Sign-Up Post for Femgenficathon IV
So here's the sign-up post for the femgenficathon.
This year, like last year, the ficathon is multifandom. It is also an open ficathon. You can write in any fandom you like, about any canonical woman you like. I hope this will make it easy on the participants.
(Also, I have a feeling that a lot of stories never get written because no one ever asks for them in fic exchanges. This is your chance to to write the story you've thought of writing--maybe DREAMED of writing--but that no one ever requests.)
There will be prompts. More about that after the rules.
What's acceptable and what's not are both spelled out in the rules.
The due dates--first and last--are both mentioned in the rules.
Here are the rules. Read them carefully before you sign up.
RULES
Liberally stolen from the peterficathon, from celticmoonstar, and from Jetamors' Page o' Gen Recs:
1. Good spelling, grammar, capitalisation and punctuation are compulsory. This is not negotiable. Therefore, use a beta/Britpicker to catch all the errors that you can't see by the time that you've finished the story.
2. Fics must be posted in the following format:
In the subject line: [title, main character, rating]
Title:
Author: [your LJ name, and your pen name if the two are different]
Fandom: [this for the sake of archiving, as your mod does not know every fandom that might be chosen, alas]
Rating: [currently we still use MPAA ratings - G, PG, PG13, R]
Warnings: [if applicable. warn for violence, swearing, etc. You shouldn't have to warn about kinks or squicks because this is genfic.]
Prompt: The number of the prompt, the prompt itself, and the author's name. Please do this even if you end up not using the prompt to create the story.
Summary: [including author's notes and credits, a short description of the fic]
3. Use a beta.
4. The fic you write should be at least 1000 words in length. There's no maximum length. Multi-chapter fics are allowed.
5. Use a bloody beta.
6. First, this is a ficathon about women. For the purposes of the ficathon, I'm defining women as canonical women.
The Femgenficathon was founded to give female canon characters a chance to shine, to show that they could be more than the love interest, the sex interest or the bearer of Character X's children. To let them be the focus of attention, the heroes...which, in fanfic (and, alas, in the media), they so often are not. I wanted, and still do want, to give girls and women a chance to view women (and possibly themselves) in a less sexualized, more positive, more active light.
Exploring the feminine side of a male character or genderswitching a male character--that's not what this fest is about.
7. Second, the stories have to be gen.
If you're not sure what genfic is, here are the kinds of genfic allowable:
Pure gen: Stories with no romance whatsoever. The most you'll see here is a person who happens to be married.
Mostly gen: Stories contain mentions of crushing and/or romances, with perhaps a kiss or two. Not the focus of the piece or anything, but it is there.
Borderline gen: Stories that include many different elements, including romance. However, the focus is not on getting one or two specific couples together romantically or in bed.
8. What is not allowable:
NO PAIRINGS as the focus of the story.
No love stories as the focus. No sex stories as the focus. (This includes masturbation stories, "first-time" stories, pregnancy stories, stories about giving birth, rapefic, and so on.) No het as the focus. No femslash as the focus. No kinks, squicks or smut at all.
This also means that you cannot mention the woman and then go on to characters you find more congenial. For instance, you cannot briefly mention Mrs. Black and then go on to write a fic about either or both of her two sons.
9. No genderswitched characters.
Since you are going to be writing about women and girls, I urge you to make them believable. Do not turn them into Mary Sues.
For the purposes of this ficathon, I am defining "Mary Sue" as "authorial stand-in who possesses many, if not all, characteristics that the writer wants to possess--good looks, intelligence, "attitude," "coolness," wealth, noble or royal blood, special toys that no one else has, the love of all canon characters, the love and desire of the author's lust object(s), special powers that may or may not be canonically possible, a Destiny--and a remarkable talent to send all canon characters OOC and to kill the plot."
A Mary Sue can be either an original character or a canon character. Believe me, I have seen Hermione and Ginny Sued many, many, many, many times.
DO NOT WRITE MARY SUES OR YOU WILL HAVE VERY CROSS MODS.
