Chris Fritz's Blog - Posts Tagged "comics"
The ultimate guide to writing strong female characters
Like most of you guys out there I’m a big fan of the Marvel cinematic universe. They’ve given us so many different female characters with exciting backstories and personalities. Like Black Widow who was captured at a young age and forced to be a badass fighter, or Captain Marvel who was captured at a young age and forced to be a badass fighter, or Gamora who was captured at a young age and forced to be a badass fighter, or Scarlet Witch who was captured at a young age and forced to be a badass fighter. Wait a minute. Oh my god they just made the same character four different times! So with repetition like this I asked myself a truly deep question. How can someone create a strong female character and actually have it be a strong female character? More specifically can a strong female character be strong not in spite of being female but because she’s female? In my contemplation on this subject three characters came to mind. They are all from the same TV show and that show is Avatar: the Last Airbender.
As fans of the show know it is filled with really good female characters but right now I just want to focus on three. They are Toph, Katara, and Azula. Three character that got a lot of screen time and were flushed out the most. Let’s start out with talking about Toph. Toph is a twelve year old blind girl and her character is truly a unique departure in the evolution of female characters and comes at writing female characters from a completely new angle. For Tophs character the writers took masculine traits and mapped them on to her. This makes Toph relate to the boys more because she doesn’t play into feminine stereotypes. She rejects things like putting on makeup, doing her hair, and bathing regularly in favor of getting dirty, laughing at bodily functions, using rude language. She rejects the feminine activities and replaces them with masculine actives. Also rejecting traditionally feminine traits in favor of traditionally masculine ones. This is the way I generally see most of the stereotypical strong female characters and it can be an easy path to go down from a writing stand point. At a certain point I do think the strong female character with masculine traits becomes a parody of itself. I can probably think of dozens of strong female characters that fall into this category so if you want an easy way of writing strong female characters this is probably the way to go.
But some people demand more from their strong female characters so let’s move on and talk about Katara. Katara is a unique strong female character because her strength comes from a place that most people wouldn’t see as a place to draw strength from, your mom. Katara displays the strength of a mother. She acts like a den mother to everyone in the group. So much so that Sokka almost forgot the face of his real mother and whenever he tries to think of her he can just see Katara. At some of her most powerful moments she cries out like she is scolding her opponents. In the first episode the inciting incident for the entire series happens because she scolds Sokka. Sounding very much like a mother disciplining her child. At times when the group is mentally and physically exhausted Katara is the only one to hold them together. Like a mother guiding her children. Also in the last episode of season two there’s this one shot where she’s holding Aangs dead body and it invokes the image of Michelangelo’s pieta statue where Katara would be the Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus. Just as Mary was the mother of Jesus so is Katara the mother figure of this group. She is a good example of being strong not in spite of her femininity but because of her femininity. Being a mother is a feminine role and it’s where she draws her strength. I’ve seen very few characters like this so in Katara I find something very unique.
Now let’s take a trip over to the dark side and talk about Azula. Azulas character is an interesting development in strong female characters and it comes from a very dark place. You see in a general sense women have a high capacity for emotional intelligence than men. This means that generally women can recognize their emotions and even control them better than men. In the show we see Katara as a very emotionally conscious character for example. But what if that emotional consciousness turns into emotional manipulation. That is the strength of Azula. There is a time in the show when she gets into a fight with Zuko and doesn’t have to through a single punch. She just dodges and hurls emotionally scarring insults at him until he tires himself out. She repeats this strategy multiple times throughout the show when fighting. She manipulates the emotions of her opponents. Wasting their time, wasting their energy and throwing them out of whack without even touching them. She uses her higher emotional intelligence to manipulate her enemies and her allies. It’s a generally feminine trait that has devastating consequences in this instance. Once again she is not strong in spite of her femininity but because of her femininity.
So what’s the lesson here? I think it’s this. A female character doesn’t have to give up female traits in order to be strong. If you really want to step things up make a female character that’s strength and femininity intertwine with one another. Because women can be feminine and strong at the same time they don’t have to choose between the two. I’ll end this by saying call your mom, she misses you.
As fans of the show know it is filled with really good female characters but right now I just want to focus on three. They are Toph, Katara, and Azula. Three character that got a lot of screen time and were flushed out the most. Let’s start out with talking about Toph. Toph is a twelve year old blind girl and her character is truly a unique departure in the evolution of female characters and comes at writing female characters from a completely new angle. For Tophs character the writers took masculine traits and mapped them on to her. This makes Toph relate to the boys more because she doesn’t play into feminine stereotypes. She rejects things like putting on makeup, doing her hair, and bathing regularly in favor of getting dirty, laughing at bodily functions, using rude language. She rejects the feminine activities and replaces them with masculine actives. Also rejecting traditionally feminine traits in favor of traditionally masculine ones. This is the way I generally see most of the stereotypical strong female characters and it can be an easy path to go down from a writing stand point. At a certain point I do think the strong female character with masculine traits becomes a parody of itself. I can probably think of dozens of strong female characters that fall into this category so if you want an easy way of writing strong female characters this is probably the way to go.
