Do you have a rebellious female character?

Does she insist upon not following the traditionally feminine roles her culture has assigned her? Perhaps she wants to wield a sword, wear armor, and lead armies into battle. Perhaps she wants to sail the high seas, or the high skies for you steampunkers, with her merciless pirate crew. Is she totally against the idea of settling down to bear children and cook for her husband, who is supposed to go off and defend the village from wolves and armies? Does needlepoint bore her to tears, do dresses and gowns make her shriek with rage? Is your lady a princess who dreams of being a knight? Is she a milkmaid who wants to be an archer?

Or perhaps she is ladylike. Perhaps she does enjoy wearing dresses and looking beautiful, because she knows she can use her sexuality to manipulate men into doing her dirty work for her. Perhaps she lives in a society that encourages women to be pure, virginal, and innocent.

I'm curious about the rebellious female character that has become something of a staple in fantasy, particularly so in medieval-European based fantasies. Author to author, I'm curious about why you chose to include such a character. Do you ever feel like you're obligated to include a rebellious, perhaps anti-feminine-behavior, woman? How do you think a medieval-European based fantasy would fare if the author chose to portray the female cast as well-behaved, feminine women?

Since the rebellious female character has become so utterly popular, especially in medieval fantasies where many characters are shown taking up roles their societies traditionally dictate as male, I thought it would be something interesting to discuss.

So, what are your opinions on this kind of character? Do you have one? Why?

Yes, I have a rebellious female character. Why? It's fun to have a character with a spitfire personality. The conflict is interesting.

And I had already designed a woodland society where both males and females could become warriors. As this doesn't fit with the other societies in my fantasyland. Since these cultures share similar roots, what made it different? What led to the change? So, I thought it might have started out as a male-dominated society but certain strong-willed females took matters into their own hands and turned it around. This was loosely inspired by the suffragette movement. After all, the warriors vote on decisions; they elect the leaders; they debate matters. She wants her voice to be heard as much as she wants to shoot arrows. So she proves herself capable and earns their respect. That and having half the male population slaughtered by goblins made the remaining population open to the change.

I have a variety in the gender roles in the society. For example, in the coastlands, the genders are separate by equal. The men are usually on boats, and the women take care of the houses, but they're both considered important and work in harmony. (At least that's the ideal.) In the central lands, you'll find the more traditional European-like roles. Sorcerers don't even consider gender in roles, since both men and women can work magic. In one country, it's rather oppressive to women, and peasants, and . . . pretty much everyone. Finally, in the highlands, men go into battle; women are too precious to throw their lives away as soldiers. However, they do work in many crafts, and women make up the majority of the spies.

When reading, I have nothing against the rebels, as long as I like the character. I don't like it when the author tries to beat the reader over the head with a social-political agenda, whatever it may be. And treat this character like an individual. And give her motives for what she does.

Rebellious female character... no, I don't think I have one.

Well, I have a 70-year-old woman who works as the boss of the park conservation service, on the virtue that she's been there longest and there was no one else working there for the longest time. She never married or changed jobs to something more stable, so she never "retired". Though she's no ruler, she's the undisputed guardian of the wild enchanted lands around there since she's the one on patrol negotiating problems, managing resources and since she hasn't died in her long and dangerous career, she's recognized and respected as the best. She wears tweed skirts and stomps around in boots, she grows out her long silver hair in a braid she wears down her front, and she doesn't take any nonsense from anybody.

I have another old woman who did retire, in the loosest sense of the word. She used to be part of an inner-city ninja clan whose members have whittled down over the years due to many causes. Now she's the only one left, but mostly lives her life as an innocent old lady and doesn't like to show off her ninja heritage out of fear she'll be hunted, but she's still very competent at her skills. After her role in my story ended, she started her own ninja school so she can get impressionable children off the street and carry on her dying clan's traditions.

Then there's the female character that inspired my protagonist to get in the mess he did, but she's not an old woman; she's an android. She starts the story by getting really mad, assaulting a news reporter and getting arrested and kidnapped, and spends the rest of the story off-page in jail until the protagonist stumbles upon the holding outpost while he's focusing on more important problems. What I described would be considered "rebellious", but it really was an off-day for her. She's normally upstanding and generally follows rules since she has a dangerous job as a member of the city's bomb disposal team. That whole incident happened the one day she messed up since she was being distracted on the job and the news reporter was just rubbing salt in the wound.

