Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Lindsey Byrd! She is the author of On the Subject of Griffons, a fantasy novel about a woman who ends up working with her deceased husband’s former mistress to seek a magical cure for one of her children. The Sun Blessed Prince, her next novel, is the first book in an epic fantasy duology with romantic elements that features a prince and an assassin with opposing gifts who might be able to put an end to a war. I’m thrilled she’s here today to share some thoughts on the “not like other girls” trope and discuss two female characters in her soon-to-be-released novel—which is coming out on May 1 in the UK and May 6 in Canada!

About The Sun Blessed Prince:

A battle-weary prince meets a reluctant assassin. But could their bond end their war?

SEPARATED BY WAR, UNITED BY FATE…

Prince Elician is a Giver. He can heal any wound and bring the dead back to life. He also can’t be killed, so is cursed to watch his country wage an endless war.

Reapers can kill with a single touch. When one attacks Prince Elician near a hotly contested battlefield, but fails, the Reaper expects a terrible punishment. Instead, Elician offers him a chance at a new life and a new name on enemy territory. Cat, as Elician calls him, hadn’t realized he could ever find something, or someone, to make life worth living — until the prince. Yet Elician is unaware that his enemy plans to turn his kindness against him until danger engulfs him in turn.

As the pieces of a deadly plot come together, featuring abduction, treachery and forbidden magic, tensions escalate at court and on the battlefield. The fires of conflict burst into new flame — but can those who wield the powers of life and death find peace?

Whenever I hear the phrase “not like other girls” about a character in a book it’s usually accompanied by a rolling of the eyes and a huff or great sigh of disdain. The accompanying dialogue is something to the tune of “I was reading a book and this girl was just insistent on being not like other girls.” The offending character perhaps even makes the claim herself, insisting how she’s unique and special. She doesn’t wear dresses, she drinks, she likes to go to fight club or has any number of traits that set her aside from the traditional “feminine.” If it isn’t how she presents herself physically, then it’s her mental state. She doesn’t chase boys, she has no interest in child rearing, or she abhors any type of presumed gender role.

Audiences have love/hate relationships with these characters. While some see them as wish fulfilment, the embodiment of everything they themselves wish they could do if not held accountable to the societal norms placed on them, others (quite loudly) consider them tacky, annoying, or out of touch. Fandom circles, in particular, can be ruthless when it comes to any female character, but the use of the “not like other girls” trope can engender additional vitriol.

I confess, as a young writer first developing my craft — I was terrified of writing female characters because of the backlash they often receive. If not outright vitriol, then pure silence in the comments section certainly makes it loud and clear that audiences prefer to read about their male favourites over the female co-stars. And, as a young writer, I was more prone to writing wish fulfilment characters in general. Self-insert, Mary-Sue, sister-fics and the like were a therapeutic form of self-comfort. Unhappy with my life beyond fiction, these characters were written specifically to make me feel that: if only the [insert special event] happened, then I could be a hero, and would receive praise, glory, love and affection too!

But very quickly, it became obvious: such characters were not to be written about or posted in public because no one wanted to read it. It was so unrealistic — even the random internet strangers knew better than to cater to it. And as a young writer, I internalized that any girl who dared to break the mould of acceptability was not to be written about. The male characters were the only ones that were truly of interest. This internalized misogyny breached past the Rubicon of just “not like other girls” to ensure that I felt that all female characters in general should be used sparingly in my writings.

It would be years before I even confronted that thought process and what it actually meant.

For weeks now, in preparing this blog post, I’ve rolled around the notion of what “not like other girls” really means and who is impacted by it. I think it’s relatively safe to say that everyone wants to feel special and important at some point in their life. That there is some unique identifier within you that makes you stand out and worthwhile. Whatever the hardships that you have faced, you overcame them, and the way you overcame them made you strong.

When someone else (particularly a man) says “Wow, you’re not like other girls,” though, it creates a kind of strange social dissonance where your personal status is now being judged by a metric of a whole gender. A gender which presents itself in a myriad of beautiful and often disparate ways. Which girls are being discussed? From which race and social class or culture of origin? Because perhaps the actions of that individual are perfectly normal in their own community, or perhaps this enforced othering is a mechanism through which “other girls” can be disdained. This is particularly true in cases of white “normativity” in writings, and when white culture is used to create a separation or a judgment on non-white women and their behaviour. Are they not like other girls because they’re not white or white-woman enough? Which group are they being compared against? And does this factor into how they’re being judged in the first place?

Several books (and fandoms) do celebrate the “not like other girls” characters once the character in question has proven herself to be “one of the good ones.” Here, because they have adopted the more masculine actions and responses to certain situations, while simultaneously proving themselves to not be too “obnoxious” in the process (a fine line), the female character can be praised for being heroic. She managed to overcome her fragile femininity to become a hero. She could play with the big boys and hold her own. This female character can thus be praised in canon for her accomplishments in the superior gender field without betraying her obvious womanhood. It’s a strange dichotomy, highlighting one set of behaviours over another and squishing gender somewhere uncomfortably in the middle for good measure.