But some people demand more from their strong female characters so let’s move on and talk about Katara. Katara is a unique strong female character because her strength comes from a place that most people wouldn’t see as a place to draw strength from, your mom. Katara displays the strength of a mother. She acts like a den mother to everyone in the group. So much so that Sokka almost forgot the face of his real mother and whenever he tries to think of her he can just see Katara. At some of her most powerful moments she cries out like she is scolding her opponents. In the first episode the inciting incident for the entire series happens because she scolds Sokka. Sounding very much like a mother disciplining her child. At times when the group is mentally and physically exhausted Katara is the only one to hold them together. Like a mother guiding her children. Also in the last episode of season two there’s this one shot where she’s holding Aangs dead body and it invokes the image of Michelangelo’s pieta statue where Katara would be the Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus. Just as Mary was the mother of Jesus so is Katara the mother figure of this group. She is a good example of being strong not in spite of her femininity but because of her femininity. Being a mother is a feminine role and it’s where she draws her strength. I’ve seen very few characters like this so in Katara I find something very unique.
Now let’s take a trip over to the dark side and talk about Azula. Azulas character is an interesting development in strong female characters and it comes from a very dark place. You see in a general sense women have a high capacity for emotional intelligence than men. This means that generally women can recognize their emotions and even control them better than men. In the show we see Katara as a very emotionally conscious character for example. But what if that emotional consciousness turns into emotional manipulation. That is the strength of Azula. There is a time in the show when she gets into a fight with Zuko and doesn’t have to through a single punch. She just dodges and hurls emotionally scarring insults at him until he tires himself out. She repeats this strategy multiple times throughout the show when fighting. She manipulates the emotions of her opponents. Wasting their time, wasting their energy and throwing them out of whack without even touching them. She uses her higher emotional intelligence to manipulate her enemies and her allies. It’s a generally feminine trait that has devastating consequences in this instance. Once again she is not strong in spite of her femininity but because of her femininity.
So what’s the lesson here? I think it’s this. A female character doesn’t have to give up female traits in order to be strong. If you really want to step things up make a female character that’s strength and femininity intertwine with one another. Because women can be feminine and strong at the same time they don’t have to choose between the two. I’ll end this by saying call your mom, she misses you.
The Snyder Cut Follow up
Last week HBO Max released the re-edited version of the movie Justice League that some people have just named the Snyder Cut. It's supposed to represent Zack Snyder's original vision of what the film was supposed to be. I talked about it on my blog earlier so I thought that I would do a follow up now that I've actually seen the movie. I didn't think it would happen but it actually came out. This movie definitely made me feel a lot of emotions. It made me think back to 2017 when I saw the theatrical cut of this movie and was ultimately disappointed. It made me think of all the things that have changed since then. It made me spend a lot of time thinking about the two previous films that lead up to this one. Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of justice. How a lot of people thought they were bad movies. How they thought the theatrical release of justice league wasn't that good. So I was very curious to see if the Snyder cut would turn all of that around. I'm not really sure if I went into seeing this with high expectations, low expectations, or no expectations at all. I just new something had to happen and that this movie is important. The Snyder Cut has the same basic plot as the theatrical cut almost everything happens the same there's just some notable additions and subtractions.
When I first heard it was four hours long I almost didn't believe it. But it is four hours long and it's divided into multiple chapters. Very reminiscent of Tarantino's longer films. The blanket differences are the whole movie is visually darker, it's paced really slow, and for some reason there's a lot of opera being sung in the background. On the whole this new cut does fix some problems that the original version had. It adds a lot of scenes that improve the story without changing the story. It makes me empathize with the characters more. I feel like I have a better understanding of almost every character in the movie. Almost all of the plot points are more flushed out and make more sense creating a stronger narrative as a whole. The villains are better. In the original Steppenwolf was just generic and bland. In the new one he's a disgraced warrior who has to regain his honor by conquering the planet. That's just a surface level and easy change that made him a whole lot better. It was nice to see Darkseid in this movie. He was truly a shadow that cast itself over the entire film. That really took the story to a new level.
