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Kickass Female Characters
Sep. 3rd, 2010 06:49 pmFrom this week's ![[community profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fannish5: Name five kickass female characters:
In the order they occurred to me:
1. McCoy from Streets of Fire: The role of McCoy was originally intended to be played by a man, but Amy Madigan managed to persuade them that she could play the role, originally "[...] written to be played by an overweight male who was a good soldier and really needed a job. It could still be tough and strong and have a woman do it without rewriting the part." And they didn't. McCoy is an ex-soldier/mechanic who is tough, strong and kicks serious ass without having to be rewritten so that we get beaten about the head and neck with the fact that she's a woman!
2. Grandma Hazel from The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein Hazel appears in a couple different Heinlein stories; she's a little girl in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and plays a big role in Cat Who Walks Through Walls (which is actually where I first met her and I thought she was pretty kick-ass there too). But, I believe The Rolling Stones was her first appearance where she's the family matriarch. She lives with her son George and his wife and four kids on the moon and goes with them when the family decides to take an extended trip through the solar system in a rocket the twin sons have just bought. She's old and cantankerous and generally enjoys aggravating her son but she also steps up and rides herd on her grandkids, particularly the twins Castor and Pollux. The scene that wins her a kick-ass award in my heart is where Grandma Hazel plans to let herself die of oxygen deprivation to save her youngest grandchild when the two of them are stuck on a small scooter out in the asteroid belt.
Hazel's daughter in law Edith likewise gets kickass points for voluntarily going aboard a spaceship suffering from a measles outbreak to help treat the people aboard, because, hey she's a doctor and that's what doctors do, yeah?
3. Hunaker from Deathlands: Pilgrimage to Hell. She's tough, she's strong, she's an excellent shot with an MG and she's a bisexual woman who prefers women and who is in a relationship with another woman and that relationship is treated as something serious and normal. Did I mention that Deathlands: Pilgrimage to Hell was published in 1986 and that it's a men's post-apocalyptic adventure novel (part of the still ongoing Deathlands series) and that the character could just as easily have been written as a man but wasn't and that she's friggin' AWESOME! *clears throat* *ahem* I like Hunaker.
4. The women of Jem and the Holograms: All of 'em. Jerrica Benton runs her own company AND is the foster mother of 12 little girls AND sings as Jem. Her bandmates are in the band AND are foster mothers to 12 little girls. The Misfits know what they want and go after it and the women of the Stingers are likewise plus Minx of the Stingers is a tech-savvy gal in her own right. Probably one of the few 80s kid series to beat the Bechdel Test into the ground.
5. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on M*A*S*H: particularly once they sent Frank Burns home and she divorced her jackass husband. I remember one episode where she was dating a sexxay sergeant named Scully who was miffed about her wanting to stick to her career and Margaret pointed to her rank insignia and said "These come in gold, not blue for boys and pink for girls so step off, bucko." Well, ok, she said everything before so step off bucko but I can't remember the rest.
Special Mention: to Jennifer from WKRP in Cincinnati for being pretty AND smart. And generally the only sane person at the station.
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End Notes: The spoiler code used for this post comes from amadi's article "Warnings & How to Do Them -- any formatting errors in it are from me.
fannish5: Name five kickass female characters:In the order they occurred to me:
1. McCoy from Streets of Fire: The role of McCoy was originally intended to be played by a man, but Amy Madigan managed to persuade them that she could play the role, originally "[...] written to be played by an overweight male who was a good soldier and really needed a job. It could still be tough and strong and have a woman do it without rewriting the part." And they didn't. McCoy is an ex-soldier/mechanic who is tough, strong and kicks serious ass without having to be rewritten so that we get beaten about the head and neck with the fact that she's a woman!
2. Grandma Hazel from The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein Hazel appears in a couple different Heinlein stories; she's a little girl in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and plays a big role in Cat Who Walks Through Walls (which is actually where I first met her and I thought she was pretty kick-ass there too). But, I believe The Rolling Stones was her first appearance where she's the family matriarch. She lives with her son George and his wife and four kids on the moon and goes with them when the family decides to take an extended trip through the solar system in a rocket the twin sons have just bought. She's old and cantankerous and generally enjoys aggravating her son but she also steps up and rides herd on her grandkids, particularly the twins Castor and Pollux. The scene that wins her a kick-ass award in my heart is where Grandma Hazel plans to let herself die of oxygen deprivation to save her youngest grandchild when the two of them are stuck on a small scooter out in the asteroid belt.
Hazel's daughter in law Edith likewise gets kickass points for voluntarily going aboard a spaceship suffering from a measles outbreak to help treat the people aboard, because, hey she's a doctor and that's what doctors do, yeah?
3. Hunaker from Deathlands: Pilgrimage to Hell. She's tough, she's strong, she's an excellent shot with an MG and she's a bisexual woman who prefers women and who is in a relationship with another woman and that relationship is treated as something serious and normal. Did I mention that Deathlands: Pilgrimage to Hell was published in 1986 and that it's a men's post-apocalyptic adventure novel (part of the still ongoing Deathlands series) and that the character could just as easily have been written as a man but wasn't and that she's friggin' AWESOME! *clears throat* *ahem* I like Hunaker.
4. The women of Jem and the Holograms: All of 'em. Jerrica Benton runs her own company AND is the foster mother of 12 little girls AND sings as Jem. Her bandmates are in the band AND are foster mothers to 12 little girls. The Misfits know what they want and go after it and the women of the Stingers are likewise plus Minx of the Stingers is a tech-savvy gal in her own right. Probably one of the few 80s kid series to beat the Bechdel Test into the ground.
5. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on M*A*S*H: particularly once they sent Frank Burns home and she divorced her jackass husband. I remember one episode where she was dating a sexxay sergeant named Scully who was miffed about her wanting to stick to her career and Margaret pointed to her rank insignia and said "These come in gold, not blue for boys and pink for girls so step off, bucko." Well, ok, she said everything before so step off bucko but I can't remember the rest.
Special Mention: to Jennifer from WKRP in Cincinnati for being pretty AND smart. And generally the only sane person at the station.
-------------------------------
End Notes: The spoiler code used for this post comes from amadi's article "Warnings & How to Do Them -- any formatting errors in it are from me.
