Your female characters are so strong they’re flexing their way out of the written word, ripping the cover of your book apart, and leaping off the page to bench press unsuspecting readers.
Your female characters are so strong their hugs hurt. “Don’t,” your other, softer characters say, stepping back, when your strong female characters try to greet them. “I’m happy to see you. But — don’t.”
Your female characters are so strong they split their kneecaps yesterday at the squat rack in the gym.
Your female characters are so strong they can draw out leviathan with an hook, and his tongue with a cord which they letteth down; they can put an hook into his nose, and bore his jaw through with a thorn; he will make many supplications unto them, he will speak soft words unto them; he will make a covenant with them, and they will take him for a servant for ever. They will play with him as with a bird, and bind him for thy maidens.
Your female characters are so strong they’re kidnapping characters from other, better books and dragging them into their own scenes to liven up the dialogue.
Your female characters are so strong that Brutus’ idle threats pass by them as an idle wind, which they respect not.
Your female characters are so strong that when they rear from off the Pool their mighty Stature; on each hand the flames are driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and rowld in billows, leave i’th’ midst a horrid Vale. Then with expanded wings they stear their flight aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air.
Your female characters are so strong that they play harder than they work, then work harder than they last played.
Your female characters are so strong they’ve developed stress fractures and tendonitis as a result of overtraining. Your female characters are so strong they’re developing microtears in their muscle fibers and have been advised by their doctors to take it easy for the next few weeks.
Your female characters are so strong they’re capable of asexual reproduction. Every one of your female characters has spawned seventeen unbelievably strong daughters. All of them have the same name.
Your female characters are so strong that if you strike them down now, they will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Your female characters are so strong they read ahead to the last page, barked ‘I DON’T LIKE THIS ENDING,’ and moved the ink around to change the final lines.
Tags: books, feminism, feminism sort of!, some quotes from job and also from paradise lost i think, strong female characters
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DEATH BY SNU SNU
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.
MAN I cringed when I wrote the splitting kneecaps one and I’m cringing just thinking about it now
i just can’t stop thinking about kneecaps splitting down the middle like a walnut
HELP
i think the strong female characters’ form is off
knees should not do that during a proper squat
patellaplop
Have you tried thinking about just stapling them back together? ALL BETTER NOW.
Mallory, do you knees feel like they’re splitting when you squat?!?!
I CAN’T help, I’m too busy cringing about kneecaps. I had to curl up into a protective fetal position when I read that one, and can barely type now.
As someone who has split her kneecap (by tripping and falling, not by being a badass), it really isn’t all that bad. You get lots of sympathy, and people bring you food when they visit you post-surgery. Split kneecaps for all!
That line gave me a heap of willies, but then I saw ESPN’s body issue and now I want to go do crazy heavy lifting
( http://espn.go.com/espn/bodyissue )
BUT CAN THEY HAVE IT ALL?
With an army of clone spawn? YES
For real though, I would like an army of clone spawn. Where is the One True Gal Scientist?
Your female characters are so strong that the slightest flex of their muscles vaporizes shirt sleeves and pant legs, leaving their every outfit as nothing but DIY leotards.
DIY leotards!!
Your female characters are so strong that they spit literal nails at unsafe velocities.
Your female characters are so strong they can straight-up yawn at videos of returning soldiers reuniting with their dogs.
Your female characters are so strong that Atlas wishes he could use them as spotters. (Your female characters are so strong they don’t believe in spotters; if the weak are crushed under weight they had the hubris to aspire to lift, that’s their problem.)
Atlas is real worried about finding himself on this side of an objectivist argument
I’m confident he can *puts on sunglasses* …shrug it off.
YEEAAAAAHHHH!!
As if anyone on the planet is strong enough to straight-up yawn at videos of returning soldiers reuniting with their dogs.
(what, I’m not tearing up just thinking about it… you are!)
TIL Strong Female Characters follow the George Foreman School Of Naming Offspring
Also the Manny Ramirez school.
Your female characters are so strong, they home-schooled The George Foreman School of Naming Offspring and did the Manny Ramirez school as a summer thing.
your female characters are so strong that one time a guy said something to them about not being strong, like, “I don’t think you’ve very strong at all,” and they were like, “nu-uh,” and he was like “I’ll bet you’re not as strong as superman” and then they punched him into space
They are so strong that punching into space is their standard greeting. Like a high five. That sends you into space, where only the weak asphyxiate.
your female characters are so strong that their hearts are impenetrable to feeling
‘Some quotes from job and also from paradise lost I think’ is a tag with a lot of great possibilities.
I just LOVE this post and all the ensuing comments. LOVE.
Your female characters are so strong that when they cry, they cry openly and passionately, and those tears create oceans teeming with life, upon which those SFC sail large warships as they take to the sea, crushing those in their wake.
“Your female characters are so strong they’re capable of asexual reproduction. Every one of your female characters has spawned seventeen unbelievably strong daughters. All of them have the same name.”
This is 1000% true of Dragon Age’s Flemeth.
And asari! Sort of.
My Commander Shepard is so strong that she left one of her officers to die in a nuclear explosion because she didn’t like the familiar tone he took with her.
I don’t believe Flemeth does ‘asexual’ reproduction, though the men she… rapes, was it? Or perhaps just sex freaky enough to freak Morrigan out.
Well, either way, they don’t tend to survive.
WHO EVEN KNOWS IT COULD BE ANYTHING.
I mean, has no one really posted this yet? The great Kate Beaton:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=336
came in just to post those 🙂
Your female characters are so strong that they tear muscles. Out of the flesh of their enemies, with their teeth.
My female characters are so strong, they train with live ammunition on Day Two! (second page of this sneak peek, Go team Amazon-Velma). http://www.theouthousers.com/forum/previews-f35/s…
Aah I just read this because I hadn’t been on The Toast yet today but N.K. Jemisin linked it on twitter. Mallory, you win.
Mallory, do you knees feel like they're splitting when you squat?!?!