This is a gentle reminder to please keep conversations directed at the topic at hand …
The topic of what is or isn’t allowed in today’s media belongs elsewhere.
Let’s prevent this thread from being closed down.
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Make ugly women! Make unattractive women! Make old women! Make women past their prime! No one else is going to do it but you!
I love Mad Max: Fury Road. Old women, young women! Women that can’t fight at all, women that can shoot as good as any black ops sniper. Women that want a romance, women that wouldn’t touch another person if they were the last thing on earth. Pale women, dark women. Women that are abled, women that are disabled. Normal women, strange women.
Lone women who are the last of their kinds, women who love community, women who are protectors of life, women who are just trying to get by, bandit queens, pious knights, wild bikers, famous heroes, famed travellers, martial artists, therapists, doctors, lawyers, housewives, village elders, beggars, florists, engineers, astronauts, generals, vigilantes. Write women of a wide variety of ages and dreams.
Women that fight for women! Women that talk to other women and share their dreams and hopes with other women. Women whose personal growth or juxtaposition in the story doesn’t revolve around a man or a child. Women are roughly half the population of this planet. Start writing them like they are.
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It may sound counter-intuitive, but the best way to create strength in a character is for them to start weak and then to grow. Having a moral blind spot is crucial for a character’s development. In your approach to creating strong characters, I would focus on their weaknesses and how they overcome those weaknesses. That’s true strength.
If you wish to add a character in the story who is already strong, then that’s fine, but that puts them more in the ‘mentor’ position and it means they can’t develop nearly as much.
It’s also important to keep in mind that you can have a physically strong character with glaring personality flaws or a mental genius who can’t handle social situations etc. This allows characters to have both strengths and weaknesses, and room to grow.
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This is a gentle reminder to please keep conversations directed at the topic at hand and not at the individuals themselves. Focusing replies on the individuals themselves instead of the topic at hand can lead to friction between members and often causes the thread to derail.
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Sniping back and forth will often lead to the system closing the thread down, let’s avoid this if we can.
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Honestly I think that the term “strong,” can be kind of misleading. We can be talking about strength that the character possesses, or we could be talking about the strength of the portrayal of a female character. Personally I think that a realistic representation of women is more important than a “strong” one.
Of course real women are strong. So a realistic representation of a woman would include some strength. It would also include some weakness. Someone mentioned Wonder Woman, and Black Widow above. Honestly I don’t think either of those are good representations of women. For the same reason that allllll of the male superheroes aren’t great representations of men. They’re too damn perfect.
Let’s not even get into the physical side of things. Just judge them on their actions, and you’ll find that they’re always brave, smart, kind, and sensitive all the time. Maybe you’ll see a few seconds of hesitation here or there just for dramatic purposes, but they’ll never be cruel, or selfish or cowardly. That’s an impossible standard to hold yourself up to. The beauty standards are bad enough. I don’t need my media telling me that on top of always being beautifully dressed, done, and made-up I also have to be the smartest, kindest, bravest, and most mature person in every room I walk into.
I am not those things, and yet I drive myself crazy trying to be.
Give me the female Walter White. A woman who has her own strength, and her own goals, but also has the flaws to betray people who trust her, and put her family at risk, and let an innocent person die in her pursuit of those goals.
If you think about all the great male characters we’ve had on television lately or in other media in the past it’s their flaws as much or more than their strengths that make them so interesting. I personally would love to see some female characters like that.
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One problem I find is that when you have any character (female or otherwise) who is not the main character, it’s easy for the author to let the plot push that character around - to make things happen to the secondary character, in order to further the MC’s plot. So the 2ndary character becomes ‘weak’ or passive.
The classic example is the sidekick who gets captured by the bad guy, just so the hero will have to rescue them.
I think it’s easiest to solve this by giving the character motivations of their own. Make them a character and not just a plot device. If your 2ndaries have their own goals and reasons, it’s harder to force them into passive or ‘weak’ roles.
