Breaking the Mold: Redefining Female Heroes in Modern Storytelling

Jason J. Cross The Boss of Four Sides of Cross

And here we are again. Ready for another round of “What the hell is going on in Jason's head?” This newsletter is the only place where you can find out more about the ideas that are brewing deep within my brain. Well, I hope it's the only place. If there are other places where you can investigate my thoughts that are not from my imagination, then that isn't comforting.

If other people are hiding out in my personal thoughts, then I'll pray for their sanity because I know they won't last very long. The voices of all the characters in my mind are relentless and show no mercy. I know. For they have been fighting for control for many years now.

Speaking of mental health issues and the struggle for cognitive control, let me introduce you to one of the main characters of “Crossroads,” Alex. I say one of the main characters, though that's not entirely true. She will be the main main character. Of all the leads, Alex is the one who will receive the most screen time and the one you will follow the most. All the characters will connect to her.

Alex, The Main Character from Crossroads.

Alex is the one I had the most problems with. I have been going back and forth on whether this character should be male or female. In the original writing, the character was female, but with all the girl boss movies out there and the fact that audiences are beginning to reject female lead characters, I had second thoughts about keeping the character female.

Let me take a second to put my thoughts on the strong female character debate. These characters have reasonably successful in the past, so I don't think audiences are rejecting that. Audiences had no problems with characters like Buffy, Ripley, Sarah Connor, or Xena, to name a few. These characters are beloved and great examples of strong characters done correctly.

Strong Female Characters Done Right

The problem is the girl boss or Mary Sue-type character. The female characters are better than all the male characters, just because. No other reason than that. They are just better. I personally like strong female characters and hate girlbosses and Mary Sues.

The two girl boss characters - of the many that pop into my mind - are Ray (from Star Wars) and Captain Marvel. Whether male or female, the characters must earn their place as heroes and then win the audience's hearts. These two characters are nothing, but we're just given the title of hero because the script says so. But just because the script says so doesn't mean the audience will accept it.

Strong Female Characters who suck

Now, I'm not going to get into the whole audience-blaming campaign that writers and studios do these days. As creators, slash writers, filmmakers, etcetera, it is our responsibility to make characters and tell stories that audiences will enjoy. When we fail, we should take the L and learn. See where we went wrong and do better next time. Take responsibility instead of blaming the audience. That is just plain childish.

So here comes the dilemma. Since audiences are sick and tired of the girl boss, who they are outright rejecting, female lead movies without giving them a chance, should I rewrite Alex to be male? I'm not blaming audiences for the rejection; I blame the creators, who have saturated the market with so many stories with these unlikable characters.

In the end, I decided to keep Alex's female because it makes sense for my story. Hopefully, my female character will be able to get past the saturation of Mary Sues and earn the audience's goodwill. So, as I tell you about this character, I'll let you know precisely what I'm doing to keep it from feeling like a girl boss.

Before I get started with my presentation and try to win you over with Alex, let me mention how fantastic and brilliant my audience is. Don't even get me started on how good-looking you guys are. There should be paintings and statues in your honor placed all over the world. Scratch that, they should put that all over the universe.

Keeping the Lead Female Sexy

First and most important, for comic books, she must be beautiful and sexy. Now, I'm not a big video game player, and I have no problem with people who are, but I have seen how the industry has been toward its female characters. It isn't terrific. I'm not going to get into the details. If you know, you know.

I don't think it takes much brainpower to realize that when it comes to fantasy like video games and comic books, the audience wants their male characters to be manly and their female characters to be beautiful. I 100% agree with this sentiment.

Alex may be bigger than your average woman, but she sure does look good.

I made Alex large, not overweight, but kept her femininity. She is larger and muscular, but she's not built like a man. I specifically designed her to be large to convey her strength, while also making her undeniably female. I was taking Xena as an example. She's tall, has muscles, but is absolutely gorgeous.

To keep her emotionally female, I added to her backstory that being a bigger-than-usual female made her very lonely. Men were intimidated by her size, so no one wanted to date her or only wanted to bed her as a goof. To be able to boast about it with their friends instead of wanting to have a relationship with her.

Everybody deserves to be loved.

This lonely life led her to join the military. It is here that she meets someone who loves her. Someone who is not intimidated by her size but loves the person she is inside. For once, she felt like a woman, not a freak. This is where she feels happiest being looked at. Treated like a normal woman, and she was thrilled to be a wife and a mother.

Being part of a family is all Alex ever really wanted.

This is what she always wanted in life—not to be a top-level soldier, but to be a wife and a mother. She had no problem leaving her military career to become a housewife. It was where she was the happiest.

When love dies, revenge survives.

Of course, we can't keep her in this happy place, because that would be a boring story. To make her an interesting character, I'm going to turn her dream into a nightmare before we meet her. Her family's going to be killed horrifically. Since, at this point, how horrible the murder of her family was is not essential. If the audience is there and wants to hear more about the story, I'll go into more detail, but at the moment, it's not that important.

The reveal of her family getting killed will only be hinted at in the final of this story. Details will be revealed when or if the story continues. Don't want to reveal too much about any of the characters, just enough to get people interested.

Looking for trouble.

When I originally wrote the story, we first met Alex at a bar. Not just any bar, but one that was frequently visited by a group called Vipers (Tentative Name). She had learned that the Vipers were planning something big to send a powerful message. What it was and who it's for are things she's going to try to figure out.

When we first meet her, we will be inside her head. We will get the impression that she's not entirely there. She's having a mental battle. Will she fall into complete madness on her request for vengeance? Or will she be able to get together and move on with her life? That will be her arc as she fights. In her mind, she's not too far gone that killing is not a problem, but she is far from being OK.

Tamara, a damsel in distress?

While she's waiting for a higher-up Viper member to show up, she overhears a very drunk Tamara. Tamara's entirely out of place. She looks like a rich girl who's slumming it for fun, someone who doesn't realize how much danger she's in

Tamara leaves with one of the Viper gang members and is followed by three other men. Alex battles herself over whether to follow her. Tamara has got herself into this mess, so Alex is not responsible. She gets what she gets. Alex needs to stick around and hopes to find someone higher up and find out about the big plan, but in the end, there's still good in her, and she can't just sit there and do nothing while innocents are going to get hurt or killed.

The guilty will feel her pain.

So that's all the details I'm going to give you in this segment about Alex. What do you think? Do you think I can create a strong, good female character, or does she still come across as a typical girl boss? Let me know what your thoughts are. I hope I did a good job. Well, it's now time to end this segment. Next time I'll be talking about tomorrow. If you were getting the opinion that she has more to do with the story than a drunk damsel in distress, you would be right.

So, until next time, please feel free to write to me with your thoughts about this story or any other story that I've put together on my website. I have been doing this for a while, and I always love to talk to people about my work, so peace out for now.