10. Please. Use a beta.
11. What can you write about?
You can write about any female character in any canon. And you can write about pretty much anything, as long as the story isn't about romantic love, sex or pairings. Here's what I'm looking for:
I want women going on personal quests. I'd want women and girls having adventures. You could have a woman in mad pursuit of a magical artifact, or a spy. You could have a woman rescuing another person from danger, or a woman escaping from a physical, emotional or spiritual prison. A woman could become enmeshed in a byzantine plot for revenge. A woman could have to solve a puzzle or a mystery; she could be entangled in fierce professional or familial rivalry. You could have a woman struggling to overcome her status as an underdog; you could examine her motives, needs and impulses in a temptation plot. She could be coping with involuntary physical metamorphosis or have to undergo psychological and emotional transformation for the sake of survival. Maturation could be a goal. She could have to sacrifice something--perhaps not her life, but other things can be sacrificed, such as friendship and ideals. She could discover something or explore somewhere. You could tell a tale of wretched excess, detailing her psychological decline. You could explore her rise or fall, showing how a crisis made her either a stronger, better person or a weaker, more corrupt one.
12. Posting. I myself am a fanfic writer so, I too am subject to this (and all the rules as well). Please, do not choose a challenge because you have a fic already done (or in the works) that would fit a certain challenge. The whole point of the femgenficathon is to get new genfic out there. Therefore previously written stories are NOT eligible.
Also, your fic should not be archived anywhere other than the femgenficathon livejournal or site until after August 15th. Similarly, nothing should be posted to the community until July 15th - until then, either comment or keep it to emails.
13. For the love of all things holy (can you tell this is my favourite rule?) use a bloody beta.
14. Get your story in on time. You're being given two to four months to write your fic and as such are expected to finish. That said, extensions will be granted for those in desperate situations - make sure to email as soon as you feel you won't be able to finish in time, for the sake of the moderator's sanity.
15. I implore you on bended knee--USE A BETA.
16. Have fun. And don't cause the mods undue stress if you can help it. Please. Don't break the mods.
DATES:
2 April: Sign-ups begin.
16 April: Sign-ups closed.
15 July: Assignments able to be posted.
1 October: Final date for submission.
***
Now. About the prompts.
If you want to sign up, comment to this post with a) your LJ name, b) an e-mail at which I can contact you, if I have to, and c)any number from 1 to 100. I'll respond with a quotation by a woman or about women. That's your prompt.
Once a number has been chosen, it cannot be chosen again. I'll list the numbers that are taken in this post. Please check the comments before requesting a number.
One of the people who signed up last year asked me what was supposed to be done with the prompts. The answer is, anything you like. You can put the prompt at the head of your story, include it in the narrative or the dialogue, use the images or ideas in the prompt to help you create a story, or, if it doesn't help you, toss it aside and use an idea or plot or character you really want to use. The prompt is there to help give you ideas, nothing more.
1) Before a secret is told, one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere. -- Susan Griffin. (claimed by slam_girl)
2) One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter. -- Francoise Sagan. (claimed by zandra_x)
3) I worshipped dead men for their strength,/Forgetting I was strong.--Vita Sackville-West. (claimed by skylar_inari)
4) It is a common delusion that you can make things better by talking about them. -- Dame Rose Macauley. (claimed by shyshutterbug)
5) One need not be a chamber to be haunted;/One need not be a house;/ The brain has corridors surpassing/Material place. -- Emily Dickinson. (claimed by lady_sarai)
6) Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death. -- Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey. (claimed by a_t_rain)
7) For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that we use it so little. -- Rachel Carson. (claimed by laurus_nobilis)
8)Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken--Abigail Adams. (claimed by quinby)
9) Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards. -- Lois McMaster Bujold. -- (claimed by lareinenoire)
10) I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions. -- Maxine Hong Kingston. (claimed by snowballjane)
11) Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed. -- Lily Tomlin. (claimed by deifire)
12) The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom. -- Margaret Drabble. (claimed by i_am_girlfriday)
13) I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry. -- Maxine Waters. (claimed by cygna_hime)
14) Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. -- Ursula K. LeGuin. (claimed by sparkfrost)
15) Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned -- not to see what is not. -- Maria Mitchell. (claimed by envinyatar15)
16) I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay. (claimed by pirateygoodness)
17) They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. -- Dorothy Parker. (claimed by msmoocow)
