Originally a blog by totallynotabrony

My Little Pony has a lot of in-your-face ladies. Since most of the cast is female that's to be expected, but why don't we take a closer look?

Rainbow Dash and Applejack are clearly the stereotypical take-charge type of characters that this trope probably goes for. They are both tomboyish and less girly than the rest.

But is "butch-feminist-don't-need-no-man" the definition of strong female? Let's look at at a few examples of another type of character. Rarity is very girly, but she threatened to tear some dragons apart if they hurt Spike. Twilight Sparkle is a princess, has a pretty tiara, and loves books, but she's pretty much the most magically powerful pony anywhere.

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy don't fit the same mold. Pinkie is random and silly. Fluttershy is a doormat. But we can argue that they are both well developed, high quality characters that are capable of driving their own storylines.

Yes, this means we have to define "Strong Female Character." Is it a strong female personality, or a strong character who happens to be female?

Here's a quote from Neil Gaiman:

"I always feel like the wrong person to be asked when I get asked that question because people say, ‘Well how do you write such good female characters?’ And I go, ‘Well I write people.’ Approximately half of the people I know are female and they’re cool, and they’re interesting, and so, why wouldn’t I? I think the big thing to point out to people is, you know, possibly they should go and hang around with some women. And also, it’s worth pointing out that people, unfortunately, misunderstand the phrase ‘strong women.’ The glory of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is it was filled with strong women. Only one of those strong women had supernatural strength and an awful lot of sharpened stakes. And people sort of go ‘Well yes, of course Buffy was a strong woman. She could kick her way through a door.’ And you go ‘No, well that’s not actually what makes her a strong woman! You’re missing the point.’"

Writing what you see in reality should be a good starting place for developing characters. Everyone has flaws and strengths. Richard Nixon did illegal things in the Watergate scandal, but he sent the United States to the moon and got us out of Vietnam. Genghis Khan killed millions of people, but you can't take over most of the world without seriously good military skills. Those examples are pretty extreme, but the point is that nobody in real life is ever truly without detail to flesh out their character.

Strong characters are important. Their gender is another matter. People are sexist. We make a big deal out of things. The first woman to do anything is lauded on the news and there are more than a billion internet search results for the phrase "first female." The media skews things unrealistically.

Guys have a save the girl mentality. This is fuel for the damsel in distress trope. A damsel in distress, if she could be easily replaced with an object to be saved, comes across as flat and uninteresting. Instead of being objectified, your female characters have to do something. Hermione, from the Harry Potter series, is a fine example of a strong character. Ron and Harry once had to rescue her from a troll, however, that wasn't her only contribution to the series. She wasn't just a damsel to be rescued.

Nobody talks about strong male characters. There are not many "dude in distress" stories, probably because they would be criticized as feminist by the media. This doesn't seem right. Equality is a two-way street.

An often-quoted standard of female equality is the Bechdel Test, which originated from Alison Bechdel, the creator of the comic Dykes To Watch Out For:

I think we can all agree that Ellen Ripley is a strong female character.

To summarize: the story being tested has to have at least two women who have a conversation that is about something other than men. This is a loose set of rules that establishes female characters as something other than a plot point. Another test is the Mako Mori Test, named after the character in the movie Pacific Rim. It states that a story has to have at least one female character who gets her own narrative arc that is not about supporting a man’s story.

Neither of these two tests is perfect. The Bechdel Test started out as a joke. The Mako Mori Test is failed by the very movie it was inspired by. Only about half of modern movies pass the Bechdel Test, and only about one in five pass both tests. Still, the tests can give an indication of having interesting, useful female characters while while the story itself can be something not girly at all - like Pacific Rim's epic robot fights.

Ultimately, that's the best takeaway from this. To be a strong character, they can't be useless in the story - no matter what the story is. Strong female characters have a slightly different set of rules to play by, modern gender relations being what they are, but they are strong characters first, female second.

Going too far can result in an unrealistic, unlikable Mary Sue character who unbalances the story just by being there. There's nothing wrong with a female badass, but she has to have a personality to go with it.

So where does this leave us for My Little Pony? The Mane 6 are all female. Some are more Action Girl than others, but all are vital to the story. Someone did their homework to establish a group of personalities that balance and complement each other, and feel real (if, admittedly, slightly more exaggerated than real life)

Write what you know. Write who you know. There's no better way to create strong characters than portraying the real people in your life - not gender stereotypes.

I always consider a developed character one that you can read without, in your mind, going "Oh, it's a girl," or "Man, this dude again."

You eventually forget about their gender, not considering it a defining feature of their personality or, if it is, an extension of something greater.

However, you have to realise that in reality, people remember whether they're a guy or a girl. You see it in cliques and such or even simple defining tropes of modern day lives like girls taking a long time in the toilet. It's there: you cannot ignore it.

I don't really know what there is to say. Most of the time, female characters, or, as they should be called, characters are written in a way that it doesn't feel... 'female.' They're just girls, so what? This isn't high school.

Also, regarding the Mako Mori test: Pacific Rim was one of the few 'mainstream action hollywood dumbdead' flicks that didn't have the male protagonist 'hook up' with the girl for the sake of sexual appeal... lol, who am I kidding?

"To summarize: the story being tested has to have at least two women who have a conversation that is about something other than men." This one's silly for self-explanatory reasons. People rarely write girls that do nothing but talk about boys. And if they do, it's often for the same reasons some boys in fiction talk about nothing but girls.

