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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44284
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44284
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Just be aware that almost everything is trope/stereotype of some sort: [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysFemale](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysFemale)

One of the best ways to mitigate that is to make sure there are MANY women -- Buffy in _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ is a classic "strong & female" character, but she's so into "normalcy" that in s3, she competes to be homecoming queen. But there's also Cordelia, a rich "girlygirl" who also is amazingly direct and honest about what she wants. Willow, Faith, Tara, Anya, Jenny Calendar -- all are very different type of women. By the nature of the show, they have some superpowers (magic via chemistry, magic via witchcraft, technopagan, demon-life), and they take different elements of the patriarchy and adopt or rebel against them. Anya loves capitalism and heterosexual sex. Jenny goes to Burning Man.

In my own real life, I've noticed I _hated_ pink, partially because I was rebelling against what I was supposed to like...until I started trying to cosplay Delores Umbridge...suddenly I'm looking at all the pink in Goodwill and finding... I like it! Not all pinks, but quite a few look good on me. So often there's a struggle between figuring out one's OWN tastes, the current social-group's tastes, the over-arching society's tastes, etc.

Another, less-gendered example: So many of my friends love _Firefly_, but I don't care what in-jokes I won't get: I'm just not interested. Am I trying to be "not like those other SF fans?" Have I just not encountered the right podcast to make me reconsider? I really don't know. A lot of people locally are upset that a local Dr. Who convention died, and they don't _want_ a general SF con to take its place: are they trying to say they're better/different than all the other fans? Or is it that these are the type of fans that whichever fandom they found (Baseball, Roman history, antique cars), they'd want a deep focus, and not be interested in "sports", "history," or "transit"?

The best way is, especially since it's YA, is 1) have multiple characters, so no one person is The Representative Whatever (woman, person of color) and 2) have the characters recognize that they're struggling with this. As YA protagonists, trying on identities is pretty normal; as superpowered ones, expressing that via costumes and variant names can really display this!

Original score: 4