18) I could never tell where inspiration begins and impulse leaves off. I suppose the answer is in the outcome. If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse. -- Beryl Markham. (claimed by aphrodite_mine)
19) There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. -- Colette. (claimed by hypaethral)
20) Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word "human." -- Suzanne La Follette. (claimed by westernredcedar)
21) The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy. --Florence Shinn. (claimed by golden_d)
22) Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. -- Margaret Chase Smith. (claimed by allie_andromeda)
23) People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. -- Audrey Hepburn. (claimed by mydocuments)
24) Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself. -- Rita Mae Brown. (claimed by tarimanveri)
25) I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. -- Gilda Radner. (claimed by dbassassin)
26) I empathize with those who yearn for a simpler world, for some bygone golden age of domestic and international tranquility. But for the mass of humanity it is an age that never was. -- Shirley Hufstedler. (claimed by ulkis)
27) The most damaging phrase in the language is: 'We've always done it this way.' -- Grace Murray Hopper. (claimed by fairest1)
28) We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. -- Anais Nin. (claimed by liminalliz)
29) Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference. -- Ida M. Tarbell. (claimed by velvetmouse)
30) There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside. -- Pearl Bailey. (claimed by bluflamingo)
31) Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. -- Mary Wollstonecraft. (claimed by sarah_frost)
32) I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other. -- Harriet Tubman. (claimed by amaresu)
33) The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is. -- Marguerite de Valois. (claimed by calleigh_j)
34) I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water. -- Amy Tan. (claimed by ainsley)
35) Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself. -- Berenice Abbott. (claimed by catsintheattic)
36) My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong. -- Mother Jones. (claimed by persiflage_1)
37) Please understand that there is no one depressed in this house; we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist. -- Queen Victoria. (claimed by miramirafics)
38)So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women? -- Harriet Beecher Stowe. (claimed by lfae)
39) Everyone thought I was bold and fearless and even arrogant, but inside I was always quaking. -- Katharine Hepburn. (claimed by rose_whispers)
40) Some people have such a talent for making the best of a bad situation that they go around creating bad situations so they can make the best of them. -- Jean Kerr. (claimed by bluetara2020)
41) Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. -- Maya Angelou. (claimed by siliconalleycat)
42) The public will believe anything, as long as it is not founded on truth. -- Edith Sitwell. (claimed by minkhollow)
43) You do not have to be superhuman to do what you believe in. -- Debbi Fields. (claimed by tegdoh)
44) To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. -- Bernadette Devlin. (claimed by daegaer)
45) It is dangerous for a woman to defy the gods;/To taunt them with the tongue's thin tip,/Or strut in the weakness of mere humanity,/ Or draw a line daring them to cross. -- Anne Spencer. (claimed by snegurochka_lee)
46) As you know, no one over thirty years of age is afraid of tittle-tattle. I myself find it much less difficult to strangle a man than to fear him. -- Queen Christina of Sweden. (claimed by shield_wolf)
47) I'm moved by contraries, by opposites, the strength that was my mother's eyes, the beauty of my father's hands. -- Judith Jamison. (claimed by wizefics)
48) Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. -- Han Suyin. (claimed by slowmercury)
49) People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant. -- Helen Keller. (claimed by j_a_lie)
50) I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. -- Lillian Hellman. (claimed by anonymous_sibyl)
51) Traditions are the guideposts driven deep into our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of. -- Ellen Goodman. (claimed by elvenpiratelady)
52) Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat. -- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (claimed by sabethea)
53) In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul. -- Mary Renault. (claimed by lazy_neutrino)
54) The trouble with man is twofold. He cannot learn the truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple. -- Rebecca West. (claimed by cranberry_crash)
55) It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't. -- Mignon McLaughlin. (claimed by zoe_chan)
56) A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country. -- Mary Astor. (claimed by liseuse)
57) There is nothing so skillful in its own defense as imperious pride. -- Helen Hunt Jackson. (claimed by rose_griffes)
58) The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. -- Muriel Rukeyser. (claimed by prolix_allie)
59) The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you "come to terms with" only to discover that they are still there. -- Ingrid Bengis. (claimed by katharos_8)
60) I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me. -- Jane Rule. (claimed by kazaera)
61) You dare to cry out Liberty, when you hold us in places against our will, driving us from place to place as if we were beasts. -- Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. (claimed by snorkackcatcher)
