bookphile:

Female-Driven Genre-Fiction Wishlist:

• Girl teams, all girl teams.
  
• Female characters of color who actually represent their culture.
• Less self-sacrificing, martyr girls more girls and women who do things for themselves without feeling bad about it or people judging them for it.
• Mothers who do things other than parent and cook.
• Mother and daughter characters who don’t hate each others guts.
• No more “I’m not like the other girls”.
• Girl characters who are good at math and science.
• More poor female characters, who come from nothing, and exploring how that effects their heroism. And I don’t mean like middle-class poor, I mean, like having to chose between food and paying bills poor.
• Girls who don’t like each other, but can still respect each other.
• No more girl heroes/villains whose tragic backstory is getting raped.
• No more female characters of color dying or sacrificing themselves for white female characters.
• More fat girl characters in fantasy and other genre fiction who are the ones kicking-ass and taking names and being haled the hero. That are defined by something other than their weight.
• More girls of various body-types other than “lean.”
• More disabled characters in stories that aren’t necessarily about their disability.
• More unattractive girl characters.
• Girls that are not looking for relationships or losing their virginity.
• More non-binary female characters.
• More LGBTAQ+ female characters.
• “Strong” female characters who actually do things other than fight all the time and have a personality.
  
• More “strong” female characters whose “strength” is something other than fighting.
• No more stories sold as “feminist” in which only the leading character is female and everyone else is man, and only other female characters are minor or antagonists.
• No more using “like a girl” or being a girl as an insult.
• Stop making female characters be “bitches” just because. Unlikable characters are still supposed to be likable, meaning: love to hate, hate to love. Just look at Scarlett O’Hara, she’s a godawful awful person, but she’s a fantastic character.

Feel free to add yours.