So, how do we propose they fix it?

As it's the culture as a whole that's broken, my only suggestion is to show even more women with agency who aren't actively evil. I think they did address some of those issues in S2. For me, it worked fairly well.

Heck, my suggestions for a less problematic S3 are fairly simple:

• A variety of recurring women of agency.
• More boys in peril from non-gendered entities.
• Agent Exceedingly Hot and Awesome back and not as pure antagonist this time. With Mulder jokes. Because those are never not funny to me.

People of color with agency who are not bad guys.

People of female gender with agency who are not bad guys.

Those two would be a start.

Does anybody have a link to the cafepress book? I must have the wrong title; my search came up empty.

Agent Exceedingly Hot and Awesome back and not as pure antagonist this time. With Mulder jokes. Because those are never not funny to me.

This, and so totally FTW. Linda Blair's character returning would also be made of awesome.

Also? I would love to see a female Trickster - but that probably won't fit in with the arc of the season. That I am hypothesizing out of my tush, because I am unspoiled.

::loves on everyone::

::promises to be a more conscious viewer in future::

::conscious of more than just the HOT, that is::

juliana, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that we're going to be demon-heavy. I would, in fact, be irritated if we weren't.

demon-heavy.

True, but Tall Tales was a lot lighter than where I think they'll be going this season. The Trickster joke is probably played out, too.

no parallel construct to the dirty old man (and I could imagine that people might have an issue with what they might come up with if they tried)

Heh. Mary Murphy on SYTYCD comes to mind. ::shudders::

As it's the culture as a whole that's broken, my only suggestion is to show even more women with agency who aren't actively evil. I think they did address some of those issues in S2. For me, it worked fairly well.

Heck, my suggestions for a less problematic S3 are fairly simple:

What Plei Said. Unsurprisingly.

I'd be sad if there wasn't at least one light ep in the season, but, yeah, I would be surprised if we saw a trickster again as a primary character.

::sits on hands so as not to spoil::

::for lo, I am a total whore for spoilers for this show::

To supplement with a couple of visual notes:

Pilot: female perp (ghost); male victims (Car Dude, Sam) - targeted for gender male perp (demon); female victim (Jess) - targeted for identity

The female perp was wearing revealing clothes, and shot so we could all look down her cleavage. Her power was explicitly sexual, which actually doesn't make that much sense, when you find out that the reason she's a perp is because she drowned her children.

(By contrast, the "male" demonic perp that got both Jess and Mary doesn't even have a body, much less a sexualized one.)

Dead In The Water: male child (ghost); mixed victims (two males, one female), mixed menacing (one woman, one man, one child) - targeted for relationship to spirit

The two female victims/near-victims were in a bathing suit and naked, respectively. (They were also shmuckbaited like whoa.) The male victims were all fully clothed.

Bloody Mary: female perp (ghost); mixed victims - targeted due to specifics of urban legend/ghost's specific MO

I actually kinda liked how this one was about the crazy initiation rituals of teenaged girls, and the girls managed not to be treated as sex objects throughout. Like, it let them be relatively early-adolescent, and not available sexual targets, despite the fact some of them were old enough to drive. There was a canyon of skeeve avoided, there.

Then again, the whole story of the perp is a story of female sexual violence. It's backstory, and it's treated as a Bad Thing, but.

Skin: creature, gender assumed male; female victims, mixed menacing - targeted due to gender

A lot of lingering shots of female suffering in this one. Mostly, shots of women you don't even know, so it's harder to identify with them.

the real world (at least outside of prison), adult men are rarely the victims of violence with a sexual component, whereas women are victimized in that way far too often.

But... this is a world of ghosts (&c.), and we've been shown that ghosts are equally snitty, male or female. There could easily be an episode about some dead matriarch who continues to rule her family with an iron fist; or a Long Island housewife, creamed in a car wreck, who comes back for revenge on her gossippy neighbors. We could have stories about the ghosts of girls who starved themselves to death, force-feeding the people they haunt. All three of these examples are feminine concerns -- family, gossip, dieting -- but they're not concerns that turn automatically toward sexualized violence. Also, they are plot bunnies.

(I'd also love to see more stories about children who are young enough to believe in the things that go bump in the night; although I imagine it's tough to cast that kind of role.)

I think that the visual component is also a big deal, for me. How the camera is situated; whom we're supposed to identify with; whether any given shot is necessary for the plot or pure tittilation. (This ties into a problem I have with scripting, i.e. the scripts are very flabby and constructed without enough thought for visual storytelling, but that is a gripe for another time.)