laurus_nobilis | So. About that annoying female character flowchart.

Current Mood: frustrated

Entry tags:

fandom,
rant

So. About that annoying female character flowchart.

(This one, in case you haven't seen it.)

Instead of ranting about it, I'm going to 1)link to a great fix (thanks to

etrangere for the link!), and 2)follow

allira_dream's idea and channel my RAAAAGE in a positive way:

GIVE ME A CHARACTER WHO IDENTIFIES AS FEMALE. Then I will write you the reasons why the lady is awesomer than awesome. It might be my squealing, it might be a drabble, it might be five reasons. The point is, I will gush about a female character, then YOU can gush about said female character and we will all be a little bit happier because 'FUCK YEAH, SHE'S AWESOME'.

I'll probably go for squealing/listing reasons instead of drabbles. But still. GO WILD.

Martha Jones (Doctor Who) - spoilers for the end of season 3
Sari and Arcee (Transformers: Animated) - spoilers for the end of the series
Donna Noble (Doctor Who) - implied spoilers up to End of Time
Trucy Wright (Apollo Justice)
Katara (Avatar: the Last Airbender)
Karrin Murphy (The Dresden Files)
Airazor (Beast Wars)
Nakuru (Card Captor Sakura) and Suki (Avatar: the Last Airbender)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Martha Jones!

My favourite thing about Martha is that she's a nerd and is not afraid to show it! She gets the chance to travel through time and space and her first reaction is "but I've got exams". She has a geeky sense of humour, she fangirls Shakespeare, she lets Lazarus kiss her hand to collect his DNA, she saves the world with a Harry Potter spell.

Then she saves the world in many, many other ways, too. And she doesn't only think in the large scale - she connects with people, always. She's interested in them as individual persons and lets it show.

And when she gets into a messy unrequited love thing that's only hurting her? She steps away, not because she thinks she doesn't deserve the Doctor or anything, but because she knows she's awesome and deserves better. And goes to keep on saving the world.

I love Martha so much.

:D Yay for Martha!

Holy crap, that flowchat is terrible. First I've seen of it, but still...WTF. The "fixed one" is definitely better. WAY better.

And uh. Sari or Arcee. Take your pick between the two. :)

The "best" part is that many of the examples are actually well written, three-dimensional characters. So... I have no idea of what they were looking for.

And let's do both, why not. =D

Sari is awesome because even though she's a cute and adorable little kid, that's not all there is to her by far. She's got a child's stubborness (and later a teenager's stubborness!), but she grows a lot, and she tries so hard to help everyone. But what I like best about her is her sense of humour and how she always seems to be having fun with everything. It's like the world is a big shiny playground for her.

Besides, she's so caring with everyone. Sure, there's a lot of fascination with Cool Giant Robots there at first, but you can tell how much she genuinely loves her crazy family. ♥

And Arcee... well, I'm not going to let certain sectors of the fandom I shouldn't like her because she's pink and used to be teacher. Canon could have treated her a lot better, sure, no argument there. But the lady is still badass. She was an intel officer! She was willing to let Ratchet repair her while still conscious because she wouldn't risk losing the codes. She manages to think clearly enough, even when she's captured by Lockdown, to keep him from getting the information. Then she loses her memory and suddenly wakes up right in front of Megatron, and she still won't give up the codes. And when she gets properly reactivated at last, the first thing she does is go and help save the world. And that's awesome.

Donna Noble!

OH, DONNA. How amazing are you? ;___;

The thing about her is that she puts her brutal honesty and no-nonsense attitude to very good use: if you are Doing It Wrong, she will tell you, and she won't let you get away with it no matter who you are. Donna will always, always make her best effort to do the right thing, to help people as much as possible.

She's a positive influence on people. That's what I like best about her. It takes her a long time to get past her own self-esteem issues and see that, but the truth is that Donna helps the Doctor and others around her be better persons. And she's got so much compassion and love to give, and she wants her life to be Awesome, and I love her forever and in my headcanon she has epic adventures even after End of Time because I can't see it any other way.

And she's got so much compassion and love to give, and she wants her life to be Awesome,

This so much!

Para ser original, Trucy Wright

Trucy is one of those characters with lots of hidden strength. She's cheerful and optimistic and funny and you'd never guess how hard it's been for her. But that's not fake, not at all. She honestly gives her best effort to be happy, to see the good things in the world no matter what, because she also knows that life can be great and that people can be wonderful. And so she ends up making other people's lives brighter, too.

