Well Written Female Characters - in your opinion, what/who is a well written female character?

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Neil Gaiman is pretty good with female characters, though he doesn't write them as main characters all that often. There was a transgender woman in one of his sandman comics that was done extremely well in an issue that was fairly female centric. The fact that she was transgender was acknowledged but not flaunted and she played very well off the 'barbie' character. I'm actually surprised that the character isn't talked about more on tumblr and the like, given how much they latch onto trans characters.

Tumblr doesn't read Neil Gaiman because liking Neil Gaiman requires intelligence.

 

[Thirsty Weeaboo]

Idk if she's well written, but I love Alice from Alice Madness Returns. Appearance: she doesn't use sexualized outfits and her appearance isn't perfect (she is pale, has dark circles, needs to take care of her hair, etc), but she isn't ugly and uses boring outfits like when sjw's draws characters in a more " realistic " way. Personality: she knows ho to impose herself and has a sharp tongue, but isn't rude. She's clever, brave, creative and heroic, but has flaws, too. Plus, she's a badass fighter and has a beautiful voice.

Also, I think Tomoko Kuroki is a good example, too. Not only as a female character, but as a realistic fucked up human in anime world. She's kinda ugly, perverted, struggles with social anxiety, is cynical, envious, etc.

 

[QB 290]

Andrea from the walking dead comics

Spoiler: Spoilers

Was fucking badass and brought the best out of every character she interacted with while still being the heart of both the story and the main characters.

Spoiler: Massive spoilers

The comic took a massive nose dive after her death and without many people stopped reading because of it, she was so important that her death killed the golden age of the series

 

[Tragi-Chan]

I didn't mean that it would have to be graphic, like people in storys also get sick without the author describing how they barf and shit everywhere, but it's still portrayed as an inconvenience that has an impact on the story

and being in pain and uncontrollably bleeding once every month for a week would be a massive inconvenience without sanitary products and pain killers. I don't really care for that in modern setting, because there's stuff avaible to deal with that, so there would be no impact on the story anyway, but it kinda irks me in medieval scenarios, post apocalyptic ones and the likes

There is a series of fantasy novels called Thraxas. To be honest, in general they're pretty crap - the characters are okay, but the setting is just generic post-Tolkien/Howard sword-and-sorcery. However, it does actually talk about the whole issue of periods and in fact, in a meta way, the fact that no one talks about it - in their society, anyone talking about it in mixed company is likely to get ostracised.

But in my experiences, male characters can be written just as poorly or pandering-like in specifically female-geared media. For example, men in romance novels are very warped idealizations of what men really are, literally no different to me than the hot bikini model bimbo you might see in a guy's movie.

In a way, I think it's a little unfair to bring characters from romance novels into the equation, because romance novels are intended primarily as a fantasy. Just as the female characters in porn are invariably promiscuous nymphomaniacs with low standards. When the aim of your work is to tittilate, ideally you don't want your characters to be too realistic. Your readers are aiming to escape reality.

 

[X-Shaped Weeaboo]

Andrea from the Walking Dead comics recently died, and so did my ability to continue reading the series.

That aside, she was a God-Damned trooper and consistently the most bad-ass and charming character in the entire comic. I'm sad that she's dead and that the author never had the balls to pass the torch onto her as main character.

As for a short list:

Teresa from Claymore
Eve from Black Cat
Keiko Yukimura from Yu Yu Hakusho
Robin from One Piece

I have others but I have a horrible ability to recall anything from the top of my head if I don't think about it extensively. Well written female-characters are a God-send because most of the time you have pandering to "Womyn r strong ecks dee" or irrelevant love-interests/satellites that either fill a quota or lose relevance as a story goes on. People say that they prefer to see female characters as just characters, and while I agree with that completely, I also think it's important that people realize you get certain packages with the identity of your character. In my opinion, female characters get the best privileges when it comes to design because you can get super creative with what a woman can wear and how they look. Don't get that much mileage out of men, who also have the advantage of being easier to make "cool".

A great female character can be a great character by herself without noticing gender, that's true. But only a woman can be a mother within the context of a story, and those and other such examples like it are experiences that should be allowed to be taken advantage of. I argue this is true of male characters as well, just throwing that out there as well. There is no bias here.