3026037 First of all, thanks for sharing the blog post with us.

What it really comes down to when writing strong female characters that are not tomboyish, is that you need to take under consideration that most females don't solve problems like males would. The show itself is full of examples of this, and how stereotypically male problem solutions fail to do the trick in most situations (like e.g. kicking a full-grown dragon in the face). There's a reason there's no element of ass-kickery, so if you sword-and-sorcery fic only features Red Sonja type females, you'll probably lose some credibility.

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An excellent point, though it does run the risk of having female characters that are similar to one another. Though that tends to be the problem already.

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We could always turn her over and use her as a rug

3026407

If they step on your face, PUT THEM IN THEIR PLACE!

3026037

Writing Strong Female Characters

Write them as any other character.

3026218 Hm why do you think this would make female characters more similar? I mean, female means are usually less confrontational, but apart from that they can be very different.

Fluttershy tries to solve problems with compassion and kindness (the manticore, Discord) or 'the stare' (the dragon, the cockatrice), which I'd like to compare to something like motherly authority.

Rarity on the other hoof sometimes tries to lie her way out of situations (sweet and elite), or use generosity (the water serpent), which is just an euphemistical word for bribery IMHO, or tries to be persuasive by being manipulatively charming (the dragon, putting your hoof down), dignified or annoying (diamond dogs).

Pinkie Pie... well, she isn't that much of a problem solver at all, but what she tries to do is to be everyponies friend and make everyone laugh and feel good about themselves, which is IMO the same as being kind to everyone but in an over-the-top and sometimes obnoxious way, which demonstrates that the same core trait (being kind + unconfrontational) can manifest in very different behaviour when the person is shy or outgoing, which doesn't register on the masculine/feminine spectrum for me.

>3027507

By saying women solve problems in a way that is different from men you start to group the behavior of women. If you look at it with that exact wording then you are defining their thought as different from men, but many women think and solve problems in ways more atypical to men than women. The reverse is also true.

3027827
That's the point, they both did good and bad things. They were multifaceted.

3029727 So basically, you're saying that I should not define a group by its distinction from another? (a fair point, by the way. It's just that the "seek and destroy" method is so overused that it's easy, although not alltogether fair, to do that.) Or are you saying I stated it too black and white?

3026091 Just a quick point, though I agree with the rest of what you said:

"To summarize: the story being tested has to have at least two women who have a conversation that is about something other than men."

This is the crux of the Bechdel Test: in only about half of movies have two female characters talking about something other than males. The average romance movie will not feature two females talking about something other than males. Crazy examples that fail the Bechdel test: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Run Lola Run, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Captain Phillips, Sex and the City.

Notably, none of these films would really be called sexist, either. (maybe SatC, but that's debateable) The meaning of the test is only in it's aggregate: the fact that so many films fail is in itself interesting, that fact that any one film fails really isn't. Captain Phillip is simply set somewhere without any females.

hey look a chart!

Alien fails the test spectacularly, but I wouldn't call Ripley "weak."

I agree with everything especially about writing based off people you know.

If I was going to write a female character especially a strong female character I would use my mom. My mom to me is the epitome of a strong woman. My mom likes to act like a girly girl you know dressing nice and make up but that being said I have seen my mom fight and damn. My mom was in the car with me and I was like nine at the time and this other woman almost put my mom and me into the guard rail on the road. So my pulls up along side her angry obviously and pulls the woman over. My mom is 5'4" the woman she pulled over was a head taller than her and my mom was in her face calling her a stupid bitch for putting me in danger the woman pushes my mom. My mom pushes back. The woman slaps and well my mom slugs her. Puts her down one shot. Now don't take this as my mom is mean cause she is far from it my mom is always nice till you give her a reason not to be. My mom grew up with a alcoholic father and dirt poor with two older siblings and has made her first and only marriage last 23 years.

So to me when I think of a strong woman character I think of my mom.

Am I the only one here who found the OP's post to be fairly incomprehensible?

You have poorly formed paragraphs. You don't really complete any of your thoughts in them, and instead mix multiple topics. You wander from idea to idea.

You also seem to be attempting to cite sources, but do nothing helpful like linking any of your sources beyond the initial video.

I give this lecture a poor grade.

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Both. Defining a group by another is one of the main issue when talking about any specific gender. But also saying all women act X, or not Y, is an issue.

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To each their own. I'll try and add links next time and flush out the paragraphs a bit more.

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Defining a group by another is one of the main issue when talking about any specific gender.

Well, I tried to counter that by giving examples of what I saw as feminine problem solutions regarding Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie Pie.

But also saying all women act X, or not Y, is an issue.

Never did that. I said most. On a scale of how confrontational a problem solution would be, most women would tend to be on one side of the spectrum, whereas statistically more man would be on the other. I thought that was made sufficiently clear by using most, and stereotypical. Doesn't mean you can't have no Red Sonja, just that overpopulating your world with them would make it implausible.

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Must have misunderstood then.

3027276 This. Why does their gender matter?

3026037 You're right about Hermione from Harry Potter. I actually like her better than Ron

To be safe, perhaps we should base characters off people we know, rather than basing characters off what we think we know about people?

Most good writers have experience with dealing with people, rather than sulking about reading about gender tropes that they think people actually do.

3026091
B-brother?

3680761 Big Brother.

I am watching you.