#Bernard is acting like that one back hurt meme and I think it’s from him once again carrying christmas

[shittyelfchild]

t-two more days til christmas guys…

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

Meme Time!

Rules: List ten of your favorite female characters in different fandoms (I’m a rebel) and then tag ten people.  

I got tagged by @cycas and @grundyscribbling! Thanks for another chance to ramble >:D

Problem is, I don’t actually have ten fandoms! But I suppose books/series that I have enjoyed count, even if I’m not active in the respective fandoms *innocent whistle*

Also, I don’t know when to shut up, so I guess a cut is in order.

1. Lyra Belacqua (His Dark Materials). Quick, everybody act surprised! I love her quick thinking and her negotiable attitude towards the truth and her ability to intuit the alethiometer and the way she picks her way through all the absurdities and horrors and revelations thrown at her. I even managed to enjoy the lukewarm movie adaptation from ten years back, although I hope the new BBC adaptation is going to do the series more justice.

2. Elwing (The Silmarillion). Since the lovely people who tagged me already chose Nerdanel, let’s have someone else. Elwing gets a lot of dirt thrown her way by parts of the fandom for abandoning her children, wah wah (like Eärendil didn’t? but for him it’s ~okay~ because he’s a ~guy~ and he’s gotta ~save the world~? and Elwing didn’t even know the twins were still alive! Let’s be real here, if I thought my kids had been killed, I might be tempted to jump off a cliff too! I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS), so I feel it’s my duty to show her some love.

3. Éowyn (The Lord of the Rings). Yes these are two separate fandoms shut up. Another total surprise. When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I was an oddball who loved martial arts and was annoyed by girl stuff and had fallen tragically in love with a guy who was already in a relationship. So I identified really hard with Éowyn. I had also recently been disappointed by the way Shakespeare resolved the “no man of woman born” prophecy, so “no living man am I” had me literally punch the air and yell YES! YES! YES! and run around in circles before I could continue reading. -- I felt personally attacked by that stupid scene in TTT SEE where she cooks that disgusting slop because much though I disliked (still dislike) housewifing, I did (and do) love cooking! You can know how to hold a sword AND how to cook, damnit! It’s not mutually exclusive!

4. Æthelflæd of Mercia (The Saxon Stories/ Actual History). Marginally related to the former. In Bernard Cornwell’s books, we see Æthelflæd grow up from spunky girl to unhappy wife to confident and competent military leader. The “unhappy wife” bit isn’t attested by the actual Anglo-Saxon Chronicle but the “military leader” bit is. She did a lot of the actual ruling of Mercia even while her husband was still alive, and after his death she was officially declared its ruler. Incidentally, I suspect that the White Lady of Mercia may have been at least part of Tolkien’s inspiration for Éowyn.

5. Ronja (Ronja the Robber’s Daughter). Another tough and adventure-loving woman - well, girl - but not the kind that’s made to look strong by disdaining traditionally “female virtues”, but who is allowed to feel strongly and be kind and sensitive, to abhor the thieving and people-hurting business of her father, and to make friends with the son of her family’s arch-enemy. (A boy who is likewise allowed to be adventurous and boisterous, and at the same time caring and sensitive and intent on peace and healing.)

6. Meg Murray (The Times Quartett). A fave from my teenage years. These days, the somewhat hamfisted evangelising of Madeleine L’Engle makes me uncomfortable (and I say that as a reasonably faithful Christian), but back when I first stumbled across A Wrinkle In Time, I was so relieved to meet Meg! While I loved reading and had identified with plenty of fictional characters already, this one seemed to have been written specifically for me: A teenager from a stable, loving family background who was nonetheless at odds with the world, who got bullied in school, who couldn’t always keep her temper, who was smarter than most of her peers and probably some of her teachers who simply didn‘t know how to use her smarts. Her complaints about how she got graded down in maths for using shortcuts and not documenting her approach in the way her teacher wanted, even though she arrived at the correct solution, struck a chord in particular! As if that wasn’t enough, even her physical description matched my image of myself: Mouse-brown hair, glasses, braces; not feminine, not tall, not pretty. She was literally just like me. Well, aside from the tesseracting and saving the universe and stuff. But it was a girl just like me who did the tesseracting and saving the universe and stuff! That was the important thing! -- I’ve seen that there’s a new adaptation in the making where the Murray family is black, and it makes me so happy to think that maybe a smart, nerdy, late blooming black teenage girl is going to find herself reflected by the new Meg the way I did back then by book!Meg.

Ahem. Moving on.

7. Hermione Granger (Harry Potter). Do I even have to explain. She saves her friends’ butts so often, both on a small scale by making sure they don’t forget their school work over all the Really Important Stuff they continually have to worry about, and on a larger scale because guess what, learning actually helps to know things. She’s a bookworm and a know-it-all, but she also knows how to put her knowledge to good use. She’s fierce and loyal and could easily have been the hero of the story even though she isn’t The Chosen One(TM).

8. Magrat Garlick (Discworld). Actually, I love all the Lancre witches, but I guess Magrat is just the most endearing to me. Often considered a “wet hen”, she has to juggle the duties of Queening and Witching and isn’t really prepared for either. She wants to be a nice person and is constantly confronted with a world that doesn’t play nice. She nonetheless manages to stay kind and hold her own and mold expectations to her self rather than the other way round. If Meg Murray is my teenage self, Magrat is my aspiration for the future, I guess!

9. Rey Skywalker (Star Wars). Gosh, I love her so much. She’s resourceful and clever and strong and adorable and my total teenage wish-fulfilment fantasy and I am so here for that. She also makes me painfully realise that I am no longer a teenager! But that’s okay.

10. Tuuri Hotakainen (Stand Still, Stay Silent). I’ve kept the most painful one for last. Like Magrat, at first glance it’s easy to dismiss her as a naïve, happy-go-lucky fluff bunny, but underneath the soft and friendly shell, there’s a competent mechanic and tank operator, a great friend, a not-always-perfect sister and a resourceful young woman who shows that being cheerful and idealistic doesn’t mean that you can’t handle reality and make tough choices when you have to.

There may be a theme going on here...

Right! Tagging - on a completely voluntary basis, obviously - @vefanyar, @heartofoshun, @the-wavesinger, @ineptshieldmaid, @independence1776, @fanfuchs,  @catilinas, @garland-on-thy-brow , @as-kingfishers-catch-fire and whoever else feels like playing.