Woman Warriors as Characters

The Origin of Kaplea

When the idea emerged for my novel, *Delivered to the Ground, it was clear that in order for it to work, I was going to have to depict women characters as credible warriors in an ancient setting. I knew that women could be and often had been effective fighters or soldiers, but cultural tropes run deep; it's hard to step out of them when creating characters and hard to keep from slipping into stereotypes or caricature.

Women warriors these days are common in movies and television but one recent commentator in the New York Times noted they tend to be men dressed up in women's bodies. I'm not sure I wholly agree but the characters often don't have a truly organic feel to them. I had my work cut out for me.

I thought back to the women warriors of my youth depicted in movies and television who tended to be little more than scantily clad beauties brandishing weapons ...

Shahna in Star Trek episode, Gamers of Triskelion, played by Angelique Pettyjohn 

Being an adolescent male, I wasn't complaining about the beauties or the outfits, but the characters were unconvincing in the sense they weren't very intimidating. They didn't scare me.

I tried to think of the first instance in fiction or film where a female warrior type scared me, or at least would if I were to meet her in the proverbial dark alley. Size wasn't the key. Joe Pesci is a small man but his characters in movies like Goodfellas or Casino are very scary. To be convincing, a character has to project a certain inherent willingness to violence. Princess Leah in the original Star Wars was a great character but she really didn't have that edge that could make her physically intimidating. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien was closer, a convincing character but more of a reluctant warrior forced into the role.

Oh, yeah -- the sequel -- Aliens, and the character, Private Vasquez, a member of a space marine combat team. I remember looking at her doing pull-ups and talking trash and thinking, holy crap.

Pvt. Vasquez is magnetic in the film and an entirely convincing badass. The actor, Jenette Goldstein, showed the world how it could be done, how a female soldier might fit in believably with male ones. This was something I needed to bring to the ancient Scythian warriors I was trying to depict where 20 to 30 percent of them would have been women (see *Amazons and a Novel Idea). One of the woman warriors in the book needed to stand out as particularly fierce, so something of the soul of Vasquez had to be in her.

In thinking about all this, I recalled another movie, Monster, starring Charlize Theron who portrayed the real-life serial killer, Aileen Wuornos.

The portrayal was convincing to the point of being difficult to watch. Aliens was fun SiFi, Monster was gritty realism. The will to violence was there in a terrifying way and was brought on by horrifying events. It made me wonder. If Wuornos had been born into Scythian culture, her will to violence might have found outlets, guidance and discipline. Instead of becoming a homicidal deviant destined to spend her life in prison, she might have found belonging, usefulness and respect.

A character formed in my imagination: A bit Ripley, a bit Vasquez, a bit Wuornos, strong, supremely skilled, ferocious, a killer, a war leader, yet human with vulnerabilities and doubts. I thought long about a name and when it occurred to me, I knew it was right: Kaplea, tiger woman. Now all I had to do was bring her convincingly to life with words. It helped that she came to life in my imagination.