Characters That Changed The Game

This podcast episode discusses the character Mare Barrow and her journey towards becoming a hero. Mare, a 17-year-old with powers, is initially not seen as a hero but through her mistakes and growth, she becomes relatable and loved. Unlike traditional female heroes, Mare breaks the mold by making mistakes and learning from them. This makes her more relatable to girls who may not fit the typical hero archetype. The discussion emphasizes that anyone can become a hero as long as they learn from their mistakes and let their passion inspire them. Mare's story serves as an inspiration for the female community. Hey guys! We're back on Characters That Changed The Game, and this week we're going to talk about Mare Barrow. We have the pleasure of having Riley here. Riley, are you familiar with the book? Um, I would like a summary of it if you could. Okay, so do you know who Mare Barrow is? I've heard of Mare. I'm going to give you a quick summary of her personality, her story, and then we're going to start a conversation about her leadership skills. So, Mare is a 17-year-old. She's a red blood who casually has powers, same as a silver blood. I'm sorry, English is hard. Okay, so what characteristics do you think that a hero has to have to be a hero? To be considered a hero, I think that they need to be looked up to. They need to be somebody with a game plan, who has fail-safes in case the plan doesn't go as planned, somebody who has temper control, and just overall somebody who you can turn to if a problem is set and you know for sure that they'll be able to solve that problem for you. Okay, so do you think that a hero is born, like was born, or like you can become a hero? I don't think necessarily that a hero has to be somebody born a hero. I think really anybody can become a hero if, you know, environmentally they get pushed by outside forces that turns them into somebody worth being a hero. So, okay, so like talking about like a hero, how bad can you mess up being a hero? Like are you really allowed to mess up? I think that that quality makes you human and probably more relatable, more likable. If you come across a problem that you fail at first, I think that'll put you back closer to your community. If they can see that you fail and you can resurrect from that failure and go back from, you know, where you fail and then people look at you and they're like, it's okay, we can come back from this. And I think that makes you more human if you're able to fail and you can come back from it. Okay, you just said something that's like very, very, very, like that can really describe Mare. If we know something about Mare is that she is relatable. She messed up a lot of times, but we still love her because she knew how to like go back and learn from her mistakes and like become a better person. But a lot of people can like argue that she was not a hero. Like from what you know about Mare, not being like familiar with the story and like not loving her the way that we fans love her. Do you think she was a hero? I think towards the end, I think she became a hero at the end of her story. Towards the beginning, I think that she was not a hero. But like I said earlier, with the outside environmental factors, she became a hero and she became lovable. Because of her failure, she learned from her mistakes and she grew from it. And she ended up learning how to acknowledge that she made a mistake and come back from it. So I think towards the end of the book, she did become a relatable hero. So something about the book is that Mare kind of broke how we like think about female characters and female heroes. Like thinking about like Wonder Woman, Supergirl. They were perfect like from the beginning towards the end. They never made a big mistake. They were perfect. They were like as we conceive what a woman is. Do you think that Mare is kind of like breaking the mold and breaking how we think of a female hero? Absolutely, I do. Because she was not an anomaly that just appeared in the atmosphere perfect and golden and just from scratch just never made a mistake in her life. She made many, many mistakes and that made her who she was at the end of the book. So I think that she really did break the mold that is seen with female heroes, especially with the femininity of her qualities. She was raised by her brothers. So she had masculine qualities in her and that just showed that she wasn't your typical girl hero. She was much more relatable to girls our age now who may not be that girly girl who was born perfect and, you know, pageant perfect queen who is now a hero. No, Mare, she's completely different and she broke the mold with that and she became somebody extremely relatable as a really, really good hero towards the end. That is an amazing comment and that's inspiring for the female community because at the end of the day we can all become heroes. We can all become leaders as long as we let our passion inspire us and we learn from our mistakes and we learn how to become better people. Because at the end of the day we're all humans and we all make mistakes. And Mare was put in a situation where she wasn't born to be a hero. She wasn't born to be a leader. She wasn't born to be a rebel. She wasn't born to change the world she was born into. And it took her a while. It really did. And it took her a lot of mistakes but she was able to adapt and learn how to unlearn and become a better person and a better hero and become, at the end of the day, a role model. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. You're welcome. And we'll definitely be inviting you for next episodes. Great. Thank you so much, Riley. You're welcome.