Community Profile

Formed in response to the ongoing discussions of misogyny in fandom, the merit/lack thereof of Mary Sues, and issues related to the dominance of male narratives in fanfic.

The Challenge: produce 10 creative works (via writing, fanart, vidding, or any other medium) in which the central main or narrative character identifies as female.

Much like 50books_poc, feminist50, and queerlit50, you can choose your level of participation in the challenge:
1. Take the challenge: commit to writing, drawing, vidding or otherwise producing creative work for 10 stories with female protagonists in the course of one year.
2. Take longer than a year if you have to, but commit to the number 10 as a goal and a launchpoint for many stories to come.
3. Talk, Create, Share: Talk about your stories, create your stories, and share them with us. Then share your experiences.
4. Read, rec, and review stories and works featuring female-identified main characters.

Fan fiction as well as original fiction is encouraged.
We also invite you to take the sub-challenge along with the regular challenge, and write at least one blatant Mary Sue into your fanfic or other writing of any kind!


Suggestions for breaking out of our fannish comfort zones:

A general objective of this comm is to actively encourage ourselves to move away from white-male-dominated narratives (while recognizing that writing those narratives is not necessarily an inherently harmful or negative act). This comm is about having more of good things, not condemning what we already create.

With that in mind, participants are encouraged to write, not only about female-identified characters, but about each of the following:
- culturally, racially, politically, and religiously diverse characters of all genders
- transitioning characters of all genders
- gender-neutral characters
- non-cisgendered characters
- characters of all physical sizes, shapes, and makeups
- characters of all abilities

Participants are also encouraged to explore sexual identities of all varieties, keeping in mind that sexual identity and gender identity are separate and autonomous. We encourage you to consider writing queer and asexual characters, as well as multiple types of relationships.

Please educate yourself as thoroughly as you can about the characters, identities, backgrounds, and cultural contexts they are assuming. Also, please note: while discussion about your writing and the challenge itself is welcome, the members of this community are not here to educate you about the subjects and diversity issues listed above. The goal of this community is to foster active writing about female- and other diversely-identified characters. Please do your own research and your own educational work outside of this community before participating in discussions here about writing the characters. And, as always, check your privilege.

A list of educational resources is being compiled and will be provided to the community shortly.

It should go without saying, but just in case: female characters and other exploratory characters should be written with thoughtfulness and respect. We want this experience to be empowering, both for writers and readers.


Other female-oriented writing & reading communities:
sueducing_ladies
so_sue_me
hooked_on_heroines
shes_awesome
ladiesbigbang
thelittlebang
femgenficathon
femslash_today
yuri_challenge
ladykink

If you have other communities you'd like to suggest to us, please let us know!

Also, if you'd like to help mod this community, please email Aja at bookshop at livejournal dot com. Thanks!