A current ‘strong female character’ who I love is Simone on the TV show DAS BOOT. Anyone else watching this? It’s on Hulu in the US. She makes some iffy decisions and has blind spots and flaws, but damn - that woman has nerves of steel.
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This reminds me of the protagonist in the fantasy series I’m currently reading. It’s definitely a female power fantasy as the heroine is a bit overpowered compared to everyone around her. And because of that she’s brash and fearless. This also makes her impulsive and vengeful, and these traits at times come back to bite her in very painful ways, which brings her back down to earth. Her actions very much have consequences. Her companions try to temper her, but aren’t always entirely successful. She grows as a person through the series, but the core of who she is doesn’t change. If anyone is interested it’s Rosie Scott’s Six Elements series; the first book is Fire:
I’ll also note that there are numerous gay and bi characters spread throughout the books, including among her close companions.
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But I’d bet the heroine is still straight as an arrow or just a bit bi-curious. Now what I think would be more interesting to read is if the protagonist themselves would be gay without it being the main focus or it written in overly sexualized way… I don’t think I’ve ever read a book which I could bring up as a good example here.
(And sorry for being offtopic here, honestly I don’t feel like I could add anything new to the original topic).
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Straight as an arrow.
I hear you. Having representation is not the same as getting to be the star of the show.
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In my opinion, any female character that embraces her feminine side, regardless of who she might be. Who says a female warrior has to be brawny and act more like what most would consider “masculine”? I find that trend very odd. Wouldn’t a strong FEMALE warrior, for example, be a female warrior who is still feminine? At least that’s how I see it. By making any “strong” female character more what most would consider “masculine”, aren’t you just saying masculine=strong, feminine=weak? Like how often do you see “strong” male characters portrayed as very feminine? Whether physically “strong” or in some other way, I’ve personally never seen it tbh.
I think most portrayals of Lara Croft in games between 2000-2009 is a perfect example of a “strong” female character, who is also very feminine, and I would argue it’s because she is very feminine that she is a “strong” female character. Just as one example. I can imagine some people would disagree with this though.
That’s just how I see it personally…
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From my experiences with people in real life who I consider strong (regardless of gender) their strength is revealed to me gradually, through their actions and the way they deal with particular situations. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone and immediately thought of them as extremely strong minded. It’s as I get to know people, discover more of their life story, notice the way they deal with what life throws at them, how they treat others, etc, that their strength begins to surface. No one who’s truly extremely strong has the need to show other people that they’re extremely strong, and so you won’t always see it at first.
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what if a female doesnt have a ‘feminine’ side to her ? what is she supposed to do ? shake them tits to show she is a women ? 
Lara croft was made by men for mens . I remember my brother playing the older Tomb Raider and drooling .
I think most peoples first gotta get out of the mindset that feminine for exemple only apply to womens, and masculine only apply to mens .
Once you got your brain back from those stereotype, then you can see ‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’ as more a ‘Skirt’ and a ‘pair of pants’ .
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I’d say to make the character grows like you can start with a total loser or a poor helpless little girl as long as you developpe her, make her change, make her overcome her flaws.
Something I rarely see people pointing out is humor. I don’t know if this could be considered as a strong trait but I think in books we lack of female characters who make us laugh and have a sense of humor.
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I see what you’re saying, but my whole point is that we’re already way past that point. To the point where a “strong” female character being portrayed as feminine is more rare than not. Meanwhile the opposite is not true for male characters, and I just don’t really understand how people fail to see the hypocrisy there.
And I wouldn’t say it’s very feminine to “shake them tits to show she is a woman”, I would argue the opposite.
I would also argue that in the pursuit of “empowering” women, it’s just turned in to; “make women more like men”, and I just think that’s wrong on so many levels. But that’s probably a bit off-topic.
And as for the Tomb Raider stuff… I mean sure, in the early adaptations, pre~2000, her pixelated and squared model was certainly well endowed, if you can call it that. The games weren’t made just by men though, ever. Since the very conception of the idea of Lara Croft, there were women working on the game as well as men.
