Tuesday 19 November 2013

The Sassette Principle



Because The Smurfette Principle is not very appreciative of this little tomboy gal.

Update (28/10/2015): extended article on this subject here.

9 comments:

  1. You know, considering 2 out of 3 female smurfs were created by Gargamel, people do tend to ignore the other two in favor of Smurfette, who was never my favorite character.
    In fact she's right down there with Minnie Mouse for me (No offence to people who like Smurfette and Minnie Mouse- I just don't like them.)

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    1. Yeah I'm not quite sure why Disney is suddenly pushing Minnie as a marketing character, I just don't get the appeal. Then again I'm not a fan of current Mickey Mouse either. I'm heavily in favor of returning him to his roots like they did with Epic Mickey.

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    2. Micky's always better in comic books. :D He never really left his roots, there. XD

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    3. I should probably search for those. I've got a small collection of Donald Duck hardcover bundles from the 60's and I'm searching for a comic store carrying The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (I found it one time before I discovered how ridiculously awesome it was, by then it was too late). Can't hurt to keep an eye out for Mickey's as well.

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    4. I'd recommend Wizards of Mickey- it's a series featuring Mickey Donald and Goofy as wizards trying to save the world from a warlock version of the Phantom Blot.
      Donald's got the best quirk there- None of his spells seem to work- but in fact, they DO work, just hours after he casted them- so he goes around thinking he's a failure when in fact he's just slow.

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  2. Actually, if you REALLY think about it, Sassette has a way more interesting story- she was entirely an accedent, and she doesn't hate Gargamel for making her, in fact sees him as extended family.
    Course I'm the guy who thinks that the smurfs and Gargamel could have been friends if they were only willing to part with BRAINY for a single afternoon.

    I got a lot of issues with this trope. Thing is, back when I was a kid, I sort of got suckered into following it by some random girl suggesting I make a female character- she turned out completely bland, but I don't give up on a character, and later on, I made more female characters that I liked, and ended up breathing some debth into that other one (who wasn't even my FIRST female character) and in the end, I got her to be someone I actually like- Point being, if you force a character to achive a "Token" you might as well put them off until you know what your doing.

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    1. That's the thing about any token character. Any token character will end up dull and bland because if I was a TV writer or even an author of Dead-Tree Published books, if I feel like I must have some character in for "diversity" reasons, I won't give a damn about how good that character is. I'll just say "Here, there's this type of character you said I needed" and that'd be the end of it. But that's just my take on it.

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    2. Personally, that's why I work in cartoon animals. XD That there is already a diversity category I can avoid.

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  3. I like it.

    Also, tokenism happens when writers feel like they "have to" have certain characters in a cast; it's not done to spite whatever group is underrepresented. The feeling that one should have a character in their cast for diversity reasons or whatever, which is, oddly enough, what media critics would have media creators do. Media critics would be creating the problem that they are complaining about, basically.

    I had more thoughts on this, but I am criminally behind on my Nanowrimo story and I should get going writing that.

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