Rambling January Day 8

[moonlettuce]

For Day 8, beren_writes wanted: I would love to know all about your favourite female character(s), please :). Comics or films or TV shows.

My awesome ladies, let me show you them :D



Ororo Munroe (X-Men 616!verse)
Ororo was probably the very first person I fell in love with when I opened a comic book.

Ororo is, in a word, amazing. When she had her powers ripped from her thanks to Forge's dickfoolery, she still continued to lead the X-Men. In fact, when Cyclops questioned her ability to lead them, the two of them faced off in a Danger Room simulation and she handed his ass to him. A depowered mutant with nothing more than her wits and her own strength took down a fully-powered Scott Summers and owned him, and the writers who tried to retcon that can fuck right off.

She's one of a handful of omega level mutants, powerful to the extreme. One of the things I hate about the X-Men movies is that they took such a brilliant character, with this epic backstory, and turned her into the almost caricature she is in the films.

This is Ororo. She's been a goddess who soars through the skies, a thief on the streets of Cairo, and the Grey King of the Hellfire Club. This is the woman both Loki and Dracula fell in love with, and I can absolutely understand why.




Kitty Pryde (X-Men 616!verse)
I adore Kitty. Part of the issue I have with the X-Men movies (and, oh lord, do I have issues with those movies) is that they have fucked over Kitty Pryde far too many times. Rogue's storyline in the first one? Fuck off. It's Kitty's. Sending Wolverine back in Days of Future Past? Fuck right off. Kitty is meant to go back. DoFP is a seminal storyline for Kitty Pryde, and they've given to Logan. Like there's not enough fucking Logan in the X-Men movies.

Anyway, I digress.

One of the things I love about Kitty is the streak of darkness she has in her. When Ogun kidnaps her and trains her up, he lets that dark streak out. The problem I think some writers have with Kitty is that they almost infantilise her back to when she first appeared in the X-Men. 13 and scared, but still willing to sneak on board a Hellfire Club vehicle to rescue Wolverine. It's part of the reason I didn't actually like how Whedon wrote her when he did the run on Astonishing. That, and Joss Whedon seems to have a fetish for putting Kitty with Piotr, and Piotr is a knob who needs to fuck off.

Kitty is one of those characters who will stand up for what she believes. The scene in God Loves, Man Kills where Kitty steps in front of Kurt when one of Stryker's people is about to shoot him and comments that "if it is a choice between your god and my friend, then I chose my friend" remains, to this day, what I believe is one of the most powerful scenes ever written in a comic. (However, I am also willing to admit that my feels for God Loves are wide and extreme, as it is, quite possibly, the best graphic ever created.)

Also, she's canonically (in the future) the first mutant President of the United States, which is just beautiful. (In my head, Pete Wisdom is the First Husband and grumbles about it every chance he can get.)




Melinda May (Marvel 199999!verse)
Melinda May, let me count the ways in which I love thee. The beautiful thing about May is that they've given her a storyline usually attributed to a man. She's a fighter with a past she won't talk about, and you know something bad happened, but she's trying to deny her nature due to it. If you watch action movies, it's pretty much a generic tagline for many action heroes. But Agents of SHIELD has chosen to give it to the female character and it just works. May is deadpan awesome and six steps ahead of everyone else, and Ming-Na Wen plays her perfectly.




Jemma Simmons (Marvel 199999!verse)
Jemma! I'm honestly not sure what to say about Simmons apart from she's one of the ScienceBabies and I genuinely don't understand people who don't like her. She's adorable and awesome and uses her Britishness against people *\o/*




Natasha Romanoff (Marvel 199999!verse)
What isn't there to love about Natasha? The entire scene in Iron Man 2 where she just sweeps through the guards remains one of the most perfect scenes in the MCU. She's one of SHIELD's most lethal weapons, and has the wits and cunning to fool the Trickster.

People who say that Natasha was 'tokenism' in the Avengers really piss me of, because all it shows is that they have no knowledge of the 'verse, and no brains to watch the movie and understand that Natasha is one of the strongest characters in it. I've seen people decry her for being scared when the Hulk came after her. Hello? It's the motherfucking Hulk. You'd have to be an utter moron not to be scared if he came after you. Saying she's not strong because she was scared is stupid. Where Natasha's strength lies is that she got up and carried on, and went and fought Barton and got him back even though she was terrified after the Hulk.

Natasha Romanoff saved the world and people who deny that or claim that she didn't do anything need to check themselves.




Pepper Potts (Marvel 199999!verse)
Pepper owned it in Iron Man 3. With extremis and the end of that movie, you can absolutely see Rescue in the MCU'verse. Also, let's be honest, she put up with Tony Stark's shit through everything. That alone deserves a medal.




