@Chuck

Thanks for repeatedly answering my comments :p It can be hard to understand each other over the Internet.

When I read your article, I thought 'Hey, he's saying taking an AI and giving it a female voice shouldn't be lauded as "look, we have female characters! It's diversity!". He's got a point. And I guess it's true that having only action heroines isn't the way to go either.'
But afterwards, it seemed to me you were saying "men can be anything at all for no reason, but if females are made as action heroines, there needs to be a good reason". And I didn't get the double standard.

I agree that "different" doesn't mean "one is better than the other", I just like to think of people in general as different. There are characteristics considered male and others considered female, sure, but I find it's so all over the place that ultimately, there isn't really a rule, and having to go by that seems silly to me. I'd rather ask myself "Would such character do this?" than "would a male/female do this?" and a a result, I tend to leave gender per se out of the equation, it's only a part of the character and not a major criteria.

Would it be a problem if the only female characters were all Samuses and Lara Crofts? Yes, probably, because it would cast-type them all. However, is it a problem that these do exist? Not really. And I still don't see why every female character ever should be completely 3-dimensional and well-written when male characters aren't held to the same standard. Although it would be nice if all characters ever were, for sure.

I guess what I don't get is that you seemed to me to be saying "videogames are dominated by men" and kind of accepting that you'd have to work with it, when it seems to me in cases like that, it's by working against it, questioning it and throwing it out of the window that changes can happen.

@Matthew:

I actually disagree with you :p
I think GLaDOS is pretty much a blank canvas. A blank canvas with a woman's voice, sure, but still a blank canvas. Passive-aggressivity certainly isn't purely a mother or female thing. The way I see it, you can see GLaDOS as a mother, and you can see it as a boss, and you can see it as anything you want because it's an AI. You project a character onto it, and I think Chuck and yourself have shown that by having completely different interpretations.
So while it's possible for GLaDOS to be a motherly-type if you see it that way, I don't think it counts as a notable female character if the player is the one creating that character, if I'm making sense.

@Topiary:
What I meant is that people have characteristics that are, in my opinion, arbitrarily seen as male or female when they're not really much more common in one sex than the other, and that everyone has a combination of these that is pretty much unique to them and can't be sorted into two categories "male" or "female", since there are as many combinations, and therefore categories, as there are people. It seems to me that the only thing that changes when you take someone and change their sex is how other people see them and how they see themselves. They stay the same person, not more masculine or feminine than they were before, but people will see things in a different light.
I remember in particular an article about transsexual people, that is, post-op, and how people started treating them completely differently. And I think that sucks. I think you should treat people based on who they are and not what genitals they have.
It just seems to me that the only difference between a male and a female is whether I'm going to be attracted to them. The fact that on the Internet I've been interested in females equally prior to knowing they were female, but not at all if I know they're female, seems to point me in that direction too.

I don't think people are going to be raised in a way that turns them from "I like shoes" to "I like hunting" or whatever. What I think is that culture has a lot to do with what's considered "masculine" or "feminine", and you might very well go to a different country and realise that the conceptions are different. (For a silly example, you're less likely play soccer as a kid if you're a girl in France, because soccer is "a guy's thing". In the US it seems that it's a girl's thing, though, if I'm not mistaken).
So if I can move countries, and for something people thought as tomboyish in France to become girly here in Canada, and vice-versa (and I know both have happened, I just can't remember the specifics) then I don't think it makes sense to say "this female character isn't realistic enough as a female" based on "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics that might simply be switched if you change countries (or time periods).
And certainly, if people have such a variety range, I feel that characters should, too.