Stolen and tweaked from an LJ writer's prompt: favorite female character(s)?
Here, flist, let's have one of those posts where we go crazy with lists.
Stolen from a morphed writer's prompt in the ways_back_room:
Do you have a favorite female character?
Uh. Yes. Except that there are about five thousand of them vying for the top slots at any given moment.
So, just off the top of my head, a few that come to mind
- Margarita from The Master and Margarita - fearless in the face of love and the fantastical
- Cordelia Vorkosigan from the Vorkosiganverse (yes, even with Lois McMaster Bujold's racefail, Cordelia is still close to my heart - perhaps Bujold should try to be more like her)
- She-Hulk, of course
- La Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine - do I really need to explain why?
This is but one of a few million reasons why:
- Wonder Woman, that being Diana of Themyscira
- Hippolyta, that being Wondy's mother
- Viola from Twelth Night
- Misty Knight
- Colleen Wing
- Mary Jane Watson-Parker
- Wanda Maximoff
- Zealot, aka Lady Zannah of the Red Lament
Despite the hideous Mike Deodato ninetiestastic art, this one panel should show you WHY she's AWESOME:
...She is the perfect melding of raison d'être made manifest by sheer willpower and dedication. See? Not all dialog in the nineties was bad!
(Fun fact: Mike Deodato loved the character of Zealot SO much that he based DC's Artemis on her.)
- Kit Ryan from Hellblazer
- Tulip O'Hare from Preacher
- Pyanfar Chanur from C.J. Cherryh's Chanur novels - actually, let's make that Pyanfar's ENTIRE crew: Hilfy, Chur, Haral, Geran, and Tirun.
- Brawne Lamia from Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos
- Elektra Natchios
- Jean Grey
- Black Canary
- Hawkgirl Kendra Saunders
- Carol Ferris
- Sue Dibny
- Ororo Munroe
- Jubilation Lee
- Dorcas from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun
- Ultimate Vision
- Flint from the Wildstorm verse
- Amanda fucking WALLER
- Cecilia Reyes
- Onyx
- The Engineer
- Jenny Sparks
- Agent O'Brien from MAX Punisher - and believe me, I'm surprised at how much I warmed up to her
- Debi Newberry from Grosse Pointe Blank
- Theresa Maeve Rourke Cassidy
- Mistress Mercy
- Darna!! (She's a famous Filipino comic book character)
- Domino (THIS Domino)
- Carol Danvers (pre Civil War nonsense)
- Liz Lemon (There, I said it!)
- MOSURA...MOSURA...Mothra!
- Black Mamba, Diamondback, and Asp from the Serpent Society - I have to list them together since they work as a trio
- Lt. Uhura - both versions, but TOS is closer to my heart
- Cleopatra Jones
- Green Lantern Soranik Natu
- Green Lantern Boodikka before Geoff Johns got ahold of her
- Can I include Mother Mercy on this list? Even though she's the consciousness of a planet-form entity?
Eternal Mothra - her final form:
...Until the next film, that is.
- Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill (natch)
- The Major from Ghost in the Shell (blame nique and lyssie for this)
- Zoe from Firefly (so obvious that obvious broke)
- Starbuck from BSG (again, blame lyssie)
- Temperance Brennan (I can feel kita0610 twitching in hate from two states away)
- Every single female character from Farscape
- Ditto for Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5
- Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin from any Discworld book that she appears in
- Dot Matrix
- Susan Sto Helit
- Susan Storm Richards (Superheroine! Supermom! SuperMILF!)
- Kathleen Stewart from The Dark Corner - that's Lucille Ball playing a tough as adamantium assistant to a PI, and it's a GREAT film - gritty noir from 1948, and very much worth renting
...And that's just the tip of the iceberg. That's barely touching literature, film, television, theater, and poetry.
God help us all if I start to write essays on WHY I love each and every one of the above.
So, since Wondy's on my list, Robot 6 is talking about how Grant Morrison wants another crack at Wonder Woman.
