Name: Anastasia Romanov
Role: Grand Duchess and youngest Romanov princess
Noble Quality: optimism
Fata Flaw: naiveness  
Fandom: Romanov by Nadine Brandes
I think I resonated so much with this story mostly because of Nastya's optimism and hope that she radiated throughout the book. Nastya's positive outlook on life - combined with her brother Alexei's hope for a better future for their family - makes her a protagonist that's easy to love and cheer for. 

Name: Claire Kenton
Role: main character (she doesn't really have a job XD)
Noble Quality: perseverance
Fatal Flaw: her temper/her grudges
Fandom: Heirs of Neverland/Peter Pan
Y'all didn't think there wasn't going to be a Peter Pan book/character on this list, did you? Claire is my favorite (Tiger Lily being a close second) because through all of the pain and suffering she's gone through, she never gives up. And as she finds out in Dust and Shadow, the reward is well worth her wait. 

Name: Nym
Role: Elemental slave
Noble Quality: grit
Fatal Flaw: her emotions (she can't control her powers otherwise)
Fandom: Storm Siren series
I haven't read this series in forever, and I probably am going to need to go back and reread it at some point (I don't even remember the series ending, which is so bad for me as an avid reader XD). I do remember admiring Nym's grit and determination to be more than a victim of her circumstances, which made her such a good MC.

Name: Arwen Undómiel
Role: ...Elrond's daughter? 
Noble Quality: loyalty
Fatal Flaw: you guessed it, loyalty
Fandom: LOTR
​Arwen is one of my favorite characters from the books and movies of LOTR, mainly because of her relationship with Aragorn. In the movies, she doesn't change her mind as to who she's picked, like some women in poorly written love triangles tend to do. And while her loyalty to Aragorn makes her vulnerable in the 3rd movie, it's a tragically beautiful representation of unwavering love.

Name: Eliyana Ember
Role: I can't actually say, it'd be a huge series spoiler
Noble Quality: desire to change the world
Fatal Flaw: she is too trusting sometimes
Fandom: Unblemished
And on the topic of fantasy series I haven't read in forever but still love, this series taught me so much beyond "beauty isn't skin deep" (which was also very important, don't get me wrong). El's desire to change the strange portal world she found herself in had a profound effect on me, and I've wanted to follow in similar footsteps since. (Okay, and Ky was really cute too. Some readers' fictional boyfriend is Rhys from ACOMAF, mine was always Ky.)

Name: Teresa Lisbon
Role: CBI (California Bureau of Investigation) Agent
Noble Quality: moral compass/desire for change
Fatal Flaw(s): emotionally detached at times, overly critical (of everyone, including herself)
Fandom: The Mentalist
I just finished watching this series and guys, there are few characters I wish I could write more into my books than Teresa (or as her brothers call her, "Reese"). Teresa has so many good qualities, including her desire for justice to be served, her love for her co-workers at CBI (even if she doesn't express them well), and her strong ethics. What's not to love?

What do you guys think? Who are your favorite fictional heroines? This is by no means a complete list, but these are just a few of my favorite fictional women from literature and the big screen. Let me know who your votes are in the comments! 

Until next time,
~Cate 

Hello everyone! I decided to take a break from my trope series. One, I've been studying hard this week and haven't had a lot of time to work on the next trope I'm going to feature; two, the next trope up is miscommunication, and it's my least fave trope of ALL time, so if I can push it off for two more weeks, I'll be okay. Finally, I wanted to talk about some of my favorite fictional heroes - from books, movies, comics, TV shows, etc. Is this my time to show you guys all of the fandoms I've immersed myself in? Of course. But this is also a case study into character traits that I want to see more in Christian fiction, and especially in Christian speculative fiction. So without further ado, let's get to it! 

Name: John Watson
Occupation: doctor/detective/writer
Noble Quality: strong moral code
Fatal Flaw: undying loyalty
Fandom: ​Sherlock
Something I don't see very often in speculative fiction of most varieties is a hero with a strong moral code. Watson, on the other hand, has a strong moral compass. In the books, it's indicated that Watson may have been a believer (I hope so, even if he is a fictional character XD); we see glimpses that he won't stoop to murder, breaking and entering, and other questionable activities that Sherlock entertains doing/has done on a case. There are also instances when Watson will try to save the lives of criminals (see The Illustrious Client). I absolutely love that shows like Elementary and BBC's Sherlock have kept this quality of Watson in their renditions of his character. I think we need more fantasy and dystopian (especially dystopian) characters who have a moral compass that stops them from crossing lines, even when saving lives like Watson and Holmes do. 

