Icon meme! Because there's nothing like a meme when you're tired.

[oloriel]

And it's an intelligent meme, too! Snagged from munditia. I'll just quote her so I don't have to come up with a rant of my own:

There's this Female Character Flowchart out there that I'm sure most of you have heard of already. If you haven't, let me sum it up for you: basically, all fictional female characters fall into stereotypes and aren't "realistic." Round-up here! Also, this flowchart is done in a way that basically anyone can be crammed into one of their categories, as long as you ignore the more three-dimensional aspects of her characterization and focus on the most two-dimensional details available.

Seriously, people who are much more articulate than me have ranted on this subject and explained why it's such a bad thing. That's not what this post is about. You see, this post? Is simply a chance for me to go through my LJ icons and post the ones that I have that feature female characters, whether by themselves, with other women, with men, or simply as part of a group (which wouldn't be whole without them).

Why? Because the thing is, these women are all awesome, in their own unique ways.










Lacking, of course, the most frustrating compelling character of all: myself. But I am not fictional. I think. (If I am, I want to know who the hell WROTE THIS SHIT.) Amusingly enough, though, I - who I probably am, as we have established, not fictional - would fail the first question on that flowchart. Carry my own story? Are you MAD?
I'd probably end up somewhere between Sweet Nerd, Bossy Girl and Tomboy, with a side helping of Damsel in Distress and/or Biological Timebomb depending on the day's events...

Comments

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

I think this is just one of the memes I don't get the sense of. Of course the women (and men) in my icons are all awesome in their unique ways - or at least somehow fascinating, regarding the villains. Because otherwise I would not take their icons into my collection in the first place. But it doesn't matter as my icons mostly consist of sheep or random inanimate objects or words or creatures with no fixed gender like my little confused guy up there.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

The sense of it is that the flowchart that inspired it is a wee bit crappy because it reduces some characters more than the original characterisation does, and it doesn't actually leave... anyone. So instead we show off... anyone. Even those characters who actually are on the two-dimensional side, and more so those who aren't.

Wasn't your confused little guy called Pauli? Or am I imagining things?

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

Yeah but don't you do that already by having those icons in the first place? IDK, it's just one of those memes I don't get, same with the bra meme on facebook.

I just know him as Maulwurf without any name.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Technically, yes - but you don't specifically call attention to them. And memes like this are a lovely excuse for going through one's own icon collection, admire all the shiny and pick a variety for showing off. What's not to love?

I thought I remembered him as "Pauli, der kleine Maulwurf". Though perhaps that was just the name my friends and I gave him back then. *headscratch*

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

It's just an approach that's not my cup of tea but that's rather my problem, I guess ;)

Google says that he was called Pauli in some German homevideo releases but that the name was unofficial. In only knew him from the Sendung mit der Maus, where he remained being unnamed. In the Czech original he is called "krtek" which just means mole.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Ah, so that's where that came from... So the only question that remains is: Does Czech have grammatical gender, and if so, which applies to krtek? *ducks*

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

*points to icon*

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, of course. If I really thought it were important. ;)

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

See - for that meme it would be important *ducks*

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

It would be - if you were interested in taking it! :D

[For what it's worth, it seems that krtek, like Maulwurf, is masculine.]

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

And precisely this is one of the reasons why I'm not taking it ;)

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Interesting female icons. I may put mine up. Yours are more versatile. Mine consist of the women of the Silmarillion and myself and my daughter (mostly reading!).

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Not sure whether you and your daughter count (you are real people as well, after all, or so we're told ;)), but I think any excuse to show off one's icons is good. ;)

[vout.livejournal.com]

With regard to life as fiction: Yesterday, when we were in the supermarket, Kira vanished. Just like that. I actually thought I finally found out what genre the movie of my life is: either wife-disappears-and-life-falls-apart drama, thriller or horror movie. I was really glad when I found her again. I'd rather my life be a two-girls-kick-ass movie.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

\o/
I love that you have all these RPG icons. Good times.

I'd rather my life be a two-girls-kick-ass movie.

I'd rather watch that than the thriller/horror variant, too!

[vout.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was surprised that I have that many. 11! And I didn't take the ones who are double.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

What's the story behind these three icons? They are gorgeous.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, there was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called--- oh, you mean how I got to have these icons?

They're pseudo-illuminated initials from Yet Another Extremely Fangirly Project (TM) of mine, in this case a hand-written copy of the Valaquenta in Quenya (http://pics.livejournal.com/oloriel/gallery/0000fb68). Valaquenta because that's the only complete "book" that's been translated into Quenya already so I don't have to do that myself. I started it last December so my LARP character (an Elvish scribe) finally had some work to show, and soon after I had to discontinue it due to my master's thesis & other real life stuff, so I got no further than Vairë. No idea whether I'll eventually take it up again, but as I was particularly fond of these three (and Aulë), they ended up as LJ icons. ^^

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

I had suspected that they might be illustrations of some Valier, but I wasn't quite szre.

And the project is awesome. Your manuscript scans are really, really lovely.