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What makes a good female character?

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.

Or maybe it's not a self-injection of any kind. You don't have the psychic ability to read what the writer was thinking -- especially when you haven't even bothered to do the research to find out who wrote the movie. You're just jumping to "self-injection" because you've decided (or been convinced by others on the Internet) to use the buzzword "Mary Sue" for the character and that's part of the definition. But here's a rather effective article by Charlie Jane Anders pointing out what a useless criticism that's become. (EDIT: And here's Peter David's post on the topic. He's perhaps being a little too narrow in his definition, but the point is still worth considering.)



Why is it you can't make specific criticisms about a female character without being accused of not liking strong female characters?

That's a spurious question. The problem is that some criticisms are more valid than others. Your criticism was based on lack of information, both about the creative process for this movie and about J.J. Abrams's career record, and it's always valid to criticize an uninformed conclusion. More important, you were not criticizing the character; you were criticizing the person you assumed to be the creator of that character, which is an entirely different matter. A character is not a real person, but a writer is, and it's unfair to make assumptions about another person's motivations or integrity. Especially when you don't even know who's actually responsible for the decisions you're criticizing. It's never fair to blame one person for a different person's choices. None of that has anything to do with gender; it's just about getting your facts straight and being fair.

Still, there is a gender issue here, because you unthinkingly defaulted to the assumption that the creator of a movie character must be male, and that very default is the root of the problem. The reason so many writers have trouble writing female characters effectively is because they're socially conditioned to assume that male is the baseline setting for everything and consider females to be an exception to the norm.


Rey doesn't have any character flaws, and I'd make the same criticism for a male character.

Did Luke have many character flaws? To quote Anders's article:
Just as most of The Force Awakens is pretty explicitly patterned on A New Hope, Rey is basically this movie’s answer to Luke Skywalker. Luke touches a lightsaber for the first time about 45 minutes into A New Hope, and is using the Force pretty brilliantly by the end of the movie.


Joss Wheadon has lots of strong female characters and none of them are Mary Sues.

You can certainly find plenty of people online who consider River Tam or Echo a Mary Sue. No doubt the same goes for other Whedon characters. The problem with "Mary Sue" is that it has no agreed-upon definition except "a female character I don't like." So you can find instances of just about any female character (and, yes, a fair number of male characters) being called a Mary Sue. That's why the term has outlived its usefulness.

Here's what I said in response to Anders's initial post on Facebook this morning before she expanded it into her io9 piece:

The term "Mary Sue" has been broadened to the point of uselessness. People forget that it doesn't actually mean a guest character who dominates a story (something that was actually routine in '60s TV) or a character who's really good at what they do -- it refers specifically to a character of that type *done badly,* a character that the author alleges is wonderful but fails to give any genuinely worthwhile qualities to. E.g. a character who's supposed to be a strategic genius but never actually makes a clever move, or a character who's alleged to be irresistibly charismatic but never says or does anything interesting. So it's missing the point to use it for a character who actually succeeds at being hypercompetent.​

The thing is, fiction has always been full of hypercompetent, idealized characters -- Sherlock Holmes, Jeeves, Odysseus, you name it. You may or may not like that type of character, but it's a far older and broader character type than the Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a particular subset of it, a badly done example that's purely a wish-fulfillment exercise by the author. The mistake you're making -- one that too many people make because of the overuse of the "Mary Sue" meme -- is confusing the subset with the set, assuming that all hypercompetent characters are like that.
 
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The trick is not to get hung up on the fact that "ohmigod, how do I write a female character?" In my experience, where male writers sometimes go astray is when they overcompensate by trying too hard to write from a "female" POV. Just write a good character and don't feel obliged to keep stressing that "yep, she's a chick!"

It's one thing I suppose if you're trying to write a sensitive story about one girl's coming of age, but nine times out of ten, if your protagonist is trying to defuse a bomb, or being chased by werewolves, or leading a space squadron into battle against an alien armada, it doesn't really whether they have breasts or not. They're going to react pretty much the same way.

"Oh, crap! I'm being chased by werewolves!"

Bottom line: Don't try to write "a strong woman character." Write a bounty hunter, or a mercenary, or a brilliant genetic engineer, or a college president, or a masked vigilante, or travelling salesperson, or a struggling musician--who just happens to be a woman.

Being a girl or woman should not be their defining trait.
 
A woman on her period being chased by werewolves vs. a man being chased by werewolves.

Not equal. Not the same.
 
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.


May I point out that by the hour mark in ANH, Luke was able to deflect laser blasts with the lightsaber? And talk to the dead? And by the end he had precognition?

Also, Luke never actually has a lightsaber fight in ANH. We don't know how good he was at it, just that Vader was still better by TESB.
 
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She
was plenty good with the staff before Rey knew that she was a force user.

This slumdog (Oh she's a gal. What do you call a female dog who lives in a slum?) knew how to fight for real, and didn't have to be used like a muppet by the force to have her battles fought for her.

Unless she wasn't a good fighter, and just subconsciously use the Force to unwittingly fight her battles.

Books would have me believe that Jedi surrender to the Force in a light sabre fight.

