In Dungeons & Dragons, players roll dice to accomplish actions. Simply put, rolling a higher number increases the chances of success. On a 20-sided dice, rolling a natural 20 (a 20 is displayed on the die) means instant success! Not only success, but really awesome things happen. On the other hand, rolling a natural 1 means instant failure. And not only failure, but bad things happen to your character, too. Reading about Wonder Woman, her origins, and her evolution made me think about the role that women play in comics and the Fantasy genre, and how it so often feels like we are constantly rolling a natural one.

In the same way that Dungeons & Dragons characters are appealing, superheros are popular because of their power; they can accomplish things that the audiences cannot, and that makes them cool! Wonder Woman’s creator, William Marston, made her powerful but also a model of “strong, free, courageous womanhood”, making her even cooler! (Lepore 1). Yes, she has Amazonian super strength, but she also has to be talented enough to successfully execute her plans (Steinem 204), so no rolling natural ones allowed!

When talking about the appeal of comics, Martson brings up the concept of “wish fulfillment,” claiming that wish fulfillment is tied to human emotion, and emotions are exactly what comics play at (Martson 39). While reading that passage, all I could think about was how true it was for my own experiences with my Dungeons and Dragons character.

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons in high school. I had given up attempts to stifle my inner nerd (I planned my senior prom… and made the theme outer space) and decided that not only did I want to play D&D, but I wanted to chop as many imaginary goblins in half with my imaginary enchanted two-handed battle axe as possible. But as I got to creating my character – Ellywick Silverleaf, half-elf, fighter class – I realized that I didn’t want to make her a one-dimensional killing machine. I wanted her to be a complex and multi-faceted killing machine.

Much like my own struggle to find balance between femininity and the Fantasy genre, I wanted Ellywick to have all the power that I don’t (wish fulfillment!) but still be a relatable female who wants a husband, children, and a modest castle in the hills. So, I created Ellywick to be a symbol of “strong, free, courageous womanhood”, because other symbols like her were, and still are, so lacking.

Wish fulfillment is not something that only appeals to men. Just as much as my brother liked video games, so did I. Wonder Woman, obviously, appealed to female audiences, but female audiences were also reading Superman and Batman, and they continue to do so today. Yet, despite large numbers of female comic book fans, women continue to hit a glass ceiling (keeping in line with the theme of this article, I am imagining women like lasers unable to penetrate the Gungan deflector shields at The Battle of Naboo).

Gloria Steinem discusses the importance of Wonder Woman in her own formative years, reading about a character that (“Great Hera!”) was a woman with an active role (Steinem 204). But, today, Wonder Woman fails to achieve the fame of her male counterparts, instead being tossed into the background of a Superman/Batman mashup movie and being subjected to fashion critics looking at her outfit more than anything else.

Early on in my creation process of Ellywick, I almost made her a man. I wanted her to be as strong as possible, and that seemed to better fit a male persona. But this, I realize, is exactly Martson’s point. That “not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, power” (Marston 42). We need to stop rolling natural ones for ourselves, stop accepting worn-out, sexist roles for our female characters, and demand that the efforts of early Wonder Woman not be in jest.

 

Photo credits

Woman Woman breaking chains: Gardner, Dwight. “Her Past Unchained.” The New York Times. 23 October 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/books/the-secret-history-of-wonder-woman-by-jill-lepore.html

D&D Character 1: Dungeons and Dragons, armour and underwear.http://blog.rhiannonlassiter.com/2012/09/12/dungeons-and-dragons-armour-and-underwear/

D&D Character 2: DeviantArt. http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/artists/149223458?view_mode=2

Wonder Woman comic: Asselin, Janelle. The ‘F’ Word: Wonder Woman’s Feminism Shouldn’t Be Covered Up. Comics Alliance. 2 July 2014. http://comicsalliance.com/wonder-woman-feminism-meredith-finch-david-finch-dc/