 

[CWCissey]

Lisbeth Salander.

She's cool, she does shit because she wants it done, she largely taught herself and she essentially told Sweden to go fuck itself.

 

[Slumber Crasher]

Lyra Belacqua (His Dark Materials) has always been a favourite of mine. Well rounded character. A really solid "chaotic good" type of role - she has the best interests of others at heart but one of her greatest skills is the ability to lie convincingly. (Adding this again since it was lost in maintenance)

 

[Corrugated Daffodils]

I can't believe no-one has said it but Kreia from KOTOR 2. Holy shit she's the single best written character in the whole mess that is the Star wars canon let alone the best female one.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

I can't believe no-one has said it but Kreia from KOTOR 2. Holy shit she's the single best written character in the whole mess that is the Star wars canon let alone the best female one.

Kreia is a singularity of everything wrong with the Star Wars EU. She's just the writer's mouthpiece responding to decades of poor understandings of the original films with his own equally poor understandings of the original films.

I really fucking hate the EU. The fanbase and franchise would both be all the better for none of it existing.

 

[OJ 473]

Spoiler: Oscar of course

Oscar from Rose of Versailles is more or less written as a man because she was raised as a man. She doesn't take shit from anybody and it's inspiring to see how she's able to gain respect from the men she's put in charge of.

 

[QB 290]

Andrea from the Walking Dead comics recently died, and so did my ability to continue reading the series.

That aside, she was a God-Damned trooper and consistently the most bad-ass and charming character in the entire comic. I'm sad that she's dead and that the author never had the balls to pass the torch onto her as main character.

Spoiler: WD comic spoilers

her death was actually done very well, but you're missing nothing if you stop reading the comic. It's descended into monthly PC Social justice lesbian hour and in a way, I'm glad Andrea wasn't butchered along with the rest of the plot.

Keeping on topic though:

Forever carlyle is a fucking badass and the main reason lazarus is an awesome comic.

 

[Slowboat to China]

you might want to look into female action/adventure authors, Janet Evanovich, Laurell K Hamilton, Seanan Maguire, Kim Harrison type stuff. Altho I can't remember any specific mentioning periods.

I don't recall the Anita Blake books mentioning periods much. Sadly, these days the character is mostly concerned with what goes into the vagina, not what comes out.

Well-written female characters ... It's hardly a cinematic masterpiece, but Evie Carnahan from "The Mummy" left quite an impression on me when I was a child. Smart but a little reckless, tends to charge headlong into situations without quite thinking things through, proudly a master of obscure knowledge despite being (thanks to the era) unable to get a job, and rises to the challenge presented by translating a hieroglyph she can't currently see while being throttled by a mummy. Evie and Ripley were young Slowboat's heroines.

 

[Dysnomia]

I've always admired Sara Crewe from A Little Princess. Even after she became a penniless maid employed at the headmistress's charity she never treated others as poorly as she was mistreated. She commanded an air of grace that surprised everyone who expected her to become a wretched creature just because she was poor and dressed in old rags slaving in the kitchen for spoiled rich girls.

well except for when she poured the ashes from the hearth all over Lavinia. But bitch had it coming.

 

[Taily Puff]

what would you like to see in a female character that makes her well written?
what should writers avoid when writing female characters?

A lot of people have said it in the thread already, but one of my personal pet peeves is when someone makes a "strong female character" by essentially giving a male character long hair and breasts. And they'll do something like make her faster and more agile instead of stronger, and then inevitably have something about babies or rape because that's basically all a woman is right? It's one of the few things that makes me want to unironically use the term phallo-centric, because it's obnoxious writing. Both male and female writers fall victim to it too. If you have a strong female character, she has to be really good at killing dudes and sad she can't have babies, cause otherwise she's not strong and not female right?

I think periods are rarely mentioned for the same reason the taco shits are rarely mentioned. It's a completely natural process but it's kind of gross to think of and does it really serve a point to the narrative?

There aren't many times discussing bodily functions is going to enhance a story. At best it can be played for vulgar comedic effect, maybe, but there aren't a lot of times drama or action are going to be better off by having a character stop to find a toilet. I vaguely recall Keifer Sutherland joking that he wanted his character in 24 to come out from behind a tree after a commercial break to lampshade the fact that the camera is basically on him for a full day and he never stops to pee, but even that would just be a throwaway joke in a story about terrorism.

