How can we write when our tropes are burning?

[tielan]

Lately overheard in fandom:

OVERTHINKINGIT: Tell me, what do you do with female characters?
FAN 1: Burn them!
OVERTHINKINGIT: And what do you burn apart from women?
FAN 1: More women.
FAN 2: Tropes.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Good, now why are female characters worthless?
FAN 2: Because...they're tropes?
OVERTHINKINGIT: So, how do you tell if a female character is a trope?
FAN 1: She fits into your handy female character flowchart with terms that were totes not stolen from TV tropes.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Ah, but now, can you not also have male characters who are tropes?
FAN 1: Oh...um...yeah, I guess.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Are all tropes bad?
FAN 2: When they apply to female characters!
OVERTHINKINGIT: What else is bad?
FAN 1: Het fic.
FAN 2: People who complain about race representation.
FAN 3: Republicans.
FAN 1: Major characters who aren't white or male and who don't appropriately defer to the white males.
FAN 2: People who write het fic.
FAN 3: Female characters.
OVERTHINKINGIT: Exactly! So, logically...
FAN 2: If she's a female character...then...SHE'S A TROPE!

Dear Overthinking It,

Certainly, you've put together a useful flowchart for identifying tropes. However, not all tropes are bad, and the fact that a character matches a trope does not make them any less "real", "strong", "worthwhile", or "interesting".

You might like to reconsider reducing females - real or fictional - to a single most notable aspect.

not exactly encouraged by your reductionism,
T.

tl;dr version

OVERTHINKINGIT: If your female character fits any trope at all, she's not a "strong female character."
FANDOM: Let's take her out the back and beat the shit out of her!

Comments

[havocthecat]

*splorfle* This is awesome as a response to the rage.

[tielan]

I figured I could rant and probably be dismissed as one of those feminist frothers, or show exactly how ridiculous the flowchart was in terms of defining (or failing to define) 'strong female characters'.

I mean, hello, Ellen Ripley? Because she didn't survive the third act?

And one thing the flowchart and it's defendants fail to note is that most of the time the canon is Not About The Female Character, which is why she can't carry her own story or survive to the third act. It's flawed in that the 'role' of women shouldn't be as fridge fodder or helpful assistant or romantic interest, but the nature of writing is that all the secondary characters exist to help or support the main character(s).

Since the main character(s) are almost never female, and because there's a narrative history of using women as love interests, 'the help', or fridge fodder, female characters are at an automatic disadvantage from the get-go. Because "they can't hold their own story" or "they need a man/romance", so they're considered expendable, unimportant, and available to abuse (by the writer) without mercy.

[lady_ganesh]

Ellen Ripley survived the third act twice, and could've ended up in at least three places on that flow chart. They didn't even figure out their own examples!

(Here from Metafandom)