I could have sworn I’d done this topic so many times over the years, so I was very surprised to look back through all of my posts and realize that I hadn’t! The only topic that was even remotely similar was Independent Women from 2019. Considering how much strong female protagonists have been a trend over the past few years, especially in fantasy, I was surprised this topic hadn’t come up more. My original intent was to find some characters, even from movies or TV, that had a more unconventional kind of strength. I was inspired by my rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically because of Tara. Although she is not the “traditional” version of a strong character (ie. physically strong, aggressive, snarky), she has her own quieter kind of strength that really shines through, especially in the show’s sixth season (spoiler alert for this paragraph — skip ahead to below the Top 5 Wednesday tagline below if you do not want to see spoilers for Buffy). We see Tara progress from being incredibly shy from her first appearance in Season 4, to someone who is able to stand up for herself and the people she loves, and even to take time and space away from her relationship when it was becoming unhealthy. I really wish we could see more of this kind of strong female character, in addition to the more traditional version. Most of the books below feature more of the stereotypical strong female character, who were great characters as well, but I do wish there was a bit more variety.
Top 5 Wednesday is a meme created by Gingerreadslainey on Youtube, and is now hosted by Sam at ThoughtsOnTomes. The official GoodReads group with the weekly topics can be found here.
Abyssal Librarian 