I think the most rebellious female character I invented was probably the villain. I started by off-handedly mentioning some young woman running away from an arranged marriage she thought would be unhappy and went missing. The main villain, leader of the parasite alien scout troops, picked up the dead body of the runaway bride as a replacement for her old body. Since she and her team had been left behind on the planet for a good seven years after the first attempted invasion, she and her teammates have slowly grown mad about their unintentional exile and their interstellar empire's "endless war". Needless to say they don't become hippies, but they've become the closest thing the empire's got since their army has failed to win the day bring them home for so long they've contemplated desertion and other treasonous acts. I've especially made this strange because I'm thinking that the way the hero defeats her is by marrying her first and then exposing her for what she is.

The funny thing is that my hero is a male who's surrounded and shaped by women. Since many of these characters were once male until I decided I needed more females in the cast, this may be intentional.

I don't feel like I'm ever obliged to create a character that I don't particularly have an overwhelming need to create.

My world is modern. The last two NaNo novels (though this one was a failure, heh) involved an alternate dimension off of the main world, post apocalyptic, and certainly not modern at all in whatever version of society was left without humans. But the world that I usually write in, Gaia, the rough equivalent of our earth, is modern. So, no, I don't have any runaway princesses or an ambitious milkmaid. Those things wouldn't make sense.

I also don't write complete, pure-blooded humans who grew up among other humans, or anyway, knights and princesses, or teenagers who spontaneously develop magical powers, and feel the need to rebel against authority, and no, I don't have one male main character and one female love interest. The ratio of males is higher than the ratio of females in general; also, many of my important characters are hundreds if not thousands of years old and have gotten past any silly youthful rebellion stage, both male/female/other gender/neither characters.

I don't know if it's popular. -shrug- As a female reader and writer, it never seemed all that interesting to me. I don't really feel that a strong character should have to be rebellious or a spitfire to prove their independence or importance or legitimacy next to characters of a different gender. Even more often, I find that, especially in medieval-based fantasy, it breaks my suspension of disbelief. I can understand the fun behind it, and wish fulfillment aspect, but.... It never really attracted me that way.

I suppose the closest I have to a stereotypically rebellious character would be my Glorious Sirena Titan. She's a daughter of the god Ares by an unknown siren, and as such is more than half monster. She can spin minor illusions and has a good amount of fighting ability. She stayed as her father's pet in court for most of her youth, always trying to live up to his expectations without too much success compared to her older full siblings, Piccolo and Ambrosius, the twins. She became desperate for attention and did a lot of silly things, without much result, at least until she met Loki. She has a temper, can be quite impulsive, as well as vain and impractically feminine; alone of her siblings, she has her father's coloring, and only a little bit of magic talent. She has very few friends besides Loki, and a few of her cousins - hardly any female friends at all, as she certainly doesn't count the Amazon contingent.

Glory loves being overly dramatic, but most of it's show - she had to learn to be quite tough in reality, as she and her siblings were abandoned on the streets in the middle of the Great Depression for years until someone from Olympus even noticed their existence. Some hallmarks of her stories include becoming a manic stalker with a crush for a prince of the Underworld, protecting a human girl during a massive demon conflict, being one of the few living creatures that can make the trickster Loki give a wholesome answer, and, eventually, strong-arming a voodoo witch into turning her into one of the undead in order to shame that same prince into marrying her and making her regent queen. She's also had a short stint as a truly awful private detective, and ...

Well, let's just say she's not my favorite character, and if I met her in real life I would probably despise her for the her mannerisms and attitude, but she can certainly make some interesting trouble for the other characters.

Only if one of my characters, who is a princess of a small kingdom, who has banded together with princesses of other small kingdoms, to do their Kidnapee-for-Hire business, counts. Then again if I ever do this it'll be more modern-ish. If I do it, it might focus on one or two other characters who are in the business. In a way, one character rebels kinda because she has no interest in marrying a man or having children...because she much prefers the ladies.

