Here's my own "Lazy Guide to Writing Strong Female Characters"
1. Write a complex character with ambitions, talents, and flaws. Do not consider the character's gender or any societal norms about said gender while forming her identity.
2. Make sure this character has ladyparts.
You did it!
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I also take issue with the 2, as well as the idea that heterosexual romance is inherently a negative for female characters.
Most stories in general revolve around a person's relationship with another person, whether amicable or antagonistic. More female antagonists would be nice, but it's not going to change how I view a female MC.
Examples of equal heterosexual romances are still fairly rare, and the true feminist ideal calls for the normalization of such relationships, not their abolishment.
That wasn't the point in the Brave example. What it demonstrates is a case of saying that Merida has value because she's way better than any of the men. Pixar was going for something that was pretty positive, but the article is saying that they didn't go about it in the most productive way.To use the Brave example, there's no way I get "OMG women are so much better than men" reading from the archery contest. Jessica Jones beats the crap out of everyone, and throwing a dude through your door is classic noir moves, it's not about humiliating a guy. And Rey, yeah, she's a excessively wish fulfillment can-do-no-wrong character in my opinion who would be more interesting if she had real foibles, but I don't think that's framed in a "embarrassing male peers" way at all.
I think number two is kind of weird. Where do you draw the line? The female character can't care about a male character? Can't interact with a male character on a regular basis? Last I checked about half of all people are male, so a guy being important to a woman (as well as other guys) is completely normal.
That wasn't the point in the Brave example. What it demonstrates is a case of saying that Merida has value because she's way better than any of the men. Pixar was going for something that was pretty positive, but the article is saying that they didn't go about it in the most productive way.
2. Their stories always revolve around a guy (hero or villain)
I don't think Sakura is a good example here. Not only was it done out of necessity, she retained her femininity after.It always bothers me too when female characters cut their hair to show how serious they are. Like, it it's trying act like character development, but it almost never actually means anything (Like Sakura AND Ino in Naruto) You can be feminine and still an ass kicker.
OP can you list some examples that are not from Japan.
I don't think Sakura is a good example here. Not only was it done out of necessity, she retained her femininity after.
Plus the reason it was that long in the first place was something MANY girls are guilty of.
I mean that was more because she wasn't a genius. Heck a ton of male and female characters got sidelined because they weren't special. Which is a whole different criticism of Kishi.Yeah she has a more concrete reason than most, but it was still lazy writing. Because after that she went right back to being a damsel/sideline character who never got any moments to shine besides Sasori and a few super forced obligatory moments in the last arc.
She's a tomboy
You're missing the forest for the trees. There's nothing wrong with Merida being a great archer, but there are lots of ways of showing that off. And that Pixar's decision to make it about her beating the boys ends up delivering a bit of an off note.And I don't agree with that sentiment at all. They get to play parts of the scenes for laughs, which is important in a comedy film, and it doesn't detract from the fact that Merida is great at archery. No one with a brain in the audience thinks that all women are better than men as a result, which is literally what the author is saying.
The lack of intention is the point of most of these concerns. Usually a writer has the best of intentions, but he had problems trying to express these intentions without screwing up. Look at Star Trek Voyager where the writing staff did their darnedest to make Janeway into a proper "strong female character" captain, and still ended up screwing up monumentally.is merely a consequence of males being the default character. Like if movies are 70-90% men in those roles, then if you ever have a strong female character there's a 70-90% chance their story is going to revolve around a guy as well. I'm not sure an intentional choice is made to make the story revolve around a male in the majority of those situations. Certainly some, of course. But it's a multifaceted thing.
Ideally, you wouldn't have the story revolve around anyone at all. So it's still bad to have the story revolve around a different female character. It's only a lesser critcism because you're still presumably trying to build up a female character (even if it's not the right one).The other thing I think of is, what if you turn this on its head, and say that you need to subvert this thing specifically by making the strong female character's story revolve around another female character?
Then it's a good thing that this isn't a list of rules for evaluating strong women.These rule are extremely dumb for evaluating a strong women. By real life standards, not just game writing.
Ideally, you wouldn't have the story revolve around anyone at all. So it's still bad to have the story revolve around a different female character. It's only a lesser critcism because you're still presumably trying to build up a female character (even if it's not the right one).
No, you're too caught up on gender on that point. It's more about who the protagonist is, and whether the story should revolve around someone other than her. I think that the examples in the Cracked article aren't the best, but the gist is that it feels like many of these prominent female roles exist to talk about a male character.Wait, ideally stories shouldn't revolve around either males or females? That seems excessive.
I want a kickass woman who dresses in pink and frills, that would be awesome. Hopefully we are getting there.
Technically she fails 2 of the 6 criteria since A) she is secondary to the main male lead (Richter) and B) her story is based around a male target (Dracula). In SOTN she loses another point as she literally gives Ricther her powers so he can finish off Dracula.
But on the plus side, not only is she a girlie girl that can easily defeat any adversary, she is completely unfazed when Dracula, the literal Prince of Darkness, wants to maker her his bride. Take that, Jessica Jones!
The lack of intention is the point of most of these concerns. Usually a writer has the best of intentions, but he had problems trying to express these intentions without screwing up. Look at Star Trek Voyager where the writing staff did their darnedest to make Janeway into a proper "strong female character" captain, and still ended up screwing up monumentally.
But she's not "strong", she's a damsel always getting rescued...
6/6.
I think Jessica Jones hits all of those??
Should female characters really be dinged for having romantic interests? That seems like a double standard.
It's like when people were complaining about Black Widow in Avengers 2 having a relationship with Bruce Banner. "Of course the woman is the only one with a romantic subplot!"
