Hooked on Heroines

Female Leads

2026-04-16T05:30:43Z

Posted by: ysabetwordsmith

I looked up some lists of shows with female leads...

Netflix dramas spotlight powerful female leads

Top 10 Badass Animated Female Leads You Should Know

Women in TV: Which Streaming Services Are Doing It Best

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Meta: High Potential

2026-01-27T23:23:26Z

Posted by: ysabetwordsmith

I wrote a promo introduction for "High Potential" for snowflake_challenge and I'm copying it here so more folks can see it. This show has a good set of awesome female characters. \o/

High Potential

Overview

"High Potential" is a crime dramedy based around Morgan Gillory. She is highly gifted with an IQ of 160, and like many gifted people, most folks refuse to put up with her -- hence "high potential" being a mockery. Average adults don't like smart adults any better than average children like smart children, with predictably bad results. Thus she has wound up working as a cleaning lady at a police station. This leads her to pointing out an error in an investigation, which eventually brings her to work for the police as a civilian consultant.

( Read more... )

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Opinions requested

2025-03-30T11:20:53Z

Posted by: elisheva_m

Hello,

I'd like to know what others make of the end of one of the scenes in the lakorn-novel I'm writing. The friend who's read it missed part of what I had hoped to convey.

The FL is pretty awesome.

Fandom: None - original fiction. Genre is Thai lakorn (you don't need to be familiar)
Pairings: het (OC)
Rating/Warning: No CW. Teen and up
Length: 614 words
Notes: See post intro. Impressions re the ending are fine. Anything else if you feel like it.

It's this post here.

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Meta: Nimona

2025-03-07T10:07:23Z

Posted by: ysabetwordsmith

This is spliced together from several of my posts about Nimona.

Why I Love Nimona

I love Nimona.

I love the fact that she's a polymorph who can take any shape. She uses them all with fluid grace and great effect in combat.

I love the fact that she refuses to define herself as more than "Nimona." She won't try to be anything else but what she is. She just wishes other people would accept her for who she really is.

I love how casually destructive and violent she is, especially when it comes to tearing down symbols of the corrupt social order. And she breaks a few things in Ballister that he frankly needs broken. We could use someone like that in local-Earth.

I love how she is wild and fierce and free, a forest spirit even in the city. She brings a breath of fresh air everywhere she goes.

It's not so much one scene as one character, one aspect of Nimona -- that she's chaos incarnate. The trailer really captures that sense; this movie is so, so queer in all the best ways. That's Nimona for you. At least with her, life is never boring.

I grok that.

( Read more... )
.

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Meta: "Why I Love Wednesday Addams"

2023-03-31T06:34:17Z

Wednesday TV Series (The Addams Family) Meta

2023-03-10T20:12:32Z

Posted by: ysabetwordsmith

As part of the March Meta Matters challenge over on marchmetamatterschallenge, I've written about the recent series Wednesday. All links have been archived with the Wayback Machine and/or Archive.fo.

* Overview
* Interesting Aspects
* Episodes
* Promising Crossovers
* Relevant Dreamwidth Communities
* Memorable Fanworks

This series has a high number of prominent female characters, compared to other canons. If you're looking for a new fandom with lots of fanwork potential, this is well worth exploring.

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Just checking...

2022-05-10T05:36:24Z

Posted by: theresa_ramseyer

Good morning :).

I'm trying, again, to get back in the swing of writing. It's a long story. I want to check something first. I can talk/post about the non-canon characters I'm writing, right? She's Awesome was created for canon characters, as I recall, but I've asked if the rules could be changed slightly. It's been years since someone posted an actual fic to the big three, concentrating on women, Hooked on Heroines, She's Awesome, and So Sue Me. Especially in light of all we're going through now, I find that to be really sad, at best.

Thanks,
Theresa

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Did we ever begin a "regular reading/watching group"?

2014-05-19T18:27:15Z

Posted by: theresa_ramseyer

Going back through the administrator postings, I found this from April 8, 2010.

"Secondly, there has been a request for a regular reading/watching group within the community, which I think fits our purpose nicely. This would be to read pro-fic, fanfic, or watch TV or movies together in order to discuss the female characters involved. There would be regular suggestions posts, and then I suppose polls to see which would actually get group discussions going, and then a separate post for each piece of media discussed.

I think it's a great idea and I, personally, look forward to participating in it."

While I can't moderate, I would be interested in seeing/participating discussions like this. We don't have cable, but I have a library card to Webb City's public library and one to MSSU's library. I am always open to learning how to write better.

Theresa

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How to differentiate between two very close female characters?

2014-05-19T17:58:10Z

Posted by: theresa_ramseyer

Afternoon :).

I'm not sure if this post fits Hooked on Heroines, so please let me know if it doesn't. Thanks.

I mainly write in "The Equalizer (series)" fandom. (Please don't get me started on the upcoming movie(s) - there are too many differences from the series that basically they are just using the name.)

Pete O'Phelan is a female canon character that doesn't have much canon information. She's an ex-agent who left the Company with her husband after they married. He died. Now she owns and runs a restaurant where the other characters eat occasionally. (She's played by Maureen Anderman)

She shares several traits with my main female OC character, Teri. (Again, not related to the upcoming movie(s) Teri at all.) There are some differences. Teri, for example, is an agent who's also married to Control, deals the most with their daughter, and moonlights with other groups besides helping Robert McCall/the Equalizer. So Pete's and Teri's paths cross, and they're friends.

Unfortunately, I'm not coming up with enough strong details to visually differentiate the two. They are about the same height, short black hair, closed attitude unless with friends, and so forth. Different eye colors. I could switch Teri's hair back to her original brown, and that would make her even more like me.

I have thought about habits, but nothing yet comes to mind.

I'm blaming it all on the She's Awesome community . I didn't really think about this until I decided today to write more often for that group. Started planning for that, realized how close the two characters are, and here I am!

Hope you're having a wonderful afternoon,

Theresa

Edit: I had forgotten I can't do tags. That's a good deal, because I am always a bit concerned I'll forget something :).

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How to make yourself love a character

2014-04-09T00:53:08Z

Posted by: beatrice_otter

I happened to be paging back through the community looking for something, and I came across a post from 2011 asking the question "how do you make yourself like a female character?" The OP was annoyed by a female character being bashed a lot, and wanted to write fic and meta countering the bashing, but didn't actually like the character on her own merits.

This is interesting to me, because I just did it by accident for yuletide. Here's how it happened:
( It started when I finished my assignment and was wandering through the prompt list looking for something I wanted to write )

Once I was in the story, I became immersed in her world-view, and came to respect her. And seeing Don and Cosmo through her eyes made me respect them less.

And there you have it: Lina Lamont, Rocket Scientist

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A Kickstarter that is relevant to our interests

2014-03-26T00:28:28Z

Posted by: beatrice_otter

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Signal boost! Gauging interest for a female-centric Remix

2014-03-16T01:19:05Z

Posted by: beatrice_otter

So there are remix challenges happening, which is always exciting, because I love remix!

But remix often comes with issues of not having the ability to specify that you aren't a big fan of slash or mostly write women. While that can sometimes be part of the fun, it's also really frustrating when you've got a bunch of awesome stories about women and one not-as-awesome story about men and that one not-as-awesome story is the one that gets remixed because your author doesn't write women.

So are you into stories about women? Have you written stories about women? Would you like to read and write more of them? Would you like to read and write stories based on other people's stories? Yes? Motherfucking yes? Well then, I want to hear about it!

In short, tielan and theladyscribe are trying to gauge possible interest in a female-centric remix.

The interest-gauging post is here.

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The Chaos: Nalo Hopkinson's nightmare of Blackness

2012-10-07T19:49:09Z

Posted by: ed_rex

Drawing on myths from Jamaica to Russia, on folk tales of Coyote and Brer Rabbit, and maybe from sources as disparate as Chuck Jones, J.R.R. Tolkien and Mervyn Peake (not to mention Lewis Carroll), Nalo Hopkinson's "Young Adult" debut is as singular a creation as it has been my pleasure to read in a very long time.

All at once a surreal adventure, a subtle exploration of privilege in caste-ridden society and a daring push against the walls of narrative fiction itself, The Chaos has no villain and its (black, Canadian) heroine never wields a blade nor fires a gun.

Though questions of race and identify form organic parts of how the novel's characters view and interact with the world (none of the book's major characters is white), race is not what the book is about. Hopkinson is telling a story, she is not preaching.

Narrated by probably the most fully-realized teenager I have come across in fiction, The Chaos is always surprising, a thoroughly unconventional page-turner you owe it to yourself to read — to pass on to any literate young person you know.

For my full review, click, "When I cried, the tears were black."

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Review: Stargazer, Volume Two - by Von Allan

2012-05-09T06:27:52Z

Posted by: ed_rex

The girls, the monster and the Artifact!

More than a year ago I reviewed the first half of what I thought then was a "gentle" children's adventure, Stargazer, by Ottawa indie cartoonist Von Allan. I bought the concluding sequel back in December if memory serves, but circumstances didn't see me get to it until now.

A black and white comic book featuring three pre-pubescent girls in the role of unlikely heroines, Stargazer features a Magic Doorway in the tradition of Alice's rabbit-hole and Narnia's wardrobe (and the Starship Enterprise's warp drive, for that matter).

But what seemed a "gentle adventure" in its first half, proves to be a considerably more spicy brew in its second. What seemed to be turning into an exercise of that hoary old "And then she woke up!" cliché becomes something very different — and very memorable — by the time the story is over.

A little rough-hewn, Stargazer nevertheless has considerable virtues. This story of friendship and loss just might be a gateway drug to comics for that young boy or (especially) girl in your life — but keep a kleenex handy. My full review lives on my site, ed-rex.com/reviews/books/stargazer_volume_two.

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female character trope fest: now open for fills

2012-05-02T11:39:21Z

Posted by: such_heights

( promo banner )

Having gathered over 700 prompts in over 100 fandoms, the Female Character Trope Fest 2: Electric Boogaloo is now open for your fills for all fanworks involving female characters and using fandom or genre cliches, tropes and conventions.

More info here!

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3w4dw: thought for getting some community posts perhaps?

2012-04-28T12:09:55Z

Posted by: oursin

I expect quite a number of people have already seen this post by Kate Elliott, Looking for women in historically-based fantasy worlds and the general paucity of roles for women that writers tend to come up with.

So I was wondering, do people have any thoughts about good sources for finding out more about the immense diversity of women's lives before the present, and in other cultures?

A source I love, even though I must concede that it is specifically UK, is the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Unfortunately it's a subscription site, but they have a free Life of the Day,which you can get either by email or there is a DW feed, as well as other free features, and if you are a member of a library (including many public libraries) which has a subscription you may well have remote access.

The ODNB made significant attempts to be more inclusive than the old DNB and and there are lots of entries on women who are perhaps rather below most people's horizons and had fascinating lives. There are also entries on groups of women such as the Bluestockings and the circle around the Freewoman journal.

What sources, on or offline, do you recommend?

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Review - The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was

2011-10-20T05:00:20Z

Posted by: ed_rex

The sonic lipstick's last hurrah (Part 3 of 3)

It seems churlish — and a bit pointless — to dwell on the negatives, so let's get it them of the way.

The Man Who Never Was is the weakest serial of The Sarah Jane Adventures's final half-series. The details are clunky and there is an almost unforgivable bit of idiot-plotting to get us to the cliff-hanger at the end of the first episode.

But never mind all that; it is still an entertaining episode and a fitting tribute to its late star.

The other parts of the story, the important bits, more than make up for the deficits, and Russell T Davies deserves our thanks for reigning in his tendency towards over-blown melodrama.