I think that you're not supposed to want to be kidnapped, let alone charge money for it, but the service serves two purposes--it gives those princesses money that's only theirs (since the majority of them are second-born and younger), and if people are willing to fill the Hostage Role, then people won't kidnap an unwilling royal family member. Because in that universe, Princess-Kidnapping is more of an entertainment thing than something done with an ultimatum attached. It's weird like that.

I tend to write the characters I want to read. And the idea of a woman who twists her prescribed role to her advantage sounds like a fun one.

No. My female characters are simply whatever they want to be. Sometimes that matches gender roles. Sometimes that doesn't.

Gee, with all the textwalls in here about people being awesome at describing their characters I do feel a bit silly since I know already that mine is going to be short:
I have this female bounty hunter. Right now she's actually from a family of bounty hunters, therefore she wouldn't even "rebel" against anything since she just does what her family does.
I'd like to change that in the edited version so that she's part of ... something like a cult or the like. I have to figure that out first before really changing anything about her. What I mean is that she doesn't know better. She still looks like a lady, you just get the idea that she's dangerous. (I mean, being heavily armed should give others that idea, right?)
Fun fact, my MC is very cautious when they first meet since he's a bit scared of her (you know, not scared-scared just ... 'this could turn out pretty bad'-scared).
... she even has a twin sister who runs an inn, which is funny because that sister is nothing like her. lol

When I started creating my culture, I had to think about the female roles in the society and determined that some of them would be warrior roles, but most of them would not. Strength is the primary factor in this determination, so in warrior roles where strength is less of an issue, females are not uncommon. Mainly this is due to the survivalist nature of the dominant culture. They live on a world infested with lethal plant life that animates every three weeks and tries to kill all life that is not part of it. In general, this means all mammals, reptiles, and avians are at risk. To combat this threat requires specialized skills and unique professions. Some of those professions, Firemen for example, require strength. Firemen carry naptha tanks into battle and they're heavy, so very few women ever migrate to this profession. Gardeners, on the other hand, use shears - mentally controlled flying disks (like a buzz saw blade). These don't require any physical strength to use, so there are as many women in this profession as there are men. Plus, Gardeners are trained from a young age and many of them are selected from among the orphans left over from previous battles against these plants. Women are just as likely to be among these orphans as the men. Guards are another example. They use blusses (rifles) in addition to close combat weapons. Blusses don't require physical strength, so it isn't uncommon to see female guards on the walls with blusses or manning mounted flamethrowers.

Despite this, there is still the typical role for women in this society. Those who fall outside combat roles are in the majority, and fit into more standard professions. Therefore, the concept of a 'rebel' really applies to both genders, and generally indicates an individual of one profession that wants to 'rebel' against their established role and take another. In this regard, even nobility could be considered a profession (although one the individual is born to rather than selected for or assigned). For example, I have a farmer (male) who wishes he was a Gardener and goes out to fight against the plants even though he isn't supposed to.

My main female character is a Gardener. She was placed in her current role by selection from the orphanage when she was very young. She doesn't remember her parents and was told they died in one of the battles against this plant (which isn't unusual). The only person who knew her true lineage was the city's Regent. When other people arrive to collect her, she discovers she's a Princess from another realm (world) placed here to keep her from being assassinated. Most of her 'rebellion' from this point forward involves her reluctance to leave the place she was raised and considers her home. She doesn't want to be a Queen. She isn't interested in ruling a Kingdom. She just wants to be a Gardener. So her rebellion revolves around the forced transfer of her profession from Gardener to noble ruler. It's kind of a reverse rebellion. She starts in a warrior class and is forced to assume the role of an aristocrat, something she has little respect for. In the end, she accepts the new role and does what she has to, but only because she's her mother's daughter after all, and can't let her people (who she doesn't even know) die because she wants to hold on to the profession she loves. Much of this is written as an internal struggle that gets backed up in dialog. If she weren't so honor bound, she'd probably rebel entirely and refuse to become Queen. To accept that role, she has to give up her boyfriend, her profession, her culture and the only world she knows.