62) I sometimes wish you had not so many lofty virtues.... I assure you little sins are far less dangerous and uncomfortable. -- Emmuska Orczy. (claimed by bonniedoll)
63) I am treating you as my friend, asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses. -- Katherine Mansfield. (claimed by lexie_b)
64) A whisper can be stronger, as an atom is stronger, than a whole mountain. -- Louise Nevelson. (claimed by daphnie_1)
65) I swear to keep the dead upon my mind,/Disdain for all time to be overglad./Among spring flowers, under summer trees./By chilling autumn waters, in the frosts/Of supercilious winter--all my days/I'll have as mentors those reproving ghosts. -- Gwendolyn Brooks. (claimed by dead_sexydexy)
66) We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story. -- Maxine Kumin. (claimed by red_day_dawning)
67) Time...is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary. -- Ivy Compton-Burnett. (claimed by biichan)
68) The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. -- Ivy Baker Priest. (claimed by edenfalling)
69) The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. --Flannery O'Connor. (claimed by reluxi)
70) There are hurts so deep that one cannot reach them or heal them with words. -- Kate Seredy. (claimed by lorelei_lynn)
71) Of course I realized there was a measure of danger. Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any good reason to refer to it. -- Amelia Earhart. (claimed by bofoddity)
72) Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are. -- Madeleine L'Engle. (claimed by doyle_sb4)
73) There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch. -- Bette Davis. (claimed by resolute)
74) Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? -- Jane Austen. (claimed by sporkyadrasteia)
75) If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, these women together ought to be able to turn it right side up again. -- Sojourner Truth. (claimed by veracity)
76) When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot? -- Kathleen Norris. (claimed by dragonclaws)
77) By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd grown up. -- Eve Babitz. (claimed by redsnake05)
78) Oh, God, why don't I remember that a little chaos is good for the soul? -- Marilyn French. (claimed by jain)
79) They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness. -- Louise Erdrich. (claimed by midnightxgarden)
80) The deadliest feeling that can be offered to a woman is pity. -- Vicki Baum. (claimed by bonstar)
81) We are so vain that we even care for the opinions of those we don't care for. -- Marie Egner von Eschenbach. (claimed by romanesca08)
82) Rights are liable to be perverted to wrongs when we are incapable of rightly exercising them. -- Sarah Josepha Hale. (claimed by rivrea)
83) The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years. -- Agatha Christie. (claimed by opheliet)
84) You should know how terrible a weapon belief is, especially in the wrong hands. And how do you tell which hands are wrong? -- Diane Duane. (claimed by loopily)
85) What matters it if they do forget the singer, so they don't forget the song. -- Frances Watkins Harper. (claimed by mindabbles)
86) Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. -- E.L. Konigsburg. (claimed by takemeback)
87) Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time. -- Margot Fonteyn. (claimed by shiiki)
88) We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. -- Marian Wright Edelman. (claimed by ligia_elena)
89) I shall be an autocrat, that's my trade; and that good Lord will forgive me, that's his. -- Catherine the Great. (claimed by idea_of_sarcasm)
90) Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee...I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now. -- Margaret Atwood. (claimed by schmoo999)
91) We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. -- Iris Murdoch. (claimed by dartxni)
92) Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought. -- Mary Lyon. (claimed by athenejen)
93) My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed -- my dearest pleasure when free. -- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. (claimed by sanstexte)
94) So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. -- Brenda Ueland. (claimed by inlovewithnight)
95) The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. -- Agnes De Mille. (claimed by romanticalgirl)
96) Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways in science, in politics, in every bold intention. -- Shirley Temple Black. (claimed by sheepfairy)
97) It's funny how your initial approach to a person can determine your feelings toward them, no matter what facts develop later on. -- Dorothy Uhnak. (claimed by little_murmurs)
98) Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both. -- Alice Stone Blackwell. (claimed by osmalic)
99) Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after. -- Anne Morrow Lindburgh. (claimed by fell_beast2)
100) I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision. -- Eleanor Roosevelt. (claimed by amathela/ amidalashari)
101) Why couldn't she have two lives, or why couldn't she be satisfied in one place? -- Nella Larsen. (claimed by roh_wyn)
102) The vows one makes privately are more binding than any ceremony...or even a Shubert contract. -- Beatrice Lillie. (claimed by doctor_sneeze)
103) The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. -- Martha Graham. (claimed by mahoni)
