As The Fire Flashes In Her Eye.
List ten ladies you love, from ten different fandoms.
I was given this challenge on the secret Tumblr where I do nothing but cry about Linkin Park, and I thought I'd reproduce the list here! I tried very hard not to solely list videogame characters. As this was written for my Tumblr, the audience of which largely consists of Linkin Park fans who know very little about my fiction preferences, it might repeat a couple of things I've already said on here.
The challenge was just to list them. I probably didn't then have to write a billion words. But I am, it turns out, incapable of not writing a billion words.
(If anyone reading this wants to take on this challenge, I'd be interested to see your list!)
- Ellie, from The Last of Us. What a great character. The Last of Us doesn’t work if it’s only a story about Joel learning to love Ellie; it has to be a story about you learning to love Ellie as well, and I absolutely do love Ellie, because Ellie is great. She’s not fearless; she’s afraid, but she’s prepared to do what has to be done in spite of that fear. She’s been through a lot, but she’s not entirely jaded; she’s still capable of wonder, she can still appreciate beauty. She’s slow to trust without being incapable of trusting. She’s got a weakness for terrible puns. She’s such a bright spot when you’re trudging through the apocalypse. I was delighted when I caught her trying to keep her balance along the edge of a kerb.
- Yuna, from Final Fantasy X: the story of a selfless young woman’s journey to discover that, hey, sometimes it’s okay to be selfish. She’s constantly setting her own life and her own desires aside for the sake of others, and I love it when she finally plants her feet and goes, no, this system is terrible, I’m going to fight it for myself and the people I care about. She’s not physically strong, she can seem a bit of a pushover at first glance, but she’s got the most incredible strength of character.
- Rachel, from Animorphs. As a kid in the nineties, I was so starved for female characters who actually got to do things that I remember getting really excited about how powerful the queen was in chess. And then along came Rachel. She was unlike me in pretty much every respect, but she still made a big impact. Here was this gorgeous blonde girl, she was athletic, she was interested in fashion, she was everything I’d been told was ‘feminine’, she was INCREDIBLY BLOODTHIRSTY and absolutely thrived when she was thrown into a horrible war against mind-controlling aliens. I was more of a Cassie myself, but I was absolutely awed by Rachel.
- Korra, from The Legend of Korra. I prefer Avatar: The Last Airbender to The Legend of Korra by quite a long way, but I absolutely adore Korra as a character: this hot-headed, proud, fundamentally good-hearted young woman with an uncontrollable drive to make terrible decisions.
- Elena Fisher, from Uncharted. Bold, smart, adventurous, sharp-tongued. My favourite moment in the entire Uncharted series is the part where you’re playing Crash Bandicoot and Elena is just making fun of you the entire time. I would have been perfectly happy if Uncharted 4 had been nothing but that.
- Teresa Lisbon, from The Mentalist. Listing Elena’s good qualities reminded me of how much I loved Lisbon! They’ve got a fair amount in common, although Lisbon’s a little more cautious. One of my favourite moments is where Jane needs the charges against a suspect dropped, and eventually he admits it to Lisbon - 'I couldn’t tell you earlier, I didn’t want to put you in danger' - and Lisbon just goes, 'You’re an idiot. Let’s go,' and gets the charges dropped by flat-out punching the suspect in the face in front of his lawyer.
- Utena Tenjou, from Revolutionary Girl Utena. I need to rewatch this; it’s been too long! My fondness for Utena comes from the same place as my fondness for Korra: I’ve got a real weakness for bold, good-hearted, slightly cocky characters who make awful, awful decisions.
- Mahiru Koizumi, from Danganronpa 2. In a cast of over-the-top characters, she felt very real and helped to keep things grounded. I loved that she always stood up to Kuzuryuu if she felt he was trying to bully the others, too; she absolutely refused to be intimidated. It’s interesting to me that she buys very strongly into traditional gender roles without entirely fitting into them herself; she’s outspoken in a way that doesn’t strike me as 'traditionally feminine'. I also (inevitably) enjoy the fact that she’s privately insecure and haunted by a terrible decision she made in her past.
- Mary Read, from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. I love that she just mocks Edward non-stop; I love that she appears to be in the habit of casually patting him on the arse before he even knows she’s a woman; I love the cutscene after he learns her true identity, where her motions have the subtext 'ooh, look at how close to you I’m getting! am I going to kiss you? am I??? NOPE AHAHAHA PSYCH.' The moment where she and Anne Bonny are arrested for piracy and go 'lol, you can’t execute us, we’re both pregnant' is absolutely magical (and historically accurate!).
- Donna Noble, from Doctor Who. Brave and kind and spirited and hilarious, and unhesitatingly prepared to stand up to the Doctor. She could so easily have been a shallow, exaggerated comic character, but she turned out to be something wonderful. She made me care about Doctor Who again when I’d fallen out of love with it.