They stop thinking and wait for it to be over, hopping that they don't die before it's over.

That's called being a punk bum female word for dog.

Luke Skywalker is a a punk bum female word for dog.

Although Qua Gon Gin said in a movie that Jedi seem faster than they are because with future vision they are prereacting to possible futures that haven't happened yet, but the only way this works is if a Jedi sees futures that are not going to happen if they are going to change that Future where they're shot or something, unless they only see futures where they defend themselves perfectly against attacks and then mimic that future they've seen, until they see their own death and die. Unless Jedi are always seeing multiple futures where they defend themselves to different degrees as well as die. That's gotta be a little painful to see 80 ways that they could have died during every 5 minute fight you have with a baddie.

She had had no Jedi training.

But Rey could have heard detailed mostly accurate stories bout the Jedi, and what they are capable of, at any point in the last 20 years.

Meanwhile there's also hours of unaccounted time on the Falcon where Han could have been telling these two crazy kids all his old war stories talking about Luke, Vader and Ben
doing weird magic and ####.
 
Anakin was using the force before he really knew what it was. That's why him being "the only human who can pod race" caught Qui-Gon's attention. And even though he didn't know he was a force-user, he did know enough about Jedi to recognize Qui-Gon as one. The untrained Leia apparently has the psychic ability as well. Though admittedly, that skill did seem somewhat unreliable at vital moments...

Rey mentions she knew what the Jedi and Sith were, she just thought they were mythical figures. She also knew Luke by reputation.
 
That was a decade before the Jedi were exterminated.

There was no excuse not to know what a Jedi was.

Han's ignorance, and Luke's ignorance seems to suggest that the Emperor worked hard to Orwell the Jedi from history in just 2 decades.

There's two ways that can happen so quickly.

1. Tax credits for shutting the #### up about Jedi.

2. Rounding up chatty Kathies, and sending them to work in the spice mines.
 
Han had heard of them, and the Rebels seem to be believers. Maybe Luke and Admiral Of Little Faith were just particularly dense.

It's in Luke's blood after all.
 
Han had heard that the Jedi were Hooey.

Rebels, like any rat dragging pizza through the subway, need religion to diffuse how doomed they are by facing down an evil empire millions of times larger than their mine of illiterate 12th century wannabee ne'er-do-wells plotting to change the shape of the galaxy from a cave lit by candles. It doesn't matter if death is certain if the force wants you to die and will reward you for your death.

Although, faith in the Force or using the Force is not a religion, it's scientific fact.

Midi####ingchlorians.

How the Jedi and the Sith chose to manipulate Midichlorians (Have you seen City Slickers recently? Similar principle to cattle driving totally.) is Religion... Or sport?

Different sports have different rules.

There are radically different ways of playing the ball game Rugby that are as separatable as blood types.

Sometimes, as a lark in Australia, (??) two sides of a rugby game will play each other while respecting different sets of referee enforced nonidentical rules.... Unless I misunderstood something a long time ago, but this sounds wicked smart right, if it's real?

Imagine if a baseball team played baseball against a football team playing football.

Sith vs. Jedi.
 
Can you believe that I'm actually going to say 'yes'? Coz I can't believe that I'm actually going to say 'yes.'

Well, except about Australia football. No clue what you're talking about there.
 
Regarding the OP, and admitting that (atypically) I have not read the whole thread, the thing(s) that make a good female character is the very same thing that makes a good character.

Interesting Story to play to
Something meaningful to say
An arc that is not contrived, and fits within the "geometry" of the story
Compassion and Courage
Humility and Fear
Likability
 
Can you believe that I'm actually going to say 'yes'? Coz I can't believe that I'm actually going to say 'yes.'

Well, except about Australia football. No clue what you're talking about there.

I am on the record that professional sports is stupid as mass entertainment unless you're allowed to gamble on it.
 
Its 6 to 5 and pick 'em. I know bunches of people who would agree with you, Guy.
 
My problem with Daisy is how young she looked.

The actress is 23, but I wasn't completely sure that I wasn't looking at a 15 year old most of the time.

(No make up, no product in the movie. Outside of Star Wars she looks 23.)

Are there any bad female characters that come to mind?
 
Okay, I'm bowing out of this conversation until I see the new STAR WARS movie. I'm having to close my eyes and scroll past too many posts . . . :)

Note to self: Just because a thread doesn't have STAR WARS in the heading doesn't mean it's a spoiler-free zone.
 
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.
FYI~I responded to this over in the Buffy thread in Science and Fantasy because our discussion had wandered so far off topic here.
 
Dog/wolf noses. Increased sense of smell. They eat flesh but they track blood.

(P.S. The Merchant of Venice, y'know?)

They also track sweat and body odour, so really a human being with a nose like a dog (this happened in a recent episode of Castle) would be a very angry and aggressive person who is put out by almost any contact with any human being who has a disturbing scent, which by default is everybody.

In the sitcom Wilfred, there's a talking dog who can tell when humans share the same dildos because of cross migrating fecal matter.

What has a more potent stink?

Blood or BO?
 
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