didn't have to say it, you continuing to act like writing female characters is in its infancy is all that needs to be there to draw conclusions for.

We have so many women characters throughout history written by men and women alike that have been praised. It's only in the last ten or so years that people have started acting like it's a concept that stopped being beaten into submission and the mentality you're championing acting like it's new and just being experimented with just now and so it's okay for these characters to be considered the best we've got.

Why would you lump those three together?

Is it because they are all female protagonists written by women? Because they have very little in common beyond that. Literally noone describes Bella Swan or Anastasia Steele (lol) as "strong female characters" or "mary sues" unless they're stupid or joking. What they are, however, is female characters, in a very traditional and very conservative sense (they are literally in the romance genre). Noone would read a gender flipped 50 Shades of Grey or a gender flipped Twilight. A gender flipped Hunger Games would have been fine.

I lumped them together because they're what is being put forth as strong female characters in recent times. As for people not reading genderflipped 50 Shades, My Girlfriend is an Idol is very similar in many respects, Twilight? A various number of some of the less ecchi Monster Girl and a handful of Seinen manga like My Wife is an Idol(this is very different and much more sappy than Girlfriend). Hunger Games, you're right, it has been fine, and better written and more beloved in various forms.

And yes, I do actually think the absurd reaction to Twilight (including the pro-feminist reaction) has an element of ingrained sexism in it. There are plenty of much more obviously "bad" stories aimed at teenage boys or indulging traditional "masculine" fantasies. The singling out of Twilight as the worst story ever does seem to have a lot to do with a kind of macho disdain for the romance genre and that girly shit. This is not the same as implying that Twilight is good, only that criticism of Twilight was weird, hypocritical and motivated. The same is true here.

Heck, much as it actually physically hurts me I'll even entertain the possibility that the same is true of 50 Shades. I wouldn't piss on E.L. James if she was on fire, but I don't think her book would have got a fraction of the backlash if it was just an absurdly heteronormative and clearly abusive BDSM fantasy aimed at straight men, and any backlash it did get would have been screamed down by a bunch of angry men crying "feminazis".

Also you're misattributing where the backlash comes from with 50 Shades and Twilight. It's porn for women, nothing wrong with it, support it same as anything, like what you wanna like. But the girls and women that like it didn't/don't want to admit it, but they'll ***** about the porn habits of dudes till the sun goes dark. It being abusive as all fuck and completely inferior to things like NanaKao and parts of Nozoki Ana was just extra reasons.

Also please name these equivalent and worse works that gained anywhere near as much traction. In fact, literally name anything as examples of anything you're talking about beyond talking about Campbell and then dismissing him in the next post because "Freudian". Give out some kind of common ground we can discuss.

 

[Natemans]

Oh joy, somebody brought up Rey as a Mary Sue.

Of fucking course. -__-




And for the record, I don't think she is a Mary Sue in the slightest

 

[Hawki]

B) So let me get this straight: When it is Luke who does the Protagonist stuff it is because he's the hero. When Katniss (or Rey, you calling female protagonists Mary Sues is sort of a recurring theme on these boards) does the protagonist stuff it is because she's verging on Mary Sue? I think this categorization says more about you then it does about Luke or Katniss.

I'd say there's quite a bit of difference between Rey and Luke. That said, while I'd say Rey is a Sue based on TFA, TLJ has absolved her of 'Sue status' (for me).

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

There's a lot of definitions of a Mary Sue, but my favorite one is "A character who doesn't actually portray the qualities the author tells the audience they have". To use 50 Shades as an example since it came up, Anastasia is a textbook Mary Sue because the author has characters tell you she's funny, brave, and strong while exhibiting none of these qualities. In fact, she shows the exact opposite of being strong by bending to every single request that Christian makes that she doesn't want to do. I feel like this is a sort of wish fulfillment where people want to relate to the main character, so the character needs to act in a way that they would, but they want to be seen by the rest of the world as being better than they are by doing what they normally do. Not too far off from harem anime characters.

The other Mary Sue definition is someone who's good at everything, which I don't think is as problematic.

I don't think that Katniss falls into the second definition because, at least in the last movie I watched (The second), she did jack shit. Of course, she displays all of these crazy bow skills, but the second it actually matters she is a trainwreck. She's constantly getting saved by basically every other character. I think the only thing I remember her succeeding on was shooting the arrow at the end of the movie to short out the dome or something along those lines. I didn't read the second book, so this might have just been in the second movie, but I was really frustrated with how ineffectual she was. It felt like it was nearing the first definition of Mary Sue, because everyone kept treating her like she was a big deal.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Since when? I've yet to see you bring up an example of anything yourself. Only seen you bash the examples others bring up.

Just off the top of my head..

Spoiler

In person..

When writing..

"When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest ..."

Seriously though, it's not just geek writers and fantasy writers who write women like this. Go through any form of modern Western literature and you will find scores of female characters who are absolutely fascinated with their own bodies to the point they are constantly aware of them and need to describe them to you all the time. This isn't because women actually think like that, it's a trope that exists because straight male writers tend to project their own fascination with women's bodies onto women themselves..

You didn't have to say it, you continuing to act like writing female characters is in its infancy is all that needs to be there to draw conclusions for.

No, clearly I didn't have to say it, because you drew "conclusions" regardless.

I lumped them together because they're what is being put forth as strong female characters in recent times.

By whom?

Again, anyone who thinks that Bella Swan is a strong female character would be wrong. Absolutely, absolutely wrong. She might have been considered a strong female character in the 18th century, but even then it would be pushing it. She is a female character, a very traditional female character whose role in the narrative is defined by her weakness, vulnerability and need to find her place in the world through finding a hot vampire man to take care of her. She is in a story which is, to all intents and purposes, an extremely traditional female-oriented romance story which just happens to have vampires and werewolves.

As for people not reading genderflipped 50 Shades, My Girlfriend is an Idol is very similar in many respects,

Never heard of it. Never heard anyone mention it. Can't find any information by google searching it except that it seems to be a K-drama with really low production values and that there's a similarly named anime. I consider my point vindicated.

Twilight? A various number of some of the less ecchi Monster Girl and a handful of Seinen manga like My Wife is an Idol(this is very different and much more sappy than Girlfriend).

I think what's really interesting about this is:

a) You have to go to a completely different cultural context to find anything.
b) You assumed I was talking about the vague premise being gender flipped, rather than the actual relationship between the characters (which is literally the most important thing in the narrative because it's a romance story).

Also please name these equivalent and worse works that gained anywhere near as much traction.

Well, teenage boys don't really read as much, so book series targetting teenage boys don't tend to get a lot of attention, but..

The entire Michael Bay transformers franchise (grossed over $1 billion)
The Fast and the Furious franchise (grossed nearly $4 billion)
Virtually every action or horror movie ever made.

Practically anything aimed at teenage boys and young men will have shit character development, crude or exploitative depictions of women and relationships and a heavy reliance on tropes. This is accepted as normal and in general noone goes for this kind of media, even people who don't like it or think it's silly, in the way people went for Twilight.

 

[wizzy555]

Seriously though, it's not just geek writers and fantasy writers who write women like this. Go through any form of modern Western literature and you will find scores of female characters who are absolutely fascinated with their own bodies to the point they are constantly aware of them and need to describe them to you all the time. This isn't because women actually think like that, it's a trope that exists because straight male writers tend to project their own fascination with women's bodies onto women themselves..

That quote appears to be a third person narrator not the internal monologue of the woman.

*Also I've read lesbian erotica written by women, this is not unique to men.