parallax, female protagonists, moment of pride
I finally broke my writers block and started into Act 2, Chapter 2 of the Vek-10 (space monks) side of Parallax, and I realized something about our lead character, hypermath prodigy/catwitch Olivia: I couldn't think of a single other character in media to model her on. Not off the top of my head.
I did finally come up with a few. I'm sure there are plenty of obsessive, impetuous career-science women in literature, but almost everyone I thought of in film/TV was not only recent, but from a certain narrow band of modern animation, basically the "New SIncerity."
So... Princess Bubblegum, Entrapta, Twilight Sparkle, Agatha Heterodyne, and maybe Webby Vanderquack (at 24, with a math degree, having put all her XP into INT and none into WIS).
And maybe that's just my brainstorming failure -- I'd love to hear more if you can think of any -- but I'm still feeling pretty good that I'm putting a character archetype out there that's still badly underrepresented.
Hooray for irresponsible female power nerds!
re: parallax, female protagonists, moment of pride
@Aradia Yeah, Servalan is only an inspiration for a REAL dark alternate-universe of Olivia (which, spoiler alert, is NOT off the table), but she is still God much like Ivanova is God. Servalan and Kim Wexler from Better Call Saul both fit the "driven and ambitious" part of Olivia's character, as does Dana Scully, but none of them are damn CRAZY enough. :)
re: parallax, female protagonists, moment of pride
@Balinares *spittake* Olivia!? 😼
*reads up on the AWSW wiki*
OK, yeah, fair enough! Olivia is a self-centered flake (aka: "a cat") but at least she hasn't given up on people and she genuinely *likes* most of them...
re: parallax, female protagonists, moment of pride
@zebratron2084 She's clever as Avon and unrelenting in pursuit of the Liberator. If only she didn't work for literal fascists.