By This is the first in what may evolve into a series of posts focused on Character Tropes.
Let’s start with two examples of Young Female Teenage Warrior Women. You know, the type of character who pops up with some frequency in dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction. She’s the kind of girl who kicks butt, take’s names and makes grown men step back. Oh, and in my experience, she’s smart and she’s pretty.
There will be some spoilers, but I’ll keep them to a minimum
Here are today’s contestants:
Astrid Larsson – from the Emberverse series by S. M. Stirling
- 14 years old at the start of the series
- 5’ 3” and slender
- Comes from a wealthy family
- This girl is an archery fanatic and loves everything J. R. R. Tolkein
- Has a custom made bow she practices with a lot
Faith Smith – from the Black Tide Rising series by John Ringo
- 13 years old at the start of the series
- Tall and muscular for a girl her age
- Comes from a survivalist prepper family
- This girl loves guns and shooting things
- She would have played rugby if there was a team but settled for soccer
Context: I’ve read most of the books of the Emberverse but only the first one from the Black Tide Rising series. I do intend to read more. I’m a huge S. M. Stirling fan but also think highly of the works of John Ringo.
Astrid Larsson
I found Astrid to be the more believable of today’s contestants and found her to be engaging – a character I liked and cheered for.
- Coming from a wealthy family who had the money and the space to indulge her archery habit, I found it to be believable, especially coupled with her love of Tolkein.
- When things fall apart, she (and her family) are in frequent, realistic danger and don’t have an easy path.
- In the brutal new world in which she finds herself, she experiences loss of loved ones and sexual assault, both of which, sadly, are totally believable in the context. Indeed, these are logical outgrowths of a world gone mad.
- Her experiences shape her but also scar her emotionally, another realistic consequence. Her future eccentricities (some would say bat-shit crazy) feel like logical outgrowths of the trauma that shapes her.
- Her competence in her accomplishments is the result of hard work, native intelligence and training – lots of training!
Faith Smith
Even though aspects of Faith as a character twanged my believability meter, I still found her to be engaging; one of my favorite characters in “Under a Graveyard Sky”.
- I didn’t find a good support argument for why Faith is so fond of, and good at, martial mayhem.
- When things fall apart, she (and her family) are often in dangerous situations. I found myself asking why some of them weren’t simply avoided? For example, they go to an impromptu concert in New York City in the middle of the outbreak of a Zombie Apocalypse. Really? It was a cool action sequence and it was entertaining, but… Her father Steve, who is obsessed with making sure he can keep his family safe if things go bad, is ‘ok’ with going along with this type of obvious and unnecessary threat? TWANG
- There is no close personal loss. In fact, the Smith’s are an insulated island in a sea of tragic separation and loss. TWANG
- From the get-go, Faith is eager to kill zombies and she’s good at it. I can partially buy into that with the explanation that the family prepared and trained as part of their world view. I think what bugs me is there really wasn’t any character development to get to that result. It was just ‘there’.
- As the first book in the series unfolds, she does begin to present evidence of mental duress, and it does help with the whole believability aspect. My reservation was it felt as if it was written in because there jolly well needed to be some consequence! So, a stuffed toy she carries around and projects her stress onto was introduced. I like the mechanism but never got the feeling it was anything other than something placed into the narrative to satisfy an obvious need.
In conclusion: I like the Teenage Girl Warrior Woman character trope. Despite having more problems with Faith Smith, it was reading her story that reminded me of Astrid Larsson and inspired me to pen this post. Girls are often more mature for their age when compared to boys. When confronted with a world that is falling apart, I like the idea of younger characters of both genders stepping up and shouldering more of the load then we would expect them to. Just as I like the realistic portrayal of some adults falling apart in the same situations. Character, after all, is not determined by age. It’s also refreshing to find strong, competent female characters who don’t rely entirely on a male hero to protect them. Heroes shouldn’t be determined by gender.
So don’t make the mistake of messing with Astrid or Faith!
What examples of this character trope come to mind for you? Comment below.