Given how Morrison has treated her previously (HI THERE, FINAL CRISIS!), I'll be brief:
I have about as much interest in reading more of Grant Morrison’s take on Wonder Woman as I have in reading about the gastointestinal difficulties of Idi Amin. This is the man who said “… I must admit I’ve always sensed something slightly bogus and troubling at its heart. When I dug into the roots of the character I found an uneasy melange of girl power, bondage and disturbed sexuality that has never been adequately dealt with or fully processed out to my mind. I’ve always felt there was something oddly artificial about Wonder Woman, something not like a woman at all.”
“Disturbed”?
“Artificial”?
“Girl power” being described as something that causes Morrison “unease”?
That’s not someone I want anywhere *near* Diana, particularly after the way he’s treated when he has written her.
Didn’t he also say something to the effect of “she’s not like the rest of us” and inferred that that was a *negative* trait?
Morrison's now making noises that he thinks that Diana should represent women the way Superman represents men, and while that's a positive compared to the absolutely weird things he's said about her before, talking about her as if she's some kind of golem, I sincerely hope that Mr. Morrison gets to process Diana all he wants. Just please don’t publish it in a book, DC.
On the other hand, we have a preview page for Wonder Woman #34. (DCU's Source has a whole bunch of preview pages for the issue here.)
While I'm less and less enchanted with the direction that Gail Simone is taking with the WW book, one thing I have to give kudos to Gail for: finally, someone remembers Diana's connection with animals!
OMGWTFKEWTPOLARBEAR!
Gail should be putting a scene in each issue of Diana talking to animals. THAT's the Diana that I love.
Also, GORILLAS.
I need a "gorillas make everything awesome" tag.
So, flist! Your favorite female characters?
Edit: Whoops, forgot to add Wolfe from Andrew Vachss' Burke novels and Detective Olivia Benson from Law and Order: SVU. Who doesn't love Olivia?
Edit of I-Am-So-Going-to-Hell-For-Omitting-Her:
LAAAAAAADYTRON!
Stolen from a morphed writer's prompt in the ways_back_room:
Do you have a favorite female character?
Uh. Yes. Except that there are about five thousand of them vying for the top slots at any given moment.
So, just off the top of my head, a few that come to mind
- Margarita from The Master and Margarita - fearless in the face of love and the fantastical
- Cordelia Vorkosigan from the Vorkosiganverse (yes, even with Lois McMaster Bujold's racefail, Cordelia is still close to my heart - perhaps Bujold should try to be more like her)
- She-Hulk, of course
- La Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine - do I really need to explain why?
This is but one of a few million reasons why:
- Wonder Woman, that being Diana of Themyscira
- Hippolyta, that being Wondy's mother
- Viola from Twelth Night
- Misty Knight
- Colleen Wing
- Mary Jane Watson-Parker
- Wanda Maximoff
- Zealot, aka Lady Zannah of the Red Lament
Despite the hideous Mike Deodato ninetiestastic art, this one panel should show you WHY she's AWESOME:
...She is the perfect melding of raison d'être made manifest by sheer willpower and dedication. See? Not all dialog in the nineties was bad!
(Fun fact: Mike Deodato loved the character of Zealot SO much that he based DC's Artemis on her.)
- Kit Ryan from Hellblazer
- Tulip O'Hare from Preacher
- Pyanfar Chanur from C.J. Cherryh's Chanur novels - actually, let's make that Pyanfar's ENTIRE crew: Hilfy, Chur, Haral, Geran, and Tirun.