And she has a weird sense of humour. And she's more than a bit strange, and very very dorky, and all around adorable. ♥

I'm just going to state right here that if the name of one of your 'stereotypes' is the character's name, that's not a stereotype. Because science says that's not how it works.

Katara!

Honestly. And there were several of those, too. :|

Katara is great because she is so, so rounded. She's caring, hopeful, sweet, compassionate, sometimes overprotective. She's also moody and stubborn and a bit judgemental and might chew your head out, for a good reason or for none at all. (I've said this before, but I love that finally I can look at a girl who gets angry a lot but she's not defined solely by that and is still shown in a positive light.)

She's always trying to do the right thing. Sometimes she does it in ways that turn out to be counterproductive, yes, but she learns, she listens to other people (after a while, at times, but she does). She's not afraid to speak her mind or to defy tradition. And she never, ever loses hope.

Bonus 'love' for the question 'can she carry the story'. Well, gee, maybe if there's an ensemble cast, or if she happens to be in a supporting role, she's not *supposed* to, and it doesn't make her a bad character. Especially when the equivalent male character can't carry a story either.

I love that Katara is in some ways the stereotypical "Chick/Team Mom", but in other ways a fully rounded character. Like, she's not angelically virtuous and somehow totally unaffected by growing up in a world at war. And while she's the team mom, that role means that sometimes she drives the other characters up the wall, as one's mom does.

Also I love that she's sometimes wrong, and she's sometimes right, and she's sometimes uncertain, but she's always *something*. I love the writers for the fact that she always has an opinion of her very own, and that she's not either wrong or right all the time. And she gets angry and I'm allowed to think that's okay.

Oh, definitely. Only protagonists can be good characters? o.O Yes, I'd love more female protagonists too, but if that's what they were getting at it's... poorly worded.

And while she's the team mom, that role means that sometimes she drives the other characters up the wall, as one's mom does.
Yes, definitely! Besides, while she does have some stereotypically "girly" traits, she'll be the first one to kick you if you suggest that's because she's a girl and not because it's, you know, her personality.

Karrin Murphy :D

Murphy is so incredibly badass. She got stuck with a weird, dangerous job where most people won't even believe what she and her team have to see, and she was open-minded enough to learn how to deal with it. She's brave and practical and goes after monsters with chain saws. =D

But my favourite thing about her is her strong moral sense. She puts doing what's right before anything else, even if it comes at a personal cost for her. Which is another reason her job is so difficult, too, because she has to keep making decisions that are pretty much impossible to explain.

... oh, and the icon is relevant. :P

I'm still just reeling that Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor were on that list. As stereotypes. Seriously? Maybe if you reduce them down to their sole story function, but as characters? Blech.

I'd like to hear about the awesomeness of Airazor, please. :D

I still can't get over that. Part of me wants to shout "Tropes Are Not Bad", part of me wonders what they'd think of equivalent male characters and then I try to stop thinking before I break something. :|

So, squeeing about Airazor instead! I have an irrational amount of love for her because she's one of the few TF characters I actually remember from when I waas a kid. And, rewatching Beast Wars, she didn't disappoint!

I love that she's brave and confident. I love her sense of humour. I love that even if she's the only female character in the team, she's certainly not The Girl. She's funny, and strong, and a bit of a hippie like Tigatron. And since her job means she's usually separated from the core team, that means that she often gets to be the one that shows up and saves everybody. :P

Heh, someone on my JF flist is also ranting about that flowchart.

For the meme, how about Nakuru, with some meta on why she identifies as female? Or if not, then Suki from ATLA.

It looks like it managed to annoy a looot of people.

I haven't read CCS in quite a while so I don't feel confident enough for the meta, but I can ramble about Nakuru's awesome anyway! She's hilarious, and she seems to be having such fun all the time. She knows what she wants, and she'll try her hardest to get it - but she doesn't get bitter or jealous if she fails. One of my favourite things about her is how, after all she tried and tried and tried to get Touya's magic, in the end she's just "oh well!" about it and in fact becomes a lot friendlier towards Yukito. And I love the way she treats her family, too. She teases Spinel and gets Eriol to make her stuff, yes, but you can tell how much she really loves them.

And Suki... wow, where do I start? That girl is made of pure awesome. She's brave, she's resourceful, she never gives up. She's got a sense of humour, but she knows what things need to be taken seriously, too. She's open-minded and welcoming and willing to give people a second chance. And she'll take no nonsense from anyone!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So. About that annoying female character flowchart.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject