A strong character isn't physically strong. They're well written, in other words the writing that supports them is strong. You can sympathize with a strongly written character because despite their status as a fictional being sprouting out of the imagination of an author, they are credible enough that you can actually relate to this made up mish-mash of parts, this Frankenstein's monster of a human being.
When you're young, you don't need a character who saves the day and wins every battle, you need a character who faces trials like your own. A character who you can look to in order to learn how to triumph over those trials, and to whom you can look to for a sympathetic companion when you both share failure in the face of those trials. You need a character who has a good reason for their actions, the kind of reason you can look to for guidance when you eventually have to deal with actions of your own.
This is what makes a lead strong. Not the achievements and trophies they rack up on their shelf, but the trials they both overcome and are overcome by.
When you slap power and a lead role on a normally neglected demographic but don't back up that character with the sort of strong and intricate writing it takes to breath life into fiction, you're not helping. You're depriving those most often deprived of having a character they can relate to and see themselves in. You're depriving them of the emotional growth that comes from seeing someone like you struggle and succeed, or struggle and fail, but learn to keep moving. That last one is huge. We all fail eventually, it happens no matter how strong, talented, or skillful we are and one of the most important things we can learn is to keep moving.
So please, consider this when you stop to defend a character or attack a character because you feel like they're strong or not strong enough. Everyone deserves a role model with quality at their core, so lets not just take anything they hand us and call it a day, please?
>>64313792
Are you implying Rey faced no trials in TFA?
>>64314012
Barely. I at no point felt worried about her fate, because any time a real challenge showed up she just Mary Sued her way through it.
>this thread again
>>64313792
In the thumbnail it looks like she peed her pants.
>>64313792
>She saves herself EVERY SINGLE TIME
If they could kill off every other character she would still beat the first order by herself at this rate.
YOUR DAD MURDERED CHILDREN
>>64314878
She was defeated by Kylo twice.
She was constantly running away.
I liked her, I liked the actress and the job she did with a character.
In the end she was saved by Chewie.
When I was kid I liked Luke because he was a badass.
>>64314878
>there are no challenges
>well except some
>but they don't count because she eventually triumphs
kek
>>64314967
Exactly. She never fucking fails. She at no point meets somebody worth being liked by who doesn't just automatically like her and shower her with praise.
Her only real "trial" is that she was abandoned by her family, and it only serves as a moment to try and force us to sympathize with how much more of a victim she is than anyone else...while also being the most popular person in the room who is also the best at everything.
I'm actually seeing people try to point at Luke Skywalker as a character who did all the things she did without receiving this sort of criticism, and its got me convinced all the people defending her have never actually watched the original trilogy.
She isn't saved twice by an old man, isn't then saved by a smuggler, and then saved by the princess he's coming to save. She doesn't train a shit load to face the big bad evil guy just to get her shit kicked in and have her hand cut off. Luke Skywalker's one accomplishment was blowing up the Death Star, and they pretty much asserted that he was an inherently amazing pilot from the start, but that was his only real positive quality. Otherwise he was actually kinda shitty and a bit of a whiner.
He depended on his friends, and while alone he was kinda shit, when he was with them his talents and abilities actually lent themselves pretty well to the group and they as a full fledged force were something to be reckoned with.
Rey is just this feminism wet-dream self-insert that has no real qualities past success. People keep saying we're only criticizing her because she has a vagina, but I'm pretty sure those same people are only defending her because she has a vagina.
>>64315329
Yeah and the only way he really blew up the death star anyway was with Obi-wan's help
>>64315229
None of her challenges really challenge her. They're not trials, they're just moments for her to display how powerful she is. There's a huge fucking difference between a character struggling through something and overcoming it vs a character just wiggling her ability to succeed at everything at whatever trial pops up.
>>64315386
And he was only even able to get that far because Han Solo came back and saved his ass.
>>64315098
>she was defeated by Kylo twice
Except she wasn't even defeated once. The time in the takodana forest doesn't really count as all that build-up led to her escaping. It didn't seem to stop her at all. The whole " not what they do but how they do it" thing works both ways.
>she was constantly running away
Like every other character? Running away a few times doesn't make a character relatable.
>in the end she was saved by Chewie
But it was made to look like such a small thing. In fact, that would've made an excellent plot point in the movie if it was expanded on.
In all fairness, Daisy Ridley done a pretty good job. Also, Luke did become a badass by the time of ROTJ but he did get his hand chopped off.
>>64315649
Yeah Daisy isn't a bad actor, her character is just shitty, Same with Finn. I understand he is suppose to be the comic relief but they really went out of the way to make him incompetent.
In reality Finn got the worst treatment, except for kylo losing his hand(of that I'm not even sure)
>>64313792
Finn made a way better lead role. He's probably my favorite so far.
>>64316104
My only problem with Finn is that his personality made no sense.
He's a character who was raised as a hitler-youth in an uber-fascist organization whose primary principles are order and discipline. He couldn't take off his helmet without an express order to do so. The moment he gets out he suddenly turns into Turk from Scrubs?
I think they could have done that way better. Instead they just made him a bumbling moron, which while affable just makes little to no sense.
