That is an awesomely kick-ass series, I'm reading it right now! I'm in the middle of the third, pondering whether I want to read the next three she wrote.

I once read a book mandated by my high school that had two cousins screwing in a church.

I was going to suggest reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels. They are good, and are also the basis of the HBO series True Blood (written/directed by a man)

You can see the differences between the show and the book and probabbly draw some inspiration from that. The book by the way is written by a woman.

Oh, if you want to attempt to roleplay a hilarious female personality, read Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate) by Gail Carriger. It's not really a classic fantasy, it's more of an alternate reality in Victorian England with vampires and werewolves. The female protagonist reminds me of a Jane Austin character, complete with priggish manners and all sorts of pride and prejudices (who also happens to have no soul). The first paragraph sets the mood:

Yeeaah, to avoid standing out as an obvious example of rule 33:

1. No one cares what you know until they know that you care.
2. You don't get to say things like rule 1 (or this rule 2) because you avoid making strong generalizations. Generalize all you want (women don't do it any less than men!), but pepper it with qualifiers. You know, from what I've seen, most people don't care what you know until they know that you care.
3. Supplement to both above rules--it's ok to be wrong (but mostly because you never said you were right).
4. Negotiate based on intangible wants, not tangible needs.
5. Quantify less, qualify more.
6. All your fellow female creatures are either friend or foe, rarely both, never neither. Neutral is reserved for men.

These are generalizations, but they might be useful to you:

Xavius is pretty spot-on. Females tend to view other females as competition (even if in a vague sense), unless they are political allies, friends, or family.

When someone discusses a problem, men tend to be discussing that problem in order to talk through a solution. Females tend to do it in order to talk through how they are feeling and thinking - they don't necessarily want potential solutions just rattled off. Both the talking and the listening can be applied to how a female character deals with things. Note, this does not mean your character has to be nurturing. An evil-aligned female could sit silently, letting someone discuss a problem, in order to gather information.

Males tend to play (especially PK or politics) to beat others. Females tend to play to achieve, or to be valuable. So a female's motivations will be more towards getting titles and achieving goals, or to making herself useful in an org. The end results may be the exact same as a male's, but the motivation tends to be different.

The next three books are awesome and totally worth it, though Phedre and Joscelin barely make any appearances and they are old and not quite as much fun . However, it goes into Imriel and Ysandre's children - really, really good books, I got them all in hardcover I loved them so much.

Don't worry, the next book will take place 10,000 years in the future and you'll see how those people impacted entire civilizations and you'll LOVE IT!

Loved the first Dune book, not a big fan of the rest.

Sorry, that was my point, didn't come across right I have yet to meet anyone who liked the later ones.

No. Twilight does not have any strong female characters. It has Edward Cullen who refuses to allow Bella any say in her life whatsoever. And Bella who is a whiny, ungrateful little brat who puts herself in danger for selfish reasons.

Ugh, those series are awful. Burn them, don't read them.

He was not being serious, you know.

Intriguing that you want to do this, Vhaas.

Sadhyra makes some very valid points - I believe she hit the inherent aspects found in many if not most females regardless of affiliation.

Before I make my own suggestions, however, I would wait until you mention which affiliation your character(s) will have. What she wants to achieve, etc. As the general points were hit, we could move on to specifics.

P.S. Most of the men's suggestions in here are too... manlike in thought. (Don't listen to them.)

P.S.S. As for female characters: the protagonists in these two darker series can be flippant, but also get down to business when they need to. Not too emotional, but they exude feminine strength.

By Kim Harrison:
The Hollows Series

By Laurel K. Hamilton:

Meredith Gentry Series (has erotic scenes tied in with the story, but is not entirely based on them)
EDIT: The books in this series are A Kiss of Shadows, A Caress of Twilight, Seduced by Moonlight, A Stroke of Midnight, Mistral's Kiss, A Lick of Frost, Swallowing Darkness, and Divine Misdemeanors)

I haven't read her Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, but it sounds lovely.

Still, QFT.

And just a small wrench for you, Vhaas. Your attitude towards other females will depend on your character's sexual orientation. For straight women, in general terms, Xavius is correct. It might not be competition persay, however. I tend to think of it as...straight women look at other women in the way that straight men look at women.

I also think Sadhyra's bit about motivation is fairly accurate, but nothing is ever 100%. I'm of the mind that there are plenty of women who play to pwn.

It might be most important to outline what motivations your character has, then ask this question again.

edit: Rancoura-ninja'd me on the last point. D:

It doesn't matter, he still suggested it, even if it was only meant to be half-assed!

Some good books about wonderful heroines, also, is The Golden Compass, the Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. The main character is only 11-13 during the entire series, but undergoes a vast and complex change. When I re-read the books the first time I was surprised at all the character development. They're good books.

It also has Mrs. Coulter who is like, a vindictive little thing. And some very strong female characters (and male ones). Just... good books. Read them.

