Strong Women are Awesome, Bad Writing is Not

I've touched on strong women and bad writing before, but I honestly think that this is as bad as writing for women has ever been. We have seen some truly horrific storytelling when it comes to female characters which just makes the real strong women even more awesome.

Tinseltown has had a bad habit in recent years of introducing female characters that they think are strong but are really just shells and caricatures of what it means to be good characters.

In this video, I discuss why how writing for "strong women" has been so terrible lately and why we the audience don't hate strong women, but the bad writing we have been given.

[CatotheE]

Yeah. Most people have no problems with strong female characters. They just have to be written well. I recently watched Alien and Ripley is a good example of a strong female character.

[mischake]

One aspect that I think explains some of the badly written female characters, i truly feel, is that in some cases the person writing the character inserts their own narcissistic characteristics into the character and feels justified in showing off these traits that they themselves probably don't dare portray themselves. But usually these traits surface once the backlash to their work explodes and they start to defend their work in the most toxic ways possible

[nicoleg]

I think the best way to distill why we don’t like “strong female characters TM” is because they exalt vices instead of virtues. Selfishness in place of selflessness. Self service in place of self sacrifice and service to others. Strength for the sake of dominance in place of strength for the sake of protection. Ego in place of humility. Vices are neither aspirational nor inspirational. Nobody looks at a raving narcissist and goes “yeah I wanna be like that guy”. Despite the slow degradations of modern society and norms, humans still gravitate towards virtue, we still set as role models those who give rather than taking and protect rather than destroying. More importantly, we look to those who grow from their flaws and mistakes because we seek to grow from our own.

[StarOfElyon]

Alita: Battle Angel (2019) was a movie with a great female character and the world slept on her.

[MARSHALL_SLAYER]

When I went to watch Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker with my ex, she was calling out plot points and saying how she could see it coming cause it fit like a fanfic and I could never unsee it cause Disney Star Wars does not feel like it's for its fans anymore. It all feels like fan fiction and inauthentic.

[askarsfan]

We can root for an underdog; we can't root for a bully.

[ianesgrecia]

The biggest irony is that the worst written female protagonist were written by FEMALE WRITERS. So the point of "maybe because these writers don't understand women or just DONT KNOW HOW TO WRITE" even more ironic.

[giannid.]

I have nothing against writing well-written strong female characters, don't confuse being strong with unpleasant, self-centered and self-centered.

the example of Mulan "from the animated films" is perfect, here is a well-written female character, she is feminine, warrior, while remaining gentle, lover, with a sense of duty, who loves families.

[xrosslegends]

What's funny to me is that it's actually easy to make even a Mary/Gary Sue/Stue likable, just make them humble, anime has tons of examples, and also Superman, he would be terrible if he wasn't a golden retriever.

[warwolf]

i personally love a movie with a strong female lead but the movies that have been coming out lately with female leads have been so poorly written that the femae leads has been so insufferable and unbelievably irritating😊

[jacotromp]

I have absolutely no problem with woman in charge and being a hero. I mean, I find it sexy when a woman takes charge, but I have a problem when a 70Kg woman beat the living hell out of a huge 130Kg muscle man that has years worth of fighting experience. Woman who are extremely smart, and use that smarts to win is hot.

[jimharrison]

I absolutely love Edge of Tomorrow. One of my favorite films of this past decade along with Hell or High Water, Wind River, Ford V Ferrari, Baby Driver and Hacksaw Ridge. I guess you could also add the John Wick series to that list lol.

[PatricksCrazyPlace]

In Masters of the Universe: Revelations, Evil Lyn tried to literally destroy all of creation and she got forgiven, unpunished, and a full redemption...ok.

[SpiderSora]

I dont like how female characters these days are always written to have hostility towards men and I especially dont like how if you say you dont like these female characters some women accuse you of being a misogynist like you aren't allowed to dislike a character that happens to be female, it proves in todays day and age your not allowed to criticize a woman without them pulling the gender card

[Bjorn_R]

What I really dislike about Rey is that the older movies made it a point to show hard the force is to master and control. She is not only a bad character she litterally disparaging the old movies at the same time. Glad to hear someone who "gets it" with these modern movies

[AlbertusMagnus_]

You said it. These people can’t write. Hollywood today is dominated by talentless amateurs.

[lordsinister]

The worst part about it is that we all can see that it is a intentional effort to write female characters as you described. Why do I say this? Because for some reason we all see that most modern day writers downplay a lot of previously written female characters from the 70s or 80s. As if to say that there was something wrong with these characters because they just weren't good enough.

[claytonveno]

The time has come to stop calling them "girl bosses" and to officially start calling them Vaj Bosses in order to call out the absurdity of the concept as a whole!

[theoddegg]

This is so true. Theres a difference between a girl boss jerk who treats everyone like shit and a boss who happens to be a girl and embodies actual leadership traits. Whats tragic is that this was not a uncommon trait for women characters for the past 50-ish years. This terrible updated stereotype gives good characters like that a bad rep and needs to be analyzed and brought back to form by the writers of these properties.

[gouravchakraborty]

Marvel Rivals have strong female characters way more well written than Woke Hollywood alone.