Okay, that's it.

[apocalypsos]

Tell me something awesome about a woman you love in any fandom. Wax poetic. I want to hear people talk about what they love about female characters. And try to pick female characters or women in RPF who haven't already gotten love so we can spread it around.

And no bashing other people's comments!

You know what? I'm picking Boo. Yeah, okay, she's a very tiny woman. Who cares? She's silly and fun and adorable, and looking at an icon of her always makes me feel better, and she learns how to be brave right before our eyes. I heart that so much that I really wish I had the time to rewatch Monsters Inc. before I leave for work, but I don't, damn it.

Now you go. :)

EDIT: Guys, if you want to do more than one character, go nuts. The more, the merrier, right? \o/

Comments

Doctor Who

[pescivendolo.livejournal.com]

I love Donna Noble. She's hilarious, quick-witted, snarky, loud, compassionate, and brilliant. She's more than a match for the Doctor. She doesn't let him take himself too seriously. She's also not afraid to hit him when he needs it. And she's gorgeous.

Re: Doctor Who

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

God, YESYESYES. I loved Rose and Martha, but Donna's my favorite New Who companion. She doesn't take his shit and he needs that by now. And I second the gorgeousness.

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

I love Tess from A Constant Gardener-- very much not afraid to stand up and speak her mind, even if it gets her laughed at or worse. She knows exactly what she wants and goes after it, and when she sees something awful going on, she works to stop it instead of just turning away.

[slashfairy.livejournal.com]

word. oh man, i watched that 5 or 6 times for her; read the book twice, for her.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

A new addition: Pepper Pots (movieverse).

I like her because she's not a kick-ass kung-fu chick, which appears to be the default setting for Strong Female Character these days, but she is unbelievably strong, quietly so, smart, caring, and she knows who she is and what she can realistically expect and do. I love her because she can run like a maniac in hells, she takes the Captain Sensible Option at all times, and is never at any point the damsel in distress.

SO MUCH *HEARTS*.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I loved Pepper Potts in the movie. She was kickass without actually kicking ass, which ... you're right, that doesn't get to be mutually exclusive quite as much as it should be.

[allegraconbrio.livejournal.com]

Yes, let's talk about awesome women. Boo is adorable and brave and I have not seen Monsters Inc. for years, but now I want to, like now.

I am going to start with a very unpopular in my area of fandom opinion, I ADORE Starbuck from BSG. I love her. She is strong and damaged and weak and horrible and then she as strong as hell when it counts and she is a big damned hero to me. I love her.

I may be back to love on other women, right now I am trying to decide. Women rock!

*buh*

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

There are places in BSG fandom that don't recognize Starbuck's absolute amazingness?

I don't think I want to know.

[girl-wonder.livejournal.com]

Cordelia Chase. I loved her in the first few seasons of Angel, when she was so brave and so charming, without ever losing the core of who she was. And she was always willing to call out other people on their issues.

[beautifulstars.livejournal.com]

Oh, I SO agree with this. Particularly in that last episode with Angel, which makes me weep like a baby.

[wiredwizard.livejournal.com]

Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully - she's gorgeous, she's smart & she can kick ass!

[xturtle.livejournal.com]

Jinx! Love your icon.

[xturtle.livejournal.com]

Dana Scully. Sure, the show's done, but it was my first fandom and I've found very few characters to rival her awesomeness since (one caveat: I deny the existence of XF beyond season 6; the shark, it was jumped). She took everything the crazy writers threw at her, and rarely if ever played the Martyr Card even though she was the Major Plot Twist punching bag for most of the series.

Sure, she's an obvious choice. But she'll always be my favorite.

[allegraconbrio.livejournal.com]

Scully rocks. No doubt.

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

One of my all time favorite female characters is The Boss from the Metal Gear Solid video games. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metal_Gear_Solid_3_characters#The_Boss) In her canon she manages to be one of the strongest and most decorated soldiers in the world without it being turned into "that's freaky, a woman using a gun!" She's calm and isn't forced into a sassy, witty place in order to be powerful. The seven foot plus main villain is so afraid of her that he reflexively backs away from her when she raises her voice. She's a mother figure without being reduced to being only that, and she's over forty. It doesn't get much better than that. :)

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Uhhhhhhh. She sounds like exactly the kind of character I get hideous crushes on. (Hi, Shoi!)

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

Faith the Vampire Slayer. Complicated and complex, not finding her true strength until she makes the choice to stop using her background as an excuse and turn her life around.

Always more interesting to me than Buffy ever could be.

