And as much as I've always loved Ozma and Dorothy together as two awesome girl adventurers, if you read the wikipedia from Spn!Dorothy's pov, you can kind of see why Dorothy might think Ozma is an ass -- especially the part where Ozma takes the throne and many realms of her kingdom don't even realize it. :P Also, Dorothy is a grown woman, and Ozma stays forever a 14 year old girl. :P
That's interesting, thank you! Reading about it reminded me of the plot I know from the cartoon (pardon the blasphemy :)).
I think we have to insist on strong women characters, and strength that comes in many iterations.
I agree that there are different sorts of strength, and it's important to depict them, but why must we insist on strong woman characters? Why do they have to be strong at all, and why does it need to be a central part of their characterization?
Strong women set unfair standards, we're doing to ourselves the same thing society's doing to men, and everyone should cut it out, IMO. As I understand it, originally strength was considered to be a feminist characterization, in order to prove that women can do anything men can do, perhaps even better than men. But that's living in a world developed by men, for men, and not necessarily what everybody wants. I want to have other parameters, strength is really overrated. And I want to deserve to be a person - a cool, awesome person - even when I'm weak. I don't want to put everything into proving to society that it should give me rights. And equating strength with feminism, or with being a person, is really harmful sometimes. For instance, it puts responsibility for everything on the person. "Had they been stronger, they wouldn't have had trouble with this". But not everybody can be strong. So basically, this means people who aren't strong, deserve what they get. Fuck that. Especially since a person's ability is usually not something that person has much choice about.
I want women and trans* characters who have more to them. For example, to me, one of the most beautiful, amazing things about Dean is his vulnerability, the complex emotions that shine through when he's helpless, the way he struggles and fails to disentangle himself from different ways in which his loved ones make him miserable (partial picture, of course). Where are the female characters who get that sort of characterization, and who are allowed to show such interesting, pretty vulnerability?
Or Sam, when he was dealing with his hell visions. Being crazy, dependent, and knowing it, being a person, a subject, while also being those things, was beautiful to me. Where are the female characters who can be weak and dependent and not sure what's real and what isn't, and also be people, be funny, be "ok apart from the hallucinations"? That is a sort of strength, but mostly it comes from accepting weakness. I want women to be allowed to do that.
There was a scene in Desperate Housewives (not my favorite show, but it had some really great things about it), in which Lynett falls apart over having to make costumes for the kids, something like that. It wasn't comical at all, it had a lot of empathy to it. This was an awesome person going to pieces over having to deal with what's supposedly just a few household chores - not cause she wasn't awesome, but because household chores can be really really hard to deal with. It was such an important thing to say, to me.
I loved that Dorothy underestimated Charlie at first
I liked that a lot too (though it implies secretaries aren't important). To me, it made her more interesting as a character.
But as the story developed Dorothy came to appreciate the kinds of things that Charlie offered. I love that Charlie fangirled Dorothy, without the writers making it more woman on woman
I very much agree, on both points.
In terms of trans characters, I liked Ms. Hudson on Elementary. She was beautifully cast and fairly well written -- I hope to see more of her. :)
Ooh, I never watched far enough to meet her! Sounds awesome :)
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And as much as I've always loved Ozma and Dorothy together as two awesome girl adventurers, if you read the wikipedia from Spn!Dorothy's pov, you can kind of see why Dorothy might think Ozma is an ass -- especially the part where Ozma takes the throne and many realms of her kingdom don't even realize it. :P Also, Dorothy is a grown woman, and Ozma stays forever a 14 year old girl. :P
That's interesting, thank you!
Reading about it reminded me of the plot I know from the cartoon (pardon the blasphemy :)).
I think we have to insist on strong women characters, and strength that comes in many iterations.
I agree that there are different sorts of strength, and it's important to depict them, but why must we insist on strong woman characters? Why do they have to be strong at all, and why does it need to be a central part of their characterization?
Strong women set unfair standards, we're doing to ourselves the same thing society's doing to men, and everyone should cut it out, IMO. As I understand it, originally strength was considered to be a feminist characterization, in order to prove that women can do anything men can do, perhaps even better than men. But that's living in a world developed by men, for men, and not necessarily what everybody wants. I want to have other parameters, strength is really overrated. And I want to deserve to be a person - a cool, awesome person - even when I'm weak. I don't want to put everything into proving to society that it should give me rights. And equating strength with feminism, or with being a person, is really harmful sometimes. For instance, it puts responsibility for everything on the person. "Had they been stronger, they wouldn't have had trouble with this". But not everybody can be strong. So basically, this means people who aren't strong, deserve what they get. Fuck that. Especially since a person's ability is usually not something that person has much choice about.
I want women and trans* characters who have more to them. For example, to me, one of the most beautiful, amazing things about Dean is his vulnerability, the complex emotions that shine through when he's helpless, the way he struggles and fails to disentangle himself from different ways in which his loved ones make him miserable (partial picture, of course). Where are the female characters who get that sort of characterization, and who are allowed to show such interesting, pretty vulnerability?
Or Sam, when he was dealing with his hell visions. Being crazy, dependent, and knowing it, being a person, a subject, while also being those things, was beautiful to me. Where are the female characters who can be weak and dependent and not sure what's real and what isn't, and also be people, be funny, be "ok apart from the hallucinations"? That is a sort of strength, but mostly it comes from accepting weakness. I want women to be allowed to do that.
There was a scene in Desperate Housewives (not my favorite show, but it had some really great things about it), in which Lynett falls apart over having to make costumes for the kids, something like that. It wasn't comical at all, it had a lot of empathy to it. This was an awesome person going to pieces over having to deal with what's supposedly just a few household chores - not cause she wasn't awesome, but because household chores can be really really hard to deal with. It was such an important thing to say, to me.
I loved that Dorothy underestimated Charlie at first
I liked that a lot too (though it implies secretaries aren't important). To me, it made her more interesting as a character.
But as the story developed Dorothy came to appreciate the kinds of things that Charlie offered. I love that Charlie fangirled Dorothy, without the writers making it more woman on woman
I very much agree, on both points.
In terms of trans characters, I liked Ms. Hudson on Elementary. She was beautifully cast and fairly well written -- I hope to see more of her. :)
Ooh, I never watched far enough to meet her! Sounds awesome :)