In my second project, called Samurai Cheerleaders, I have a main character, named Nikki Bombshell, who is suppose to be a high school blond bimbo who wants to become a queen bee in order to fit in her miserable high school life. She joined a cheerleader squad, who turns out to be reincarnated samurai warriors who are in a secret war against another samurai cheerleader team to finish a battle, which they both lost in ancient Japan. And Nikki becomes their target after they believe she is their reincarnated enemy. In order to defend herself, her cheerleader captain starts to train her to become a samurai while Nikki does some cheer leading practices. Plus she gets into crazy ass situations. Now in the original draft, Nikki doesn't sound too much like a typical dumb blonde. She is girly who takes a lot of girl slang words, but she becomes self aware of the danger she gets in. Plus she kind of gets too serious near the end of the book. I did some research on stereotypical dumb blondes, but it is becoming difficult for me to understand how dumb Nikki should be as a dumb blonde. How do you think she should act as a dumb blonde at high school and in samurai fight scenes? I am just looking for some suggestions to brighten my ideas for the revised draft.
I'm... I'm not too sure how to answer this honestly. You pretty much lost me at Samurai Cheerleader, but I'll give the question some thinking time.
I'm confused as to why you're *trying* to have a stereotyped character. Stereotypes are usually things that people try to avoid.
She is meant to be a comic relief character. Plus the story is suppose to be action comedy. Its only purpose is to make readers laugh for entertainment.
Listen to some old George Burns and Gracie Allen routines. Gracie practically invented the dumb blonde, although in reality she was as shrewd as they come. Another one is Goldie Hawn in the 1960's. Her persona on Laugh-In was infectiously appealing, and purely an act. You can also search for dumb blonde jokes for ideas, like the one who locked her keys in the car. She was stranded for two hours before the rescue squad arrived and forced the lock, freeing her at last.
The fight scenes have to probably be kind of slap-sticky for this to work. People falling over and stuff. Maybe she tries to beat someone up with a balloon animal. There's also a difference between being slow on the uptake and pretending to be dumb. If she wants her antagonist(s) to underestimate her, she might as well act dumber than she really is. Watch that old Jessica Simpson reality show for inspiration, the one in which she wondered if there's chicken in the 'Chicken of the Sea' tuna.
What's the point of saying that? All you did was negatively comment on his idea, and try to make it sound worthless. It kinda sounded like bullying to me. Anyway, I like the idea. It sounds like one of those silly self-aware things that are usually pretty refreshing, and I would read it. A likeable character is always aware and involved in the plot. She must care, so that the reader cares. However, if it is necessary for your story that she be a little dumb, it's still workable. After getting in a heated argument with one of the allied Sumarai cheerleaders, she decides to smooth things over by making a sandwich for the cheerleader: "Here, I thought you would be, you know, hungry after practise. I didn't know if you liked un-pickled pickles or pickled pickles, so I just put both in." Or if the Sumarai refer to each other by their ancient names, the villain's name could be something hard to remember, like Kitsishoru. She could keep referring to him as: Kitty-Show-Room, Kitty-Guy, Kiss-Sho, even in passionate sentences: "Don't give up now. We can still stop that Kitty-Shoe!" Edited to say: This works much better when it bothers someone else that she says it wrong, and they keep correcting her. To sum it up: As long as she cares deeply about the outcome of the plot at all times, you can then just pepper funny things throughout her speech and activities.
I like the idea of her giving her enemies cute names. In the original draft, she does fear death, and she joined the cheer leading squad because she always been treated like an outcast at school for being dumb. She does care, but she sucks at everything, except cheer leading. Most of the characters are all girls and they are ruthless samurai warriors. And they used to been men before they were reborn as hot girls.
Hm. I don't think any story will get far if the protagonist is actually stupid, but a pretty girl can dumb herself down in order to fit in. If you haven't watched it, I recommend the movie 'Heathers' and the character of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder.
The whole point of the novel is to make readers laugh. Nikki is flat out dumb because she wasn't raise correctly. However she does have feelings and dreams. A dumb blond character I like is Jilian Russel Wilcox from Family Guy. She is a good parody of a typical bimbo.
This offended me on so many freaking levels. BUFFY DIDN'T MAKE THE TEAM! She got backup with Amy! And she's not stupid! On an on-topic note, @jazzabel is spot on with the Heathers thing.
Here is a link to the excerpt, which I just posted. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/samurai-cheerleaders-revised-first-chapter.128874/
Only someone who has never seen the show could make such a poorly-considered statement. Even if you're talking about the Kristy Swanson movie, she's not the comic relief. The whole movie is a comedy, and she rises (a little) above airhead status when push comes to bite. In the series, the only dumb blonde that comes to mind is Harmony. And even she had her moments. MilesTro: Sorry, I won't critique this here (and I think it's rather shabby to use a discussion thread to send prople to your critique thread), other than to say it;s a swing and a miss. It's one big, clumsy stereotype. Not comic, just shallow.
How about the samurai cheerleaders behave like men because they are reincarnated from typical samurai warrior men. And Nikki is the only girl in their squad who acts like a girl.
My only answer is to smoke something real good and only then will you find your answer, as only answer procured from being high will be enough to satisfy a question like this.
There's also Clover from Totally Spies. All she does is check out fashion and observe guys while she complete missions.
