CONTENT WARNING: discussions of misogyny, murder, mentions of sexual intercourse, bad language, mentions of domestic abuse
SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers for the Halloween special as well as quite a few story elements. Don't read unless you don't care about spoilers or you've read up to 2:15.
I was gonna do this yesterday, but I deleted it because I didn't like the pictures I did and wanted to redo them XD But (belated) Happy International Women's day < 3
It used to be that I found it really difficult to write female characters and most of my main characters were male. I figured out eventually I wasn't a woman after all (explained a lot!), but the many years of poorly feigning womanhood actually sucked quite a lot, most women were awful to me, I thought guys were nicer to me but it turns out they only wanted me to be their friend if I minimised myself (should've seen that one coming) and I didn't find good female friends until my 20s. On top of that, I realise now, free of certain bad influences, how people have treated me way different to the way they'd treat cis men, and also that some cis women have VERY specific definitions of what it means to be the 'right' kind of woman...
It's not until I distanced myself from any sliver of feigning femininity that I've been able to look back on it all from a distance and realise a lot of things. I'm still going to talk about the experience of womanhood however, since yes that's not who I am but that's how people have seen me, and that's influenced how people have treated me and various societal attitudes and such. Even if you aren't a particular gender, if that's how folks see you, you'll get all of the bullshit that particular gender gets given (on top of all the bullshit your own gender gets given.)
For me, Divided is my post 'pick-me' story. It's not about unity with the oppressors or finding common ground or all getting along, it's about sticking with your fellow people to fight back in whatever way is needed to keep yourselves safe and alive. It's a (I like to think) multilayered look at womanhood, looking back on the experience from a distance, and the different experiences amongst different kinds of women. So let's look at the main Divided ladies in more detail < 3
Áine
We'll start with the main character...No, really, she IS meant to be the main character! It may not seem like it now, but... : P
As well as being born into a time where being a woman and doing almost anything could get you burned at the stake (double especially actually having magic in your blood) it's already a tough life for Áine. But a lot of what has affected her is the murder of her mother. When she became pregnant, Saoirse wasn't there to help her and guide her with her own maternal knowledge. The bit she'd explained to her as a teen just wasn't enough, but Saoirse expected to still be alive when her own daughter started having children.
Something I think a lot of women / AFAB folk in their mid to late 20s onwards can relate to, is the trial and error of growing up that way. Something you might notice reading this story: this is a historical story, but you might realise that not as much has changed as it seems. Your mother might've told you some things about growing up and such, but even then there's SO MUCH SHIT that happens to you that no one could prepare you for, and you likely had no-one you felt you could turn to.
When you expressed your feelings, you were likely often told you were overreacting or crazy or the like. Of course Áine's mother would never think that of her, but she made Áine aware of what wider society expected of her. Of course, what society expects of you means little to a witch, but still.
I think that Áine feels starved of female company. She loves Reynold and she loves her daughter, but someone to speak to about 'womanly' things would mean the world to her, someone who she could meet up with regularly. She considers Kat and Clem friends, but she doesn't really have much time to spend with either of them.
For me I think Áine's defining trait when it comes to her womanhood is her resilience. Sometimes it feels like the female (or by extension AFAB) experience is nothing but resilience, and I think eventually that might become a plot point for her. Resilience will becoming tiring, and she will just want to live as well as just survive. But we'll see what the future of the story holds for her. Another defining point of Áine is her as a mother- fiercely protective, but also incredibly fearful of the world, especially raising a magical child. Áine tries her best to emulate her own mother's bravery and caring nature. Áine will burn any witchfinder before they try to burn her child.
Katlego
Katlego is fun to write, but also more difficult since there's little from my own experience that goes into writing Kat. I realised that I'd sidelined a lot of characters of colour in the Magic Universe and Aliens Universes combined and that I had to do something about that. After all, what good is a story about different people from different backgrounds bought together by magic if it doesn't include a lot of different people from different backgrounds?
I did some background research before coming up with Kat's character. I read various experiences of a) Black women and b) people from across the globe and their experiences living in England. One thing that was very common amongst a lot of Black women's discussions was many felt an expectation to be hyper-independent, and many felt that they reached out and people either didn't want to help or just expected them to 'be strong!' and just deal with it.
Another part of her character is inspired by something I found out after naming her. Katlego's name means 'success'. I cannot remember what the phrase was, but there's a Tswana phrase which more or less means that many think a name can predict a future and this is an important belief across many communities in African countries. So in Kat's eyes, her name means success, but her business ideas were completely ruined and she'd stagnated in a rural area doing very little. In her eyes, the future ahead is grim if she's 'screwed it up' already. When will she be successful? Or does Kat need to realise that success doesn't always mean what most people think it means? Kat's parents would be proud of her no matter what, but there's still a sort of desire to impress an invisible someone.
Whilst many people try to help Kat, and whilst she does try to accept help, I think deep down she still feels the need to try and do everything herself. She's getting better now with Ellie's help, but there's still ways to go. Trouble is, she's in a whole new country that is nothing like her own close-knit community she grew up in. Henford seems a distant and divided place, and people were quicker to trust an exploitative billionaire than her, who was just trying to help out this new community as well as make something of a living. She felt entirely alienated by this lack of community when she was so used to it back home, and I think that's why she spent so long with the group of witches in Glimmerbrook- starved of community. She also feels alienated amongst witches and other magic folk because of her relative pacifism. She doesn't mind slapping someone about if she has to, but she can't understand why witches are so ready to kill when their own people are being slaughtered.
I think Kat's defining trait is her unapologetic nature. She's not mean-spirited, but she's also not going to go out of her way too much for other people unless they've shown they deserve it at the moment. She knows her own worth as well as she knows the worth of the people who care about her. She stands her ground, even with her friends and trusted people. She's true to herself and she won't change for anyone, friend or foe, and I love that about her.
