30 days female character meme - 03 & 04
Sep. 28th, 2010 02:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ishimeBeing late as I always am, I'm gonna kick myself in the ass and put two awesome female characters in one post. >__>U
Besides, both of them come from the same series and the reasons they are awesome are sort of similar, so...
03 - Alice, from The Wardstone Chronicles (aka L'épouvanteur in French).
No, I am not finished squeeing about those books. I LOVE them, to the point where I'd choose them over Harry Potter anyday.
I have many reasons to love them - the dark atmosphere, the dark themes, the openly agnostic POV, the bestiary... But the main reason, as often with me, is the characters. And especially the female ones, and the gender dynamics.
Alice is the second female character to appear in the first book, but the first to be really developped. She appears as "the girl", except she's not. She's nothing like a cliché of girly - but she's not boyish either.
She is very soon discovered to be of witch descent and a witch herself, but she is not a cliché of a witch either. As Mom tells Tom, the hero, she is neither a good witch nor an evil one. She is herself, and this is a very important point, both to her character and to the plot, because she plays a very important role in it.
So Alice is the hero's friend - not the female-friend-as-opposed-to-the-male-friend, his only friend. She also is a witch, while Tom is the apprentice of the spook, a man who hunts evil, magical creatures, including witches. And the dynamics between them is always ambiguous, for a whole lot of reasons. Tom's master, John Gregory (who is always sexist when he talks about women, but this issue is treated and in an interesting way, too) tries to resume it either as Alice being a witch or as her being a woman, but in the end, I always felt like Alice made her own definition of who she was.
She goes against the idea that girls are more obedient (she's fiercely independent, especially regarding Tom's master), is smart and practical, and is rutheless compared to Tom. Alice is not a creature of principles ; to her, the ends justify the means, which lead her to make some big mistakes and kill people (though not exactly nice people), but also enables her to save Tom's life many times.
She has taken an interest in Tom and is more mature than him, though they are roughly the same age, and she has some disturbing passages where she shows that she considers him hers. I really like that she is the one getting to this topic, and never in a submissive way. I also like that, even though he does not fully understand what she implies, Tom is not completely clueless, and accepts it that part of Alice without problem (but then, that's the main characteristic of Tom as a hero: to be tolerant and open-minded).
She is a witch and proud to be, and she holds her ground on that topic in the end. Even with Tom or Gregory. She uses witchcraft, the folkloric, evil-labeled one, to help Tom and herself. She uses what her aunt taught her, even if Lizzie was an evil witch who definitely mistreated her.
Since she was mistreated as a child, Alice is both afraid of being beaten and ready to fight to defend herself with all the arsenal at her disposal (mainly witchcraft).
She is afraid of what she is - a witch, expected to become Tom's natural ennemy, and all - but she refuses to reject it. She makes use of it instead, good, clever use, and this is why she is such an awesome character.
That and she totally has Tom under her thumb, and she saves his sorry ass more than once (take that damsel-in-distress trope \o/).
04. Tom's mother, from The Wardstone Chronicles.
We do learn her name and all, but it's heavy spoiler, so I'll just call her Mom.
Mom is a very important figure in the books, and for Tom. Clearly, Tom is not a father's son, he is his mother's son, in about every way. That does not mean Tom does not love and respect his father ; but it means that he looks up to his mother and relies on her advice, more than on his father.
Mom is the one who made Tom who he is - and I'm not talking about giving him birth here. She's the one who taught him to keep his eyes and heart and mind opened. She's the one (well, the main one, because Alice does that too) to remind him of this, thoughought the series.
Mom is wise, she's like wiseness personified. She never allows herself to be blinded by principles of stereotypes or anything. She always knows and understands things, and her advices and special gifts save her son more than once, too.
Mom is both familiar and mysterious, both to Tom and to the reader. She is always quiet, peaceful, and almost never leaves her home, but she always knows everything, and she can solve a lot of problems and is widely respected.
I'm getting more and more incoherent here, so I'll just sum it up. She's a mom AND she is damn awesome. She loves her sons, especially Tom, she takes care of them, AND she still does things appart from being a mother. She is one of the most powerful "good" characters, maybe THE most powerful one. Like every "good" character in that series, she is a complex character with her flaws that keep her from being a manichean "good" - and even those flaws are awesome. She's one of the most interesting characters in the series, and the most fascinating, hands down in her rocking-chair.
She's not the hero's mom, she is Mom, now bow down to her sheer awesomeness and mighty power, bitches.
I don't even have to joke here. She could just go and do that. She's just that cool. Where else do you find a mother to be the most wise and powerful ally to the hero?
