What makes a good female character?

[gblews]

You're forgetting about the rape.

Buffy wasn't in control of herself either.

Buffy may not have been in control of herself, but she was in control of the relationship with Spike.

Rape or no rape, she was still in control of the relationship. That is probably one of the reasons Spike did what he did. It was an attempt to gain some control for himself.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Not control. Enlightenment and penance.

As a vampire, he didn't understand what he had done wrong, or why she stopped acting like she loved him, stopped the sex or why she wouldn't forgive him, and why she continued to feel betrayed and hurt, when Spike hadn't really done anything wrong at all by his soulless standards.

William may of went and got a soul to win her back, but once he got his new soul, he probably backflipped when he figured out how badly he fucked up, and getting Buffy back was no longer a playable hand. Apologizing forever was however totally in his wheelhouse.

...

The "romantic" relationship ended at some point during the rape.

Buffy didn't see it coming.

She was surprised.
...

I'm watching something called Spooked: Paranormal Professionals on youtube, and "Andrew" (from the Trio) is in here.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Buffy fought him off, he didn't successfully rape her. And up to that point he was basically a supernatural dildo to her.

Riley was a different case, his machismo had a problem with Buffy being stronger than him and Buffy was emotionally closed off. It had nothing to do with whether she was strong or not.

I would agree that some people confuse strength with just giving a female stereotypically masculine traits. One great example of a strong women is from an old movie Night Of The Hunter. It's a movie about a serial killer posing as a priest who hears in prison about a condemned man who stole some money, then goes back to marry his widow to find the money. He kills the widow, but the children escape with the doll that the money was hidden in. The children are later taken in by an old woman who takes in a lot of orphans, and that old woman shows complete strength and agency without having any masculinity. She isn't scared of or fooled by the false priest in the slightest.

 

[gblews]

Not control. Enlightenment and penance.;

No, control, or at ;east what he thought was control.

As a vampire, he didn't understand what he had done wrong, or why she stopped acting like she loved him, stopped the sex or why she wouldn't forgive him,

Spike knew exactly what he attempted to do. That is the reason he left Sunnydale right after in order to change is life.
[/QUOTE]

 

[Guy Gardener]

It took him a while to leave. Spike even tried to have another consensual sex date and wondered "what was wrong with her" when she told him to bugger off.

It took him weeks/episodes(?) to reason out with logic that what he did was wrong, rather than for a soul to tell him instantly. Logic is a shitty replacement for a soul.

 

[Mr Light]

I just saw Force Awakens and I thought Rey was a great strong character.

Spoiler

She was always in charge of the situation and refused to let Finn try and take control. She stuck up for BB8 and was ready to fight to defend herself. She does get kidnapped by the bad guy at one point.... but then she manages to free herself and ultimately beat the bad guy.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Strong or powerful doesn't mean "good".

To me it's a question of believably, which Rey had in spades.

Spoiler: although?

Can we get Droid rights sorted out for once? People or property? Did she turn down a years worth of food, and sign up to be murdered for the sake of a roomba with delusions of sentience? It's like a kid holding onto a teddy bear, or droids are people with feelings.

 

[Mr Light]

Droids are clearly sentient, even though they have no rights and can be memory wiped on a whim by their owners. Sadly, the only story to really deal with droid rights was the IG-88 short story in Tales of the Bounty Hunters and he was going to take over the galaxy.

 

[Guy Gardener]

"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." ―Qui-Gon Jinn to Jar Jar Binks.

 

[Mr Light]

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/rey-exactly-star-wars-character-010500388.html

This article complains that Rey is TOO perfect as a strong feminist character

 

[Christopher]

This article complains that Rey is TOO perfect as a strong feminist character

Which is typical. I haven't read the article for fear of spoilers, but just going from the description, you probably wouldn't see an article like that about a male character. Part of the problem is that there are so few female leads out there in mass-media adventure films that any given one is expected to be an exemplar for all female characters everywhere, which is an impossible standard to meet, because there are so many different ideas of what that should be. With men, there are so many different male heroes out there that we accept they have a lot of variety and no single one is expected to represent the entire category. What we need is to get to the point where the same is true of female characters.