And I always found it weird that people react so strongly to attractive female characters with perhaps larger than average breasts… yet no one ever batted an eye at males with bulging muscles(not saying people should), which is also very clearly not the average physique for males.
I could speculate more(and I have, plenty)as to why there is such a strong reaction to this specific, very rare occurrence in games(proportionally). But that would probably also be a bit off-topic, so I’m just gonna leave it at that.
And we’ll probably just have to agree to disagree on the whole feminine/masculine thing.
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Let me take your Lara Croft example to another level, and the discussion back to topic^^. As much as I agree with @E_RedMark regarding the old Lara. She was optical a Barbie a woman that in real life can’t exist, due to measurement and amount of organs that should fit into a body. So she is definetly not an example for a strong women because she could not exist in real life. Muscular men, are another thing, they might exist in real life, but are just not common. But even they were made for men, so why should we women complain? No one said that no woman was involved on making the game, it might be a surprise but most game developers are working on small parts of a big project to make money, they do not want to spread ideas or ideals. It is more the other way round, the changed reality mirrors in the games.
That brings me to the new Lara Croft, which I would a fitting example for a strong woman. She gets hurt, she gets lost, she is sometimes near to giving up, but she goes on, because she needs to. She lets go her own needs and whims to do what has to be done, thats the classical hero trait. It is basically the opposite to what the disney princesses say in Wreck it Ralph 2. I do not know the exact english words, since I have seen it with my daughter. But in the german versio they ask if the people think that a strong man solved her problems and that made her a princess. I think a strong woman is one to be able to solve her problems on herself. Not alone, but because she intends to, not some other decide for her that it is time to solve problems. So asking for help, may also be a sign to being strong.
So nearly every woman can be a strong woman. Even the prostitute who goes to work not for drugs but to get money and a better life for her child. In my opinion it has a lot to do with problem solving, but that might just be my opinion
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I do always find it ironic that some people throw the Disney Princesses as bad role models when most of them are very competent in their own right. Outside maybe some of the oldest like Snow White and Arora (though I haven’t seen the new version of her yet) but all have great qualities and aspects to their character.
Wonder Woman would be my favourite example of a strong character who doesn’t sacrifice her femininity, especially the animated Justice League and Gal Godot incarnations.
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Except she goes into battle with her skin bare and in high heels. There’s “feminine” and “basic common sense goes out the window for sexualisation”, just like with early Lara Croft.
I love… like, all the female characters in Mad Mad: Fury Road. Old women, young women. Women that can’t fight, women that could beat a man’s ass six ways to Sunday. Women who refuse to offer forgiveness, women who believe in the inherent goodness of people. Women looking for love and women who wouldn’t dare. Women with prosthetics and women who count bullets and women who love plants. Women who have their own goals that do not revolve around a man.
God, please watch Mad Max: Fury Road. I can’t press this enough. I took a bunch of women including my mother to see it and half of them were in tears by the end just out of sheer joy to see so many different and yet realistic female characters, wearing things that made sense, doing things that made sense. God! Women!
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Because she and her fellow Amazonians have super strength. Also it depends what version of Diana you’re talking about. I loved 2017’s Wonder Woman with Gal Godot because it didn’t have to be a feminist or male bashing piece, it just had Diana being brave and respectful and beautiful and powerful and falling for Steve in her own terms whilst learning about his world through him - and yes there were a few little jokes about guys but they were always used in the right context, same as 2018’s Black Panther did.
Wonder Woman is sexy sure, but it’s not the sole thing that defines her, same as Lara Croft as she’s generally written today.
…I probably do need to watch Fury Road at some point though. 
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btw I never said Disney princesses were a bad example. I just commented on the line in the film. Some of the princesses are a real good example for strong women. Especially the newer ones.
Fury road was a really good film
One of the best movies of the last ten years. Probably the best. Watch it as soon as you can.
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