We Think The Women Should Be Allowed To Fight.

[rionaleonhart]

A while ago, misscam posted an entry about the hard time female characters get in fandom and invited everyone to talk about female characters they loved in the comments. I thought that this was a lovely idea, and so I am completely stealing it. Because I do tend to talk about male characters far more than I talk about female ones, and that's not right. There are plenty of female characters I adore. Here are some of them.

I love the women of House. I love poor adorable Cameron and her tendency to become attached to patients and her emotional masochism. I love longsuffering, sarcastic, awesome Cuddy. I LOVE THE BUDDY COP DUO THAT CAMERON AND CUDDY HAVE FORMED IN MY MIND. I love Thirteen when she is vulnerable and when she has that ridiculously cute grin or that little smile and when she is rolling her eyes and when she is going 'THESE ARE NOT THE CORRECT DRUGS; THEY ARE INSUFFICIENTLY CRAP' and when she is saying words and when she is on the screen.

I love Donna of Doctor Who. I love that she could so easily have been a shallow, exaggerated comic character, but that the writers instead took her and made something wonderful. I love that she made me emotionally invested in Doctor Who again; I cared about what happened to her, which was something I hadn't felt about any Doctor Who character (with the possible exception of the Master) since Eccleston's regeneration. I love that she will stand up to the Doctor, and she won't take 'I AM A TIME LORD AND THEREFORE MORALLY SUPERIOR' for an answer. She is compassionate and awesome and ridiculous and amazing and I adore her.

I love Toph of Avatar. She is mocking and hilarious and kicks arse, and the way she uses Earthbending to see is utterly fascinating. Katara, meanwhile, is lovely and awesome in equal measures, and Ty Lee is just the most adorable antagonist ever, bless her. I also love the fact that Toph and Katara both have very real flaws, and that these flaws in no way stop them from being wonderful.

I love Annie of Being Human, because she is adorable. I love her inept attempts to conform to the cultural image of what a ghost should be like. I love that she wants to be in Hufflepuff and make glittery cards. I love the little things she does for Owen, and her little smile when he notices them (even if he does not deserve them. Why don't you adorably haunt my house, Annie?). I love her friendship with Mitchell and George, and the ridiculous amounts of chemistry they all have.

These certainly aren't all the female characters I love (Carla, Elliot, Tosh, Sharpay, Fran, Celes, Selphie, Quistis, Freya, Yuna, Rikku, Lulu, Paine, Larxene, Ruby, Bela, Pamela, Ellen, Gwen, Morgana, Rose Tyler, Alex Drake, Samantha Carter, Luna Lovegood, Sara Tancredi...), but it's a start. Who are your favourite female characters? I'd love to hear about why you love them in the comments.

Comments

[vzg.livejournal.com]

I adore all the female characters of Scrubs, because I adore all the characters in Scrubs. For a long time I wanted to hate Kelso for being an evil bastard (even if it's fictional, cheating pretty much always rubs me the wrong way, especially when the character acts like they deserve to cheat), but I can't even hate him!

I love the ladies of FFX (but I'm less-than-in-love with Paine, so not so much FFX-2 I guess) and probably would like the girls of FFXII very much if I ever picked the game back up. >.>

I LOVE ELPHABA AND GLINDA OF THE WICKED MUSICAL SO MUCH, YOU HAVE NO IDEA. I want to paint myself green for Elphaba, that's how much I love her. On the note of musicals, I love Hairspray's Tracy and Penny absolutely to pieces, and Mrs. Turnblad just as much (even if she's played by a man, she counts, right?), and I love Kate Monster and Christmas Eve from Avenue Q (I giggle every time I think of Christmas Eve shouting "GO GET JOB!" and There's a Fine, Fine Line is absolutely wonderful [and so is Fantasies Come True, but that's mostly because it's so heartbreaking — which is the same reason I like There's a Fine, Fine Line]).

In comics, I like the girls of the Runaways more than any other in comics, mostly because they're treated with respect. Like real respect, too. They're given personalities and not driven crazy (or bitchtastic) by their powers. Molly, Karolina, and Gert are the best; Nico is... well, all right, I don't suppose I love her, but she has awesome moments. I'm not yet used to Klara (given that I've read all of two issues with her in them?) and not yet completely convinced Xavin isn't struggling with gender identity, so I don't include them (though I do like Xavin... but probably only about as much as Nico, or maybe a little more).

I love Doctor Girlfriend of the Venture Brothers (and Triana, to a lesser extent, given her lesser involvement) so freaking much, I immediately developed a mini-crush on Doc Hammer (one of her creators and her voice actor). Of course, the fact that he proved to be insanely awesome and hilarious in real life helped. I only bought two poster-type items at NYCC, and one was an unofficial drawing of her.

Like you, I, too, love Toph, Ty Lee, and Katara of Avatar. In fact, one of the best things about Avatar for me was how much I adored the female characters.

And Gwen and Morgana! Especially Gwen. Her role may be comparatively small, but she's got something so sweet about her.

Harmony Faith Lane from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I mean, I am all about the Harry/Perry when it comes to fanfic, but in the movie Harmony was a perfectly awesome part of their little group. Sure, she is a little ridiculous at times, but they all are!

Olive Hoover from Little Miss Sunshine. Little girl, big win!

Juno, Bren, and even Vanessa from Juno are all different kinds of awesome. Juno is snarky awesome, Bren is motherly awesome, and Vanessa is... an entirely different sort of motherly awesome.

Hermione, Molly Weasley, and Luna Lovegood. Tonks and Ginny were a part of that for a while, before book six, and after book six I did like Fleur almost as much (almost).

Christopher Moore has made some female characters I like very much, in particular Jody the vampire, Abby Normal (for comedic purposes, mostly), and Molly Michon.

[vzg.livejournal.com]

MOSTLY EVERY FEMALE WHEDON CHARACTER EVER? Okay, that's a bit overboard, but to start — Buffy, Willow, Tara, Dawn, Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, River, Fred, and there is even potential for me to really love some Dollhouse girls, but the main ones are dolls, which complicates things. :P I dunno, I like the bits of Echo that come out of her on her own, but sometimes Caroline's flashbacks make her personality kind of rub me the wrong way. And there's been so little seen of Sierra and November beyond the dolls — although Sierra gets to be awesome vengeful, I think I mostly identify November as Mellie. :/ I dunno. WE'LL SEE. Adele is pretty cool, too, and so is Paul's FBI co-conspirator lady whose name I can't remember. Although Topher's assistant is cute, I also would like to see more of her before passing official do-I-like-her judgements, since so far she's mostly just been upset about having to get snacks for him.

Olive and Vivian of Pushing Daisies, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Chuck and Lily. But! Olive! I did not know of Kristin Chenoweth until Olive, and I love her so. And Vivian is just so... so... I want her to be my slightly off aunt.

Juliet and Vick of Psych are quite awesome.

Satsuki and Mai of Totoro, and Kiki of Kiki's Delivery Service and Chihiro of Spirited Away are all awesome. Hayao Miyazaki is not bad with respecting girls. :D

There are more, I'm sure, but I've listed a lot here and should probably sleep at some point. :P

[vzg.livejournal.com]

WAIT FUCK— Envelope Girl from The Engima! I don't know why I love her, but I do. (See icon!)

[timydamonkey.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I forgot Pushing Daisies - Olive really is amazing. She's my joint favourite character with Emerson.

[madmogs.livejournal.com]

AUNT LILY! In the graveyard in tight trousers holding a gun! Makes me doubt my asexuality!(Because yes, unbelievably awesome.)

Also, Olive will never ever not win the universe.