A) Every other Avenger has a romantic subplot either explored in their own movie (Iron Man with Pepper Potts, Cap with Agent Carter, Thor with Natalie Portman) or within Avengers 2 (Hulk, Hawkeye with his wife)
B) The one she was having a relationship with was another Avenger.
I'd actually go as far to say as its weird for a character not to have any sort of romantic interest, unless they're explicitly asexual. I get a broader complaint of shoehorning romance into movies that don't need it, and the way relationships are written can certainly be improved, but come on. You can give a female character a boyfriend.
Doesn't the very existence of Chris Hemsworth's character knock them all down to at the very least a 5/6?
Why do so many people use the Bechdel test incorrectly? It was never meant to evaluate individual films. It's more about how many films fail the test, and what that says about the industry at large.
Other female action heroes try to do the same stuff, but just aren't interesting at all. Like the woman in Kingsman (can't even remember her name, but she became Lancelot). No woman is gonna cosplay her at a convention or talk about how much they liked her because she was forgettable and not cool.
The biggest problem was inconsistency. They would have her do something one episode and act like a completely different person in the next one (or sometimes even the same episode!) Part of this was the directive that Janeway has to be right all the time because she was supposed to be the "strong female character". Most of the rest stemmed on the showrunners not wanting to maintain continuity from episode to episode so very few consequences could be shown.How do you think they failed?
Yeah, a lot of the problematic material stems from men being portrayed as the norm, so any female characterization has to take that into consideration. That's probably why so many of Cracked's points are about relating the female character to male ones.This.
People get too wrapped up in getting the checkboxes of arbitrary criteria met, which is rarely the point of articles like the Cracked one. It's all about taking a step back and seeing how pervasive certain tropes and elements in media repeat themselves with certain types of characters, and women are often written with these prebaked traits. Why that is is a whole 'nuther can of worms.
She also wasn't the main character--more like 5th from the top, at best.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ranks 6/6 in general, though some arguments can be made about certain parts of her story. She did not have a sexual trauma in her backstory, but the slayer's power being forced on a chosen girl is subtext that doesn't get called out until season 7. The only time her storyline was consumed by a man was Angel/Angelus, but that was mainly concentrated to the second half of season 2 with fallout in season 3. Everything else is balanced out by her friends, mom and sister. And the only time she could be considered a bitchy leader was for a few episodes in season 7.
Otherwise she passes everything else with ease. She was the slayer who held on to being a regular teenage girl. She can curbstomp monsters with her stylish yet affordable boots. She didn't have to share the lead role with any male character. The proposed Buffy animated series never got off the ground because the network wanted Buffy to share the lead role with Angel, and the creative folks felt that would lose the essence of the show.
I tend to just use the metric: "Do women want to imagine they are this character?"
Other female action heroes try to do the same stuff, but just aren't interesting at all. Like the woman in Kingsman (can't even remember her name, but she became Lancelot). No woman is gonna cosplay her at a convention or talk about how much they liked her because she was forgettable and not cool.
The biggest problem was inconsistency. They would have her do something one episode and act like a completely different person in the next one (or sometimes even the same episode!) Part of this was the directive that Janeway has to be right all the time because she was supposed to be the "strong female character". Most of the rest stemmed on the showrunners not wanting to maintain continuity from episode to episode so very few consequences could be shown.
Yeah, a lot of the problematic material stems from men being portrayed as the norm, so any female characterization has to take that into consideration. That's probably why so many of Cracked's points are about relating the female character to male ones.
Yup.
Kind of the problem of Jessica Jones. But Jessica Jones is also supposed to be kind of a scumbag so...it still works.
Am I crazy or does Halle Berry's Catwoman stand at 0/6?
Ron D. Moore on "Equinox":Yeah, the inconsistency is annoying, but that's the nature of a show like Voyager (or TNG, for that matter.) I don't see it undermining the character, specifically as there are so many women nerds I know who really like Janeway as a character.
Also, I think it's one of those things people have amplified by retelling. I'm nearly through rematching the entire series and there's very few where Janeway actually acts like a completely different person. This is just fan argument about Tuvix extended to the entire series.
We finally landed on this idea that the two captains were going to go in opposite directions. Janeway was going to really feel the same kind of pressures and stresses that Ransom [John Savage] felt, and watch how it could turn a good, by-the-book Starfleet captain into what he had become. At the same time, his interaction with the Doctor [Robert Picardo] and Seven of Nine would rekindle his humanity.
It was this nice, double track approach, but it just got lost in the translation. It has no coherence. Youre not sure whats really going on. Youve got some potentially good scenes. The scenes between Janeway and Chakotay had some real fire to them, and you kind of felt like she is going off the deep end, a bit. Then she relieves him of duty, and there is this crisis of command between the two of them. But at the end of the episode, its just a shrug and a smile and off to the next.
I just hit the ceiling. I remember writing in the margins, This is a total betrayal of the audience. This is wrong. You cant end the show like this. If you are going to do all this other stuff, you cant end the show like this, because its not fair, because its not true, and it just wouldnt happen.
I don't know why people are bothering to apply a list of problematic writing commonly found in female action film heros on characters who aren't female action film heroes. You can draw a bit of a parallel from games where they cover the same ground as action films, but what's the point outside of that context?
Ron D. Moore on "Equinox":
You can check out the whole interview here: http://www.lcarscom.net/rdm1000118.htm
The only potential issue with this is that it can lead to flawless characters.
I think that, if it makes thematic sense for any character in a given story to have embarrassing, shameful, or lame moments, then then female characters shouldn't be excluded from those.
Girls and boys both rule and drool in equal measures, it's worth reflecting that.