I have my Queen Beatrice. She isn't rebellious, in fact probably the reverse. However she is intelligent, sassy, confident, can kick ass in a fair fight (her 6ft11 hubby wouldn't pick a fight with her and we first meet her in the stories when she has been assigned to be his body guard). At seventeen she has the two most powerful men in the kingdom the king (her husband) and the Abbot (one of her dad's) wrapped around her little finger. But she is a seventeen year old kid - and has moments of fear and doubt. Moments when she likes to bury her head in a manly chest. Like most of my characters she is conflicted.

In my contemp fantasy I have the elderly Iris Steele - I am not sure if she is rebellious, but she is tough. She knocked out her abusive son-in-law when he tired to kill her daughter. In her 60s she has just met up again with a one night stand she had 40 years ago. They are living together :)

Hmmm. In the epic story (non-nano) I've been writing I have first a woman who in other respects takes her traditional role as a housemother and a daughter of a prominent noble, but chooses her husband - a foundling of a different race. She keeps her head (and her parents have the reason to accept it rather than lose their daughter).

And I have a crown princess. Not a rebel, but educated "as a prince" because she has no siblings, and has excellent skill with swords and bows. Later on she has to run for her life, and joins guerillas incognito...

No. Instead I have a vaguely medieval-European-based fantasy world with gender equality and consequently male and female characters in various roles.

I don't really enjoy the "female character rebels against her gender role" stereotype as I believe that this sort of approach - well-meant as it may be - subtly serves to normalize and reinforce the same trite old idea of what is "feminine" and "masculine", with only a small number of oh-so-special heroic people daring to do things differently, and usually only by allowing a woman to take over a traditionally "masculine" role. This way of making one female character or a small group of them "special" is actually very old (if you look at old myths and literature, you will always come across individual female characters or female groups deviating from the norms of the mainstream society of the time - think of characters like Atalante or Hervor). On the other hand, the idea that being a non-combatant or having an interest in traditionally "feminine" pursuits does not make you less of a man is rarely explored.

Therefore, I am actually very glad that writing fantasy (as opposed to, say, a historical novel) allows me to come up with a different kind of society.

Is it really rebellion when there's counter-cultural roles for those characters to fill?

I have fun with this in the modern world. Writing an urban fantasy. The MC is a ghoul, a shape-shifting demon that feeds off corpses and has some inborn magic, that is stuck in the form of a woman (long story). This has pros and cons as "she" puts it. It lets her get the drops on some other supernatural creatures that tend to think of humans as pathetic and human women moreso. Then the MC rips their heart out of their chest...

I also have fun with the whole gender issues thing, as the MC thinks mortals obsess over the whole thing a bit much considering their meager lifespans. While at the same time pointing out the difficulty some vampires and other creatures have with the same issues. When you lived through chivalry and the times of arranged marriages, our modern age is hard to swallow for some.

The MC finds it all very hilarious...

Given, I don't have any chicks who wanna wave swords around. All I have is a chick who thinks for herself and states her opinion at great length whenever possible, heh.

But mostly I think I write characters like that because I've never been the "traditional" kind of woman, and I find it impossible to interest myself that much in their internal lives. I actually tried writing a character who had dresses in her closet once...it turned out that she hadn't worn one since her ex fiance dumped her, which was several years ago. I did manage to write a girly girl once, but she was really a parody of a girly girl...all pure, innocent, and clueless, so that she thought the guy who was trying to seduce her had a harmful growth between his legs, and offered to cut it off for him. :P

Admittedly, I'm pretty sick of the "strong chick" stereotype too...if for no other reason than it must cost out the wazoo to make a suit of armor to accommodate boobs. :P I kinda wish people would write women as people, and not get so wrapped up in whether they wear dresses or swing swords around & only say bitchy stuff. But, as with most things in human culture, we have many more examples of the extremes than we do of stuff in the middle. :/

Then again, I think that a lot of authors have a Rebellious Spitfire Female Character Quota to fill, whereas I don't as much. I find that kind of weird. At the same time, I find it kind of annoying that any traditionally feminine woman who isn't also a villain of some kind is almost always mincing and whiny and basically childish rather than girlish. A female character can like dresses and want to settle down with a nice person of their gender of choice, and maybe have a kid or two, and still have their brain and spine intact, and I'd like to see less conflation of "childish behavior" with "feminine behavior".