I was given this challenge on the secret Tumblr where I do nothing but cry about Linkin Park, and I thought I'd reproduce the list here! I tried very hard not to solely list videogame characters. As this was written for my Tumblr, the audience of which largely consists of Linkin Park fans who know very little about my fiction preferences, it might repeat a couple of things I've already said on here.
The challenge was just to list them. I probably didn't then have to write a billion words. But I am, it turns out, incapable of not writing a billion words.
(If anyone reading this wants to take on this challenge, I'd be interested to see your list!)
- Ellie, from The Last of Us. What a great character. The Last of Us doesn’t work if it’s only a story about Joel learning to love Ellie; it has to be a story about you learning to love Ellie as well, and I absolutely do love Ellie, because Ellie is great. She’s not fearless; she’s afraid, but she’s prepared to do what has to be done in spite of that fear. She’s been through a lot, but she’s not entirely jaded; she’s still capable of wonder, she can still appreciate beauty. She’s slow to trust without being incapable of trusting. She’s got a weakness for terrible puns. She’s such a bright spot when you’re trudging through the apocalypse. I was delighted when I caught her trying to keep her balance along the edge of a kerb.
- Yuna, from Final Fantasy X: the story of a selfless young woman’s journey to discover that, hey, sometimes it’s okay to be selfish. She’s constantly setting her own life and her own desires aside for the sake of others, and I love it when she finally plants her feet and goes, no, this system is terrible, I’m going to fight it for myself and the people I care about. She’s not physically strong, she can seem a bit of a pushover at first glance, but she’s got the most incredible strength of character.
- Rachel, from Animorphs. As a kid in the nineties, I was so starved for female characters who actually got to do things that I remember getting really excited about how powerful the queen was in chess. And then along came Rachel. She was unlike me in pretty much every respect, but she still made a big impact. Here was this gorgeous blonde girl, she was athletic, she was interested in fashion, she was everything I’d been told was ‘feminine’, she was INCREDIBLY BLOODTHIRSTY and absolutely thrived when she was thrown into a horrible war against mind-controlling aliens. I was more of a Cassie myself, but I was absolutely awed by Rachel.
- Korra, from The Legend of Korra. I prefer Avatar: The Last Airbender to The Legend of Korra by quite a long way, but I absolutely adore Korra as a character: this hot-headed, proud, fundamentally good-hearted young woman with an uncontrollable drive to make terrible decisions.
- Elena Fisher, from Uncharted. Bold, smart, adventurous, sharp-tongued. My favourite moment in the entire Uncharted series is the part where you’re playing Crash Bandicoot and Elena is just making fun of you the entire time. I would have been perfectly happy if Uncharted 4 had been nothing but that.
- Teresa Lisbon, from The Mentalist. Listing Elena’s good qualities reminded me of how much I loved Lisbon! They’ve got a fair amount in common, although Lisbon’s a little more cautious. One of my favourite moments is where Jane needs the charges against a suspect dropped, and eventually he admits it to Lisbon - 'I couldn’t tell you earlier, I didn’t want to put you in danger' - and Lisbon just goes, 'You’re an idiot. Let’s go,' and gets the charges dropped by flat-out punching the suspect in the face in front of his lawyer.
- Utena Tenjou, from Revolutionary Girl Utena. I need to rewatch this; it’s been too long! My fondness for Utena comes from the same place as my fondness for Korra: I’ve got a real weakness for bold, good-hearted, slightly cocky characters who make awful, awful decisions.
- Mahiru Koizumi, from Danganronpa 2. In a cast of over-the-top characters, she felt very real and helped to keep things grounded. I loved that she always stood up to Kuzuryuu if she felt he was trying to bully the others, too; she absolutely refused to be intimidated. It’s interesting to me that she buys very strongly into traditional gender roles without entirely fitting into them herself; she’s outspoken in a way that doesn’t strike me as 'traditionally feminine'. I also (inevitably) enjoy the fact that she’s privately insecure and haunted by a terrible decision she made in her past.
- Mary Read, from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. I love that she just mocks Edward non-stop; I love that she appears to be in the habit of casually patting him on the arse before he even knows she’s a woman; I love the cutscene after he learns her true identity, where her motions have the subtext 'ooh, look at how close to you I’m getting! am I going to kiss you? am I??? NOPE AHAHAHA PSYCH.' The moment where she and Anne Bonny are arrested for piracy and go 'lol, you can’t execute us, we’re both pregnant' is absolutely magical (and historically accurate!).
- Donna Noble, from Doctor Who. Brave and kind and spirited and hilarious, and unhesitatingly prepared to stand up to the Doctor. She could so easily have been a shallow, exaggerated comic character, but she turned out to be something wonderful. She made me care about Doctor Who again when I’d fallen out of love with it.