[allegraconbrio.livejournal.com]

I always loved Faith so much more than Buffy. She is very complicated and not usually likeable, but when she got it together, she GOT it. Love her.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

Coreen Fennel! Yes, Vicki is Way Awesomer Than Pretty Much Anyone Ever, and everyone knows that. But Coreen is smart and resourceful and irrepressible and if she were any cuter our heads would literally explode. And she never ever gives up. And she's living in a Very Scary World backing up people who are much older and more experienced and she loves every minute of it. (Okay, almost every minute. The minutes where she's not actively about to die. And even those are kinda cool in retrospect.)

[ladyofluthien.livejournal.com]

Dang. I have to pick *one*?

Let's go with Eowyn from LOTR. She's strong, brave, and even with all the crap that happens to her, she keeps soldiering on. She kicks so much ass as Dernhelm (I read the trilogy after Fellowship came out). She doesn't have any special powers, she's a sucky cook, she has crushes on guys she can't have, and she's damn stubborn. She rules.

[st-aurafina.livejournal.com]

Eowyn is brilliant! She's tough and she rides and she can go to war and be freaked out by it all, and still keep on going. That's courage.

[earis.livejournal.com]

i Know it's a kid's show, but my favorite women and gals are the ladies from 'Avatar: The Last Airbender."

You'd think that in a show entirely devoted to this boy who is the last Airbender and must save the world from the eeeevil Firelord, that it would be more focused on guys, but the girls are just so f*ing AWESOME!

Doesn't matter whether they are good or evil, they rock the house.

Umm.. other women

Always have been a Tolkien fan, mostly because Tolkien was not really about the female empowerment and yet his female characters have become some of the earliest symbols of female empowerment in the fantasy genre. Eowyn, Galadriel, and Arwen are all awesome in the books; but there is also Luthien Tinuviel, Melian, Varda, Idril, and lots of other females in the 'verse who are powerful and strong and in control of their destinies.

I will always love Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, and Athena, and Laura Roslin. I like the BSG characters because they are people first and women second. No one ever says, "Roslin can't do this, she's a WIMAN!!" They have strengths and weaknesses and make good decisions and bad decisions, just like real people. (shock!)

And the girl in my icon, Utena, form the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. She's awesome too, because she doesn't let society's expections about gender get in the way of her self-interests, friendships, and future.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

the ladies from 'Avatar: The Last Airbender."

I just want to tell you how much I second that comment, seriously. Toph is the light of my life.

[nilchance.livejournal.com]

I love Laura Roslin from BSG. She's strong, ruthless when she has to be. She flexes with the wind rather than breaking. She's flawed. She loves Bill Adama but won't ever sleep with him, because it would endanger her people. She gets the giggles when she's nervous. I mean... *hands*

[allegraconbrio.livejournal.com]

Roslin is completely amazing. Yes. She is flawed and adorable and strong and yes with the love of Bill Adama. Neither of them will go there, but they love each other and it is adorable. They call each other in the morning. Eep, I loved that.

[newredshoes]

C.J. Cregg from The West Wing. The indomitable press secretary who showed me that dammit, it's not only okay, it's glorious to be six feet tall in politics. Women on TWW are smart, ferocious, loyal and hilarious without compromising themselves. And the men adore them for it too.

Piggybacking: Ainsley Hayes will dang your stuff up, and on national TV to boot.

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

C.J. Cregg from The West Wing.

I will never stop believing that CJ Cregg is the perfect woman. I would marry her in California and have like a million awesomely brilliant babies with her.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Ooo, ooo! I've got another one! Annie, from Being Human. She's intriguing and scared sometimes and brash other times and so very desperate for company and not all at once.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

This is the part where I do excited flailing that it's actually going to be a damn series so we get MORE ANNIE!

[pie-is-good.livejournal.com]

I love Claire, from Heroes. She can get a little annoying, sometimes, but she's a teenager. I can't blame her. When she needs to, she knows how to get what she wants done and tries to do the right thing.

I love a lot of DW female characters. Rose, Martha, Sarah Jane, Romana, Donna, Jenny...they're all strong females who won't take crap from the Doctor, for the most part, and are very sure of what they should be doing. Love 'em.

Pam, from The Office. When we first meet her, you love her, but you wanted her to grow up more and step out of her comfort zone. Now she's starting to, and she's Fancy New Beesly, and she's awesome.

Fiona from Burn Notice. That is a woman who can kick some serious ass.

I could go on. :)

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

Hear hear! I was just posting last week that the version of Heroes I'm watching is "Claire Bennet Is The Sanest Person On The Planet (God Help Us All)". Cheerleaders DO kick ass!

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm in. And oddly enough, I'm picking Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale. I just watched it for like...the millionth time this past friday (I'm a Bond fanatic since birth, pretty much) and she is magnificent. Brilliant, brave, and human. Her reaction when Bond is getting his ass kicked in the stairwell is to help him fight back, but she's not an agent, he's an accountant. She isn't trained to deal with that kind of violence. So, after it's all over she breaks down. But that doesn't stop her from completing her mission and actually pulling one over on EVERYONE, including MI6. I love her desperately.

