I just had the severe misfortune of watching A Shadow in the Cloud, and that experience has compelled me to reiterate some of my thoughts on writing female characters. I don’t claim to be an expert (not a female), and I haven’t studied feminist literature or anything, but I sincerely feel like there is a huge problem plaguing female characters that is not only obvious, but easily avoided.

I don’t have time to expand this into a ten-page dissertation (shocking, I know!) so I’m going to keep this short and simple.

Writers seem to have a very hard time creating female characters that aren’t defined by men and/or traditional female roles. In other words, these writers have decided that a female character that’s abused by her husband is not empowering — but their answer to that is to still write a female character that’s abused by her husband, but just make her handle it differently.

Are you following me? Because this is a huge problem that I’ve seen repeated and repeated throughout movies, games, and books. It drives me nuts because it not only tends to hamstring some pretty good premises (like the aforementioned movie) but also subverts the very ideas of strength that I assume the writers are trying to embrace.

There seems to be some need to set the female character up as a victim first. In many cases, the character is written as a victim over and over again, and the displays of her strength come from her “getting through it”. But I would argue that this isn’t empowering as much as it is…apologetic? I don’t know. It’s somehow unfulfilling and seems very insincere.

Why not simply write female characters who have agency and purpose of their own? Without it needing to be driven, in some way, by the men around her (abusive or not)?

The Part With Spoilers

I saved the specific examples from A Shadow in the Cloud for here, just in case you want to watch it for yourself.

Anyway, I don’t understand the difficulty of writing a strong female character. Make her human, and make her competent in the things she’s competent in.

It’s really straightforward (and works for all types of characters) but the heavy-handedness and apparent cluelessness of many writers makes it seem so challenging. Strong does not mean infallible. Or invulnerable. Or flawless. Strong can just be capable and relatable.

But when it’s pushed too far — as it was in the movie — strong turns into comically stupid.

Starting at the end, where the female lead physically overpowers and kills a bat creature that’s larger than her and equipped with talons and fangs, we see an example of how strong doesn’t have to mean…well…physically strong. Like, beyond all realms of believability, especially. Indiana Jones pulled out a gun and shot a sword-wielding dervish guy, and we loved him for it. (Yeah, I know the backstory on that.) I don’t think it would have been unreasonable for her to just shoot the bat creature — if she really needed to kill it at all.

And then you have the standard stuff throughout the movie, wherein all of the male secondaries seem to suck at their jobs, but she can walk in, take over, and outperform them in every way. Strong doesn’t mean better than everyone else. Again, especially when it makes no sense. She’s a better gunner than the gunners. She’s a better fighter than the soldiers. She’s a better pilot than the pilot. And she knows more about the plane’s mechanics than the plane’s mechanic. This is too much — and more importantly, it’s unnecessary. This kind of over-the-top character isn’t endearing as much as they are annoying. And that’s not a gender thing at all…it’s a human thing.

All in all, I had high hopes for this movie going into it. Then there was a scene that lasted at least 20 minutes where we had to listen to the plane’s crew make misogynistic remarks at her through the radio. Seriously, it was a lot, and it immediately made it clear that the writer really, really wanted to hammer home the idea that the men on the plane were awful.

Again, did it have to paint her as a victim so that she could superwoman her way around all the men later? I don’t think so…but many writers think this is the only way to develop a strong female.

The falling off point for me was the introduction of the baby. I was willing to suffer through the movie while imagining that the main character was some kind of OSI agent transporting a baby gremlin that had been captured or something (that was my guess). I was hoping she would just be a badass because she was a badass, and that she had a mission that had nothing to do with a man to accomplish.

But no. She had lied her way onto the plane to escape an abusive husband.

See what I mean? Isn’t that infinitely more disappointing than her just being a woman with agency and free will who was dedicated to a mission for the war effort? Doesn’t that suck?

Anyway, I’m cutting myself off now. Feel free to let me know what you think at roe@jpaulroe.com.