I'm going to miss The Sarah Jane Adventures an awful lot. In its quiet way it offered its young (and not-so-young) viewers a powerful moral vision and provided an example (instead of a lecture) of a subtly radical alternative to life as most of us know beneath its fantastic trappings.

Some spoilers behind the link. And I'll try not to get blubbery.

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DIY: teaching yourself to love them

2011-10-15T21:16:55Z

Posted by: kaz

So, I have a bit of a problem, and I thought people on this comm might have some insight and find it an interesting question.

I'm currently writing a fic in a fandom where there is a major female character (one of the canonical installments' main antagonists, in fact). Now, I'm not really... interested in this character. I don't really *dislike* her, precisely, but I dislike the plotline she appears in, there's some elements in it which smell of sexism to me and somehow she's never really grabbed me. I can see that there's some potential for awesome there, but I've always been pretty "meh" on her.

Now, the problem - the rest of the fandom is also not too keen on her. In fact, not only have I never seen this character really done well or portrayed with any sympathy (only one exception I can think of), but I've frequently seen her bashed or totally reduced to her relationships to male characters. And this pisses me off. I may not be too enthusiastic about the character, but I can definitely see potential in her and she does not deserve the treatment she's getting (treatment which, frankly, stinks far more strongly of misogyny than her plotline does). Therefore, I'm determined to do her justice. I am going to write her and by all that is holy she will be awesome.

However, I keep running up against the problem that I'm genuinely not that interested in her, and that I find her plotline pretty awful in some ways which I'm struggling to figure out how to fix. My enthusiasm for writing her is due to my beliefs about portrayal of female characters and anger at how she's being treated, not any sort of actual enthusiasm for the character. And this makes the whole thing a little... difficult. I've come to the conclusion that I need to teach myself to love this character if this is going to work, but I haven't the faintest idea as to *how*.

Has anyone dealt with a situation like this before? Or have any other tips?

Canon info, in case anyone's curious: the character in question is ( spoiler for Morrowind: Tribunal expansion )

ETA: I don't have the time or spoons to respond much, but thank you everyone who's commented for some truly excellent advice! I think I have a good idea of how to attack this now.

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hooked_on_heroines @ 2011-10-15T09:51:00

2011-10-14T20:54:54Z

Posted by: demimonde

Hello! I'm Liisu, and I have a lot of feelings! As a result of many of these, this morning I sat down and wrote an essay about why I feel 'Mary Sue' is a problematic term, largely used to bully and discourage young women in fandom. I'm trying to explore the way these stories and their authors are reacted to, what's wrong with that, and what would be better, basically. If nothing else, I am trying to start a conversation. You can find the essay: here on DW and here on LJ.

You may have seen an earlier version of this post that quoted from my essay directly- I edited it for clarity at request.

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Review - The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Curse of Clyde Langer

2011-10-13T04:21:03Z

Posted by: ed_rex

The sonic lipstick's last hurrah (Part 2 of 3)

There is but a single story left to tell before The Sarah Jane Adventures is done.

Following hard on the heels of last week's solid series opener, the program has hit one out of the proverbial ball-park.

The Curse of Clyde Langer was an emotionally involving and sometimes very creepy story that only faltered — maybe, a little — in a slightly too-easy resolution.

To add to the episodes' multiple pleasures, The Curse offered strong characterizations, a hefty dose of good humour and even a little unexpected romance. As usual, some spoilers ahead but no snark whatsoever.

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Review - The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sky

2011-10-12T03:53:56Z

Posted by: ed_rex

The sonic lipstick's last hurrah (Part 1 of 3)

Pretentious is a dangerous word for a critic, one I try to avoid and one which (I hope) I use with judicious deliberation when I do press it into service.

The term is kissing cousin to dishonest, and which implies promises which are undelivered or, worse, betrayed.

As you might know, I have spent considerable time over the past few months looking at a couple of British science fiction series, the 2011 editions of Doctor Who and its ostensibly adult-oriented spin-off, Torchwood, both of which promised much but delivered very little indeed.

