Throw back head, let out gratified sigh.

I have been non-existent online the last few days because I have undertaken freelance data entry work for extra money. It's a great opportunity for me and I'm really stoked about it but in my eagerness I sort of bit off more than I could chew. So in between my full-time job I've had to bust ass every night to get my allotment of work done by today's deadline but get it done I did. Boy, what a load off. However, they'll probably have a new batch of work for me to complete by next Monday but that's perfectly fine. I'll take the money what with the holidays and all.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

30 Day Female Character Challenge Day s 12 - 14

( The prompts. )

Day Twelve: Favorite female character in a movie. Well crap, I already listed Ripley from Aliens. Since it's my overall favorite movie I guess I'll nominate Izzy/Isabelle (Rachel Weisz) from The Fountain. I've never seen Weisz in a bad role or a bad film and I think The Fountain is her best work. She brings such incredible mortality and fragility to a character that is, in a very real sense, immortal and eternal.

Day Thirteen: Favorite Female Character in a Book. White Crow from Mary Gentle's Rats and Gargoyles. This... is a weird book. In terms of weirdness it makes China Mieville or M. John Harrison read like Dostoyevsky. White Crow makes the whole thing work. It's a story about a city ruled by the thirty-six aspects of God where humans are subservient to anthropomorphic giant rats. White Crow is a heroine of uncertain background and motivation who ties the whole crazy mess together. She's sexy without being fanservice and smart enough to go up against God without seeming like an overpowered Mary Sue. The book is hard to find but worth it if you like strong heroines in surreal settings.

Day fourteen: Favorite older female character. When you read a lot of fantasy "older" is a very relative term. The eighty year-old crone with the wart on her nose doesn't have much on the 5000 year-old elven princess in terms of wisdom and experience, right? Right. I think a favorite of mine who encompasses "older" in sense of both age and timelessness is Morgan La Fay from the Arthurian legends. She's rarely depicted as an old woman, but she is often depicted as a force belonging to an earlier time, trying to hang on to what was lost. She makes a cameo appearance at the end of Vivian Vande Velde's novel The Book of Mordred where she is depicted as a femme fatale whose appearance sometimes "slips" to show her true age when things aren't going right. It's a more outright villainous depiction of her than has become fashionable in the post-Marion Zimmer Bradley world, but I thought it spoke to a core part of her traditional characterization very well.