Clementia
Clem's character is a fun one to write, though sometimes it hurts to write her. Clem grew up in a family of Lunvinchenaîné- the moon-shackled- but she was born without their blood. Not only that, but Alistair and Blythe had planned to have a son, and hadn't planned for the surprise daughter that came alongside him. Her being a woman, as well as her 'unexpected' nature meant she was sidelined for much of her life. She was often called out for acting out every time she spoke up or showed emotion, and her brother Reynold got away with all of his attitude because of the moon's influence. It made her furious, a fury she wasn't allowed to vent.
Then came the time when she argued with her brother about various things, eventually provoking him and the werewolf inside of him that his family hadn't taught him about. The resulting attack nearly killed her. The once-Peteran Clementia came to realise after that that there was no kind Watcher and joined the Jacobans...though Jacobism wasn't kind to women either. Shepherd Julian, on the other hand, was ahead of his time as a Jacoban and had no issue with allowing a woman into power. As some of us may have experienced at some point...a powerless woman given a shred of power can feel amazing. It can make you feel on top of the world. A taste of power for the once-powerless can also lead to darker things (as some of us saw with Morgyn back in TSAHF), but we'll see where Clem's character is heading in the future.
One thing that defines Clem a lot is I very specifically wrote her to combat the 'stoic woman who never shows any emotions ever' trope because I hate this idea the media has gone with that feminine strength comes from bottling it all up. WOMEN HAVE BEEN DOING THAT FOR YEARS and it does a shitload of psychological damage! There's nothing feminist about telling women they're only #girlbosses if they don't dare show a single emotion. Clem is often tearful, quick to think that people hate her or that she's 'weak' and sometimes reacts frightfully when someone raises her voice at her due to trauma. It doesn't mean that Clem isn't strong. Clem has grown up her entire life around people who think less of her for being a woman, and yet she still persists, and she's doing her best to stand her ground as much as she can despite it all. She's a woman in her mid-twenties who's trying to heal from multiple things, both the werewolf attack and a lifetime of being treated differently for something out of her control. It's a painful part of womanhood, and by extension the AFAB experience as well- becoming an adult. Realising you deserved better. More painful realisations. A desire to demand the respect you deserve from now on- easier said than done.
Violeta
Violeta's intention is to wholly embody the 'dark feminine'. She's unapologetic, not particularly nice, doesn't trust men, is willing to kill absolutely anyone even if it's just to eat, and has little in the way of a moral compass. She was even willing to kill Áine and her unborn child because she remembered what the witches had done to her own people. Though she starts to become more 'humanised' when she moves to Henford and starts her art classes, for a long time, she cared about very little other than herself and her best friend and vampiric progeny, Oskar, who she often sees as being something of a son in a peculiar sense.
Violeta's character is supposed to tap into the darker side of female readers, into a power a woman might wish she had if only it were socially acceptable. Killing an abusive partner? Not giving a shit about anyone or anything after a lifetime of carrying everyone's burdens? Sparking out the next person who asks you to smile? She's an uncomfortable, dark look into the parts of the self we might try to forget about, and she's also partially inspired by the goddess Lilith, who herself embodies female power and the dark feminine. In astrology, the 'Black Moon Lilith' is often the darker, more passionate sides of people that they may keep hidden.
Violeta may seem entirely immoral at times, but there's a dark draw to her immorality in that maybe we, too, might sometimes wish we weren't so bound by the rules. She's a woman who's grown up in worse times for women even than what it's currently like in the story. Her immortality has given her a power she could have only dreamed of more than two hundred years ago, which ties in to Clementia's life experience.
If you've heard of the whole 'maiden, mother, crone' thing, then I guess you can sort of apply that to the characters. Clem is kind of like the maiden, Áine the mother, which leaves Violeta as the crone- the wise older woman. She was turned when she was in her late forties. She's lived plenty of years since then and seen it all, and she wants the women of today to realise what they are capable of and what they are worth. She is glad to have seen women taking charge of their own lives over the years, and she can't wait to eventually live until the times change enough that every woman can be confident in themselves and in charge of their own lives and futures.
Violeta will eventually get her own backstory chapter, the same way Oskar did.
The story as a whole
I think what sets Divided apart from some stories set predominantly around women, is it also shows the way that women will turn on each other at times, and the way women will happily see other women as not being the 'right kind' of woman. In this case, the 'wrong kind' of woman is often the woman with magic in her blood. Or just 'any woman that's not me.'
There's been a couple of female witchfinders in the story. Also, Princess Cordelia- seeing the witches as the 'other' and gladly letting her husband Eduardo Volpe slaughter them without a second thought because they might be a threat to her...when in reality, the threat is right under her nose. What's stopping Volpe from turning on his own wife? She doesn't know and doesn't care because as far as she's concerned, she's the right kind of woman. A woman without magic, not realising that it won't matter to the witchfinder whether the woman whose throat he slits has magic or not.
The thing is, things will only work out if all of the women, magic or not, come together and fight back against their real enemy, and that's the men in power that not only want them dead, but their children, and their brothers, and their husbands.
In Divided there's (I hope) an array of women who are all powerful in their own ways, even the ones that aren't out there taking out witchfinders. There's also the likes of the side characters like Dinah, the sex worker- Ellie, Katlego's witch girlfriend- and Susana, the fun Peteran woman- who are all strong in their own ways. They may be side characters but there's a strength in trying to survive and / or live your best life amongst strife and trying to aid other people despite it all.
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I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into womanhood in the story and I hope you all had a fantastic International Women's Day. < 3