I'mma give you Kiwis a writing secret for pulpy stuff. Women typically project themselves into the role the female protagonists. They imagine themselves in the female's place. Which is why you get these female characters in Romance Novels and Twilights are basically nothing characters. They have very little to them, except maybe you'd write them as 'plain but beautiful' as to not totally rape suspension of disbelief. This is because women fill in the blanks with themselves. Nobody wants to admit it, but read a romance novel. Every female protagonist is very floaty with little characterization, sometimes even description, while the dudes get a ton of it. So when you get women going "YASS KEWWEEN" They're imagining themselves in the place of Captain Marvel or that Twilight Girl or the Bitch in 50 Shades. They project themselves into the work, imagining what they would do. Characterization limits this, so in female-centric media, female characters are generic for a reason, so the audience can project themselves onto them. I always hear 'Well, the woman who wrote Twilight wrote herself as the female part!' No shit, that's how female pulp writing and romance writing works. You didn't make an amazing discovery. Its what romance novels have been doing for the past 50 years. Men hate Twilight because its generally not for men. Its a romance novel. Same with 50 Shades. Which I never got the scandal over because some bodice ripper romance novels are pretty fucking explicit.
In contrast, Male-Centric pulp typically revolves around being a different person. Imagining you as Han Solo, not projecting your own personality on him, but changing it. Which why you want to know his history, what he looks like how he's a womanizer. You want to BE him. You don't want to be yourself, generally speaking. I mean, just think about D&D and these elaborate backstories guys make for their characters. Sure sometimes its a veiled avatar but most of the time they're playing as someone completely different from themselves. Escapist entertainment for men and women are very different. Which is why you're seeing this massive culture clash.
And of course, this is just in general. There are a lot of exceptions and nuances to this. But that's the difference between male focused and female focused entertainment. Its this way not because of sexism, its this way because that's the way the market is. The market caters to what its audiences want.
Obviously, this is when we're talking about pulpy, popcorn novels, not literary classics or genuine hard fiction. But when you get down to the pulp level, you have to give people what they want, and men and women are drawn to diametrically different things in their popcorn fiction typically. Of course, good popcorn fiction allows and satisfies for both, which takes good writers. But again, in terms of pulpy shit like Twilight and some video-games, this just isn't the case because its just easier to focus on your core with minimal amount of effort.
And its why cross-over efforts are bound to fail if they're not done correctly. You see this tons of times.