She wasn't bad in the book, but nowhere near as awesome as in the movie. As far as book Bond Girls, I'd go with Pussy Galore or Tiffany Case for awesomeness. Both characters were way more bad-ass in the books than in the movies.

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

I will so second Vesper. Love her to pieces. :-)

QAF

[mercyisme.livejournal.com]

Debbie Novotny is awesome. She loves unconditionally, fights for what she believes in, raises not only her own but others' children, too. She's loud and crass and crude. And Debbie Novotny is not ashamed or embarrassed, ever. In conclusion, everybody should have a Debbie.

Re: QAF

[allegraconbrio.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, everyone should have a Debbie. SO many awesome women in the comments here, I am so spamming, but yes. I love her, she breaks my heart, makes me laugh and is strong as hell.

[isabeau.livejournal.com]

Abby Sciuto (NCIS) is made of endless amounts of awesome. Because she's really really good at what she does, and she's also a giant dork and completely adorable and I am totally not at all wanting a fic where she and Coreen from Blood Ties meet at a goth club and ... right.

[coolgrin.livejournal.com]

I was going to pick her too. She's smart and beautiful and caring without being a sap. She amazing and I want to be her best friend forever and always.

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

Detective Kay Howard, from Homicide: Life on the Street.

Amazing detective and then sergeant, but without being a total super woman. She had her flaws, but she never let them interfere with being good police. Let the little stuff slide in the squad room re: her gender, but would totally call people on their behaviour later.

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

I think I can safely say I will be alone on this BUT... Britney Spears!

Because she's been controlled and comodified since she was 10 years old, she's been held hostage in her own house by a sociopathic stalker, drugged, emotionally abused, had three mental breakdowns with the entire world (and CNN via helicoptor) watching, been forced into rehab for a drug addiction she didn't have, and struggled with a severe mental illness that no one (not her family, her record label, or her management) wanted to admit she had--all of that, and yet over the past few months, she's managed to turn her life around and make real progress in her career and her personal life.

Plus, her music is awesome (stfu, it IS) and she's one of the best performers ever and she is SO FUN to write as a character.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I could never ever hate Britney considering just how many of her songs are on the dance mix on my MP3 player. It's a lot of fun to get drunk and bop around the apartment to those. :)

[squigglepie.livejournal.com]

Miranda Priestly from the Devil Wears Prada movie. Not from the book, because I haven't read that. In the movie however, she is played as a woman who is strong, intelligent, witty, business-savvy and capable. She might not be the nicest character around, but she is one that has worked hard, and you don't give her respect so much as she takes it.

[shadow-phoenix2.livejournal.com]

Definitely agree here!
Miranda Priestly is someone I admire, which is strange because of how, well... bitchy... she can be. =P

Also Emily. Emily cracks me up. I think she's a very interesting character.

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait. Can I do two? If so, then I'm all over Zev from Lexx. Brought up in a box, trained from birth to be nothing but a subservient wife, and what does she do? Fights back, brings down the entire system that would have turned her into compost for rebelling against her fate, gets a kick ass new body that she's not afraid to use, and pretty much pwns both universes. All while wearing kick-ass boots and a torn-up wedding dress. God, I love her.

[poisontaster]

Dude. Zev fucking Bellringer from B3K, YES.

[rowanberries.livejournal.com]

OH OH OH.

Lisa Cuddy, from House. :D She's just so smart, and gives as good as she gets from House, and dominates the entire hospital while still managing to show us her vulnerable bits, and she's funny, and let's not forget, a sexy lady.

I kind of want to be her when I grow up.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

WORD.

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, only one?

But it's pretty inevitable I'm going to go for Toshiko Sato from Torchwood.

So very smart and so very damaged, with a sharp, sly sense of humour and the ability to take, "Oh, you are warped on the inside," as a compliment. And she was just learning to have faith and confidence in herself as a person, as well as a scientist, when I suddenly needed to STABBINATE THE WRITERS.

Also - BOOBIES!

ETA: Oh, if I'm allowed more than one?

Heris Serrano from Elizabeth Moon's Serrano Legacy books. Gives up everything she loves to save the people she's responsible for; discovers it did nothing to save her people; kicks fucking ass to help them and help herself, all the while dealing with a stifling family legacy.

Kathy Selden from Singin' in the Rain. She's got her self-respect and that comes before everything.

[wendelah1]

I love the Heris Serrano books. Kathy Seiden is fine by me, too. I have never seen Torchwood. I don't watch much TV any more.