Variation on a meme
Most of my flist are involved with fandoms what I don’t know nuttin about. So I can’t do the meme about you giving me the names of female characters and I tell you why i love them.
But I have been reading some of my flists’s posts and have been getting some ideas of what can make a character leap into another woman’s heart.
So… it isn’t really a meme, I guess. But I want to ask my flist for qualities they would like to see in some hypothetical canon hero or woman. Assuming that she has plenty of screen time, and interaction with plenty other characters, time for an arc, and all those things.
What qualities of the heart, hands, head? What kind of back story? What kinds of interpersonal issues? Romance, or no romance, or polyromance?
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I like women charas with a sense of humor. I like ones who demonstrably have some patience but don’t let people walk on them or those they care about, or hell, even random strangers. I like women who seem like they’d have your back if you worked with them. I like ‘em smart, but I’ll root for an underdog who isn’t bright but just keeps fighting and trying to understand things. (Flowers for Algernon is not just about men.)
I like it when they care about things or people or ideas enough to invest effort and time and risk in doing something about whatever needs fixing about those things and people. Even if they didn’t learn a damn thing about some RL skill they really need now, I want to see them learning it. If they need to learn to bait a hook or run a snowblower or apply fake nails or fly an airplane, they damn well figure out how to learn it.
I like women charas with a sense of humor. I like ones who demonstrably have some patience but don’t let people walk on them or those they care about, or hell, even random strangers. I like women who seem like they’d have your back if you worked with them. I like ‘em smart, but I’ll root for an underdog who isn’t bright but just keeps fighting and trying to understand things. (Flowers for Algernon is not just about men.)
I like it when they care about things or people or ideas enough to invest effort and time and risk in doing something about whatever needs fixing about those things and people. Even if they didn’t learn a damn thing about some RL skill they really need now, I want to see them learning it. If they need to learn to bait a hook or run a snowblower or apply fake nails or fly an airplane, they damn well figure out how to learn it.
I like characters who are motivated by principles, not necessarily a personal connection to a problem (like the original Kolchak hunted vampires because he was a reporter and they were a danger to the public which 1, he had to alert readers to and 2, he ought to kill before they killed more people), whereas the remake made him go after supernatural critters because something attacked his wife, or summat like that.
It’s gotten bad with all characters, but I think female characters are even more portrayed as being all about their loved ones specifically, and not about Truth or Justice or Professionalism.
And a lack of romance would be a refreshing change.
I guess what I’m saying is I’d like to see women being motivated by more than just love and kindness, which are fine things, but almost the only things women are allowed to be motivated by in fiction. And as long as the female protagonist has a strong love interest, he’ll be seen by many readers as the more interesting character.
Just for instance, there’s a female manga writer who does strong female characters, but even she names the series after the main male character (Ranma, Inuyasha), and not the girl who is just as important.
I like characters who are motivated by principles, not necessarily a personal connection to a problem (like the original Kolchak hunted vampires because he was a reporter and they were a danger to the public which 1, he had to alert readers to and 2, he ought to kill before they killed more people), whereas the remake made him go after supernatural critters because something attacked his wife, or summat like that.
It’s gotten bad with all characters, but I think female characters are even more portrayed as being all about their loved ones specifically, and not about Truth or Justice or Professionalism.
And a lack of romance would be a refreshing change.
I guess what I’m saying is I’d like to see women being motivated by more than just love and kindness, which are fine things, but almost the only things women are allowed to be motivated by in fiction. And as long as the female protagonist has a strong love interest, he’ll be seen by many readers as the more interesting character.
Just for instance, there’s a female manga writer who does strong female characters, but even she names the series after the main male character (Ranma, Inuyasha), and not the girl who is just as important.
just a thought…
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just a thought…
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