Face Off is a new weekly feature which will appear on Mondays. We intend to compare and contrast two characters. Sometimes, these characters will be examples of how not to do it and how to do it right. Sometimes, they’ll both examples of how very wrong you can be. Occasionally, they’ll both be awesome - sometimes they’ve been randomly linked elsewhere.
This week, we’re looking at Katniss from the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins vs Tessa from the Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare, which have been linked in the Heroine Torment. It's worth mentioning that when you have a count down clock for the next book in the infernal devices series, whatever competition you are running can hardly be said to be unbiased.
One of the advantages of this Face Off, is that the site itself presents the strengths of each character.
Personally, one thing I’m not going to rate is the relative combat abilities of each character. One trope I think literature in general and Urban Fantasy in particular needs to realize, is that a strong female character isn’t defined by the number of martial arts she has mastered, the heat of the fireballs she can throw out of her ass, or the size of the gun she can shoot. The very fact that we have to equate strength with the ability to be violent is extremely limiting, simply because it is one dimensional. A truly great protagonist is one that is complex and examines the world around her, rather than letting events simply happen to her and then reacting. So, though Katniss could certainly kill Tessa several times over, we will put it aside.
So let’s look at who these characters are.
This week, we’re looking at Katniss from the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins vs Tessa from the Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare, which have been linked in the Heroine Torment. It's worth mentioning that when you have a count down clock for the next book in the infernal devices series, whatever competition you are running can hardly be said to be unbiased.
One of the advantages of this Face Off, is that the site itself presents the strengths of each character.
Personally, one thing I’m not going to rate is the relative combat abilities of each character. One trope I think literature in general and Urban Fantasy in particular needs to realize, is that a strong female character isn’t defined by the number of martial arts she has mastered, the heat of the fireballs she can throw out of her ass, or the size of the gun she can shoot. The very fact that we have to equate strength with the ability to be violent is extremely limiting, simply because it is one dimensional. A truly great protagonist is one that is complex and examines the world around her, rather than letting events simply happen to her and then reacting. So, though Katniss could certainly kill Tessa several times over, we will put it aside.
So let’s look at who these characters are.
Katniss
Katniss is born to extreme adversity, having to risk her life to feed her family from a young age and living in severe poverty and oppression. She volunteered to participate in the Hunger Games to replace her younger sister, where she fought desperately to survive and then to keep Peeta alive as well. Despite having so little hope, she defied the capital and ensured both she and Peeta lived. Her act of defiance became iconic and she became the symbol of resistance, through all of the oppressed districts and integral in the propaganda war against the Capital. Despite this, she recognised the oppression of her captors, kept her humanity, kept her ideal on moral lines that must not be crossed and, in the end, having lost nearly everything, she put an arrow through her own leader’s heart. I think it is important to note that for Katniss not becoming the oppressor even as she fought for freedom was absolutely imperative.