AND THIS IS A CHILDREN SERIES.
And - and those books are awesome from A to Z, period. *__*
Besides, both of them come from the same series and the reasons they are awesome are sort of similar, so...
03 - Alice, from The Wardstone Chronicles (aka L'épouvanteur in French).
No, I am not finished squeeing about those books. I LOVE them, to the point where I'd choose them over Harry Potter anyday.
I have many reasons to love them - the dark atmosphere, the dark themes, the openly agnostic POV, the bestiary... But the main reason, as often with me, is the characters. And especially the female ones, and the gender dynamics.
Alice is the second female character to appear in the first book, but the first to be really developped. She appears as "the girl", except she's not. She's nothing like a cliché of girly - but she's not boyish either.
She is very soon discovered to be of witch descent and a witch herself, but she is not a cliché of a witch either. As Mom tells Tom, the hero, she is neither a good witch nor an evil one. She is herself, and this is a very important point, both to her character and to the plot, because she plays a very important role in it.
So Alice is the hero's friend - not the female-friend-as-opposed-to-the-male-friend, his only friend. She also is a witch, while Tom is the apprentice of the spook, a man who hunts evil, magical creatures, including witches. And the dynamics between them is always ambiguous, for a whole lot of reasons. Tom's master, John Gregory (who is always sexist when he talks about women, but this issue is treated and in an interesting way, too) tries to resume it either as Alice being a witch or as her being a woman, but in the end, I always felt like Alice made her own definition of who she was.
She goes against the idea that girls are more obedient (she's fiercely independent, especially regarding Tom's master), is smart and practical, and is rutheless compared to Tom. Alice is not a creature of principles ; to her, the ends justify the means, which lead her to make some big mistakes and kill people (though not exactly nice people), but also enables her to save Tom's life many times.
She has taken an interest in Tom and is more mature than him, though they are roughly the same age, and she has some disturbing passages where she shows that she considers him hers. I really like that she is the one getting to this topic, and never in a submissive way. I also like that, even though he does not fully understand what she implies, Tom is not completely clueless, and accepts it that part of Alice without problem (but then, that's the main characteristic of Tom as a hero: to be tolerant and open-minded).
She is a witch and proud to be, and she holds her ground on that topic in the end. Even with Tom or Gregory. She uses witchcraft, the folkloric, evil-labeled one, to help Tom and herself. She uses what her aunt taught her, even if Lizzie was an evil witch who definitely mistreated her.
Since she was mistreated as a child, Alice is both afraid of being beaten and ready to fight to defend herself with all the arsenal at her disposal (mainly witchcraft).
She is afraid of what she is - a witch, expected to become Tom's natural ennemy, and all - but she refuses to reject it. She makes use of it instead, good, clever use, and this is why she is such an awesome character.
That and she totally has Tom under her thumb, and she saves his sorry ass more than once (take that damsel-in-distress trope \o/).
04. Tom's mother, from The Wardstone Chronicles.
We do learn her name and all, but it's heavy spoiler, so I'll just call her Mom.
Mom is a very important figure in the books, and for Tom. Clearly, Tom is not a father's son, he is his mother's son, in about every way. That does not mean Tom does not love and respect his father ; but it means that he looks up to his mother and relies on her advice, more than on his father.
Mom is the one who made Tom who he is - and I'm not talking about giving him birth here. She's the one who taught him to keep his eyes and heart and mind opened. She's the one (well, the main one, because Alice does that too) to remind him of this, thoughought the series.
Mom is wise, she's like wiseness personified. She never allows herself to be blinded by principles of stereotypes or anything. She always knows and understands things, and her advices and special gifts save her son more than once, too.
Mom is both familiar and mysterious, both to Tom and to the reader. She is always quiet, peaceful, and almost never leaves her home, but she always knows everything, and she can solve a lot of problems and is widely respected.
I'm getting more and more incoherent here, so I'll just sum it up. She's a mom AND she is damn awesome. She loves her sons, especially Tom, she takes care of them, AND she still does things appart from being a mother. She is one of the most powerful "good" characters, maybe THE most powerful one. Like every "good" character in that series, she is a complex character with her flaws that keep her from being a manichean "good" - and even those flaws are awesome. She's one of the most interesting characters in the series, and the most fascinating, hands down in her rocking-chair.
She's not the hero's mom, she is Mom, now bow down to her sheer awesomeness and mighty power, bitches.
I don't even have to joke here. She could just go and do that. She's just that cool. Where else do you find a mother to be the most wise and powerful ally to the hero?
AND THIS IS A CHILDREN SERIES.
And - and those books are awesome from A to Z, period. *__*