Female Characters Deserve Better
I love fanfic. Really, just so, so much.
And I get it, reading about tough men breaking down their walls to share their Secret Pain is really attractive. And kinda hot. But here's the thing. Female characters deserve more. We should create more stories about them, and their Secret Pain, and not just as a foil to the main character's plot.
Why aren't there more works about Jessica Jones dealing with her shit? Or Natasha Romanov struggling with flashbacks? Why don't fics about Isabelle Lightwood get any love?
Let's face it, female characters (well, non-male characters) get a raw deal when it comes to fanfic. So I want to challenge people to change it. I'm going to start a challenge/collection is aimed at challenging people to read and write more works where a female character is the focus.
I don't care if it is femslash, I don't care if it is gen, I don't care if it is a heterosexual romance.
It just has to be a fic where a female character is more than a love interest or a trophy. Bonus points for angst, because I love me some angst and there is basically no good female-centric angst around.
Female characters deserve better, and we are the ones who can offer it.
(Open, Unmoderated)
Random works
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put me together, thread a needle by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
29 Aug 2024
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"Your stitches were always better than mine, Rhae," Visenya mutters, shaking a bit of loose hair out of her eyes. She smiles, bright and awkward, the way Visenya's smiles so often are. "Mother chided me about it all the time, remember? I was always better at swordplay, instead."
___(In which Queen Visenya uses blood magic to bring her beloved sisterwife back. What's left of her, anyway).
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Imagine your long lost mother is back alive on earth again after 15 years. Imagine your eight year old son has aged into an adult overnight. And in all that weirdness, imagine still trying to live a normal life as if nothing happened. But Izayoi wasn't normal and neither was Inuyasha. Perhaps it ran in the family.
Series
- Part 1 of Reunion
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february crackles within her armor by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Fandoms: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (Video Game), Avatar (Cameron Movies)
17 Mar 2026
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You are the reverse, fragile nerves strung tightly over steel insides, teeth bared in jealousy. It is difficult to bear, sometimes, seeing this other life you could have lived as a fiercely guarded daughter, suffocated by love instead of steel.
Series
- Part 18 of kiss the girls and make them cry
- Part 7 of open me up and discover the end
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the answer's in the second before the other shoe drops by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
31 Aug 2024
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"I didn't notice the resemblance, really, until this evening." Rhaenyra's looking at Aegon like Alicent hasn't even spoken, like she's a ghost in the corner. "Seeing you standing there by the fire, giving your speech. Your mother's face and your mother's poison, I felt like a girl of five and ten once more."
___(in which Rhaenyra remains unsatisfied after the Driftmark incident, Alicent deals with the past's inability to die, and Aegon, as always, is the battleground)
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Walk These Streets Like A Ghost by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Fandoms: DCU (Comics), Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020), Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Gotham City Sirens (Comics), DCU, Batman (Comics)
06 Sep 2021
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Harley's being followed by her Red.
Series
- Part 9 of Sapphic September 2021
Random bookmarks
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The family that slays together, stays together.
Serial Killer AU.
Series
- Part 4 of Femslash Fuckery 2022
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Children of Liberty by Quiet_Shadow
Fandoms: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
01 Jan 2020
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Part of her might die that day, crushed into nothingness, but she lives nonetheless, continuing to draw breath after breath as her vitals stabilize.
There is a tiny, stubborn spark insides her, a minuscule flame of will which refuses to dim and be blown away. It is this very spark which fueled her during her darkest times, making her continue to fight in the Senate for causes she already knew were lost, deep down. It is this very spark she ends up clinging to, thinking: no.
No, she can’t go like that, a broken woman swept away by the current of fates, dying of a broken heart while the love of her life stood and destroyed everything she had ever believed in and fought for.
Or wherein Padmé Amidala survives childbirth, thinks, cuts her losses and gathers her Handmaidens past and present around her to found a Rebellion. And if she weaponizes the hell out of Naboo's custom of using decoys and gives Imperial Intelligence fits while doing so, well, so much the better for her.
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Brightest Gift by Pufferfishy
Fandoms: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
23 Apr 2022
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Be impartial, they advised when they first sent her here. Be impartial they commended when she pleaded to be assigned somewhere else after seeing the disturbing conditions there. Be impartial they chastised her after she cared a little too much when another batch was decommissioned after being deemed flawed. We are at war, they said, things would be worse if we lost, they said.
But where in the middle of so much impartiality did they expect her to lose her compassion?
(Shaak Ti steals a baby clone, and is ready to change the galaxy for the better.)
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They saw her around Mos Eisley, sometimes, lingering by the repair shop where her father worked or sitting atop the crates strewn about the street. She had strange eyes - aged and watchful and inquisitive, even more so perhaps than the other children around her, although all of them had grown up too early all the same.
She would watch the Stormtroopers with tension in her shoulders as though expecting them to lunge at her at any moment. She would watch the other children and blink slowly as though she thought they'd fade into thin air out of nowhere. Even the suns - when she looked up, her dark eyes seemed to swallow the sunlight falling onto them, as though she was trying to take it all in. As though she worried that even the suns might burn out without warning.
There was something important that Reva Sevander had learned throughout the last hours she spent in what once had been a safe haven, lying atop her murdered clanmates and trying not to make a sound as the stench of their deaths grew more and more oppressive - nothing, least of all tomorrow, was ensured.
Series
Bookmarked by AshiraAshiraAshira
12 Oct 2023
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Collections:
Bookmarker's Notes
4
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Mirrored by LearnedFoot for lucymonster
Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
13 Jul 2019
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Summary
In a world where 2014!Nebula survives getting shot, Nebula has to decide what to do with her younger self.
Series
- Part 2 of Nebula!