A thread I made on Reddit regarding stock (overaggressive) "strong" female characters

[glutton]

^ The Black Widow trope is different than the action-girl one. Black Widow characters use their sex appeal to kill and outsmart. They act like assassins, basically. Action-girls use combat. One is more feminine while the other is tomboyish. (A simple explanation)

She means like Black Widow the Marvel superhero I believe, not the femme fatale trope.

 

[Vaporo]

To me, the problem is that these characters are so often just a token character so that the writers can tell everyone that they're not sexist. Or, worse, they're just pandering to a female audience. Bad writing affects both men and women characters. Plus, I don't know how many game covers I see where there's 2 or 3 generic-looking men and then one generic-looking woman off to the side.

In my opinion, if you're going out of your way to make a woman seem "strong," then you're probably going to come out with this kind of flat character with a chip on her shoulder. The character I always hear talked about as a good example of a strong female character is Ripley from Alien. The reason that I think she works was because she was probably conceived as, then written as throughout production, a woman. The writers didn't need to force any personality onto her. They just wrote a character that they thought made sense as a woman working on the crew of a small ship and then forced into a terrible situation.

 

[glutton]

In my opinion, if you're going out of your way to make a woman seem "strong," then you're probably going to come out with this kind of flat character with a chip on her shoulder.

I know you said "probably" but I go out of my way to make my female characters seem strong and it never occurred to me that they should have to be mean with a chip on their shoulder to seem so. If you're overflowing enough with power, confidence and/or courage you hardly need to also act mean to come off strong, I think it's more that writers who go with this stock trope tend not to want to give the character sufficient "real" (ie. consequential) badassness to seem strong without the abrasive attitude.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

^ The Black Widow trope is different than the action-girl one. Black Widow characters use their sex appeal to kill and outsmart. They act like assassins, basically. Action-girls use combat. One is more feminine while the other is tomboyish. (A simple explanation)

Oops, referring to the character the Black Widow, as in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She's kinda like the ultimate example of an action girl to me.

 

[Chessie]

Oops, referring to the character the Black Widow, as in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She's kinda like the ultimate example of an action girl to me.

Ah, ok! Totally the wrong thing then.

 

[Penpilot]

In my opinion, if you're going out of your way to make a woman seem "strong," then you're probably going to come out with this kind of flat character with a chip on her shoulder. The character I always hear talked about as a good example of a strong female character is Ripley from Alien. The reason that I think she works was because she was probably conceived as, then written as throughout production, a woman. The writers didn't need to force any personality onto her. They just wrote a character that they thought made sense as a woman working on the crew of a small ship and then forced into a terrible situation.

Actually, Ripley was originally intended to be a man.

Ellen Ripley | Xenopedia | Fandom powered by Wikia

Here's the relevant text from that wiki link.

Ripley was originally a male character named "Martin Roby".[26] While the majority of the characters in the original Alien script were written so that they could be either male or female, Roby was always intended to be a man.

I think this kind of shows a well written character is a well written character, regardless of the sex someone decides to assign them. And to me at least, don't focus on the sex of the character, focus on making them good characters with dimension.

 

[Gryphos]

While I do appreciate the increasing instances of female action heroes (even if, as people have pointed out, there are far too many of them who are one-dimensional and dull), I always find it very fascinating to look, not at them, but at the people they're beating up. As much as there are more female action heroes than there ever have been in the past, I'm forced to wonder: where are all the female grunts, the nameless henchwomen who the heroes cut their way through like tissue paper? With few exceptions, it always seems to be men, doesn't it? This brings me to tokenism; various writers, in an effort to be inclusive, create a Strong Female Character to be part of their main cast, while forgetting that background characters are also incredibly important. But I would call this superficial inclusivity. This suggests to me that women doing action is still on some level regarded as a gimmick; female fighters currently aren't allowed to be unimportant. But this unimportance is essential, I feel, for genuinely altering the gender imbalance in action narratives.

Nowadays the only times when I can look past this exclusion of nameless female grunts is either in historical stories where we have definitive knowledge that, say, women in that period weren't allowed to enlist in the army, or in stories like Mad Max Fury Road, where the gender of the nameless bad guys is actually an essential part of the story's thematic statement. Otherwise, if a fantasy/sci-fi setting doesn't have overt sexism, I see no reason why women wouldn't number the ranks of the nameless hero-fodder.

 

[Russ]

I must be reading the wrong books. I very rarely see "tank" female characters in the novels I read.

I see a few in comics, but they don't bother me any more than the hyper-aggressive male characters in that medium.

The hyper-strong female characters I have seen in major films I have quite enjoyed. I thought Kill Bill was awesome, and I eagerly await the release of Atomic Blonde. I like Blade Runner and enjoy Resident Evil for what it is. But the way characters are chosen and written for many major films is based on things other than literary, story or character merit.

 

[pmmg]

Actually, Ripley was originally intended to be a man.

Well, I am glad they decided to change that up. That story would not have worked if Ripley was male.

 

[Annoyingkid]

If an aggressive MC SFC falls in love with the main male lead gives up fighting and becomes a soft, submissive housewife, while her husband who surpassed her decades of training quickly (chosen one), went on heroic adventures with their son, leaving her behind. She says "I'll be with you in spirit"

:showoff: Is that empowering if the writer says that's what she really wants in life, or is it not. From one perspective, her character was tamed and domesticated into a less prestigous role, but some might say he allowed her to chase her dream of homemaking and that calling it less prestigious is because of historically feminine work being devalued, and that as a housewife she's still a SFC. Just strong in nonviolent ways.

