No, it doesn't, you're right. And males get to be any combination of traits while still being strong and masculine, but when females are protrayed as strong, they often get only those traits or variations thereof.
It makes sense that these characters are unemotional because by process of elimination, those who get really upset over tragedy, or who get traumatized more easily, are the ones who were already weeded out of the running one way or the other. It's whoever's left standing that's going to stand against the dark lord or whatever. And lets face it, most fantasy is about combating a big bad. If we're talking non fantasy/sci fi, then female protags tend to be really dependent and stereotypically feminine.
This is starting to remind me of my secondary character in my WIP. 1 Star General Zlada "Red Wolf" Volkov. If being a leader, adept sniper hasn't made her a strong female throughout her service career 26th-28th Centuries. Add on the fact that at one point she was raped by a 3 star enemy general and beat him to death. Now she is fairly cold and less outspoken after that traumatic affair, which is uncanny considering how much death and destruction she has been around since be a young girl and losing her parents. Another MC of mine is literally afraid of just how numbed out she is when she doesn't even care that the ship left in her command is being hit with all manner of nonsense. She doesn't even blink, but simply issues out an order here and there. All the while coldly glaring the challenging force whaling the shit out of the warship. So yeah you can have a strong female character that kinda acts like the stereotypical Cold Hard Man. It just doesn't happen very often.
Katniss wasn't strong. She was more of a figurehead. There to be "inspiring". In the movies she would get her ass kicked and a random black dude would just come along and save her. Mutiple times. I kept turning to my brother and saying when is she gonna start fighting and kicking ass?! And he said she's not a fighter! And I was saying THIS is the strong female character everybody's raving about?! Hah? She just stood around, and talked in a dull voice.
This only makes sense if you associate strength with physical violence, and even then only if you associate it as well with never losing (since Katniss does win physically at times as well). Being a strong character doesn't mean being able to go and beat up everyone else in the story. It can be emotional strength, moral strength, a driving force in the direction of the story, and so on. You could easily have a strong character who would never win a physical confrontation of any kind.
You do understand that Lyrical probably wasn't talking about the female character is isn't physically strong, but strong in other ways. Seeing how she said the following: "I, for one, am sick to death of reading "strong" female characters who are just males without the dangly bits." Then said: "Katniss is exactly the kind of "strong" female character I am sick of." Katniss gets physically overpowered by this kid: Gets completely dominated, then saved by random black dude no. 78 who reduces the same girl who humiliated Katniss into a crying, helpless child and kills her by ...slamming her three times. What does that say about Katniss then? I know she doesn't have to be physically strong, but from the hype she was getting I thought she'd be y'know... good. Better than that anyway. She just sits there on the grass with her usual bland expression. So that's not a "man without dangly bits" , but just a boring girl. If she was portrayed as a stereotypical male action hero, she'd be the one doing the slamming.
Your biggest problem is probably that you have 16 main characters. That doesn't even make sense. I don't think I could keep 16 MCs straight. And I'm talking as a reader. It's just too many. Asking a reader to connect and care about that many characters is a lot. And those are just your MCs. Honestly, I love a big cast of characters, but you just can't tell 16 stories at once. There's just no way to develop that many main characters in one story. You're worried about how your female characters are coming across, and you should because you have 7 of them. I just can't imagine 16 main characters in one story. I think you really need to think about what story you are trying to tell and which characters are important to THIS story. If you want strong characters, male or female, don't give them so many other characters to compete with to get the readers attention. I don't even have 16 friends. Another sign that you have too many characters is that while writing the actual story, you feel pulled away from it to write more backstory. Backstory is only important if it is important to the actual story. You can't possibly expect a reader to care about this many characters in one story. And you've given them all detailed backstories? Why? As you say, you're attention is already divided between the story and all these backstories. Stop writing backstories. That isn't going to help you figure out how to fit so many main characters into one story. Have you ever read a book with 16 main characters? I'm guessing not, and you should think about that. Perhaps, if you mesh some of these characters together, they will be stronger and more along the lines of how you imagine them to be. And if you are still struggling with your female characters after you sort out which of them are important to the story, it might help to picture a strong woman you know in real life and how she would handle the situations in your novel.
@Phil Mitchell I would have to agree with you on that one. Katniss was just a 'figure head', and always had to get rescued by someone else.
