firestorm717 | (Reply)

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Sigh. It's super bullshit that men get all the physical advantages >:( One of the reasons I hate being born a woman. But I want female Valjean to be special in some way that exceeds other men and women, since male Valjean's strength comes up again and again in the brick. It's kind of an important part of his character. I can't think of anything except intelligence? A savant-level skill with numbers? But that doesn't help if she's uneducated, and it wouldn't be any aid in physical confrontations. Oh! What about eidetic memory? Now, that could be interesting... it would require a total rewrite of some scenes, namely, the Fauchelevent scene would depend on Valjean's ability to recall some important picture/document she'd only glanced at in order to... I don't know, exonerate him from a crime or something. Will have to give this some more thought. Rather than hauling rocks around, perhaps female Valjean was given a task that honed her marksmanship or some other physical/martial ability, which would prove an advantage later.

I get what you're saying about having to respect how sexism affects characters' lives :P I just don't like it. I deal with so much sexism and self-loathing for being female in my everyday life that the media is my escape. So if I inject some wish fulfillment fantasies, that's just my way of coping with an unjust nature and society. (One of these days, I'm gonna write a fic with fem!Tony Stark, aka Natasha Stark, inventing cybernetic enhancements for herself so she can beat the boys at their own game).