Somewhere between the cultural obsession with “harder punishments for crimes” and the flood of female fantasy characters who all know how to wield a sword, I started asking myself a question: is this really what we were going for?
We’ve made progress, sure. Women now get to be the hero, the chosen one, the game-changer. But so often, they’re only allowed those roles if they can fight like men. If they can “hold their own” in battle. Katniss. Tris. Feyre. Violet. They’ve got different backstories, different emotional arcs—but at the core, they’re all legitimized by combat. Their right to be central hinges on their ability to kick ass.
And I get it. I like women who fight, too.
But I grow tired of that being the only shape a heroine can take. I keep seeing female characters being framed as “cool” or “desirable” not because they are written with complexity, but because they are essentially male archetypes with different anatomy. We now wear pants. But put a man in a dress and most people still laugh. The double standard hasn’t disappeared—it’s just changed its costume.
So I wrote someone different.
I had this image in my mind: a girl working at a forge.
She wasn’t glamorous. She wasn’t deadly. She was dirty, determined, and quietly brilliant. I wanted her to be the one rescuing the damsels—in this case, her brothers. I wanted her to matter not because she could fight, but because she could build. Because she could think. She doesn’t have any combat training. She freezes at the sight of blood. And still, she is the kind of hero I wanted to create.
Because to me, strength in a character—any character—is the ability to change toward the good, even when the incentive is low. To see the truth of your situation and yourself, and do something about it. Not because it’s easy. But because it’s right.
That kind of strength comes in many forms. And we need to see all of them.
Yes, women should be able to fight. But we also need heroines who are inventors, diplomats, caretakers, strategists, screw-ups, dreamers. Characters like Kiva from The Prison Healer, who leads from within, holding the pieces of her world together one patient at a time. Or the women of Seveneves, who rebuild civilization not by conforming to a single model of power, but by bringing their full, messy, contradictory selves to the task. Or the morally layered women of The Fifth Season and The Way of Kings, who prove that strength and vulnerability, anger and kindness, certainty and self-doubt can all coexist.
Because the truth is, women don’t need to become men to be heroes. And the solution isn’t flipping the stereotype—it’s dismantling the frame entirely.
The point isn’t toughness or vulnerability. It’s range.
And I worry that young women today are still being handed too narrow a template. First, it was: be like a man to be strong. Then came the vulnerability wave: be publicly broken to be seen as real. And somewhere in there, the honest, ordinary, flawed, funny, and—most importantly—inconsistent women got lost.
I want a space between the extremes.
A space where young people—especially young women—see characters who are allowed to just be. Who are awkward, ambitious, fierce, uncertain, kind, rude, scared, smart, and totally human. I want stories that show readers the only expectation worth living up to is becoming the person they want to be.
Because that kind of representation? That’s the kind I needed. And I think young women today need it too.
What do you love most about your favorite female fantasy hero?