Uhura? Leeloo? Ellen Ripley? Really?

[chaobell]

I am all for strong female characters in books and movies and games and everything else but dudes? You are doing it so, so, so very wrong.

Mirrored from Fire of Unknown Origin.

Comments

[arasigyrn]

I like the idea and I agree that more kickass female characters would be awesome but the starting premise seems to be 'There are no strong female characters in any media' which I don't think is true.

[chaobell]

That chart is just a great big old baklava of fail upon fail upon even more fail. Like using a Western character to illustrate the “Tsundere” stereotype, and naming a real, actual person as a stereotype (Yoko Ono, and yes I know that's meant to refer more to a phenomenon than Yoko herself but FFS, they could have figured out something else to call it), and basically saying that any female character who does anything that a real woman might do in real life fails the “strong female character” test.

And yeah, Uhura as “useless female”… which follows “token…” yeah, that’s… that’s not okay, Overthinkingit. That’s seriously not okay.

[arasigyrn]

When it first popped up, I had a quick look at it. I followed the line out to where Uhura was and thinking that she'd never struck me as useless (not on away missions often but that made more sense than a captain who leaps into every unknown encounter with several senior officers.) and meaning to go back.

I actually did have another look after your comment and wow, you are being entirely too generous to whoever crapped this out. This is pure bullshit from beginning to end. There are some of this 'types' that there aren't even examples of so where did the type come from?

'Strong female' =/= 'flawless perfect robot'

[chaobell]

BUT IF SHE'S FLAWLESS AND PERFECT SHE'S NOT ~*STRONG* EITHER, SHE'S EITHER AN ~*IDEAL WOMAN*~ OR A ~*MARY SUE*~ GAWD CAN'T YOU READ TEH CHART

[jazzfish]

I am so very sorry that I looked at that chart. Way to take a nice idea and totally eff it up, guys!

[kafziel]

"Can she carry her own story?" Well that's awfully vague - there are aren't a lot of good stories that have one and only one character, but if you're asking whether she's developed enough to be a focal character then Yes.
"Is she three dimensional?" Again, that's vague - what constitutes a three dimensional character in your mind? A lot of actual real-life people actually have fairly simple motivations in their lives. But whatever, let's go with Yes again.
"Does she represent an idea?" Now what the fuck does this even mean? We're forbidden to have an allegorical or philosophical layer to our story? Okay. This is getting tedious, but I suppose since I'm writing a character here and not a piece of interpretive dance, the answer here is No.
"Does she have any flaws?" Even if this was a fuckin' Power Rangers episode, the answer would be Yes. How infantile of a story are you expecting, where characters are literally perfect?
"Is she killed before the third act?" Ah, right. Characters who die cannot be good characters. I forgot about that. Well, since my character has to "carry the story" as well, it'd be a little weird to have two acts of nobody on stage. So let's go with No here.
Yay, I'm a strong female character! Oh wait, I was half the characters whose pictures litter your chart of idiocy.

[usagi_k1]

What was the line? "I've got an entire day ahead of reciting TVTropes.com instead of forming my own opinions."? Christ, that was a waste of time.