These female characters, though, face the double-edged sword of never quite being masculine enough or feminine enough. Their womanhood is often called into question as they justify their masculine traits. Natasha Romanoff in the MCU, for instance, both caters to her feminine sexuality while also emphasizing the masculinity of brutal murder and violence. She also, very controversially, was revealed to be unable to have children and her womanhood and ability to be a proper woman was thus called into question. Her trauma over her not being able to have children was infuriating for those who didn’t want to consider such things, as well as another sign of her womanly body being used against her. As much as she played in the masculine: it was impossible to forget she was a woman dealing with woman issues at the end of the day.

So long as the narrative distracts the reader from the fact the “not like other girls” character is a woman, by and large she’s successful. The sword-fighting badass character can be congratulated and celebrated, only until the attention returns to the fact that she is a woman at the same time. The Aryas are to be congratulated over the Sansas, for the Sansas can never hide their femininity, and should she manage an act of heroism, it is always failing to quite meet the same mark as other more accomplished male characters. When used like this, the trope is specifically making a point to highlight one gender’s perceived traits over another, and to ensure the audience knows which one (the masculine) is superior.

I struggle with all of this.

I am no longer a young writer, nor am I someone desperate to make sense of why (during a difficult childhood) I always felt left out. My childish yearning to say my differences made me special and therefore I couldn’t be like “those other girls” did not in fact take into consideration what those other girls might have been feeling. For I suspect, now as an adult, they likely felt quite similar.

Everyone has a right to the feeling that they personally are unique and not like the people around them, but by insisting that is the case — and using gender as the barometer on which those differences are judged — it flattens the experiences of all those others within that gender. All those times a fellow girl felt or did exactly the same thing.

In The Sun Blessed Prince, there are two very different female characters that take up a lot of time on page: Fen and Adalei.

Fen exists in a place of longing and yearning and development. She is a child, filled with the black and white thinking of a child, but she is desperate to be taken seriously as an adult. She wishes to express her individuality, but she equally hates the fact that she is different from the people she wants to be like. She feels as though she is not like other girls, and yet — she is exactly like other girls. She is filled with the same uncertainty, confusion, and longing to fit in as her peers. Her rebelliousness and even her bigotry are black and white because as a child — that’s how she can perceive the world. In black and white. Only as she matures does that binary begin to fade, and with it: the self confidence that comes with accepting herself for who she is.

To Fen, she is not like other girls. She feels othered and outcast. She feels like she will never fit in. However, she is exactly like all her peers, facing the same feelings of grief and uncertainty, struggling with her body and how she fits in it. Her worries and concerns and her uncertainty are entirely normal, as are her desires to do something. When she is told her limitations, she questions those that placed the limitations on her in the first place because she feels she can do better. This is an entirely natural reaction, and though she makes mistakes: her mistakes follow her journey into womanhood in a progression that does not highlight how unique she is, but just how bitterly normal a coming of age truly is. Grief, despair, longing, joy, and surprise are all a part of the process. She may not feel like she is like other girls, and yet she is. And it is that understanding, I feel, that helps provide nuance to the trope. Not quite a subversion, but rather an understanding that what someone feels and what someone is can be two very different things.

Adalei’s story is quite different. Already a full-grown woman, she has no progression or march towards an uncertain end. She knows who she is and what she wants. She is, also, a lady in every sense of the word. She runs her household, she participates in domestic crafts, she engages in politicking but in a quiet and reserved manner. She is fully aware of her body and her appearance and the impact these may have on others. She also has reached the point of her life where she has been hardened to the cruel words of others.

When Fen professes a desire to wield a sword, she implies her desire to actually, physically, commit to taking an action that has a tangible result. Take sword, hit thing, win. Adalei refrains. Her desire for tangibility is far more subtle than that. She’d prefer to take her time, and this preference is not a weakness. Women who do not fight are not fragile meek characters. There is depth and nuance to their struggles, and there is a strength that must be appreciated. To be a lady means to take command of an entire household and manage it, to be aware of every task being conducted under the roof and to ensure that any plans made are conducted exactly as the household requires. Adalei does this not only for her house, but for her country. She has no need for physical strength and prowess, but this in no way makes her inferior.

To disdain women who do not fight is simply to disdain women.

Not all women fight with their fists, and failure to wield a sword does not make someone any less of a hero.

The “not like other girls” trope is never going to go away. However, I do hope that readers and writers alike can add nuance to it. What is the purpose of the character, what is the author trying to convey, and also: who is the author writing for? Are they writing for their own inner child? Someone else’s inner child? Or are they truly displaying a deep disdain for the feminine?

I personally would reject any notion that the feminine is something to be discounted. But I also would reject the idea that the “not like other girls” trope is inherently bad. Subverting the trope, or even calling attention to it in the narrative itself, can help provide perspective within the text that may be helpful. And perhaps, in this way, these discussions about self-doubt and insecurity can help address the internal fears and concerns readers have. Perhaps, even in some cases, help them heal. That in itself would be worth writing for.

Lindsey Byrd grew up in New York before moving abroad for graduate research studies. She is an amateur birder and enjoys going for hikes to take photos of nature. She enjoys all forms of speculative fiction, and is an avid researcher of history. She currently runs the Youtube channel and podcast “Lindsey Byrd in Writing is Hard!”