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

[bubbles-san.livejournal.com]

Late to the party- as per usual.

So my recent revisit to the Star Trek fandom has reminded me of my love for Amanda Grayson (Spock's mother) and so since you have given me the oppurtunity:

Amanda is amazing. She loves her husband and her son so much and you can see it tearing her apart that they don't like each other very much. (Poor Sarek. Why don't you just admit that you love your son? It will make things easier in the long run.) in 'The Journey to Babel', when she and Spock were arguing, she completely broke down, but she was strong enough to deal with the strain that both of them being in surgery brought her, and she was so relieved when they were both okay, and it was adorable the way she got so annoyed at logic, because at the beginning of the episode it seemed she had given up a lot of her humanity to marry Sarek (because she loves him, and no matter what Sarek might say he loves her too.)

In the 'The Voyage Home', at the beginning we see Amanda again, struggling to deal with Spock after he's died and then got better without his memories in tact, and the way she's able to remind him of what was important to him before, when no one else could, really spoke of the bond they share as mother and son, and brings out the human in Spock better than anything else.

Throughout the series and movies, any negative comment about Amanda prompted an emotional response from an otherwise unemotional man ("Spock, you're a good scientist, but you couldn't sell fake patents to your own mother." "I fail to see why I would wish to sell falsified patents to my mother." *accompanying glare*); when his mother was insulted in the latest movie, he actually went so far as to nearly killing the man who did it.

Amanda's strength of character was matched only by her kindness, and the love she felt for both husband and son. And while the female cast of Star Trek was great, and most of them were quite beautiful, none compared even a little to Amanda, simply because she radiated an inner beauty that not even Uhura could match.

And that is why I love her. Because she is amazing.

[bubbles-san.livejournal.com]

I GOT SO CAUGHT UP IN MY LOVE FOR AMANDA THAT I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT ANYONE ELSE.

Much like pretty much everyone else in this entry, I love Toph to itty bitty bits, for much the same reasons. While I admit to being skeptical about Katara at first, because in the first season they looked like they weren't sure what they wanted to do with her, I warmed up to her in the second season onwards and by the end of the third one I loved her so much.

Donna=fantastic. I wish she'd been Nine's companion instead of Rose, because she was so much more deserving of him.

Romana I! Romana was one of Four's companions back in the old days, and unlike other companions she was forced onto him. So unlike other companions, she was of the mind that she was smarter than him. She was not in the least bit awed by him, and she wasn't the damsel in distress that many of his female companions seemed to be. And she was brilliant. And she could kick ass. And she was awesome, and I love her to bits. I wish that Mary Tamm hadn't got pregnant, because she would have continued to play Romana for a few more series, rather than being 'regenerated' into Lalla Ward so soon. (An interesting note about Romana: She liked looking like princesses. In the 'Key to Time' series episode 'The Androids of Tara' Romana is mistaken for the local princess because of an uncanny difference; the second Romana took on the appearance of Princess Astra, a character in the episode before she regenerated.)

Sabine: You already know how I feel about her. She is awesome and amazing and lovely and strong and admirable and hot and I adore her to bits.

Tosh: Tosh was so adorable. Though I don't generally go for characters whose strong points include pining for someone else, I found that the way Tosh's character was gone about was just so much that I couldn't help but love her.

Lwaxana Troi: She was Deanna Troi's mother in Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Her actor also played Nurse Chapel in the original series, and voiced the computers on the Enterprise up until her death last December.) Now here is a woman who knows what she wants! Not to be deterred, once Lwaxana sets her sights on something you can rest assured that it's hers. Headstrong, stubborn, shallow to an extent, and proud, Lwaxana is an ambassodor and a noble of her species. In most episodes she has a tendency to chase after various men, not for emotional bonding but simply because it amuses her. Her favorite target is Picard, who gets flustered by her mere presence; however, she has a genuine love and affection for Deanna (who she calls 'Little One' and tries to convince her to use her telepathy more), and will move heaven and earth if it means her happiness- but not without complaint. Lwaxana is strong-willed, she has got along for years without a man (beyond her valet, Mr. Homm, who is utterly devoted to serving her) and doesn't need one- she chases them because she wants them, not because she needs them. And I admire her spirit as much as I admire Amanda's.

I also admire Azula. Because she is insane. And Uhura and Nurse Chapel and Tasha (and Nashara, to a lesser extent) and Beverly and Guinan, who is many shades of amazing. (The women of Star Trek are a force to be reckoned with, for sure. Mr. Roddenberry was no womanizer- even if he did stick them in mini-skirts for no practical reason.)