104)We want things to be easy for our children, and we know from sad experience that the world can be unkind to girls who do not please, who speak out, who go their own way. But we know from experience, too, that the role of the good girl can be a hollow one, with nothing at the center except other people's expectations where your character might have been. -- Anna Quindlen. (claimed by effaced)
105) We specialize in the wholly impossible. -- Nannie Burroughs. (claimed by cirrussundog/Parhelion)
106) Not only are there as many conflicting truths as there are people to claim them; there are equally multitudinous and conflicting truths within the individual. -- Virgilia Peterson. (claimed by cyloran)
107) It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between. -- Diane Ackerman. (claimed by gehayi)
108) If I waited to be right before I spoke, I would be sending little cryptic messages on the Ouija board, complaints from the other side. -- Audre Lorde. (claimed by caramelsilver)
109) Our whole lives are lived in a tangle of telling, not telling, misleading, allowing to know, concealing, eavesdropping and collusion. When Washington said he could not tell a lie, his father must have answered, 'You had better learn.' -- Germaine Greer. (claimed by pandore27)
110) Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again? -- Rosa Parks. (claimed by ladysarahii)
111) Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. -- Coco Chanel. (claimed by savepureness)
112) The difference between ambition and discontent is quite a fine line and sometimes it is hard to tell which is which and which you are feeling. -- Rachel Field. (claimed by ultimi_scopuli)
113) Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit. -- Martha Gellhorn. (claimed by erinya)
114) Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility. -- Robin Morgan. (claimed by lanoyee)
115) There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augues not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgement. -- Pamela Hansford Johnson. (claimed by marinarusalka)
116) I fear waking up one morning and finding out it was all for nothing. We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark. -- Whoopi Goldberg. (claimed by ladycolete)
117) Our biggest problem as human beings is not knowing that we don't know. -- Virginia Satir. (claimed by ariestess)
118) Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route. -- Elizabeth Kenny. (claimed by were_lemur)
119) The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. -- Harper Lee. (claimed by tammy_moore)
120) I really, deeply believe that dreams do come true. Often, they might not come when you want them. They come in their own time. -- Diana Ross. (claimed by butterfly_kate)
121) [T]here is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture -- in front of us -- our own little mirage that we think is the future. -- Lorraine Hansberry. (claimed by snapelike)
122) People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it. -- Marsha Norman. (claimed by afterthree)
123) One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph. -- Virginia Woolf. (claimed by adararosey)
124) Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many. -- Maggie Kuhn. (claimed by avendya)
125) Pleasure was not the principle of our home. I learned early in life that to laugh before breakfast was to cry before dinner. -- Diane Trilling. (claimed by refche)
126) He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things. -- Margery Allingham. (claimed by nurturing_roads)
127) Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition. -- Florida Scott-Maxwell. (claimed by aranel_took)
128) If only no one had told them I was mad. Then I wouldn't be. -- Kate Millet (claimed by alizarin_nyc)
129) Some there are who are much more ashamed of confessing a sin than of committing it. - Marguerite of Navarra, The Heptameron. (claimed by avalonestel)
130) Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language -- this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable. -- Adrienne Rich. (claimed by boredom_doodles)
131) Beware of the danger signals that flag problems: silence, secretiveness, or sudden outburst. -- Sylvia Porter. (claimed by samodiva)
132) Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish. -- Anne Bradstreet. (claimed by redshoeson)
133) She decided, without ever deciding, that she would continue travelling by night. It was too important a matter, this talking to people and listening to them, to do it lightly or often. -- Robin McKinley. (claimed by misura)
134) We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. -- Anais Nin. (claimed by miss_morland)
135) Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine you'd fall so high. -- Joan D. Vinge. (claimed by joanne_c)
136) I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me. -- Clare Boothe Luce. (claimed by vana_tuivana)
137) There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them. -- Greta Garbo. -- (claimed by tanrien)
138) A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose. -- Hortense Calisher. (claimed by watermelontail)
139) Never give up; and never, under any circumstances, no matter what -- never face the facts. -- Ruth Gordon. (claimed by tanaquilotr)
140) I have noticed that as soon as you have soldiers the story is called history. Before their arrival it is called myth, folktale, legend, fairy tale, oral poetry, ethnography. After the soldiers arrive, it is called history. -- Paula Gunn Allen. (claimed by reddwarfer)
141) Why should we strive, with cynic frown,/ To knock their fairy castles down? -- Eliza Cook. (claimed by redsiodaslair)
