Why female protagonists fit the brand better than men

Female protagonists work for TC Marti’s brand of writing on multiple fronts. There’s zero pro-woman or pro-DEI bias, but something deeper than virtue signaling. 

I get this question more than you’d think: Why so many female protagonists?

And, yeah, it’s a fair question. Other than Sion Zona, Quinn Cozens, Braden Hawk, Tage Ras-Svendson, and a few others, my fiction skews heavily female. Kaija Jokiharju. Tarja Titan. Liza Fury. Yote Diamondback. the list keeps going.

So what gives?

The lazy answer would be: “I just write strong female characters.”

But that phrase has been beaten to death by corporate entertainment, focus groups, and the soulless content factories that think “strong female character” means a woman who smirks, punches a man, never struggles, never loses, and talks like she was assembled in a Disney HR department.

That’s not what I’m doing. I don’t write female characters because I’m checking a box. I write them because the kinds of stories I’m obsessed with often work best through them.

My stories are about people the world tries to control

Look through most of my work and you’ll notice the same war underneath the plot.

It’s not always magic versus magic, hero versus villain, or even always good versus evil, though that’s obviously there.

Instead, I’m pitting the individual versus the machine.

The family that hides secrets, an academy that ranks people, governments that brand the masses, a surveillance state that taxes, licenses, monitors, and punishes anything outside its reach, and the power elite who look at a gifted person and see a tool instead of a soul.

That’s the common denominator. And the characters who come to me most naturally in that kind of conflict are usually female.

A young woman with hidden power is a damn good vessel for that theme. Spare me the moronic reading that women are underrepresented and we need to hit a quota. It works because there’s sharper contrast.

A girl’s hometown underestimates her (Yote Diamondback), a young woman’s family dismisses her (Tarja Titan), a witch who a regime marks as dangerous (Eirwyn Starweaver), a singer-turned-survivor (Yui Kikuchi), and a student with power she doesn’t understand (Kaija Jokiharju).

That stuff sets my world on fire.

Catch a plethora of strong female leads at The Rebel Lore Vault

Female protagonists carry the contrast better

I like contrast. Beauty and violence. Innocence and danger. Softness and defiance. Vulnerability and raw power. You name it. A character who looks like the easiest person in the room to underestimate, right until she becomes the last person you should’ve crossed.

That doesn’t mean male characters can’t do this. Quinn Cozens absolutely carries that kind of tension in Beyond the Lost Horizon. Braden Hawk has it in the Terrian Chronicles. Tage Ras-Svendson has it in Sentrys of Terrene. And Sion Zona definitely has it in Elementals of Nordica.

But female characters let me attack the same theme from a different angle. Kaija’s a girl caught inside family secrets, hidden power, and institutions that want to use her rare Maalivahti ability.

Yote’s a kid who spent too long feeling lesser than her sister, only to discover something terrifying and extraordinary beneath the surface.

Eirwyn isn’t just a barefoot witch in a cloak. She’s someone King Malcor’s world tried to mark, claim, and fold into its machinery.

Yui’s a K-pop idol dropped into a survival thriller. She’s also a public image stripped of its protective shell and forced to become something real when the world burns.

I’m drawn to characters who are watched, judged, underestimated, cornered, and forced to decide whether they’ll obey the role assigned to them or burn the script.

No, it’s not abnormal

Authors skew. It happens all the time. Some authors write mostly male casts, and others write mostly female casts. A few include mentor figures over and over. And others write loners, soldiers, outcasts, detectives, witches, rebels, academics, athletes, or bitter middle-aged men who need sunlight.

Nobody bats an eye when male authors write endless male antiheroes, warlords, detectives, chosen ones, gunslingers, and tortured geniuses. But once your cast skews female, a few people start acting like there must be a hidden manifesto behind it. Obviously, there isn’t, since I’m the last person who takes petty “this is what women in the workplace collectively go through” nonsense.

The only “manifesto” is this: I follow the characters who show up with the strongest story. A story I back with unapologetic libertarian themes that the Left would hate. And most of the time, those characters happen to be women.

I’m not trying to write “for women.” It also doesn’t mean I’m trying to appeal to some sanitized woke nonsense that I sacrificed a full-time “dream job” to leave because the environment was so skewed to the Left. I’m not writing empowerment posters in novel form, so the Woke Mafia can beat it if they’re reading this post.

The emotional engine of my stories often belong to a female character because she gives me the best collision between inner power and outer control.

The real danger’s repetition, not female protagonists

The actual problem wouldn’t be having too many female characters, but too many of the same female character.

That’s where writers get lazy. They find one archetype that works, clone it with a different hair color, magic system, and trauma packet. That’s the trap I avoid.

Kaija can’t just be Yote with water magic. Yote can’t be Tarja with a school setting. Tarja can’t be Sabre with a different family history. Raj Worthy can’t be another “chosen” girl with powers she didn’t ask for. And Eirwyn can’t be a fantasy-world version of every other defiant heroine.

They need a different wound, flaw, relationship with power, way of speaking, and temptation.

One might crave belonging. Another might want freedom, revenge, peace but keeps getting dragged into war, terrified of her own gifts, or enjoy her gifts a little too much. That’s where character work lives. Not in the godforsaken gender ratio that the Left would love to leverage.

I write hidden strength

So why are most of my characters female? Because my fiction keeps circling the same fire: hidden strength under pressure. Female characters often carry that fire best.

They let me write about power without turning everything into a muscle-flexing contest, rebellion without defaulting to the same old action-hero mold. Female protagonists let me explore fear, beauty, rage, loyalty, family, faith, trauma, magic, violence, and self-ownership in ways that feel sharper to me.

That’s the real answer. I don’t sit down and say, “Time to write another female protagonist.” I sit down and ask: Who’s the good-for-nothing system libertarians hate trying to claim? Who has power they don’t understand yet? And who looks breakable until the wrong person tries to break them?

Most of the time, she walks into the story before anyone else.

Check out those stories featuring strong females at The Rebel Lore Vault