Brendan asks….
“I stumbled across one of your older posts where you listed Laurana from Dragonlance as one of your favorite heroines. Laurana is my favorite fictional character, and I’m always interested in other’s people’s thoughts on her, so my questions to you are:
1) is she still one of your favorite heroines and if so
2) what is it about her that made her stand out to you?

Great question Brendan!

I grew up on the Dragonlance series. Twelve year old me latched on to her character because she resonated with me on more levels than, say Kit could. But she remained one of my favorite characters because she embodies so many contradictions. She’s a pretty elf, but she wasn’t hyper-sexualized like Tika. She was basically a princess, but she was treated like an inconvenience by pretty much everyone for book one. She’s an elf, which symbolically has always stood for this kind of unchangeable, old-guard mentality (particularly by Tanis, but also every other fantasy novel at the time), but she has one of the most drastic character arcs of the series.

She’s also very flawed, which is something I craved in my heroines when I was younger, and appreciate as an adult. She gets to be a hero despite being a bit desperate for attention, naive, and clingy, because she’s also brave and passionate and smart. Her strengths mirror her weaknesses in a way that make it clear one wouldn’t exist without the other. Yes, she’s a bit desperate and clingy and wants to be loved, but she’s also incredibly loyal to the friends she has and won’t leave them no matter the danger to her. Not many stories do the strengths = weaknesses as well.

She grows up on the page, and I related to the persons he was and love the person she became. And she never became one of those untouchable, unflawed, perfect strong female characters ™ in the process.