Girlboss or Girl Failure: The Bastardization Of Female Characters

Intro:

It’s hardly a secret that fandom often centers on male characters. Whether intentionally or not, male characters serve as the stars of the shows in fan spaces. This isn’t always strictly a bad thing, as male characters can be compelling. However, it often comes at the cost of demonizing female characters. 

While male characters are given rich inner worlds by fans, female characters get shoved into convenient boxes. Among these boxes are the terms girlboss, mom friend, supportive lesbian, ‘the one with the brain cell’, and girl failure. If a female character does not fit into these boxes or is morally grey, she is labeled a bitch. Therefore, unless fandom can learn to deconstruct these boxes, the bastardization of compelling female characters will unfortunately continue.

Single Word Labels For Female Characters:

Rarely are female characters ever allowed to be complex in fan spaces. Whether she’s considered an archetype or a support to a male character, her individuality is wiped out in favor of fan tropes. A female character is most often a flat surface that fans can project quippy terms onto to go back to centering men. She’s the lesbian friend supporting a popular gay pairing, she’s a Type A girlboss, and she’s a girl failure. 

At other times, she’s the glue holding the group together. A mom friend with no personality traits besides taking care of male characters and keeping them out of trouble. Rarely are female characters allowed complexity in fan spaces. After all, allowing that takes the focus off of more popular male characters. 

The notable exception is in fan spaces surrounding media with only female characters. However, even then, it’s primarily because there are no male characters to project a female character’s interesting traits onto. 

Capable female characters with rich inner worlds in canon who happen to be as popular as a man get sidelined. The state of affairs is even worse in this regard with characters who are women of color. If they aren’t subject to fandom racism, their canon relationships get ignored for white male pairings. Even still, I find myself witnessing people in fan spaces begging for morally gray complex female characters. However, words are different than actions and fan spaces are even less kind to morally gray female characters.

Is She A Bitch Or Are You Just Sexist?: Looking Back At Tsubaki Yayoi Over A Decade Later

With the recent interest in “Arc System Works” games due to Guilty Gear Strive, Toshimichi Mori’s “BlazBlue” is no exception. With the original being released in 2008, the Blazblue C-Series spans four games, ending with “Central Fiction” in 2015. Tsuabki’s story starts with the second game “BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (2010)”. Since the release of her character and, by extension, her story, she has been treated horribly in fan spaces. One would think that after 14 years of mistreatment, fans would view her character with a kinder eye. Unfortunately, such has not been the case. Fans on Twitter have reduced her character to being an “incestuous bitch” when such is hardly the case.

Tsubaki Part 2:

Tsubaki is traumatized due to a variety of different factors. She is the product of incest and was raised in what is basically a cult. As a child, Tsubaki was not allowed to talk to anyone outside of her family except for one person. Throughout the story, it is revealed that she’s been slowly groomed to be the perfect soldier for the game’s antagonist. Throughout the second game, she watches her friends leave an organization she has dedicated her entire life to. She becomes increasingly isolated and susceptible to brainwashing. All she has left is her smooth-talking coworker who sinks her further into her conditioning. By the time she figures out the truth about her worldview, it’s too late. By that point, she is already fully under the influence of a mind-control spell. 

Tsubaki Part 3:

Many argue that she was not acting rationally. However, it’s hardly reasonable to expect a cult victim to act rationally in the event of further brainwashing. Additionally, the way her character is written is in conversation with the smart girl trope, twisting it on its head. 

Unfortunately, Tsubaki is also demonized for disliking the protagonist of the game Ragna the Bloodedge. However, her motivations for feeling as such make sense. Her dearest friends defected from an organization she dedicated her life to because of him. Tsubaki has every justifiable reason to be angry about that. People sadly tend to ignore this and write her off as hating Ragna for no reason. This demonization of her character serves as just one example of how fans will rip female characters apart for any perceived slight. Many of these same fans love characters in the series such as Jin, who also shows instability and moral complexity. Both are victims of intense conditioning and have similar neuroses. Even though neither is particularly a fan favorite, Jin gets demonized far less than Tsubaki for the same traits.

Conclusion On Female Characters and Biases Against Them:

This author unfortunately can’t demand people to care about fictional women. While it would be nice, doing such would require people to examine their biases. 

Many might look at this article and come to the conclusion that this author is attacking them for liking male characters. This is not the case. After all, many of this author’s favorite characters are male, so such would be hypocritical. It is important, however, to ask oneself questions from time to time to avoid squandering female characters. I’ve written a couple of basic ones below for internal reflection.

Questions For Internal Work:

“When you think about female characters you like, do they have the same rich inner world as male characters?”

“Do you primarily view female characters in a supporting role rather than a lead one?”

“Can you describe a fictional woman you like without describing her character in relation to a man?”

“Do you tend to center men/male characters in fan spaces?”

“Do you apply more scorn to fictional women than fictional men for the same set of actions?”

Final Thoughts:

While these questions are not the totality of inner work, they can help deconstruct internal biases against female characters. Additionally, if fans decided to deconstruct their view of fictional women, fan spaces would have fewer issues. Unfortunately, however, this is not a perfect world, and fandom repeats the same patterns verbatim. That said, people have the potential to reflect on their behavior and break old patterns. It’s not impossible, it just takes work.

Blazblue’s anime adaptation used to be on FUNimation but the merge with Crunchyroll jeopardizes that. Arcsys’s merchandise shop can be found here.