Okay folks, buckle up - this was a brand new idea that won the most recent Top 50 topics poll and it's got a lot of fuzzy edges so I expect some discussion to ensue. But here's the TLDR: We're nominating our favorite fictional women characters over (about) 60. Just to get them out of the way, here's a reminder of the usual Top 50 nomination how-tos:
- Choose your top 25 favorite older fictional ladies, in order starting from most favorite. Less than 25 is fine too.
-- Please list each source work/material/author as appropriate as well, to aid me in tabulating and research.
- PM them to me by the end of day on November 15th, two weeks from now.
- Scores will be tabulated and we'll have ourselves a grand ol' Top 50 thread.
Now on to the nitty-gritty. I submitted this as "Top 50 Fictional Women over 60", but it's not really about some exact chronological cut-off. The spirit of this is to celebrate the seriously under-represented demographic in fiction of older women. So, first off, keep in mind that this is about the character, not the actor or other method of portrayal. As for ages, I don't want to get all biological essentialist, but I think we can acknowledge that one of the big *reasons* historically that this demographic is uncommon has to do with the characters in question being past the ages where they're likely to be valued primarily as a sex object or in terms of having children - so we're targeting characters past those ages. Thus, if you have a character that for some biological or chronological reason doesn't age like a normal human, try to keep in mind instead the life stage that we're going for. So, no 1000-year-old dragons that nevertheless look and act exactly like 15-year-old girls.
As for a few other questions I expect to come up:
- This is fictional characters across all media; books, movies, TV, video games, comics, what have you. If a character is based on a real-life person... well, if the story is basically fiction that may be fine, but if it's straight-up biography that's probably a different list, of awesome older women in real life.
- If a character's canon age is never definitively established, take your best guess and keep in mind the stage-of-life stuff above.
- If a character is portrayed at multiple ages through a work, just ask yourself if they're portrayed in this stage of life for long enough to constitute a significant story. If they're only older in a 5-page epilogue that's probably not a great choice, but if they're mature in an entire book/movie of a multi-part series that's probably fine.
- It hopefully goes without saying that any older character that identifies themselves as a woman / female is eligible.
- Completely non-human characters get fuzzy; if it's a setting where everyone is an animal or anthropomorph and are obvious stand-ins for human issues/characters, then just use the same guidelines. If they're a creature that doesn't even have similar life-stages to humans then they may not be a good fit for this list but I'd be open to arguments.
I'm sure there's lots of other edge cases, so feel free to hash them out in the replies here or berate me for things I haven't thought about. As with most lists, I'm not planning to be a huge stickler about what people submit, but I want to guide things enough that we have reasonable overlap in the voting.
- Choose your top 25 favorite older fictional ladies, in order starting from most favorite. Less than 25 is fine too.
-- Please list each source work/material/author as appropriate as well, to aid me in tabulating and research.
- PM them to me by the end of day on November 15th, two weeks from now.
- Scores will be tabulated and we'll have ourselves a grand ol' Top 50 thread.
Now on to the nitty-gritty. I submitted this as "Top 50 Fictional Women over 60", but it's not really about some exact chronological cut-off. The spirit of this is to celebrate the seriously under-represented demographic in fiction of older women. So, first off, keep in mind that this is about the character, not the actor or other method of portrayal. As for ages, I don't want to get all biological essentialist, but I think we can acknowledge that one of the big *reasons* historically that this demographic is uncommon has to do with the characters in question being past the ages where they're likely to be valued primarily as a sex object or in terms of having children - so we're targeting characters past those ages. Thus, if you have a character that for some biological or chronological reason doesn't age like a normal human, try to keep in mind instead the life stage that we're going for. So, no 1000-year-old dragons that nevertheless look and act exactly like 15-year-old girls.
As for a few other questions I expect to come up:
- This is fictional characters across all media; books, movies, TV, video games, comics, what have you. If a character is based on a real-life person... well, if the story is basically fiction that may be fine, but if it's straight-up biography that's probably a different list, of awesome older women in real life.
- If a character's canon age is never definitively established, take your best guess and keep in mind the stage-of-life stuff above.
- If a character is portrayed at multiple ages through a work, just ask yourself if they're portrayed in this stage of life for long enough to constitute a significant story. If they're only older in a 5-page epilogue that's probably not a great choice, but if they're mature in an entire book/movie of a multi-part series that's probably fine.
- It hopefully goes without saying that any older character that identifies themselves as a woman / female is eligible.
- Completely non-human characters get fuzzy; if it's a setting where everyone is an animal or anthropomorph and are obvious stand-ins for human issues/characters, then just use the same guidelines. If they're a creature that doesn't even have similar life-stages to humans then they may not be a good fit for this list but I'd be open to arguments.
I'm sure there's lots of other edge cases, so feel free to hash them out in the replies here or berate me for things I haven't thought about. As with most lists, I'm not planning to be a huge stickler about what people submit, but I want to guide things enough that we have reasonable overlap in the voting.