Name: Bartholomew "Barry" Allen 
Occupation: forensic scientist for Central City CSI
Noble Quality: his determination
Fatal Flaw: his temper
Fandom: Arrowverse
Grant Gustin's Barry Allen is one of my favorite on-screen superheroes of all time, Marvel or DC ​, because of his grit. If you know your DC history, then you know that Barry's been through a lot. This Flash character's mother was killed in front of him, and his father was falsely thrown in prison for her murder. Barry wants to see that his mother's killer gets true justice, and once he gains his speed powers, his desire for justice branches out to helping other "metahumans" and making sure that the metas that use their powers for evil are stopped. A lot of heroes in both secular and Christian fiction have a certain level of determination, but they're usually a tad single-minded when it comes to channeling that determination. Learning to multi-focus their energy/grit/courage can help fictional heroes experience more character growth and make them better problem solvers.

Name: Richard "Dick" Grayson
Occupation: police officer/vigilante
Noble quality: leadership
Fatal flaw: fear of failing/helicopter mom mentality
Fandom: DC/Batman
My favorite Robin of the comics and movies and spin-off shows is Dick Grayson. He fits the oldest sibling role very well, which gives him peak leadership skills. But it also gives him the feeling that he has to be his siblings' second mom, which causes rifts between him and Jason, as well as the occasional argument between him and Damain (Tim Drake is such a middle child, I think Dick forgets he exists sometimes XD). "Fear of failing" oldest sibling representation is something I'd like to see more of in general fiction, Christian or otherwise. I know this isn't a noble quality on Dick's part, but it's a realistic sibling dynamic I think we need to see more of. 

Name: Prince Caspian X (the Tenth)
Occupation: king/occasional seafarer
Noble Quality: nobility/justness
Fatal Flaw: headstrong
Fandom: Narnia
Okay, okay, I may or may not have a crush on Ben Barnes in middle school. Name one female homeschooler that didn't. Anyway, I've always admired Caspian's justness as he led the Narnians and Telmarines in the movie. I've also thought he was an incredibly noble guy, through and through. Think about it - he still respects the Pevensie children as royals, even though he technically is the rightful king (via invasion from thousands of years ago, but still). To the viewer's knowledge, he bears no will towards his uncle's council members, his aunt, or her child, even though the baby was part of the reason Miraz went after Caspian. I only know of a handful of heroes in Christian fiction that resemble Caspian (one of them being Azaziah from Katja Labonté's A Noble Comfort, which comes out this Tuesday and you guys need to read it), and I think that's sad. Let's write some noble heroes, guys!

Name: Merlin/Emrys
Occupation: Arthur's manservant/wizard
Noble Quality: loyalty
Fatal Flaw: also loyalty
Fandom: Merlin
Merlin was rated poorly by critics and conservatives everywhere, and it certainly has its (many) rough spots (I say, having watched too many YouTube clips and snippets of the show from Tubi). However, one thing I need we can take from this show is how loyalty can be addressed in drastically different ways. (I don't like that several of these characters are loyal to a fault; it makes this post sound like a broken record. Anyway...) On one hand, Merlin is undyingly loyal to Arthur, and not just because he's supposed to help Arthur unite the kingdoms of Albion and become Britain's best king - he begins to respect (and, in a purely platonic way, I think) and love Arthur for the kingly person that he's trying to be. On the other hand, Merlin's loyalty to Arthur puts him in danger ALL the time (according to the fandom's wiki, he's actually the most often injured character in the series; the second is Arthur, of course), and it makes him extremely vulnerable to manipulation and to putting Arthur in danger (they are always together, and Merlin seems to accumulate quite a few enemies). Too often, we see the good side of loyalty, which is very important. But I think we need to be shown the flip side of this - what happens when a character is too​ much of a good quality? 