Laurel K. Hamilton is a great writer. Both series are good imho. The Anita Blake series starts to get very sex, sex, sex and more sex towards the later of the serious, but she sort of justifies it. (won't say how but if you read 'em you'll know.) its kind of bloody in the beginning as well.


And damn I need to by the last 2 of Gentry.

Unless you're playing a hypermasculinized female character, nobody's going to suspect you're playing anything other than a female. However, for the sake of argument, I've some information to contribute for you to at least consider.

We had an interesting discussion in my thesis class today, though, on how the relationships between the women in the texts we've read and watched differ from those they have with men, and those that men have with each other. Keep in mind that these books focused on women put in the position of a picara (basically, women outside of society in some way, up against the law in some way, and thus need to rely on their own resources to do simple things like survive). We compared them to relationships we generally see between men we might consider to be picaro characters

Because the women in these books were always in conflict with a patriarchal society, they would actually have very strained relationship with men, viewing them as either a commodity in which they could find security, or viewing them with complete distrust, all with the exception of those who were immediate family (and that's only in some of the cases presented). By contrast, the women were all depicted as being very supportive of each other, even those they weren't friends with. There was an inherant understanding of the situation each of them was in. You might see this in Moll Flanders, the movie Thelma and Louise, another movie called 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (don't look for this movie unless you're into controversial films about abortion, by the way!), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, etc.

The only instance in which women seemed to turn on each other regardless of whether they knew them or not in these books were when the woman was considered an outsider herself among the other women. Basically, these women (again, all subjugated women or women on hard times in some way, so representative only to a certain degree of the situation of the average woman) would form bonds with each other based off a need to watch one another's backs. It didn't matter whether they were friends or not. Women were just more likely to help other women than to view them in black or white, friend or foe terms.

Picaro (men) that we looked at tended to form relationships with other men based off active situations, rather than social conditions. Adventure (see: Huck Finn), war (Forrest Gump, forgive me if my spelling's off), and other situations that might require the two men to put their heads together and solve a problem or survive in a literal life or death sense are what would make men actually bond, it seemed.

In those kinds of circumstances, I can only imagine a woman would view another woman as an enemy if they threatened their own security (often read: prospective husband or boyfriend) in some way, rather than respecting it and finding their own source. Outside of the positions of the picaresque, I can't imagine why women would view each other as enemies unless it still involved men in some way.

Kalaneya makes a good point, too, about your character's own sexual orientation. All of the women in the texts I've studied have been heterosexual females, so it would apply in even fewer ways to a homosexual character than it would to a generic heterosexual female.

In any case, you don't need to play a character that views every woman as an enemy (and flirts with every man, consequently). That's boring.

Another generalization: Men tend to be direct. Even when being subtle, they will act or say things in a way to make you see things their way. Whereas women tend to say or act in ways that will make you more unconsciously feel things their way - ie empathy. For example, a man may point out x y and z as reasons for something, or PK you to convince you, whereas a woman may illustrate the trials she's gone through to achieve a goal, unconsciously working to provoke sympathy.

As for books, I'm suggesting these based on how helpful they'll be for getting inside the female psyche. They aren't the best literature out there, but they are quite strong illustrative tools:

* The Red Tent - Biblical females
* Clan of the Cave Bear - the stone age, from a battered, yet insanely strong, woman's PoV
* Princess - a ghostwritten autobiography of a Saudi Arabian princess.
* Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus - a "self-help" franchise, but very useful for flipping through as he is quite spot on regarding certain gender differences. Dr. Ruth or Dr. Phil's websites, or even http://www.cosmopolitan.com/ are all very good things you can flip through to get a peek into the female mind. Bear in mind that a LOT of this stuff is exaggerated and played up.
* The Other Boleyn Girl - even just the movie does a very good job of portraying multiple facets of reasoning and avenues of actions women take, based on similar motivations.
* Cassandra: A novel and four essays - Christa Wolf's visionary reworking of the Trojan War from the women's point of view. The accompanying essays are even more fascinating, as they explore the frustrations and issues of a female delving through the annals of history to find motivations behind the undocumented characters of myth who usually exist only as backdrops or props for the male heroes.

Of those, I highly suggest picking up Princess. It's very accessable and immensely stunning. You can read it in a day or two, but what you learn will stay with you for a very long time. Bear in mind while reading the book that while the author is neutral, the one narrating to her is not - this adds another, mind-spinning layer as you consider the Princess' motivations in telling and embellishing certain aspects (for example, FGM is mentioned and our narrarator insists it's common, when research indicates otherwise...what does this reveal about the agenda of the Princess in sharing her story? Other aspects, such as beatings, are treated with an almost blase consideration, which makes you ponder how the status quo can affect emotion towards events. Etc. I'll say no more!).

Cassandra is by far the most thought-provoking, but it's not a light read by any means. As a fun sidenote, one of the authors cited in the link above was a college professor who I read the book with and accompanied to a lit theory conference. Totally random, but it made me grin to see his name when I was getting a link for the book.

omg nyir hai

Nyir, check out The Handmaid's Tale. You might enjoy that read.