5 Female Characters Tag

Rules

1.) List 5 of your favorite female characters (book or screen).

2.) Tagging other people is optional

3.) If you are tagged link back to the person that tagged you.

4.) Link back to Revealed In Time

Choose one character from each category:

1.) Protagonist

2.) Villain

3.) Superhero

4.) That I would want to be friends with

5.) That I wish had better development

Thanks to Ivy Miranda of Revealed In Time for tagging me for this! I had a lot of fun deciding on and writing about these ladies.

Protagonist:

Mattie Ross

Played by Hailee Steinfeld

In True Grit

This goes for the book Mattie too, but to me Steinfeld's portrayal of her was so close to perfection that the two are pretty much indistinguishable. What I love about Mattie is her no-nonsense attitude and tightly focused attentions. She has one goal for the whole story, and will not be pulled off into rabbit trails or be otherwise dissuaded from pushing stubbornly on towards that goal. She is extremely mature for her age in some ways, but in others is embarrassingly naive. Like all great protagonist, she is brave and kind. She is very guarded, but with the few glimpses we get into her heart, we can see that it is full and deep. Though she is not a traditional protagonist you'd expect out of a fourteen-year-old girl, nor the traditional protagonist of a western tale, she is easy to understand, and easy to love and cheer for.

Villain:

Daisy Buchanan

Played by Carey Mulligan

In The Great Gatsby

(Spoilers) It's a strong word to call her, but one of the main principles I base my love of The Great Gatsby on is that Daisy is its villain -- not Tom Buchanan, nor George Wilson. Daisy on the surface is a beautiful, alluring woman who is good at making people like her, and making it seem effortless. Underneath, she is as cold and as selfish as they come. She lets Jay destroy himself in his pursuit of her without a care. She is the indirect cause of his death (and the direct cause of Myrtle's) but never confesses and even never appears to feel remorse. As Fitzgerald says about her and Tom, "...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness..." Only Tom was misled. Daisy knew everything, and everything that she was doing, and she did it all anyway. She is incredibly fascinating to me. Carey Mulligan in the 2013 adaptation makes a fantastic effort of portraying her villainous complexities, but the character wasn't written for the screen properly, and doesn't reach the heights of the Fitzgerald's Daisy.

Superhero

Natasha Romanoff

Played by Scarlett Johansson

In Iron Man 2, The Avengers, The Winter Solider, and Age of Ultron

She doesn't exactly have superpowers, but she is still absolutely a superhero. After appearing in four movies she collected an impressive amount of development, doing a great job in overcoming her exclusively eye-candy role in Iron Man 2, and with her last film landed solidly at the top of my favorite female superheroes. Her Winter Soldier version gives her lots of likability and normality, but Joss Whedon's version of her is my favorite -- she's like a femme fatale, playing the bad guys with smooth elegance, and you're never quite sure if that heart on her sleeve is the real one or not. I love that she has moments of yearning for a family, but is too loyal to her job of saving the world to abandon it to satisfy those desires. I love her graceful, no nonsense hand-to-hand fighting style, and I adore that she can handle herself with all the guys, but still acts like a lady.

That I would want to be friends with:

Katniss Everdeen

Played by Jennifer Lawrence

In The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

I know. It's a strange pick. Katniss is basically the complete opposite of everything you'd associate with being friendly. She even says of herself that she's not good at making friends. I don't doubt that if I lived in her world and we had a chance at being friends that it wouldn't actually happen, but we're using hypothetical's here, and the word "want." Aside from my low chances of hypothetically getting into the affections of the great Miss Everdeen, the fact is that Katniss is one of the best people anyone could ever be friends with. Think of the people she is friends with, and how devotedly loyal she is to every single one. She may not come to care for a person easily, but once she does she cares with every last drop she has to give. Plus, I like to imagine that we'd get along. She's a very open and honest person with her friends, and if someone is honest with me, I find it easy to follow suit. And honesty without fear of losing the friendship is an amazing thing.

That I wish I had better development:

Tauriel

Played by Evangeline Lily

In The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies

This was definitely the hardest category for me, because when I think a character has bad development, I automatically don't like them. I chose Tauriel, because I wanted to like her. I really, really, did. And some of the time I was able to. Evangeline Lily made her charming and sincere in her way, and really good at destroying orcs with style. But the hints at her romance with Legolas were weird; and her full-on romance with Kili even more so. Even her relationship with Thranduil was odd. She simply did not feel like a true Middle-Earth lady. She only served as ways and means of developing other characters, moving the plot along, and expanding the run time. Too bad, but even so annoyingly developed as she was, she wasn't distractingly bad, because the movies often matched her level pretty well.

I will tag:
Lizzie
Rissi 
Hamlette
Olivia 

And since tagging is optional, I'm sure that "stealing" is encouraged, so if you want to do it -- please do!