Name: Jason Peter Todd-Wayne
Occupation: resurrected vigilante/anti-hero
Noble Quality: at the risk of repeating previous qualities, justness and a desire to see justice served
Fatal Flaw: ... we could literally be here all day for this, but I'm going to go with questionable ethics for now
Fandom: DC/Batman
I hesitated at putting Jason Todd on this list because, by all rights, he's not exactly a hero. Todd grew up in a broken home on a broken street and was an intelligent but morally ambiguous child when Batman took him in. His death as Robin at the hands of the Joker and resurrection via Ra's Al Ghul made him even more volatile, and he took on the moniker of Red Hood and become a distorted version of Gotham's Robin Hood - killing the corrupt out of a sense/need for vengeance. But if the fandom wiki page is any indication (I've clearly been doing some top-tier research for this post XD), Jason's gotten a lot better. And while he still has to control that sense of violence (and fails miserably a lot of the time), his desire to see justice delivered to the criminals of Gotham and Gotham-adjacent cities is admirable, if nothing else.
We're getting better at it now, but there isn't a lot of struggling hero representation in Christian fiction. Jay is obviously not a believer, but that doesn't mean we can't copy and paste some of his struggles into Christian fiction. Maybe your hero is saved, but he did a lot of wrong things in his lifetime and now he's picking up those pieces. Sin is a very real thing, and forgiveness is always a powerful theme in Christian fiction - so let's show our readers how Christians overcome the pain and sin in their lives, and ask for/accept forgiveness. 

What do you think? Do you have certain fictional heroes that you like for their character qualities? I was initially not going to post this on my blog, but almost all of these characters are seen as "poorly written", and I wanted to set the record straight for some of them. And like I said, there are qualities in each of them that I think we can add to our own writing. 
Would you like to see a female version of this? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! 

Until next time,
~Cate

Identity issues in books are different, depending on the subtrope. There's the mistaken identity, where a character believes someone to be someone they're not. There's concealed identity, where a character is masquerading as someone they're not. Then there's layered identity subtropes, such as the false hero/heroine (where you think it's going to be someone, and it turns out to be another) and the "false Chosen One" concept (Think Obi-Wan's line from Star Wars: "You were the Chosen One!"). Any way it's written, people are not what they seem, and it creates conflict, character growth, and a web your characters have to dig out of. 

It's super easy to spot this trope, but it's way easier to spoil it for people. So without spoiling as many plotlines as much as I can here, books that feature this trope include...

• The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson (Hagenheim #1)
• A Beautiful Disguise by Roseanne White
• that one part from Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (if you know, you know)
• Besotted by Jody Hedlund (and pretty much the entire series)
• The Lost Heiress by Roseanne White
• The Princess Game by Melanie Cellier (part of the amazing Four Kingdoms series)
• A Castaway in Cornwall by Julie Klassen
• The Princess Spy by Melanie Dickerson (Hagenheim #5)
• Licensed for Trouble by Susan May Warren
• Lady Maybe by Julie Klassen
• numerous plays from William Shakespeare, such as Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc.
• Surrender's Strength by Erika Matthews
• Maid of Fairbourne Hall by Julia Klassen

And movies and shows featuring this trope are...

• ​again, LOTR by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959)
  
• kind of The Bad Guys (2022), a little bit? 
• While You Were Sleeping (1995)
• Back to the Future (1985)​
• The LEGO Movie (2014) and The LEGO Movie II (2017)

It's important to note in the Christian world that this trope is largely built on a foundation of deception (I say as I plan the outline to a mistaken identity novella *facepalm*). That said, I'm not really sure if it needs to be improved, as much as it should probably just be written more often. This isn't a trope I see very often outside of historical fiction (and especially regency romance). I think we don't see it so much now is because it's hard to pull off a different identity in a contemporary setting, where everyone knows who you are now (or can find out pretty easily, thanks to our digital footprint via social media and digitized public records).
So with those two factors, I don't really have any tips on how to improve the mistaken/concealed/otherwise smudged identity trope, other than an umbrella trip: read other identity issue trope-centric books and take notes on what they did. Find a subtrope that works for you. For Shakespeare's Macbeth, it was the false hero (the witches told Macbeth he couldn't be killed by a man who had been born naturally; his demise came about because his killer, Macduff, was born via a C-section, or as Macduff put it "untimely ripp'd"). For Disney's Sleeping Beauty, it became a story of mistaken identity as Philip and Briar found out that not only is she the princess of the land, but that they were already betrothed as kids (one could argue there's some miscommunication on the part of the parents, but when your daughter's been cursed with eternal sleep as a teenager, I guess they get some credit). Find a subtrope that works for your story, and then play off of it. 

That's all for now! Do you have a favorite book that relies off of the identity issues trope? Do you have any tips of your own for writing in this niche? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time!
​~Cate