but they can never be what she was to me
See the awesome ladies of my icons! I know I was supposed to only do fictional ladies, because real, live women are not tropes and should not be reduced to one dimension, but the real ladies are awesome, too, and I like looking at all my pretty icons!
Also, I lost the verbiage that was supposed to go with the meme and I can't be arsed to look it up again, so, you know, I'm making it up as I go.
I will say that when I saw that female characters chart linked around - the catalyst for this round of Fuck You, She's Awesome - I thought there was a good idea buried in terrible execution and wrongheadedness. Sure, most, if not all of our sources are flawed and problematic. That doesn't mean that it's okay to find 75 different ways to dismiss female characters - AND REAL WOMEN (notably, real women of color) - as nothing but two-dimensional stereotypes, because if they can all be forced into some little box that may or may not fit them, you can more easily write off all female characters in favor of yet more white men. When characters as well-fleshed out as Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, Dorothy Zbornak, Mystique, and Azula are all reduced to one simplistic facet and so fail this version of the "strong female character" test, maybe it's the test that's flawed, not the characters.
After the nth fannish iteration of "Women just aren't as well written" and "There are no good female characters," of watching as male characters who have one or two lines of screentime (if that!) get fleshed out by fans who claim ALL the women are underwritten, Mary Sues, too perfect, too flawed, too strong, too weak, too boring, too thin, too fat, too pretty, too ugly, too young, too old, too smart, too stupid, too ditzy, too uptight, too slutty, too prudish, too selfish, too selfless, too good for the men, or in some amazing quantum feat, ALL OF THE ABOVE AT THE SAME TIME, I say, yet again, FUCK YOU, THEY'RE AWESOME.
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This is not the time or place to comment about how you don't like whatever female characters (or real live ladies), for whatever reason. There are female characters I dislike too, and lord knows I try to be aware of the problematic nature of the sources I love and how that's a factor in all of this, but right now, I don't want to hear about it.
[eta] because
bethbethbeth is an awesome lady herself, and had an awesome idea, SHOW ME YOUR LADY ICONS IN THE COMMENTS. [/eta]
***
P.S. totally unrelated to the above, I told my boss about my screw-up and she was very understanding and now we are fixing it. Whew. Which is pretty much how I knew it would be? But I have this awful tendency to build things up into the ABSOLUTE WORST CASE SCENARIO in my head. Which I've been better at not doing so much? But I still backslide sometimes. But I feel much less anxious now.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/230878.html.
people have commented there.
Also, I lost the verbiage that was supposed to go with the meme and I can't be arsed to look it up again, so, you know, I'm making it up as I go.
I will say that when I saw that female characters chart linked around - the catalyst for this round of Fuck You, She's Awesome - I thought there was a good idea buried in terrible execution and wrongheadedness. Sure, most, if not all of our sources are flawed and problematic. That doesn't mean that it's okay to find 75 different ways to dismiss female characters - AND REAL WOMEN (notably, real women of color) - as nothing but two-dimensional stereotypes, because if they can all be forced into some little box that may or may not fit them, you can more easily write off all female characters in favor of yet more white men. When characters as well-fleshed out as Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, Dorothy Zbornak, Mystique, and Azula are all reduced to one simplistic facet and so fail this version of the "strong female character" test, maybe it's the test that's flawed, not the characters.
After the nth fannish iteration of "Women just aren't as well written" and "There are no good female characters," of watching as male characters who have one or two lines of screentime (if that!) get fleshed out by fans who claim ALL the women are underwritten, Mary Sues, too perfect, too flawed, too strong, too weak, too boring, too thin, too fat, too pretty, too ugly, too young, too old, too smart, too stupid, too ditzy, too uptight, too slutty, too prudish, too selfish, too selfless, too good for the men, or in some amazing quantum feat, ALL OF THE ABOVE AT THE SAME TIME, I say, yet again, FUCK YOU, THEY'RE AWESOME.
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.
.
This is not the time or place to comment about how you don't like whatever female characters (or real live ladies), for whatever reason. There are female characters I dislike too, and lord knows I try to be aware of the problematic nature of the sources I love and how that's a factor in all of this, but right now, I don't want to hear about it.
[eta] because
bethbethbeth is an awesome lady herself, and had an awesome idea, SHOW ME YOUR LADY ICONS IN THE COMMENTS. [/eta]
***
P.S. totally unrelated to the above, I told my boss about my screw-up and she was very understanding and now we are fixing it. Whew. Which is pretty much how I knew it would be? But I have this awful tendency to build things up into the ABSOLUTE WORST CASE SCENARIO in my head. Which I've been better at not doing so much? But I still backslide sometimes. But I feel much less anxious now.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/230878.html.
people have commented there.