What makes a strong female character? - This seems to be a big talking point again with Supergirl

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BubbaRobot887

BubbaRobot887

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So the media is going on about what makes a strong female character again what with Supergirl coming out and they are blaming the failure of the latest Star Wars movie on a lack of strong female characters in it.

In response people on Youtube are making their lists of strong female characters to prove they have always existed in movies and TV shows but that got me thinking, what is a strong female character?

Pretty much everyone agrees that a female character has to be an action hero like a man but I am not so sure, for instance...

Hollywood doesn't want to hear this but after rewatching some episode of Little House on the Prairie as an adult I have come to the conclusion that Caroline Inglles is one of the strongest female characters ever put to film.

She is able to hold down the fort while her husband is away for months or weeks at a time, she can help build a cabin, she finds a way to harvest cops on her own, she has a gun and is ready to fight when she hears war drums in the distance, she knows how to survive when the family is trapped in a blizzard, and more.

I think the only reason I have never heard her brought up in talks about strong female characters in that she isn't the typical action hero fighting a villain, she reads the Bible, and she trusts her husband to make the hard choices. About that last point, why wouldn't she, I mean what kind of strong woman marries a man who's judgement she doesn't trust.

In short she should be list with characters like Sarah Conner when talking about how we have always had strong female characters.

What do you think of this topic?

Do we need more strong female characters?

What makes a female character strong in the first place?
 
There are two kinds of strong women that exist IRL: Evil sociopathic manipulators and redneck chicks. Anything else is purely fantasy
 
To make a strong male character, emphasize and highlight masculine traits, the virtuous and heroic ones. If you want more depth emphasize masculine weaknesses or pitfalls, and have him overcome them (in a masculine way).

To make a strong female character, emphasize and highlight feminine traits, the virtuous and heroic ones. If you want more depth emphasize feminine weaknesses or pitfalls, and have her overcome them (in a feminine way).

If you want modern garbage female characters, give her masculine traits, and have her overcome obstacles in a masculine way. Girlboss is a subset of these, that tries to do "feminine" obstacle overcoming without effort or earning it.
 
I dunno but Hollywood seems to think its a woman that defeats all the men and female wisecracks all over the film. Surely that can never get old.
 
Confident and competent. Not to the extreme where they're some egotistical cunt who can do basically anything but just someone who has reasonable confidence and can do shit with out flailing or crying.
Strength is not about beating people up or doing backflips while insulting people, it's about holding yourself up and doing the things you know need to be done no matter the strife.
 
I think it's silly that there needs to be a sex qualifier in the first place.
A strong character overcomes both real and inner obstacles, displays bravery, tenacity and does their utmost to bring about the change they desire and all of this primarily out of a personal drive rather than just because of an external force. I'd also add self-discipline and a willingness to self-sacrifice into the mix personally.

When we recognize these acts and traits we see a person as strong - and they're universally human, whether a woman or a man happens to show them.
 
When people say they want a strong female character, what they're really saying is they want a female character capable of carrying out revenge fantasies on people they don't like. Character strength is Melissa McCarthy shooting a giant ghost in the dick with a proton pack.
 
The issue is that people don't know what the fuck they're talking about half the time. The corpo exec and the retarded cargo cultist gender studies writer hears "strong character" and thinks "physically indomitable badass who can do anything and breathes heavily while sticking out their jaw", which is where a lot of the confusion comes from. Strong characters, even strong male characters, don't have to ever engage in a fight scene to be "strong".

There's also a lot of confusion from audiences being retarded too. I think the oversaturation of twiggy five foot nothing girlboss characters has psyopped some people into thinking that portraying a woman being competent at anything vaguely "manly" is "woke garbage". Sort of like how Whedonesque quirk chungus humor has become so oversaturated that people are starting to believe that levity of any kind in an otherwise serious work is "millennial writing".
The greater a'tuin dijo:
The absence of terminally insecure penis envy based around constantly spiting and upstaging men.
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Coke-dusted Freudian hands typed this.
 
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The only two things that are required for people to like strong female characters is to have the character be actually likable and conventionally attractive. The common appeal to "realism" as to why characters like Rey don't work is retarded and counterintuitive. Suzuha from Steins;Gate does not realistically act like how a real woman would in her circumstances, but I'd be hard pressed if I knew anyone who dislikes her as a character and even if one did, it certainly isn't a common opinion.
 
I always bring up Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3. She is not traditionally attractive and can have an attitude, but in key moments in the story she acts like a good character. The revaluation scene in the car during the trip to Silent Hill. Her love for Harry does break or turn to hate. She understands and loves him more for his choices. Her drive for revenge against Claudia comes for her love for Harry. She at first doesn't trust Douglass which is natural, but she changes. When first faced with a monster she freaks out like a normal person would. She is an innocent person who has to go through nightmare-ish hell and (depending on the ending) comes out fine and grows.
 
Bad hollywood writers think a good strong female character is based on what or how she does something, but it’s almost entirely based on why she does something.

The bride (Kill Bill) was a super assassin and no one cared that she beat everyone despite her physical state because her story arc was about understandable human emotions.

Captain Marvel’s arc was powered by thinly veiled girl power.

Edit - This is true of strong male characters as well. Arnold Schwarzenegger played many action hero roles, but I would probably only classify Terminator 2 and Predator as good “strong male characters”. His movies generally relied on his build and star power over the writing of his characters.
 
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A character that is competent but realistically so, they still fuck up and have flaws. Mizu from Blue Eye Samurai is a decent example, she's incredibly competent but still gets injured in fights more often than not, and she's also arrogant and callous at times. I'm so tired of the "female character that's awesome all the time and never makes mistakes" trope. The show in general is pretty good. The villain is one of the best written I've seen from a Netflix special.
 
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