If I do have a female character who's like that, it's almost always because of the way they grew up and were raised (or not raised in the case of a few). The cases where it's not an issue of upbringing is usually a case of Nobody Else Wanted To Do It For Some Reason, since I have a few characters, male and female, with a sense of justice and fair play, and if no one else is going to slay that dragon or stop that evil king from taking over, it might as well be them, because no one else is able or willing to do it.

Does it have to happen in Europe to have females and be fantasy? Seriously?

I thought we hashed this a while ago:
1. Masculine and feminine are defined by society/culture.
The fact that authors are too lazy to get out of European mindsets shouldn't prevent people from playing with gender roles. Why can't the men be the ones to wear wigs, make up, and lace, uhh... like 17th century. See Melanie Rawn for this done well.

2. We've got to stop defining women on the definition of what makes a man strong, by cultural stereotypes.
The fact is the majority of chefs are men. Who is said to cook at home by stereotype? That's what I'm pointing to.

Physical strength does not define women. Used to be that women were deemed as stupid too.

Isn't strength also defined as a woman that's neither Xena nor a Heinlein babe? Why is rebellion defined in such narrow terms? Why can't a woman have it all?

3. Cultural stereotypes of gender identification have changed over history.

Used to be to be feminine during the Victorian era, most women were not to wear make up to be of the Upper Class. It was considered to be for Burlesque girls.

Men have worn heels and lace iun history too--some were really religious about eyeliner, powder, and so on.

Anyway, I'm kind of sick of the "rebellion" being defined by two polar ends of what a woman could be. So I'm defying the stereotypes entirely and that's my rebellion. My women are well-rounded, and if they step out of line, just like real society, they get scorned, ostracized, called less than and kicked around. I see fantasy as putting fantastical elements, but I don't think that the story should play literally and unrealistic fantasy.

People *die* for defying society and not fitting norms. They get teased and someeven commit suicide. A woman that didn't conform in some countries through history got *killed* for what they did. Torchured (See Witches).

My women characters, therefore show their strength not by a sword, but by endurance, by trying to cope while trying to get what they want. Overcoming loneliness and trying, despite great odds to maybe have a family to secure their place in the world and what they want.

I enjoy my women ancestors, not because they can lift a 200lb rock or sleep with 10 guys in a week, but because they endured so much and fought so hard to get to where we are now. I wish to write to that--the silent fighter.

Female character (rebellious), or Rebellious character (female)?

You know what would be really rebellious? Gathering up all the toilet paper they can muster just so they can TP the tower where the business leader/politician who passed that ridiculous price control on paper products uses as his headquarters. Many men were in on it, but most of the perpetrators were angry women who really wanted cheap paper products again for very good reasons. Does that qualify as "rebellious females"?

Alas, this is merely a humorous background event in my novel, since early on I used the paper crisis as a convenient set-up for two characters to meet, and then let it run rampant in the back while the main characters moved on to other concerns. Just because the plot has switched doesn't mean the problem went away.

I'm trying to think if I have rebellious female characters or not.

In my current fantasy project: No. Not really. My central female character is, or will become, something of a rebel, but her rebellion will have to do with politics, and will come about years after she serenely accepts an arranged marriage, and diligently becomes an ornament to the court. When she finally breaks the rules, she will do in an attempt to avoid a war, in collaboration with her husband. She's definitely not the classic rebel girl of fantasy.

My FMC isn't rebellious as such but she gets back-stabbed pretty thoroughly and is eventually forced to be. She is a sword-waving super-warrior but she's not defying her role by doing that. That's the norm for a person born into her position. She does her job very zealously and only stops when she has absolutely NO other options.

In my urban fantasy my two FMCs are kind of rebellious, but not by much. One of them isn't very girly and is a bit of a rebel but I find her more mischievous than rebellious. The other is fiery, but at the same time kindhearted and more stupidly brave than a rebel.
Why is it always that the heroines are rebellious, why not rebellious a villainess?