Are Strong Female Characters in Supporting Roles Mostly Useless?

Originally posted on ThinkingSkull.com:

A friend pointed an article my way called “We’re losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome,” citing a concern that, while storytellers in film have come a long way in empowering female characters, those characters are often reduced to mere plot devices.

There is an essential truth to this: they ARE plot devices.

And the reason for this is just as true: secondary characters support the Protagonist’s story.

Before we crawl under the hood, understand that I am not advocating the treatment of Strong Female Characters in many works – the author of the article makes a fair point of this – but we’re not talking about Ripley from Aliens or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” because those are their stories. We are also not talking about “Women In Refrigerators,” a trope concerning violence against women in comics as a plot device to “hurt” Strong Male Characters.

The article…

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