Which is stupid, because she’s established as an amazing fighter. She gets cornered by Drax and a handful of prisoners and needs to be rescued by Quill. The second time (when her ship got busted and she was jettisoned into space) is fine, but the first instance I had issue with. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora has to be rescued twice. So many times writers come up with an amazingly badass character only for them to be damseled in the worst ways. Just grabbing a character’s arm isn’t going to work. In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman had to have his back broken by Bane and then get shoved down a hole for five months to recover. In Avatar: the Last Airbender, there are several characters with very powerful abilities, but you take away access to their powers (especially for the earth- and waterbenders), and they’re straight-up stuck. Jasmine from Aladdin and Danaerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones are not fighters, so once you get past the legions of guards it’s simple for them to end up as a hostage or prisoner.įor a character with combat capabilities, it’s a little harder to put them in a situation that your audience will genuinely believe they cannot escape on their own. For non-combat characters, this is pretty easy. How do you do this? Well, you put them in a situation that they cannot possibly escape otherwise. The parts where so many authors fumble is how and why the DID is in distress, and also, how does the character react to this situation. I don’t mind when a character-woman or otherwise-is in distress and needs to be rescued. Basically, the author breaks their own rules to make her a DID, usually for shipping fodder. Or, on the flip side, the highly trained, super competent assassin/robot/genetically modified soldier/whatever suddenly acts out of character or the established rules of world warp to make it so she’s in distress and she has to be rescued by the hero. This is the one where the ditzy airhead with a big chest makes a stupid decision and needs to be rescued by the hero. The reason fans and feminists don’t like the DID is because the laziest version of it is the most popular. “Oh, the love interest has been captured by the villain and needs to be rescued by her superhero boyfriend. Of all the overused, misogynist cliches, damsels in distress (or DID’s) probably get the most eye rolls.
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