The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-Ed

Day Three: A Female Character You Hated But Grew to Love



Olivia Dunham, of Fringe

When Fringe first began, I didn't like Olivia Dunham, making me a proud holder of common yet unpopular fannish opinion #42,809,567 (CYUFO #6,043: Yea Verily, Aeneas was a Whinging Prick.). I didn't hate her. That would have required effort. I was bored by her. She embodied everything that was bad about Fringe Season One: her imaginary head-boyfriend was the plot coupon dispenser, her immediate superior was the annoyingly slow information tap Broyles, and her personality was the equivalent of seaside vanilla ice-cream, in that it was cold, flavorless, and unlikely to make a stain on the imagination.

So. This journal has been profoundly dead lately, because, well, life, the universe, and everything got in the way of fandom. However! I want it to be un-dead, or even resurrected, if you will. To that end, I'm doing the Female Character Meme that's been making the rounds, and because I'm a masochist, I'm not letting myself repeat a fandom. Thirty days, thirty fandoms, (more than) thirty kick-ass women. Let's begin.

Day One: Favorite Lead Female Character

C.J. Cregg, of The West Wing

When I saw the prompt for today, my first thought was “Are you sure you wouldn't rather have me do something easier and less heartless, like, say, kill a kitten?” Because I am very bad at picking favorites, and I have a LOT of favorite female leads. (This will become apparent later on.) So I decided to go not just for my favorite, but also for my aspiration, to look at the character I show to my younger female friends and relations as a role model; in short, when I was a wee baby Pax, who did I want to be when I grew up? And then C.J. Cregg waltzed in on legs that go to Canada and took over in a New York minute whilst making a better geography-related witty remark than I just did.