Melissa McCall (Teen Wolf)
Melissa is just perfection. From her fantastic relationship with Scott to the way she takes in Isaac. The thing I love about Melissa is they don't write her as being this fearless person, they write her as being someone who may be scared, but will do what she needs to do anyway. Melissa is one of my favourite characters on the show and she is just awesome. (And in total agreement with Peter Hale, she's gorgeous :D)




Kate Argent (Teen Wolf)
Yes, she was the ‘bad’ guy, but Kate was just so wonderfully unapologetic about what she did that I can’t help but love her as a character. Seduce a teenage werewolf to gain his trust? Hell yeah! Burn an entire family to the ground? Bring it on! Tie someone up half-naked and torture them? Twice on a Sunday, baby! I can't tell if I love to hate her or just love her, but there was something about Kate Argent that just made me happy when she was on screen.




Tara McClay (Buffy)
I say nothing about Tara beyond <3




Lilah Morgan (Angel)
Oh, Lilah. Lilah made no apologies about who she was. Yes, she worked for an evil law firm, but that's a decision she made, and she wasn't going to say sorry for it.

I would have given anything for them to not kill off Lilah and keep her and Wesley together in a wonderful relationship where they end up loving each other but won't admit it.




Annja Creed (Alex Archer's Rogue Angel series)
Annja is the lead character in the Rogue Angel series by Alex Archer. (Alex Archer is actually the penname for a group of writers who write these novels and not an actual person.) Annja is an archaeologist who ends up finding part of Joan of Arc's sword and meeting Joan's mentor, Roux (who has been alive since Joan was killed and the sword shattered). Roux takes her to where he has gathered the rest of the sword, and with Annja's missing last piece, the word reforms and bonds itself to her, thereby giving her a magical sword she can call on when she needs it. (Yes, just suspend your imagination, it'll be fine.)

Annja's adventures are fun. She goes around the world and gets into mystical (and occasionally non-mystical) adventures. The thing I like about Annja is the writer's aren't afraid to have a female character who is sexual, and nothing bad happens because of her having sex. It's a horrible trope to almost 'punish' female characters who have the audacity to be sexual beings, by something bad happening because they fell for someone, or decided to have no-strings sex for a night. They don't do that with Annja. She has an adventures, it fades to black on her having sex with someone she meets in the book at some point, and she carries on having the adventure. No longing angst, it just happens. Which is, strangely, kind of rare.

The books are fluff. They're not something you need to tax your brain on, but they're fun and enjoyable. And, dude, who doesn't want to read about one woman's adventures with her magical sword :D




Mercy Thompson (Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series)
Mercy is a werecoyote and the lead of the Mercy Thompson novels. I find it amazingly easy to lose myself in those novels and I love Mercy as a character. Her relationship with Adam (the Alpha of the wolf pack who lives to her) is two parts adorable and two part hilarious to watch, and I found myself rooting for them from the beginning. The appeal of her character is that she has both strength and vulnerability, and just kicks ass when she needs to.




Donna Noble (Doctor Who)
Okay, so I didn't expect to love Donna as much as I did. I didn't actually like the character in The Runaway Bride; I found her too close to some of Catherine Tate's characters that I really don't like. But once it hit the series, Donnas was amazing. She put up with no shit from The Doctor, which is what he really needs. He doesn't need someone to agree constantly, or to just let him go off an do whatever. He needs someone who will pull him back and tell him 'No' at times, and Donna did that. And I will forever hate how they ended Donna's storyline. All of the things she did and the things that she saw and the person she became, just ripped away. It was, I think, the cruelest ending I've ever seen to a companion.




Rosalita Sanchez (Tremors: the Series)
The thing I loved about Rosalita is that she took no shit. Graboids? Took no shit. Tyler Reed? Absolutely took no shit.

The regret I have about Tremors, is that they cancelled it so early and we only got the 13 episodes, so we never found out exactly why Rosalita ended up in Perfection and what she had in her history that prompted her to go there.




Zoe Washburne (Firefly)
I loved everything about Zoe. I loved all of the characters in Firefly, but Zoe? There's something awesome about Zoe. She's not afraid to shoot when she has to, and she's not afraid to tell Mal he's being an idiot when she has to. Her relationship with Wash was, I believe, to this day, one of the most perfect marriages ever portrayed on screen.


Looking at the above, I think the over-riding theme linking all of these character together, is that they are unapologetic about who they are, and about the side they end up on and the actions they take. They simply are who they are, and they do what they need to do, and I love them all for it *\o/*

Comments

[realpestilence]

I think Tara was a highly underutilitzed character who got sacrificed to developing Willow's storyline. It's a shame, as she had a quieter strength than we were used to seeing-sweet but with the potential for steel underneath. An earth mother type

I also liked Lilah a lot, and her relationship with Wesley. I liked that they were drawn to each other despite knowing what a bad idea it was; and that neither one was likely to change the other much, and it didn't matter. You know how you get those occasional tv or movie couples that ~look good together, like they could be real? Yeah, those two.

[moonlettuce]

I adored Tara, from the moment she appeared. And Amber Benson is just such a sweetheart, as well :D

[realpestilence]

I think that, even though Tara was an age peer, she had the potential to be for the group what Joyce was until she died. A motherly, stablizing, non-judgemental influence from someone who was used to making the best use of what power she had. An adult woman, to balance Giles and his influence.