man, im rereading dm and the hounds with my bf so i can talk to someone abt it but like - my guy, tysm for how you right your girl characters. like nell ofc is super fleshed out and its clear you put a lot of care into her character but like all of the girls in your story are super characterized/actually have a personality and goals and flaws and things they dont like abt themselves and ways they need to grow and i just - its just so refreshing bc thats not super common in either fantasy or fanfic (the latter mostly bc it usually has a heavy focus on m/m ships). but like the care you put into nell and her as a character really was what got me out of my art block so in summation tysm. also i hope ur having a good day etc etc
omg :'''''')))))) thank you SOOO much for this message. This is so so so sweet of you to send in.
Like, for one, the fact that you're rereading the story is just incredible in and of itself!!! I'm so glad you've enjoyed it enough to read it twice <3 genuinely.
And ahhhh I'm so glad you like how I write the girls!!! It's like 100% something that is *vital* to me. Like... I love queer stories so much, but I don't just want to write queer stories that are solely like m/m stories, ya know? bc I love girls lmao I love women. I want to represent them in my stories as well, and I want to give them as much depth and nuance as boy characters usually receive. I agree completely that like women characters can often be sidelined in favor of the men characters, and it's something I never wanted to do in my own writing, so it really means a lot that you've sent this!!!<3333
It was a big part of the reason why I chose to have Nell's mom be the Death Eater instead of her dad. Even though William's character is like very dear to me lol, I wanted to give the nuanced and complicated history to a woman (especially bc canonically, I think Bellatrix and Alecto Carrow are the only female death eaters??? which is nuts????) (Narcissa is never shown to be a Death Eater, just Lucius's wife, from what I recall).
But yeah. I wanted Nell to have a complicated relationship with her mother in particular as a way to represent the very real complicated relationships that daughters can have with their mothers in the real world. I also wanted to show like a nuanced portrayal of a mother that would always be in a perpetual state of moral grayness.
And like with Daphne--- a lot of her character was sort of my rebuff to how JKR writes feminine characters in the original series. Like the fact that the only girly characters are like Lavender Brown, Umbridge, and Fleur (and more I'm probably forgetting) --- and all of these characters are portrayed as silly and vapid... I wanted to contradict that directly with a character who is extremely girly, and also brave and complicated with her problems. Which was part of why I had Nell dismiss befriending her so quickly in the first installment, bc I wanted Nell to be wrong about Daphne to emphasize this sort of automatic dismissal that happens for girly characters. And then like show that there's more underneath the surface for Daphne, but that her femininity and softness *is* always there too.
nywayyyyyy all of this is to say that your message was so wonderful to receive so thank you so much for sending it. I agree completely about how unfortunate it is that women characters get sidelined so frequently, and it's something I hope to never do in my writing <3
And I hope you're having a good day as well!!!!!! <3