Lord of the Rings has 8main characters, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time has 12, Game of Thrones has about 50 . There are a number of fantasy novels with a large number of main characters that the reader will care about. It's not how many there are really but are they written well enough so that the reader does care about them and that's what I'm trying to do. Write them well enough that you can care about them.
I think the key is structure. You have to structure around them well. I think GOT has about 3-10 main mains though. Tyrion, Daenyrys, Ned, those ones that are almost in all/all episodes.
When my husband was reading ASOIAF, he said he simply skipped the POV chapters of the characters he didn't care about, such as Dany. Obviously do your best to make them all interesting, but the more characters there are, the bigger the challenge.
Clearly it's impossible to satisfy everyone, just look at Lara Croft (Tomb Raider). The original creator Toby Gard walked out after the second game because he thought she was being overly sexualised and the last two reboot games were criticised by feminists because she was too aggressive. The feminists want a stronger Lara, then go all over the top when a murderous survivor arrives on the scene who kills every bloke she bumps into. I don't get it.
I was thinking of the book more than the TV show (I haven't seen the TV show - Shock! Horror!!). I suppose it comes down to what constitutes a main character. I had always thought that a main character is a character who features prominently throughout the story and contributes to driving the plot forward. Each of my 16 characters is featured prominently throughout and drives the plot forward at various points (or that's the plan at least) and while it isn't necessarily told from each of their POV they are key to the story and have their own story arc and obstacles to overcome
And then there are women gamers who like both. Tomb Raider II was my favorite as a kid. I adored Lara and didn't even pay attention to her clothing 'cause, well, I was busy playing the game. I also love the reboot. Yeah, she kills a bunch of bad guys (but I'd rather kill them than animals, like in the older games) 'cause that's a thing in a lot of games like that. Nathan Drake kills a lot of bad guys too. Don't get me started on the trail of corpses I leave behind in Dark Souls or Assassin's Creed. So the new Lara is a combination of a video game character to allow the game play to happen as well as a fictional character whose personality and story are interwoven with the game play. It's a balancing act.
You really don't get it, or you're being rhetorical? I mean... do you see "strength" in being murderous and killing everyone?
Critiques like that are boring. Talk to me about story. About ways to improve it in context. Now you're speaking my language.
But isn't Lara a bad example of a strong character in this discussion anyway? We're talking about a game play mechanic. They could've made Lara a chess master whose strength is in her kindness or something, but that would've resulted in a different game. When you set out to make a violent video game, the playable character kind of has to be violent and aggressive, although let it be noted that in Tomb Raider Lara is first a reluctant killer: it's her origin story and I feel the developers implemented as much growth as they could without sacrificing game play. She doesn't first enjoy it, she's shocked, but she keeps getting attacked when she tries to help her friends and she (= the player) responds by shooting back. When you get better and know you will be killed if you don't react first, you start shooting preemptively. So complaining Lara is too aggressive is pointless because she couldn't be any other way except aggressive (what is "too aggressive" anyway?) if the game company wanted to release a game that includes shooting in addition to puzzles.
They put her in kill or be killed situations. So whether or not that's "strength" is irrelevant. Story trumps ideology. They're building her up to become the already rich aristocrat who chooses to kill people and animals in order to fill her trophy room with rare ancient items. Y'know, Lara Croft.
I don't play the game, so I don't know about the character - I was just reacting to the dichotomy presented in the post.
Yeah, I probably should've quoted @MarcT again rather than you. I find it difficult to use her as an example when we're talking about strong female characters in fiction what with her being a character in an action video game where very different rules apply than in TV/movies or literature.
I think that makes sense - most RPG/action-based games have heroes with remarkably psychotic views on human life. The solution to problems in a first-person-SHOOTER game are likely going to involve some shooting...
Maybe the problems from this stem from the 'strong' part of strong female characters. One of the meanings of strength is physical power, and that definition bleeds into what it means to be a strong character. Maybe instead of making strong characters, we should focus on 'capable' characters? Capable with dealing with stress, getting through tough situations, etc. Just a thought.
That was mentioned on the first page, I think? I think we first have to decide what word "strong" modifies - "female" or "character". Like, a strong character could just be one that's really well characterized, with realistic, interesting, consistent behaviour and dialogue. And there are enough female characters that don't fit that criteria that I think it's a worthwhile goal for a writer. But then there are strongly portrayed characters who may be "weak" by some standards, "strong" by others - like someone who's physically strong but is murderous and psychotic doesn't seem "strong" to me... So, yeah, a term that needs some unpacking, for sure.
