glass_icarus wrote, "Favorite female characters and why you love them? Any fandom :)"

SANTANA LOPEZ [Glee]
Not only is she half of my all-time favorite ship (Pezberry), but Santana is a sass-queen and a great singer to boot.
If you fell off the Glee wagon early (I certainly would not blame you), Santana was initially a sidekick character to Dianna Agron's white/blonde Quinn Fabray. Santana almost always appeared with Brittany, but it was usually Santana making the devastating one-liners as well as their characters' decisions. Because the show almost always presented Santana together with Brittany, they first presented a potential sexual relationship as a non-sequitur in a multi-party phone conversation - a joke that worked because of the other characters' surprised reactions.
But Naya Rivera wanted the camera on her at all times, and her background reactions in the choir room and in hallway scenes, usually hilarious as well as on-point, led her to bigger storylines, in part because she was one of the strongest actors on the show. [I'd say second only to Cory Monteith.] Her relationship with Brittany served as an opportunity to explore Santana's sexuality, and Rivera was there able to present a vulnerability that many fans latched on to.

In a show of self-centered teenagers, Santana is the one character who is always willing to GO THERE, to say what no one else will say. This was convenient for writers looking to push a plot forward, as well as viewers seeking vindication. She pointed out plot holes, hypocrisy, and uncomfortable truths. Even when the writing plummeted as the show continuously tried to take itself seriously for representing marginalized teenagers while also excorciating viewers for expecting anything but cutting comedy, Santana Lopez was reliably hilarious.

After having her vulnerability open her up, her character is also one of the few who has a clear progression on the show into self-acceptance and ability to love and care about other people. She learns how to have real, actual friends.

Many fic authors have given her the characterization and storylines that the show-runners never thought she deserved. She is my favorite character to write in A Song is a Weapon, and she's also my favorite character to read in this fandom.


Utena Tenjou [Revolutionary Girl Utena/Shoujo Kakumei Utena]
I'm not sure how accurate the translation was for the first sub I saw of this show, but when relaying the [first version of the] backstory, it said something like, "So impressed was she by him, that she decided to become a prince herself." This BLEW MY MIND. WHOA! A tiny girl gets saved by a prince AND THEREFORE DECIDES TO BECOME A PRINCE HERSELF. WHAT KIND OF AWESOME FUCKERY IS THIS.

Utena. Utena is that awesome. Her pink hair, her refusal to take sass, her tenacity in telling Anthy Himemiya that she's in a fucked up situation and no matter how many other people think it's just fine, it's really not okay.

I want to be Utena. I aspire to her chivalry.


Tifa Lockhart [Final Fantasy VII]
You spend the first half of the game knowing that Tifa's Cloud's childhood friend, but in the second half it's revealed that since before the start of the game she's been holding back the truth and waiting to see what happens because she knows Cloud ought to be dead, and she's not sure if the protag you're playing as is really him, or a clone - if her memories are real, or fake. This reveal is one of the biggest WTF moments in video game history, but it also gives Tifa some real depth that often gets glossed over in FF7 fandom.

In addition to that, she runs her own bar in the Sector 7 slums, and allows it to be the secret headquarters for a terrorist organization dedicated to taking down an environment-destroying corporation that's responsible for the death of her father as well as burning her hometown to the ground.

At the age of 15, she picked up Sephiroth's own sword and tried to get her revenge even though she had to have known there was no way she could succeed. And after that, after recovering from her wounds and re-learning her martial arts skills, she joins AVALANCHE to work on getting revenge in the long-term. She's supportive, she's brave, and at a point of high drama in the game, she chooses to stay by Cloud when he's incapacitated and take a break from saving the world. It's a selfish choice, and I kind of love her for it. She refuses to give up on Cloud's hopeless ass throughout the game. I was first drawn to Tifa because I over-identified with her for falling in love with her childhood friend, but I've stayed a devoted fan because of her complexity and strength.



If you want me to post about something some time this month, leave a comment on this post.