So it is that I am very happy to report that the first (of three) remaining instalments of The Sarah Jane Adventures promises only an entertaining children's adventure story yet delivers quite a lot more.

Phil Ford's eighth two-part serial is, not surprisingly, very much a typical Sarah Jane adventure, offering low-key, character-based comedy, thrills enough (I think) to keep a child on the edge of his or her seat (if not, quite, hiding behind the proverbial couch), and a subtle moral seriousness that leaves its more bombastic cousins looking like charlatans, or worse.

Not many spoilers and no snark at all (for a change), as I take a belated look at Sky and begin my last dance with Sarah Jane Smith.

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Honor Harrington and Me: A Love Affair

2011-09-13T01:58:40Z

Posted by: beatrice_otter

Books filled my house as a child. So did science fiction and fantasy. (Every year, regular as clockwork, my Dad read The Hobbit to me and my younger brother.) So, naturally, I became a great reader. I read a lot, and I read fast. And, in elementary school, oh joy of joys, I discovered the public library, which was only two blocks away from my parents' business. You can see where this is going, right? I started devouring the books there. But, you know, they had a strict limit on how many books you can check out at a time (only twenty! the horror, the deprivation!), and I read fast and constantly, and YA books are usually pretty short. So one day, the librarian (who knew me quite well by then) took me over to the adult (grown-up, not porn, get your minds out of the gutter) section of the library and showed me the science fiction section, particularly the Star Trek novels all on the same shelf. I was probably just starting middle school, by that point; it's one of the clearest memories I have of childhood, that glorious moment when I saw all those books I had never read, and all of them so much bigger--i.e. more-to-read--than the YA and children's books. It was awesome.

I started out with the Star Trek books, already being a fan of the series. Once I'd read all of those, I started expanding. And one of my first finds was Honor Harrington. (The series as DRM-Free multiformat e-books)

I was in love. Here was a female character like me, with whom I could identify! ( Why Honor Harrington is Awesome )

ETA: I just made 20 Honor Harrington icons.

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'We Love the Women that the Fandom Hates' fest

2011-09-06T23:18:43Z

Posted by: nonisland

akzseinga is having a fest celebrating unpopular women running from this Friday to next Friday.

Fandoms of any size are encouraged, any female character you've seen hate against (even if it's just from a few people) is eligible, and reposting old content appears to be allowed if I'm reading the comments correctly. You can write meta or fic, make graphics, share fanmixes, or basically anything else that's celebrating the female character you've claimed. There is a limit of three claims per language per character (so, three people could create for a character in English, and three more in Spanish, and three more in Russian, etc.).

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Magical Girl Fic/Art Swap 2011 - Sign-up Deadline August 31st

2011-08-31T01:49:38Z

Posted by: boundbooks

I thought that this community would appreciate knowing about an awesome fanworks exchange! Magical Girls Unite (mgunite) is hosting the Magical Girl Fic/Art Swap 2011. The goal of the swap is to "try and bring the various magical girl fan communities together" in a fanworks celebration! It's an AO3-hosted swap, so an AO3 account is needed to sign-up. The information post has further details.

Link: The AO3 Collection Profile Link: Magical Girl Fic/Art Swap 2011

Sign-up date/deadline: Wed 31 Aug 2011 11:45PM EDT

Due date: Mon 31 Oct 2011 11:45PM EDT

Posting date: Fri 04 Nov 2011 12:15AM EDT

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Heroines Fest 2011

2011-08-08T15:36:05Z

Posted by: pfg

It's heroines_fest time again!

Description: A fest to celebrate comic book women. Open to fanfiction, fanart, and vids. DC, Marvel, Indie & Webcomics are welcome, as are various comic book adaptations in film and animation.

Links:

Rules Post on LJ | Rules Post on Dreamwidth
Prompt Post on LJ | Prompt Post on Dreamwidth

Schedule:

August 7-26: Prompting Period
August 28 - September 11: Claiming Period
October 7-October 21: Posting Period.

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