 

[glutton]

I must be reading the wrong books. I very rarely see "tank" female characters in the novels I read.

I see a few in comics, but they don't bother me any more than the hyper-aggressive male characters in that medium.

The hyper-strong female characters I have seen in major films I have quite enjoyed. I thought Kill Bill was awesome, and I eagerly await the release of Atomic Blonde. I like Blade Runner and enjoy Resident Evil for what it is. But the way characters are chosen and written for many major films is based on things other than literary, story or character merit.

We're not talking about strength, but unjustified aggression... I love hyper-strong female characters and they are almost always my MCs, I'm referring to the stock character type that always has a chip on their shoulder and is quick to resort to hitting or verbally abusing strangers or allies who have not done or threatened to do similar to them (often because they can't show their "strength" in plot-relevant ways, so they have to show it by harming "innocent" victims instead). It seems silly that this is so often identified with being a "strong" female character when a male character who acted in a similar fashion would just be seen as a jerk.

 

[glutton]

If an aggressive MC SFC falls in love with the main male lead gives up fighting and becomes a soft, submissive housewife, while her husband who surpassed her decades of training quickly (chosen one), went on heroic adventures with their son, leaving her behind. She says "I'll be with you in spirit"

:showoff: Is that empowering if the writer says that's what she really wants in life, or is it not. From one perspective, her character was tamed and domesticated into a less prestigous role, but some might say he allowed her to chase her dream of homemaking and that calling it less prestigious is because of historically feminine work being devalued, and that as a housewife she's still a SFC. Just strong in nonviolent ways.

Objectively it would be empowering if it was natural to her character and that was what she really wanted, but OTOH I would probably hate it because I dislike noobish chosen ones who surpass their awesome experienced female love interests quickly. Especially when often after no more than one or two years after learning of their powers, they are already more competent and important than literally almost everyone in the world who has worked for much longer to be strong/skilled.

If the female warrior met another experienced male warrior and after that decided she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom to their kids while he continued adventuring, that might be cool and would not hit my pet peeve lol.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

If an aggressive MC SFC falls in love with the main male lead gives up fighting and becomes a soft, submissive housewife, while her husband who surpassed her decades of training quickly (chosen one), went on heroic adventures with their son, leaving her behind. She says "I'll be with you in spirit"

:showoff: Is that empowering if the writer says that's what she really wants in life, or is it not. From one perspective, her character was tamed and domesticated into a less prestigous role, but some might say he allowed her to chase her dream of homemaking and that calling it less prestigious is because of historically feminine work being devalued, and that as a housewife she's still a SFC. Just strong in nonviolent ways.

Molly Weasley, anyone?

 

[valiant12]

Otherwise, if a fantasy/sci-fi setting doesn't have overt sexism, I see no reason why women wouldn't number the ranks of the nameless hero-fodder.

-The average man is taller , bigger and stronger than the avrege woman. Men are also tipicaly more agresive due to testosteron.

- Most societies view men as expendable.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

You and me both. I see this stuff in movies, but not in any book I read... although I assume they must exist following the movie trend. Like most everything with me, if it's done well (to my taste) I don't have a problem with much of anything... the key being to my taste, if not then it's just gibberish junk, LOL.

I must be reading the wrong books. I very rarely see "tank" female characters in the novels I read.

I see a few in comics, but they don't bother me any more than the hyper-aggressive male characters in that medium.

The hyper-strong female characters I have seen in major films I have quite enjoyed. I thought Kill Bill was awesome, and I eagerly await the release of Atomic Blonde. I like Blade Runner and enjoy Resident Evil for what it is. But the way characters are chosen and written for many major films is based on things other than literary, story or character merit.

 

[Annoyingkid]

Arya from Paolini's IC is like this. Calling out human women for being weak cowards and shoving an ally who wanted an update on his wife's pregnancy.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Arya from Paolini's IC is like this. Calling out human women for being weak cowards and shoving an ally who wanted an update on his wife's pregnancy.

The trope of "heroines who are 'not like other girls' and raise themselves up by denigrating every other female around them" deserves mentioning.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

^Yes indeed-y. I'm a bit sick of those kinds of heroines, not to mention how kind, gentle heroines frequently get mocked or criticized for being their natural, sweet selves, or seen as 'weak' somehow.

 

[glutton]

The trope of "heroines who are 'not like other girls' and raise themselves up by denigrating every other female around them" deserves mentioning.

That comes off as insecurity to me because it implies they feel they are in a competition with all other females. If most of mine were looking for competition it would not be in the general female population or even male population, but among other elite warriors and um, powerful monsters.

I mean, if they perceive other females as being weaker than themselves yet try to pick on those they view as weaker, that comes off pretty... weak.

 

[glutton]

^Yes indeed-y. I'm a bit sick of those kinds of heroines, not to mention how kind, gentle heroines frequently get mocked or criticized for being their natural, sweet selves, or seen as 'weak' somehow.

Many of mine tend to be kind and gentle under peaceful circumstances, I can imagine one of the overaggressive supposed badasses mocking them only to realize when actual enemies attack...