I was already in pain, then something annoyed me.

[lizbee]

Taking the day off work to have my jaw checked out. As I spent three hours yesterday waiting for work to come, I don't think they'll miss me.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ANNOYING! The Female Character Flow Chart. This is supposed to demonstrate whether or not a female character is "strong" or actually strong. What it boils down to is, DON'T WRITE WOMEN, THEY ALL SUCK. Which is probably not the feminist message intended.

I tried to trace along Romana, right? TV-canon only. Carries her own story? Yes. Three dimensional? NOT SO MUCH. Not a villain. Not a love interest. Part of the team. What is her role? Er, leader, voice of reason, token female, emotional core. Sorry, I can only pick one. Okay, leader. Does she want a baby? Canon has little to say on the topic, but "no" is not an option. THANKS, FLOWCHART! I choose "not right now". She does not get pregnant. She is not in a horror story, except for "State of Decay" (which leads her to being The Final Girl, such as that famously one-dimensional character, Ellen Ripley). Okay. Not in a horror story, right. She's not violent. Is she nearly perfect? Well, I'm a bit biased, so I'll go both ways.

We wind up with three options: Romana's either a Wise Crone (...what? She's in her second century!), a Mary Sue or a Damsel in Distress.

And that's a fairly simplistic character from a 1970s children's show. (OKAY, family show.) That that degree of multiple choices and oversimplification is necessary to make the flowchart work means it's not so much a commentary on sexism in storytelling, as a participant.

SO MUCH PAIN MAKES ME CRANKY, GUYS, I'M JUST SAYING.

Comments

[kerravonsen]

Well... it would have made the chart more complicated to have an option everywhere saying "not applicable". Maybe one could take it as read that if none of the multiple choices apply, then the character has short-circuited the cliches.

[kerravonsen]

Okay, now I've actually looked at it... Uhura is useless? Er, since when? (boggles)

[nam_jai]

Well, if Ripley's not three-dimensional, I guess I was being too generous following that strand with some characters I was trying. But for those I decided to go with "No" to three-dimensional, I kept getting run aground on "What is her main role?" I mean, where does Susan fit, for instance? I decided Barbara counted as "Voice of reason," but whatever her "MO" may be, I don't see it in the options offered. She's intelligent, but I wouldn't call her shy, and the other two -- "Henpecking" or "Sarcasm" -- don't fit at all. Unless we have to call her arguments with the Doctor "henpecking," and that's going to piss me off.

Okay, now I'm going to pretend those characters I thought were three-dimensional are not, and see where I end up.

[lizzieladie]

So Buffy is either a strong female character or a dead slut depending on whether or not you think she represents an idea, and Granny Weatherwax comes out as a strong female character hands down. But what really disturbed me was following River through the sequence. I did end up in the same place as her actual picture, but I had to go through the age question for which the options were "older" "younger" and "same age." Since River is their example of same age, I'm assuming what they mean by it is someone in their early twenties, but it's fairly disturbing that that's their point of reference for women.

[infiniteviking]

Any flowchart describing TOS!Uhura as useless is itself useless in my book. *kicks it*

At least Romana gets to share that wise-crone category with Guinan. Because Guinan's over twenty-five so she's obvsly a crone, right?

*headdesk*

[akashasheiress]

Not to mention that 'flow charts' kind of miss the point.

[fallingtowers]

I, too, gnashed my teeth when I saw this chart. It is one thing to warn writers of stereotypes when creating female characters and quite another to reduce every female character to a stereotype. And why Yoko One, who isn't even fictional, pops up on the chart is quite beyond me.