For this last part I would like to talk about a video game called Injustice: Gods Among Us. The story of the video game is related to the Justice League. It takes place on an alternate earth where Superman has morphed into a despotic Tyrannical dictator who rules over the entire planet with an iron fist. The heroes of earth that are left standing have to stop him. Somehow this game has become a small source of inspiration for Zack Snyder and his overall vision for the three movies he made in the DCEU. The standard criticism I'm going to level at this man is this. He is the man who hates superman and then made three movies about superman. Now one of his previous films was the movie adaption of Watchmen. Now ever since he made that movie he internalized the themes of Watchmen that basically try to corrupt the golden age super hero and deconstruct the mythos of the super hero. It shows us a truly dark side of a superhero mythology. So with all that in his heart Zack Snyder made three movies that simultaneously build up super heroes and deconstruct super heroes all at once. I think in the future that will be the main highlights of the criticism against his three DC movies. I'm not going to lie to you there are parts of me that think Zack Snyder is the worst filmmaker of all time. Not for any of these movies I just really hate Sucker Punch.
My last thing I'm going to say is the Snyder cut does a lot of foreshadowing for a potential sequel. Now based on the foreshadowing it would seem this hypothetical sequel would be very much like the injustice game I talked about. Thus completing the ultimate cycle for his deconstruction of the DC super heroes. I don't know if we will ever see a sequel to this Snyder cut. I highly doubt that Henry Cavil wants to be Superman again and DC is going forward with a new Batman with Robert Pattinson. I could predict that a Synder cut sequel won't happen but then again I was thoroughly convinced that the Snyder cut didn't exist so who am I to say. So maybe that foreshadowing was just planting seeds in the ground and we don't get to see the garden. It's like a child that you wont get to see grow up. That reminds me I nearly had tears in my eyes when I saw the final slate of the film say "for Autumn." So overall this movie has a lot of heart, that heart was missing in 2017. It's been a long road but I think we finally have some closure. This movie is really good. It's way better than Wonder Woman 1984 that movie is weird.
I guess the lesson we should take away from this is if you make a piece of art and you don't think it was very good don't be afraid to try again.
When I first heard it was four hours long I almost didn't believe it. But it is four hours long and it's divided into multiple chapters. Very reminiscent of Tarantino's longer films. The blanket differences are the whole movie is visually darker, it's paced really slow, and for some reason there's a lot of opera being sung in the background. On the whole this new cut does fix some problems that the original version had. It adds a lot of scenes that improve the story without changing the story. It makes me empathize with the characters more. I feel like I have a better understanding of almost every character in the movie. Almost all of the plot points are more flushed out and make more sense creating a stronger narrative as a whole. The villains are better. In the original Steppenwolf was just generic and bland. In the new one he's a disgraced warrior who has to regain his honor by conquering the planet. That's just a surface level and easy change that made him a whole lot better. It was nice to see Darkseid in this movie. He was truly a shadow that cast itself over the entire film. That really took the story to a new level.
For this last part I would like to talk about a video game called Injustice: Gods Among Us. The story of the video game is related to the Justice League. It takes place on an alternate earth where Superman has morphed into a despotic Tyrannical dictator who rules over the entire planet with an iron fist. The heroes of earth that are left standing have to stop him. Somehow this game has become a small source of inspiration for Zack Snyder and his overall vision for the three movies he made in the DCEU. The standard criticism I'm going to level at this man is this. He is the man who hates superman and then made three movies about superman. Now one of his previous films was the movie adaption of Watchmen. Now ever since he made that movie he internalized the themes of Watchmen that basically try to corrupt the golden age super hero and deconstruct the mythos of the super hero. It shows us a truly dark side of a superhero mythology. So with all that in his heart Zack Snyder made three movies that simultaneously build up super heroes and deconstruct super heroes all at once. I think in the future that will be the main highlights of the criticism against his three DC movies. I'm not going to lie to you there are parts of me that think Zack Snyder is the worst filmmaker of all time. Not for any of these movies I just really hate Sucker Punch.
My last thing I'm going to say is the Snyder cut does a lot of foreshadowing for a potential sequel. Now based on the foreshadowing it would seem this hypothetical sequel would be very much like the injustice game I talked about. Thus completing the ultimate cycle for his deconstruction of the DC super heroes. I don't know if we will ever see a sequel to this Snyder cut. I highly doubt that Henry Cavil wants to be Superman again and DC is going forward with a new Batman with Robert Pattinson. I could predict that a Synder cut sequel won't happen but then again I was thoroughly convinced that the Snyder cut didn't exist so who am I to say. So maybe that foreshadowing was just planting seeds in the ground and we don't get to see the garden. It's like a child that you wont get to see grow up. That reminds me I nearly had tears in my eyes when I saw the final slate of the film say "for Autumn." So overall this movie has a lot of heart, that heart was missing in 2017. It's been a long road but I think we finally have some closure. This movie is really good. It's way better than Wonder Woman 1984 that movie is weird.
I guess the lesson we should take away from this is if you make a piece of art and you don't think it was very good don't be afraid to try again.
