... Since that's what keeps Batman from looking like Moon Knight.

> Well, I certainly wouldn't think it need apply to *all* works, but it does show how much of a minority women are in the action/adventure entertainment that I enjoy... Even works like "The Princess Bride" feature one woman and a slew of males. (Okay, Carol Kane was great in that too, though she never came near to conversing with Robin Wright.)

Yeah, sometimes, a story really does just need to be "all about the guys," for various valid creative reasons, but again, there are a lot of instances when I think it simply happens because the storytellers see "male" as the default gender setting for most of their characters.

> As for your writing, I would expect it's harder to keep such a goal in focus as, quite often, the point of your stories is to discuss the characters within them... most of the dialog is about another person, often your lead. Were your cast more regularly involved in adventures requiring exposition, then they would be more likely to converse with each other about the alien monster (or whatever plot detail existed) as well.

I'll freely admit that Dream is frequently the subject of those conversations, but what I try to do is have my female characters discuss how the current plots affect more than just him. And since I've been able to expand my own corner of the Parodyverse into its own mini-universe of sorts (I always wanted the city of Seattle, and the state of Washington by extension, to have as much of a sense of being an independent place as Gotham does in the mini-universe of Batman titles), it's usually easier than you'd think to turn any discussion of the plot into a conversation that covers more than just Dream.

> Probably for the best. Costumes require constant laundering, where as everyday clothes allow for laundry day to be once a week or less.

Bettie versus Sydney is an interesting contrast in respective methods of practicing feminism; Sydney feels it's more empowering for women to be able to play superhero right alongside the boys, whereas Bettie feels more empowered by not having to wear anything more elaborate, encumbering or revealing than modern-day casual clothing.

> Miiri's viewpoint is likely not particularly focused on nations, I would think. She's declared herself "of Earth", and she knows which Earth (and Lemurian) "houses" she feels connected to... I doubt she particularly cares about any government enough to recognize how we divide up our world. To her it's about as important as declaring yourself a citizen of whichever local county your home resides in... helpful for geography, but not much else.

I'm thinking of a line in one of shrike's stories, when Epitome told Miiri that her children would succeed because "they're Americans," and she smiled and said, "I suppose they're that, as well." And since another one of the reasons why Bettie would choose to become an American citizen is because her newly adoptive "family" is American, I thought perhaps that this might be a motivating factor for Miiri as well, especially since (as far as I know, unfortunately) there's no method of officially becoming "a citizen of Earth," as opposed to a citizen of one of its countries, even in the Parodyverse.