And I think we're already getting there on television. Earlier in the thread, I cited Supergirl and Jessica Jones as two current examples of effective female leads in strongly feminist stories, but they couldn't be more different from each other. And I guess it's getting better in movies too -- Rey, Katniss, Furiosa, etc. Still a way to go, though.

 

[hux]

Earlier in the thread, I cited Supergirl and Jessica Jones as two current examples of effective female leads in strongly feminist stories, but they couldn't be more different from each other. And I guess it's getting better in movies too -- Rey, Katniss, Furiosa, etc. Still a way to go, though.

Couldn't be more different... except for the fact that they're all examples of slim, extremely beautiful women.

Cast the likes of Amy Shumer as Rey and I might be impressed. Until then, one of my eyebrows will remain firmly raised.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Yeah, this pressure for all female characters to be an example of all women has to stop. Some of the most loved characters are poor role models yet all female characters are judged as role models.

We need more female self destructive drunken wrecks!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Just got back from seeing the new Star Wars.

I liked Rey in general, but do I dare use the term 'Mary Sue'?

Star Wars may have its own Leslie Crusher. A feminized version of Abrams' idealized self-injection.

Spoiler: Stuff she does

She figures out how to mentally influence somebody without even knowing it's a thing.

 

[Christopher]

A feminized version of Abrams' idealized self-injection.

Huh? What are you talking about? First off, of all the TV series on which Abrams has a creator or co-creator credit -- Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe, and Undercovers -- every one except Lost had a female lead. That's the norm for him, not the exception. Second, I haven't known any of his lead characters to be "idealized self-injections." They tend to be rather flawed and multidimensional characters. If anything, the Mission: Impossible film he directed was the one that did the best job of portraying Ethan Hunt as a fallible human being instead of an idealized superagent. And Abrams's version of James T. Kirk was enormously more screwed-up than his predecessor in the original series. So I don't know what precedent in Abrams's career you imagine you're referring to here.

Also, why do people keep forgetting that Lawrence Kasdan, co-writer of Empire and Jedi, is also a writer and producer on The Force Awakens? Not to mention that Kathleen Kennedy is running Lucasfilm now and is the person making the final decisions about everything. So I don't see why you'd assume Abrams is the specific one responsible.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't know if she's a specific writer's idealized self injection but she does have the characteristics of a Mary Sue. She seems to be immediately good at everything, everybody likes her, she's nice to everybody all the time. Things come naturally and easily to her that other characters had to work hard for. She's Leslie Crusher.

I'm not referring to anything else in Abrams' career, I'm referring to every single young boy who grew up watching Star Wars and fantasized himself in the universe becoming best friends with our beloved heroes. I think he, or whoever designed the character took his image of himself from those fantasies and just made the character female.

 

[Christopher]

^Except that Kathleen Kennedy is the one in charge of the entire trilogy and franchise, while Abrams and Kasdan are the people she hired to write this single installment of it. Given that Kennedy is the only one of the three who's actually carrying the characters forward into the next two episodes, surely it stands to reason that she's probably the one most responsible for shaping the characters. So why are you assuming that "whoever designed the character" was male?

 

[MacLeod]

The same things that make a good male character.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

If the person who designed the character is female, then it isn't a feminized ideal self-injection, it's just an ideal self-injection.

Why is it you can't make specific criticisms about a female character without being accused of not liking strong female characters? Rey doesn't have any character flaws, and I'd make the same criticism for a male character. If you're going to go PC Principal on me you can go **** yourself.

Joss Wheadon has lots of strong female characters and none of them are Mary Sues. And I suppose if Wesley Crusher was Leslie Crusher as originally planned, anybody who didn't like her would be accused of sexism.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Women are still drunk with power, getting used to not being third class citizens.

Give'em a century or two and they'll mellow out.