142) The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality. Reality is above all else a variable. With a firm enough commitment, you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before. -- Margaret Halsey. (claimed by xahra99)
143) How can any woman see the whole truth within the bounds of her own life? How can she believe that voice inside herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been living? And yet the women I have talked to, who are finally listening to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that has defied the experts. -- Betty Friedan. (claimed by loony4lupin)
144) Secrets find a way out in sleep...It is the place where there is no pretense. -- bell hooks. (claimed by kiarasayre)
145) She had observed that it was from those who had never sailed stormy waters, came the quickest and harshest judgments on bad seamanship in heavy seas. -- Susan Glaspell. (claimed by tarie)
146) The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who would be friends. -- Shirley MacLaine. (claimed by fly_to_dawn)
147) You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. -- Jessica Mitford. (claimed by odd_persephone)
148) Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. -- Susan B. Anthony. (claimed by elendiari22)
149) It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. -- Sally Kempton. (claimed by carmarthen)
150) Reason has no power against feeling, and feeling older than history is no light matter. --Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (claimed by attilatehbun)
151) Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. -- Pema Chodron. (claimed by da_angel_fics)
152) Oh, I am arm'd with more than complete steel,/ The justice of my quarrel. -- Aphra Behn. (claimed by array_of_colors)
153) To have a good enemy, choose a friend; he knows where to strike. -- Diane de Poiters. (claimed by fateschewtoy)
154) There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own. -- Katherine Anne Porter. (claimed by spacellama)
155) But childhood prolonged cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell. -- Louise A. Bogan. (claimed by maia_cyllene)
156) All my life I have lived and behaved very much like [the] sandpiper -- just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something.'" -- Elizabeth Bishop. (claimed by idea_of_sarcasm)
157) Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. -- Irene Peter. (claimed by xenokattz)
158) My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next. -- Nora Ephron. (claimed by comeon_eileen)
***
If you have any questions, ask them in the comments, and I will do my best to answer them.
Good luck to all of you! I hope that some excellent stories come from this!
This year, like last year, the ficathon is multifandom. It is also an open ficathon. You can write in any fandom you like, about any canonical woman you like. I hope this will make it easy on the participants.
(Also, I have a feeling that a lot of stories never get written because no one ever asks for them in fic exchanges. This is your chance to to write the story you've thought of writing--maybe DREAMED of writing--but that no one ever requests.)
There will be prompts. More about that after the rules.
What's acceptable and what's not are both spelled out in the rules.
The due dates--first and last--are both mentioned in the rules.
Here are the rules. Read them carefully before you sign up.
RULES
Liberally stolen from the peterficathon, from celticmoonstar, and from Jetamors' Page o' Gen Recs:
1. Good spelling, grammar, capitalisation and punctuation are compulsory. This is not negotiable. Therefore, use a beta/Britpicker to catch all the errors that you can't see by the time that you've finished the story.
2. Fics must be posted in the following format:
In the subject line: [title, main character, rating]
Title:
Author: [your LJ name, and your pen name if the two are different]
Fandom: [this for the sake of archiving, as your mod does not know every fandom that might be chosen, alas]
Rating: [currently we still use MPAA ratings - G, PG, PG13, R]
Warnings: [if applicable. warn for violence, swearing, etc. You shouldn't have to warn about kinks or squicks because this is genfic.]
Prompt: The number of the prompt, the prompt itself, and the author's name. Please do this even if you end up not using the prompt to create the story.
Summary: [including author's notes and credits, a short description of the fic]
3. Use a beta.
4. The fic you write should be at least 1000 words in length. There's no maximum length. Multi-chapter fics are allowed.
5. Use a bloody beta.
6. First, this is a ficathon about women. For the purposes of the ficathon, I'm defining women as canonical women.
The Femgenficathon was founded to give female canon characters a chance to shine, to show that they could be more than the love interest, the sex interest or the bearer of Character X's children. To let them be the focus of attention, the heroes...which, in fanfic (and, alas, in the media), they so often are not. I wanted, and still do want, to give girls and women a chance to view women (and possibly themselves) in a less sexualized, more positive, more active light.
Exploring the feminine side of a male character or genderswitching a male character--that's not what this fest is about.
7. Second, the stories have to be gen.
If you're not sure what genfic is, here are the kinds of genfic allowable:
Pure gen: Stories with no romance whatsoever. The most you'll see here is a person who happens to be married.