- Brawne Lamia from Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos
- Elektra Natchios
- Jean Grey
- Black Canary
- Hawkgirl Kendra Saunders
- Carol Ferris
- Sue Dibny
- Ororo Munroe
- Jubilation Lee
- Dorcas from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun
- Ultimate Vision
- Flint from the Wildstorm verse
- Amanda fucking WALLER
- Cecilia Reyes
- Onyx
- The Engineer
- Jenny Sparks
- Agent O'Brien from MAX Punisher - and believe me, I'm surprised at how much I warmed up to her
- Debi Newberry from Grosse Pointe Blank
- Theresa Maeve Rourke Cassidy
- Mistress Mercy
- Darna!! (She's a famous Filipino comic book character)
- Domino (THIS Domino)
- Carol Danvers (pre Civil War nonsense)
- Liz Lemon (There, I said it!)
- MOSURA...MOSURA...Mothra!
- Black Mamba, Diamondback, and Asp from the Serpent Society - I have to list them together since they work as a trio
- Lt. Uhura - both versions, but TOS is closer to my heart
- Cleopatra Jones
- Green Lantern Soranik Natu
- Green Lantern Boodikka before Geoff Johns got ahold of her
- Can I include Mother Mercy on this list? Even though she's the consciousness of a planet-form entity?
Eternal Mothra - her final form:
...Until the next film, that is.
- Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill (natch)
- The Major from Ghost in the Shell (blame nique and lyssie for this)
- Zoe from Firefly (so obvious that obvious broke)
- Starbuck from BSG (again, blame lyssie)
- Temperance Brennan (I can feel kita0610 twitching in hate from two states away)
- Every single female character from Farscape
- Ditto for Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5
- Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin from any Discworld book that she appears in
- Dot Matrix
- Susan Sto Helit
- Susan Storm Richards (Superheroine! Supermom! SuperMILF!)
- Kathleen Stewart from The Dark Corner - that's Lucille Ball playing a tough as adamantium assistant to a PI, and it's a GREAT film - gritty noir from 1948, and very much worth renting
...And that's just the tip of the iceberg. That's barely touching literature, film, television, theater, and poetry.
God help us all if I start to write essays on WHY I love each and every one of the above.
So, since Wondy's on my list, Robot 6 is talking about how Grant Morrison wants another crack at Wonder Woman.
Given how Morrison has treated her previously (HI THERE, FINAL CRISIS!), I'll be brief:
I have about as much interest in reading more of Grant Morrison’s take on Wonder Woman as I have in reading about the gastointestinal difficulties of Idi Amin. This is the man who said “… I must admit I’ve always sensed something slightly bogus and troubling at its heart. When I dug into the roots of the character I found an uneasy melange of girl power, bondage and disturbed sexuality that has never been adequately dealt with or fully processed out to my mind. I’ve always felt there was something oddly artificial about Wonder Woman, something not like a woman at all.”
“Disturbed”?
“Artificial”?
“Girl power” being described as something that causes Morrison “unease”?
That’s not someone I want anywhere *near* Diana, particularly after the way he’s treated when he has written her.
Didn’t he also say something to the effect of “she’s not like the rest of us” and inferred that that was a *negative* trait?
Morrison's now making noises that he thinks that Diana should represent women the way Superman represents men, and while that's a positive compared to the absolutely weird things he's said about her before, talking about her as if she's some kind of golem, I sincerely hope that Mr. Morrison gets to process Diana all he wants. Just please don’t publish it in a book, DC.
On the other hand, we have a preview page for Wonder Woman #34. (DCU's Source has a whole bunch of preview pages for the issue here.)
While I'm less and less enchanted with the direction that Gail Simone is taking with the WW book, one thing I have to give kudos to Gail for: finally, someone remembers Diana's connection with animals!
OMGWTFKEWTPOLARBEAR!
Gail should be putting a scene in each issue of Diana talking to animals. THAT's the Diana that I love.
Also, GORILLAS.
I need a "gorillas make everything awesome" tag.
So, flist! Your favorite female characters?
Edit: Whoops, forgot to add Wolfe from Andrew Vachss' Burke novels and Detective Olivia Benson from Law and Order: SVU. Who doesn't love Olivia?
Edit of I-Am-So-Going-to-Hell-For-Omitting-Her:
LAAAAAAADYTRON!