As for well written female characters, Rose from Rose Madder. Stephen King is kind of overrated as an author, yeah, but something about that book really stuck with me. I read it the first time when I was a teenager and I absolutely hated it and would have made fun of anyone claiming to like it, but something made me read it again as an adult, and I guess I'm a different person because now it's on the short list of books I'd bring with me into a fallout shelter. Her arc and the situation she's in is very interesting and well put together. (Yes I started this post saying how much I hate it when writers inject baby drama into a character as a short hand for 'female' and then admitted one of my favorite characters has a miscarriage as one of her core motivations. Deal with it).

I really liked Z for Zachariah, and the main character is really well explored (I mean, she'd have to be since there are only two characters in the book). She's really clever and how she solves problems is compelling and sometimes moving.

Also, this is a children/young adult book, but I've read Starlight Crystal more times than I can count. When I was a kid I'd read it, read something different, then come back to it again, over and over. There's probably more Paige Christian embedded in my personality than I should be willing to admit. The way she's written and the fact that she doesn't break through everything fate keeps slamming her with meant a lot to me while I was growing up. I might actually read it again now just to see how it holds up.

 

[UnclePhil]

She has character flaws. Her goals and motivations conflict with her values like any other human in a book.

Bad things are allowed to happen to her.

 

[Muttnik]

Whedon bullshit aside, Buffy's a pretty good female character. I've actually never seen a character go through so much emotional trauma over the course of a series and still manage to make it through. And even with the message of female-empowerment, she's still a very emotionally fragile character with strong protective instincts. And she's shown to make real human mistakes that don't put her on a pedestal for morality. There's something to be admired about that.

 

[X-Shaped Weeaboo]

her death was actually done very well, but you're missing nothing if you stop reading the comic. It's descended into monthly PC Social justice lesbian hour and in a way, I'm glad Andrea wasn't butchered along with the rest of the plot.

What a damn fucking shame. The Walking Dead was about the only zombie anything I ever truly cared about beyond mindless enjoyment.

I knew it would happen eventually but I hate being right. I had a feeling the series would start to lose it's identity if it continued killing off it's cast without replacing them with sufficient newcomers. And it did that for a while, granted, but I recognized that things were gonna get bad the second Abraham died. I started to realize that they were running out of people that anyone cared about as the new characters were introduced in truck-loads, and only 10% of them interesting.

This might come off as unnecessarily emotional, especially on this site, but Andrea was such a good character that following her story and relationships monthly actually stove off my depression for the few months I had been able to keep up with the comic. While I don't think it's due to sexism, good female characters tend to get the shaft ironically because people trying to force "le stronk independent womyn" angle. Either that, or they're satellite characters. That wasn't Andrea though.

Andrea was one of the few characters in fictional history that ever felt like she had her own agency. No one will ever "be" Andrea ever again. No one could even come close.

But hey, I'll give the comic some credit. It's a rarer than real saints phenomenon when you can feel good about saying this: The comic died with it's best character.

Godspeed.

 

[Metropolis Reigns]

Elizabeth Comstock, to an extent. She really likes to run away screaming. PLOT PROGRESSION.

 

[GeneralSinner666]

Sadly, I mostly only know the ones that are well-written compared to other characters from their works (you know, video game ones), so:

Alphys from Undertale (possibly Undyne as well, backstory-wise)
Samus from Metroid (background-story-wise, not counting Other M)
Lammy in Um Jammer Lammy (personality-wise)
Kirigiri, Sakura and Junko from Danganronpa (in the actual DR1 game, at least)
Tifa, Aerith and Terra from the Final Fantasy series
Elehayym (Elly) from Xenogears
Jade from Beyond Good And Evil
Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2
Kitana from Mortal Kombat
Chun-Li from Street Fighter
Midna from Twilight Princess
Toko Fukawa in Danganronpa AE
Sophia Lamb from Bioshock 2
Rosalina from Super Mario Galaxy
Palutena in Kid Icarus Uprising
Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite

 

[thrussy]

Ripley in Alien franchise is good