Mostly gen: Stories contain mentions of crushing and/or romances, with perhaps a kiss or two. Not the focus of the piece or anything, but it is there.
Borderline gen: Stories that include many different elements, including romance. However, the focus is not on getting one or two specific couples together romantically or in bed.
8. What is not allowable:
NO PAIRINGS as the focus of the story.
No love stories as the focus. No sex stories as the focus. (This includes masturbation stories, "first-time" stories, pregnancy stories, stories about giving birth, rapefic, and so on.) No het as the focus. No femslash as the focus. No kinks, squicks or smut at all.
This also means that you cannot mention the woman and then go on to characters you find more congenial. For instance, you cannot briefly mention Mrs. Black and then go on to write a fic about either or both of her two sons.
9. No genderswitched characters.
Since you are going to be writing about women and girls, I urge you to make them believable. Do not turn them into Mary Sues.
For the purposes of this ficathon, I am defining "Mary Sue" as "authorial stand-in who possesses many, if not all, characteristics that the writer wants to possess--good looks, intelligence, "attitude," "coolness," wealth, noble or royal blood, special toys that no one else has, the love of all canon characters, the love and desire of the author's lust object(s), special powers that may or may not be canonically possible, a Destiny--and a remarkable talent to send all canon characters OOC and to kill the plot."
A Mary Sue can be either an original character or a canon character. Believe me, I have seen Hermione and Ginny Sued many, many, many, many times.
DO NOT WRITE MARY SUES OR YOU WILL HAVE VERY CROSS MODS.
10. Please. Use a beta.
11. What can you write about?
You can write about any female character in any canon. And you can write about pretty much anything, as long as the story isn't about romantic love, sex or pairings. Here's what I'm looking for:
I want women going on personal quests. I'd want women and girls having adventures. You could have a woman in mad pursuit of a magical artifact, or a spy. You could have a woman rescuing another person from danger, or a woman escaping from a physical, emotional or spiritual prison. A woman could become enmeshed in a byzantine plot for revenge. A woman could have to solve a puzzle or a mystery; she could be entangled in fierce professional or familial rivalry. You could have a woman struggling to overcome her status as an underdog; you could examine her motives, needs and impulses in a temptation plot. She could be coping with involuntary physical metamorphosis or have to undergo psychological and emotional transformation for the sake of survival. Maturation could be a goal. She could have to sacrifice something--perhaps not her life, but other things can be sacrificed, such as friendship and ideals. She could discover something or explore somewhere. You could tell a tale of wretched excess, detailing her psychological decline. You could explore her rise or fall, showing how a crisis made her either a stronger, better person or a weaker, more corrupt one.
12. Posting. I myself am a fanfic writer so, I too am subject to this (and all the rules as well). Please, do not choose a challenge because you have a fic already done (or in the works) that would fit a certain challenge. The whole point of the femgenficathon is to get new genfic out there. Therefore previously written stories are NOT eligible.
Also, your fic should not be archived anywhere other than the femgenficathon livejournal or site until after August 15th. Similarly, nothing should be posted to the community until July 15th - until then, either comment or keep it to emails.
13. For the love of all things holy (can you tell this is my favourite rule?) use a bloody beta.
14. Get your story in on time. You're being given two to four months to write your fic and as such are expected to finish. That said, extensions will be granted for those in desperate situations - make sure to email as soon as you feel you won't be able to finish in time, for the sake of the moderator's sanity.
15. I implore you on bended knee--USE A BETA.
16. Have fun. And don't cause the mods undue stress if you can help it. Please. Don't break the mods.
DATES:
2 April: Sign-ups begin.
16 April: Sign-ups closed.
15 July: Assignments able to be posted.
1 October: Final date for submission.
***
Now. About the prompts.
If you want to sign up, comment to this post with a) your LJ name, b) an e-mail at which I can contact you, if I have to, and c)any number from 1 to 100. I'll respond with a quotation by a woman or about women. That's your prompt.
Once a number has been chosen, it cannot be chosen again. I'll list the numbers that are taken in this post. Please check the comments before requesting a number.
One of the people who signed up last year asked me what was supposed to be done with the prompts. The answer is, anything you like. You can put the prompt at the head of your story, include it in the narrative or the dialogue, use the images or ideas in the prompt to help you create a story, or, if it doesn't help you, toss it aside and use an idea or plot or character you really want to use. The prompt is there to help give you ideas, nothing more.
