Thanks you! Wren is very much not feisty -- she's based on an old friend of mine from high school who was the most pragmatic "do what you need to do and then take a nap because the rest of the day will probably suck" personality I'd ever met. Even when I was writing the Buffy books, Cordelia was far more interesting to write than Buffy or Willow. She varied her responses to fit the occasion, not One Kick Fits All.
It's always tough (and dangerous) to predict the development of any trope, because something will hit and change everyone's plans/plots, but I don't think 'kick-ass' is going to go away any time soon, because there are still a lot of readers looking at the traditional male heroes in movies and thinking "I want a female who does that." And we're not going to get it, mainstream, in movies [insert your own rant about Hollywood here]. So it falls to books to fill the need. (Kick-ass often tends to, by definition, be not all that smart, no matter the gender, because a smart character would not get themselves into the situation where ass had to be kicked.)
I do see a trend toward a wider background for heroines, though -- fewer 'broken/tragic figures' or 'driven by demons' [figurative or literal] and more characters who take a job because they're good at it, they enjoy it, or there's good money in it, or any of a dozen other reasons people find themselves in careers: what I call the Indy Jones model (rather than, say, Batman). The protags are self-determined, rather than driven. Of course, that removes the dramalama as a primary character prod, to which I say Yay!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-04-12 12:56 pm (UTC)It's always tough (and dangerous) to predict the development of any trope, because something will hit and change everyone's plans/plots, but I don't think 'kick-ass' is going to go away any time soon, because there are still a lot of readers looking at the traditional male heroes in movies and thinking "I want a female who does that." And we're not going to get it, mainstream, in movies [insert your own rant about Hollywood here]. So it falls to books to fill the need. (Kick-ass often tends to, by definition, be not all that smart, no matter the gender, because a smart character would not get themselves into the situation where ass had to be kicked.)
I do see a trend toward a wider background for heroines, though -- fewer 'broken/tragic figures' or 'driven by demons' [figurative or literal] and more characters who take a job because they're good at it, they enjoy it, or there's good money in it, or any of a dozen other reasons people find themselves in careers: what I call the Indy Jones model (rather than, say, Batman). The protags are self-determined, rather than driven. Of course, that removes the dramalama as a primary character prod, to which I say Yay!