Well Written Female Characters: Faithful from "The Bastard Warrior" Written by Good Boy Audios
Warning: lots of words :β -β )
Early today I was listening to a lot of videos concerning how female characters are written, treated, and depicted in different mediums such as tv shows,books, movies, etc. I'm a big story person,hell i write them and I love them so much and at times I find better written stories through audio roleplays than some other media.
I have my own personal favorite series that I listen to but I wanted to talk about βThe Bastard Warriorβ and how Faithful is written so well as a female character that it's digestible and believable unlike some other fantasy or Sci-fiβs handle their female characters.
There's a lot of things βThe Bastard Warriorβ does incredibly well with only sound. Like setting moods, tones, and setting. But I want to talk about what I found out about how Faithful was written when I listened to the series for the second time.
First off Faithful is played from the perspective of the Listener, meaning she is not verbally speaking out her feelings or voicing anything but rather her voice can only be projected by the characters around her.
Even with the lack of visuals, and a voice, her story and perspective is still told in a way the audience can understand her. She has a presence to the plot and as her own individual person without being seen or heard. Which I think further makes her an amazingly written character.
She is in fact the reason why the journey kicks off. After finding out her brother is about to sacrifice a child's life to fulfill a prophecy that may or may have not been true. She's willing to drop her way of life and religion to save Kurano from her brother. She has motivation and a goal immediately off the bat.
She goes about this in a headstrong way since she believes the sacrifice is wrong and with that belief, that motivates her to ask a Bastard for help. Children who are a product of adultery of the mother or father that are taught to be hated and disrespected by religious figures like Faithful.
She takes the opportunity to ask Albus to accompany her on the journey and kill her brother when she patches him up during their first encounter because A: she knows that regular Paladins of the world wouldnβt dare take such a job and
B:she is not experienced in the art of fighting and has no line of defense since she was prohibited from learning how to fight, but even so this doesn't stop her.
Some believe to make a βstrongβ female character or a strong character in general. She has to have muscles and fight all her battles, but that's not necessarily the case.
In the case of Faithful she cannot fight like Albus nor is she technologically or book smart like Devlin, but she has emotional strength and drive to do what's right no matter the consequences. Sure she is the motivation for both Devlin and Albus because they love her, and have respect for her beliefs, but she also helps them along the journey with her presence and words as well as listening to them and responding with advice that helps keep them grounded and keeps them going.
She not only used a means to push the brothers forward but she indirectly brought the two brothers closer. This helps them develop a better relationship allowing them to learn more about one another, leading them to have a mutual respect for one another by the end
Another example of this strength is in Episode 10- when she has to save Albus, not through punching out the problems but by talking through Albusβs. She has to be strong for him emotionally because of his reluctance to leave the perfect world in his head, and for Faithful to pull him away from that not only is heartwrenching because of everything Albus has been through up till that point and before she met him.
Faithful isn't one dimensional,.not just tethered to one personality trait but she has a few that are heard.
She's kind, understanding, brave for all of that shit that she had to go through, faithful, and resilient. At times she can be gullible because of her lack of understanding of the world because of her upbringing as a sister and the two brothers' feelings for her going unseen for a while. Also she can get quite punchy when she's mad.
Also she also has a motherly trait from how she cares for Karano and even choosing in the Albus ending to run an orphanage.
And she is allowed as a woman to have these dualities of kind and gentleness while simultaneously being headstrong and passionate about her beliefs, even if she is condemned for having them.
I just wanted to talk about this because bruuuhhhhhhhh it's so hard to type my feelings out without sounding weird or my writing being choppy. But I have a whole lot more on this series that I've observed.
GBA u freaking genius. The way you write your characters challenges me to understand them better. For the plot but as well as them being their own individuals. But yeah that's what I got from her character so far. :β -β P
