You must have been watching a different version of The Following. I quit watching four episodes in because all the characters did was make stupid decisions. Repeatedly. That and the idea of a fourth-rate novelist and literature professor brainwashing apparently half the country from prison—which is less believable…

I'm a little confused by all the "but it turned out that wasn't true" stuff. So because she wasn't raped as horribly as some of the stories claimed that makes it ok? I don't really get the point of "Was [the rape] so wrong? Yes. Was it that? Hell no!" What diference does it make if the rape was "that" or not? What we…

Speaking as a man, maybe you need to buy better underwear.

Thank you for showing us the errors of our ways. You go, you.

That would require a genre work to have a) multiple female characters who are b) compelling/interesting/important enough for the fans to latch on to, and c) related to each other. Have we had one since Charmed?

"Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?"

and yet men are three times as likely to be the victims of violent crimes. Receive dramatically harsher prison convictions, there are a plethora of issues only men face.

It is decided by the reader, but it's up to the writer to set the stage. The writer is the one creating the characters, and persuading us to care about them. If you, as the reader, are given a paragraph on one character, and a chapter on another (written by the same writer, same style, etc.), which one are you going…

No, it's not semantics, because there are characters (this person has a name, and they appear here, and now they're gone!) and there are characters (this person has dreams! Desires! Drives! It's like...they're a real person!). One is a tool, the other is....a character. You are invested in finding out what makes that…

Ugh, shut up.

Damnit, do you know what the number 1 deadly sin of world building is? The one that got left off of this list?
Showing your work.