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I'm working on a story and I have a background character that needs to be fleshed out so she doesn't end up being the typical "tough Irish girl" cliché.

Thanks!

Watch Derry Girls

Even better get a picture of the blackboard from Derry Girls and find out what each phrase means

Crispy78 wrote:
Watch Derry Girls

Does the scary clown get them?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
Watch Derry Girls

Does the scary clown get them?

If by scary clown, you mean Liam Neeson, yes, he gets them.

If you mean the scary clown from It: Welcome to Derry, thats a different channel. And yes, It gets quite a few of them.

In Derry Girls, Liam Neeson is defeated by the boring uncle...

My wife is Irish Italian, but is academically much more interested in her Irish side. This rapidly changes when food enters the equation, however.

I'm Irish despite the German flag, but I wasn't aware of any tough Irish girl tropes!

 Da Boss wrote:
I'm Irish despite the German flag, but I wasn't aware of any tough Irish girl tropes!

They appear in a lot of American fiction... and strangely in a lot of American bars.

But honestly, I can't find a reliable source of information about an Irish person's current viewpoint on the political landscape of the not-too-distant past.

Aka, do people still care or have they moved on?

(I'm being as vague as I can to skirt politics).

Oh it is fresh as can be. I was on a bus tour about 20 years back, and our tour guide said the population of Ireland was about 5 million. Someone asked if that included North Ireland. She stared at him, dead eyed for about 5 beats, and then said brightly "There are 5 million people in Ireland."

We were somewhere around Killarney, in the Republic of Ireland.

You mean the Troubles? It very much depends if someone is from the North or the Republic and what age they are. But I'd say a wide range of views exist in any case.

Happy to help, but not sure I can contribute a huge amount.

I'm Irish just living in the UK.

It's probably worth keeping in mind that most people under the age of 40 will either have no experience, or at most have little memory of the troubles. So depending on your characters age that could be a factor.

Also it's just not something the average Irish person is going to be thinking about day to day nowadays.

Yeah I'd agree with that. Younger people especially in the Republic don't think much about it and it's not a huge deal to them. And I'd say people in the Republic generally (with exceptions) don't care that much about it anyway. A lot of the older generations will distrust Sinn Fein because of their association with the Troubles but it's not a huge part of people's lives.

I think it's a bigger deal in the North but there's a significant and growing number of people who want to move on from it all up there too. And how you think about the Troubles in the North is going to vary a lot depending on which community you're part of and how much it impacted you.

So if you want to have it be a factor for your character, probably better to have them be from the North, and also to decide which community they belong to as to how it might colour their thinking.

Derry Girls is a decent look at the catholic POV in Derry for sure, and I was around the same age as those girls at that time and it's fairly nostalgic for me even though I'm not from the North. But those girls would be in their 40s now and the up and coming generation isn't the same. It's also very funny so there's that!

 Da Boss wrote:
I'm Irish despite the German flag, but I wasn't aware of any tough Irish girl tropes!

In the US there are (often negative) stereotypes about red headed women being short tempered or good at violence.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I'm Irish despite the German flag, but I wasn't aware of any tough Irish girl tropes!

In the US there are (often negative) stereotypes about red headed women being short tempered or good at violence.

And if they are from Boston foul-mouthed too.

Well I would say we are a lot more comfortable with casual swearing in Ireland. My wife's English and even she was surprised to overhear a woman in Cork using a liberal amount of See You Next Tuesdays while on the phone.

 Del Mingus wrote:
Well I would say we are a lot more comfortable with casual swearing in Ireland. My wife's English and even she was surprised to overhear a woman in Cork using a liberal amount of See You Next Tuesdays while on the phone.

That's because many of the Irish use swearing as punctuation.

When I worked as a teacher in England I really had to work on not swearing. There were plenty of things I habitually said that I didn't consider swearwords that my English students and colleagues did!

Working in an international school now, I moderate a bit, but I've also decided that people can meet me in the middle. They can unclench and I can tighten up, rather than me always abiding by the standards of other cultures.

Not just the Irish. Scots and Geordies are a foul mouthed bunch. It’s quite liberating, as why be nice when someone is testing your patience?

 Da Boss wrote:
I'm Irish despite the German flag, but I wasn't aware of any tough Irish girl tropes!

Same, I guess there's the lady in Fallout 4 (urgh) and Dead Island 2 but that's about it