On slash and female characters
Having been a part of slash and yaoi fandoms for about 6 years now, I've gotten used to quite a lot of really weird phenomena. Anything from kink-memes to squee to fandom wars has passed me by. One of the things I've always sort of taken for granted is the tendency of fandom writers to either dismiss the female lead/love interest, to use her as
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I think that for the most part you're hitting the nail on the head, although I can't answer for the character you like there because I don't watch TV at all.
I will say that personally, I have trouble identifying with (and so usually am not much into writing) very feminine/girly women because although I am to some extent curvy, I'm not much into what I have heard called "performative femininity." This is the whole business of putting effort into dressing in a feminine and decorative fashion, wearing feminine makeup and most colors of nail polish, moving in a feminine way, and so on. I like some feminine colors (rose pink, for example) and I do wear some jewelry - especially earrings, because they don't get in the way. The icon here is pretty accurate, except that I rarely wear kitty ears!
Also, let's face it, I'm middle-aged.
My type of person pretty much doesn't exist in fiction, except as an occasional guest-starring eccentric scientist, doctor, or academic specialist. In manga and so forth, I often settle for a blunt-talking butt-kicker - I guess this is your (wo)man - because at least she'd sympathize with my avoidance of skirts and lipstick. I like Rangiku in Bleach, and Eda and Revy in Black Lagoon.
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For me, the problem with yuri/femeslash is that it's often by men for men. I have yet to find a good, relyable sourse of from women for women yuri/femmeslash. A large part of the reason why I enjoy yaoi/slash, for me, is that women seem to experience sexuality and sexual fantasy very differently from men, which means that I find 'regular porn' vaguely disgusting an a bit of turn-off most of the time, if not downright hilarious and ridiculous. Any suggestions you might have for me are very welcome though!
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Such as...Strawberry Panic.
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I'm a girly girl. I like pretty dresses, I like dressing up and all that, but for me, sticking a woman in a dress and heals doesn't make her more or less feminine. As a matter of fact, one of my big annoyances is the action-series in which the male fighters get full body armour and the female fighters get to run around in heals and short skirts because apparently their boobs and genitals are the only part of their bodies that need protecting, right? ... Right. That doesn't make them feminine, it makes them incredibly stupid.
Even more annoying is the 'strong' woman, who than falls swooning by the wayside as soon as the male hero is in need of saving. Orehime being a case in point and one of the foremost reasons I stopped buying Bleach. I love her. I love her character, I love how she's an utter girl and yet so very strong and... Oh right, than she had to go and get herself kidnapped without raising a hand because Ichigo needed a motivation to go after Azen. Rukia in the same manga is more of the same. As for Rangiku, I actually find her pretty feminine in many ways and I love how she kicks ass :D
I guess what I see as the (wo)man isn't so much a woman who doesn't dress as a woman (they often do). It's more in the way a character handles things, the way their priorities stand and her goals, methods etc. are so stereotypical male. Like a stereotypical female character couldn't be sexy and feminine as well as strong, intelligent and humouristic.
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