Does your comic pass the Bechdel Test?

Mine fails hugely 8'D

1. More than one female character:
   n-no. Not that I have planned. In fact... my 1 female character hasn't even shown up. There's been one woman in a background scene so far who doesn't say anything.

2. They talk to each other:
   nnnno. There's no one for her to talk to.

3. About something other than a man:
   The character mostly has interests in religion, so most her dialogue is about that. Or drugs. Or murder. But she also ends up talking about guys a lot because... with a cast of 4 main characters, and 3 being men... It can't be helped.

I might have to fix this, but at the same time, I think adding in another woman for the sake of having a woman would just make a token character situation. I'd rather have 1 fleshed out and interesting female character than 2 poor ones : S

But if anyone has advice... Please!

A failure of the Bechdel-test doesn't mean you've written a bad story! It's a test that is mainly used to illustrate how rare it actually is, in general, for any story to have two named female characters who speak to each other about something other than a man - regardless of quality. There are terrible stories that pass the test, and there are great stories that don't.

It's just something that we as creators should be aware of; often, when creating a story, there is absolutely nothing stopping us from having more members of the cast be female - but an unconscious bias gets in the way. So many stories are exclusively - or mostly - about men that we become used to thinking of males as default and normal, when in fact that isn't the case.

So my advice is this; keep this test in mind going forward, and the next time you sit down to create a story, ask yourself "Why don't I make more of the cast female this time? What's stopping me?" - because the answer is probably going to be that nothing is stopping you.

Mine likely doesn't, but I really wasn't aiming to anyway. I just focus on making fun stories, everything else can fall where it may... BTW, Twilight and Bikini Carwash pass the Bechdel Test. It's completely silly...

1. I have three prominent female characters, all of whom are named and have spoken lines, along with various minor female characters, most of whom are not named, but have spoken lines.
   2 + 3. Two of them are in a relationship, and although they've obviously spoken, and definitely not about men, they haven't had as many scenes together as I would have liked. Now that they will both be in the same building (or at least town) for the rest of the story, they will have more opportunities to interact. There's a scene between two female characters going on at the moment. I'm not sure if it "passes" because there is a man mentioned, but he's more of an accessory to the overall topic.

As for the bonus, the cast is majority people of colour, and the women aren't exempt from that.

So for a comic with a male central character with a male love interest, I don't think it does too badly, and I do try to include a mix among the supporting characters.

Does my comic Whose World count if there's hardly a plot? .. It's more of a gag a day thing.

1. Yep! Currently there are two! ^_^
2. Not yet, but they will in the near future! So, technically, yes!
3. There are no guys for them to talk about, so far. XD So, yes!

Does that mean I pass? ;w;

Fallacy is a drama fantasy comic about people making a lot of bad decisions and then trying to patch their lives back together.

1. Have more than one female character...

Yup! A lot more, I think there are 7 named female characters, 1 unnamed guard and 1 unnamed fangirl who all have dialogue. Can't really count background character who are simply filler. And there will be a few more named ones who will be also talking further down the story. Out of the 7, 4 are so pivotal to the plot that the whole thing would crumble to dust without any chance of salvaging it if they were to be taken out.

2. ...That talk to each other at some point in the story...

Definitely. The plot would halt completely if this didn't happen. xD

3. ...About something other than a man

Yup yup, it would be strange if every conversation was centered around men. I admit a lot of conversations have been at least tangentially been about men (or rather their actions) but it's hard to avoid at this point as it's important to the plot. But dialogues do already pass the test and will continue to get more diverse.

are there any women of color in your story?

Yes. So far there is only one (some bg characters too but I still don't think those count as actual representation) but she is named (Nanna), has several lines and is/will be important to the plot. And as all characters haven't been introduced yet, there will be more.

Team Trouble definitely won't pass this test (cause we don't have girls in the team, unfortunately...)

But with The Sky Travelers it may work well...

1. Yes.There's a lot of female characters with name, spoken lines and life story. My comic will work with four main protagonists: two male and two female characters.

2. Yes. At the moment I'm still working with the beginning of my comic, but of course that will have a lot of conversations (because most female characters in my comic have senior positions).

3. Yes. Two captains of the Imperial Navy and some Pirates (all females)... what do you think? (Who talks about men all the time? They have life!)

Bonus: At the moment no...but maybe. I'm still developing the characters.

