{"id":13107,"date":"2014-03-24T21:39:56","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T21:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/24\/october-toby-daye-was-in-many-ways-my-first\/"},"modified":"2014-03-24T21:39:56","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T21:39:56","slug":"october-toby-daye-was-in-many-ways-my-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/24\/october-toby-daye-was-in-many-ways-my-first\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

October \u201cToby\u201d Daye was in many ways my first \u201creal\u201d protagonist. She was complicated, she was sad, she was bruised and refusing to break, and she was not afraid to put her duty ahead of her desire to be liked. She bullied her way through the world she was created to inhabit, looking at every complication that stood in her way and saying \u201cNo, you move.\u201d After a lifetime spent moving dolls through stories, it was like I finally had a real person to follow and document. I started writing her adventures, and sending them out to people I trusted to read and review. Midway through either the second or the third book\u2014I don\u2019t remember anymore\u2014I got a note from one of my proofers saying \u201cYou can\u2019t have Toby do this, she\u2019s always been a little bitchy, but this makes her a total bitch. No one will like her if she does this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nI panicked. I couldn\u2019t write a series about an unlikeable character! I\u2019d never get published, no one else would ever meet my imaginary friends, and everything I\u2019d worked for my whole life would be over, all because Toby was unlikeable.\n<\/p>\n

\nThen I took a deep breath, and wrote back to the proofer requesting that they do a find\/replace on the .doc, and plug in the name \u201cHarry Dresden\u201d for every instance of \u201cOctober Daye.\u201d They did, and lo and behold, what had been \u201cbitchy\u201d and \u201cinappropriate\u201d was suddenly \u201cbold\u201d and \u201cassertive.\u201d A male character in the same situation, with the same background, taking the same actions, was completely in the right, justified, and draped with glory. He was a hero. Toby? Toby was an unlikeable bitch.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe proofer withdrew the compliant. I have never forgotten it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

seanan_mcguire: Characters, criteria, and causation: where the problem lies.<\/a> (via helavik<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October \u201cToby\u201d Daye was in many ways my first \u201creal\u201d protagonist. She was complicated, she was sad, she was bruised and refusing to break, and she was not afraid to put her duty ahead of her desire to be liked. She bullied her way through the world she was created to inhabit, looking at every … Continue reading <\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13107"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}