work is boring

[fanbeatsman]

and I am ILL, bleh. So have a meme, stolen from alienchrist:

Name 5 bad-ass female fictional characters and tell me why. Try and use as many different canons you can!

Trying not to repeat any of the canons in alienchrist's post, then...

1. Sir Integra Hellsing (Hellsing): Sir Integra Hellsing is so fucking badass that the most powerful, legendary vampire in all the

Comments

[fanbeatsman]

Hell yeah Jane Roland is ALWAYS a welcome comment on this journal :D And thank you; I'm not anywhere near as sick as Hazel's been with the same cold, so hopefully I'll be able to shift it soon.

[miss_prince]

I approve of all of these! :D fff I really need to watch Hellsing. And finish FFXII.

I agree about Jade! She was a character, a character like male protagonists get to be but female protagonists rarely do, and she brought down the bad guys with the power of the press (and also got to kick bad guy butt, of course, so there was no "girls are frail and can't fight" undercurrent, either).

[fanbeatsman]

Jade's always one of the first ones to get mentioned in lists of awesome female videogame characters, and while it always makes me happy to see people recognising her awesomeness, it does kind of point to how much she is an exception to the general rule, sigh. There really need to be more game protagonists like her.

Hellsing is totally OTT and really quite ridiculous in a lot of ways (although that didn't stop me really enjoying it), but Integra just pushes so many of my fictional buttons. I'm realising that I'm a complete sucker for female characters who have to always be strong and competent because everyone around them is expecting them to be weak.

[alienchrist]

I'd always wondered what Ashe was like, so thanks for the write-up on her. And your write up on Admiral Roland has me interested in Temeraire, is it a very long series?

[fanbeatsman]

I liked Ashe far, far more than I was expecting to - I usually find Final Fantasy "princess" characters supremely irritating, but Ashe just came across to me as such a human character, much more understated and less of a caricature than FF characters can be.

There's currently 5 books in the Temeraire series, with a 6th one coming out this summer, but they're a very fast read; Novik's style is very lucid and fluent. I love them to pieces and would recommend them to anybody, but I should note, although Jane is a fairly major character, the books are overwhelmingly centred on protagonist Captain Will Laurence and his dragon Temeraire. The series is overflowing with awesome characters, though, not least the dragons themselves, and includes a surprising number of badass women, considering what a male-dominated period and setting they deal with /shameless pimping