My comics are averaging a little better than 50/50. Zoie, White Rabbits, Scary, How to Human, and Outside pass. Evil Witch Allie doesn't pass at the moment, but it will in the next chapter. The ones that don't pass are The Duel (in which only one of the three characters is female), The Door (which only has one female character, because it only has one character), Inside (which has female characters, but no dialogue), The Woodsman (which has no female characters or dialogue), and Where Kitties Come From. (Which has no characters that are immediately identifiable as female. The cats could be any gender, relay.) It doesn't help that a lot of my comics have very few characters and/or no spoken dialogue.

My comic is called Star Pace

1. Yes, 3/5 of my main cast are female
2. Yes, all the time
3. Yup, my comic is about singing, so that topic comes up a lot
   Bonus: Not in my main cast, but yes in my supporting cast.

My series: The Middle Crowd

1. (multpile women) Yes, there is more than one
2. (Do they talk to each other) They do, although...
3. (About something other than a man). Naw. I will say, however, that my story is still very young, and it does centralize around my male protagonist Danny, so it's mostly about his interactions with other characters. I do plan to expand the other characters.
   Bonus (women of color): Yes, I do.

Tipping Point1 is mystery action adventure about a young girl growing up and realizing the world isn't just good and evil.

Does it count if one of the characters is technically genderless but uses female pronouns? If not then I got a few more pages to go before I can pass the test.

The Green-Eyed Sniper1 passes the Bechdel test with flying colors! It's a sci-fi story centered around a small group of lesbians who mention the existence of a guy maybe twice in passing, and only because they absolutely have to (one of them is an assassin and she had him on her target list)

As for the bonus point, there are no women of color in my comic, but the characters belong to a despised species called A.I.M.S., so they know all too well what racism means. I could explain more, but it would be spoilers, alas.

Ah the Bechdel test. I don't remember if i've ever needed to test my stories even as a kid. Mostly because i LOVE stories about girls. Lots of girls. I haven't really changed ha.

Lalita at the End of the universe definetly passes.

1. Have more than one female character..
Currently shown in comic i've introduced 4 of the many female characters.
Lalita the hero, her best friend Nina, the robot Captain, and Tofty the angry green alien have all shown up.
I also have the lesbian space pirate showing up soon, her entire crew cept for two are ladies (though they don't show up for a while after her), The human Kaylee, and a bunch of other aliens that come and go.

2. ...That talk to each other at some point in the story..
3. ...About something other than a man

lots of talk about space and plot and fighting and saving the universe type stuff.

are there any women of color in your story?
I'd be dissapointed in myself as a writer/storyteller if i didn't. So yes. Though as human characters go i have only three ladies.
Lalita the main character is mixed raced, her mother from India, her father's parents from malaysia
Nina's grandparents are from pakistan.

the rest of the female cast is pretty much alien.

If it does, I sincerely hope it was merely an accident of circumstance.

These rules, after all, are certainly the mark of good story-telling.

Mmmm, lemme see..

1 who cares?
2- who cares?
and 3- who cares? You certainly shouldn't!

Now, lemme apologize for being salty, but things like this grind my gears a little, if you couldn't tell. =P

All honesty though, what a silly test. You should not ever, EVER be so concerned with such a thing in your media, unless we're talking indoctrination. And, no, we're not talking indoctrination. We're talking 'representation', which is as inconsequential as whether or not a background character has an ear piercing in his left ear. Who cares? Exactly, nobody does, and nobody should! Yet, this is a thing.

Especially considering the fact that pandering to such a... a mindset, I guess you could call it, could potentially ruin your comic/media, then why? Why does this test even exist? One would think to guilt trip those who don't pass the test for somebody's strange obsession with being represented, eh? But that's me scrutinizing, I can never say for sure why it exists in truth, I don't know Bechdel personally, hahaha.

To balance this all, I must say that there's nothin WRONG with passing this test, in fact that sort of thing could possibly enrich an artist's work. Absolutely, I'm not opposed to having interesting women characters and having them interact, in fact I feel that should be a given, which is another reason why I feel this test is silly. Why is the 3rd criteria that they cannot be speaking about another man? As if that's what creators have in mind when writing women, they just GOTTA be talking about another man, right? Lemme stop my eyes from rolling right out of their sockets.

Let creators make what they will, and let God be their judge as to whether they were being honest and true in their story telling. This test either accomplishes nothing, or it is designed to make creators feel bad about their work, whether they deserve it or not. Either way, for one to present this test makes their motives questionable, ahahaha!

Take no offense, though, this is only my two cents. I could be 1000000% wrong and wouldn't mind admitting so. Take it with a grain of salt and yadda yadda yadda, this that and the next, so on and so forth. I'm not angry, I'm just not on board, and I don't think you should be either XP