Okay, I don& #39;t usually go off about stuff like this, but I& #39;m going to talk a bit about why claiming that *all* protagonists *must* have agency strikes me as very patriarchal. 1/?

Yes, I know that active characters are interesting characters.

Yes, I know that characters who make their own problems are fascinating to read about.

That& #39;s not what this thread is about, though. 2/?

What this thread is about is the fact that I, and many other women, spend most of our lives navigating a world where we are forced to be reactive rather than active. We& #39;re placed in situations we can& #39;t control for the majority of our lives. 3/?

And then, when I try to represent situations like that in my fiction, I& #39;m almost invariably told that I& #39;m wrong. That my characters aren& #39;t active enough because they get put in situations that they did not cause or cannot solve on their own. 4/?