World Enough and Time

From The Fannish Five: Name five kickass female characters.

I take it that for the purposes of this question, "kickass" means: "Interesting, powerful, strong in character."

Ten or twenty years ago or so I might have said there were none, except in comics: I was thoroughly disgusted with the depiction of women in television and movies. Women in movies are still terrible - and don't get me started on my opinion of Princess Leia! - but there are some great women on TV now.

( Books... )

( Comics... )

A while ago I said I wanted to write a list of my favourite women in fiction - that is, fictional characters, not writers - and some of you encouraged me, and I want the challenge.

It's a tough one. For reasons I've never fully understood, women in fiction aren't as strongly drawn as men in fiction. Fewer of them are memorable. More of them are viewpoint characters rather than the instigators of action. Of the strong females, there are a lot I simply dislike. It doesn't seem to make any difference whether the sources are by women or men. I can think of no women in literature that I think have the stature of a Lymond, a Gen, a Miles Vorkosigan, or a Sydney Carton. Why not? I don't know.

Karin Lowachee had an interesting comment when I heard her read in Toronto. She had read a story called "This Ink Feels Like Sorrow", a first-person narrative by a twin about his now-dead twin. Both were male. Someone in the audience said that they had to keep reminding themselves that the narrator was male; they had jumped to the conclusion that the narrator was female, but it is clear in the story that he was not. Karin Lowachee's answer was to say that she wished she could write a more maculine male voice. I think she does fine - I think the problem in this instance was that she had talked right before the story about how in Inuit culture, tattooists are traditionally female, so we were primed to expect a female tattooist/narrator.

However, I found it interesting that she said "I wish I could write the male voice" rather than choosing a female narrator/protagonist. I'm not saying she should do so - just that it's interesting that this isn't something she would consider.

There's also the question of type of fiction we're discussing. On the whole, the world of prose does worst with women and their stories, in my opinion. Most of the female characters I really like are from comics - traditionally a bastion of male sexism, but also a treasure-trove of strong, well-characterized women. (And yes, of sexism too: nothing is as simple as it might be.) I'd have said I didn't like women in movies and TV, but there are always exceptions, and in the past five years, there have been more and more exceptions.

So: who to pick? I gave myself the challenge of picking only one name from any given author, so I had to choose which woman to pick from the works of Dorothy Dunnett - Kate Somerville? Sybilla Semple? Philippa Somerville? All contenders. And it's impossible to choose among them. And which woman would I choose from Firefly, where I adore them all - ? And yet, it must be confessed, my favourite character is still Mal Reynolds. Still. To have four women on the same show, all of which I adore, and which have very different personalities - it's unprecedented. Still.

So I decided to pick five women from each of three media: televison, comics, and books.

( the best female characters in television )