1) Before a secret is told, one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere. -- Susan Griffin. (claimed by slam_girl)
2) One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter. -- Francoise Sagan. (claimed by zandra_x)
3) I worshipped dead men for their strength,/Forgetting I was strong.--Vita Sackville-West. (claimed by skylar_inari)
4) It is a common delusion that you can make things better by talking about them. -- Dame Rose Macauley. (claimed by shyshutterbug)
5) One need not be a chamber to be haunted;/One need not be a house;/ The brain has corridors surpassing/Material place. -- Emily Dickinson. (claimed by lady_sarai)
6) Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death. -- Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey. (claimed by a_t_rain)
7) For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that we use it so little. -- Rachel Carson. (claimed by laurus_nobilis)
8)Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken--Abigail Adams. (claimed by quinby)
9) Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards. -- Lois McMaster Bujold. -- (claimed by lareinenoire)
10) I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions. -- Maxine Hong Kingston. (claimed by snowballjane)
11) Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed. -- Lily Tomlin. (claimed by deifire)
12) The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom. -- Margaret Drabble. (claimed by i_am_girlfriday)
13) I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry. -- Maxine Waters. (claimed by cygna_hime)
14) Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. -- Ursula K. LeGuin. (claimed by sparkfrost)
15) Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned -- not to see what is not. -- Maria Mitchell. (claimed by envinyatar15)
16) I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay. (claimed by pirateygoodness)
17) They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. -- Dorothy Parker. (claimed by msmoocow)
18) I could never tell where inspiration begins and impulse leaves off. I suppose the answer is in the outcome. If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse. -- Beryl Markham. (claimed by aphrodite_mine)
19) There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. -- Colette. (claimed by hypaethral)
20) Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word "human." -- Suzanne La Follette. (claimed by westernredcedar)
21) The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy. --Florence Shinn. (claimed by golden_d)
22) Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. -- Margaret Chase Smith. (claimed by allie_andromeda)
23) People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. -- Audrey Hepburn. (claimed by mydocuments)
24) Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself. -- Rita Mae Brown. (claimed by tarimanveri)
25) I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. -- Gilda Radner. (claimed by dbassassin)
26) I empathize with those who yearn for a simpler world, for some bygone golden age of domestic and international tranquility. But for the mass of humanity it is an age that never was. -- Shirley Hufstedler. (claimed by ulkis)
27) The most damaging phrase in the language is: 'We've always done it this way.' -- Grace Murray Hopper. (claimed by fairest1)
28) We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. -- Anais Nin. (claimed by liminalliz)
29) Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference. -- Ida M. Tarbell. (claimed by velvetmouse)
30) There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside. -- Pearl Bailey. (claimed by bluflamingo)
31) Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. -- Mary Wollstonecraft. (claimed by sarah_frost)
32) I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other. -- Harriet Tubman. (claimed by amaresu)
33) The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is. -- Marguerite de Valois. (claimed by calleigh_j)
34) I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water. -- Amy Tan. (claimed by ainsley)
35) Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself. -- Berenice Abbott. (claimed by catsintheattic)
36) My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong. -- Mother Jones. (claimed by persiflage_1)
37) Please understand that there is no one depressed in this house; we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist. -- Queen Victoria. (claimed by miramirafics)
38)So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women? -- Harriet Beecher Stowe. (claimed by lfae)
39) Everyone thought I was bold and fearless and even arrogant, but inside I was always quaking. -- Katharine Hepburn. (claimed by rose_whispers)
40) Some people have such a talent for making the best of a bad situation that they go around creating bad situations so they can make the best of them. -- Jean Kerr. (claimed by bluetara2020)
41) Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. -- Maya Angelou. (claimed by siliconalleycat)
42) The public will believe anything, as long as it is not founded on truth. -- Edith Sitwell. (claimed by minkhollow)
43) You do not have to be superhuman to do what you believe in. -- Debbi Fields. (claimed by tegdoh)
44) To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. -- Bernadette Devlin. (claimed by daegaer)
45) It is dangerous for a woman to defy the gods;/To taunt them with the tongue's thin tip,/Or strut in the weakness of mere humanity,/ Or draw a line daring them to cross. -- Anne Spencer. (claimed by snegurochka_lee)
46) As you know, no one over thirty years of age is afraid of tittle-tattle. I myself find it much less difficult to strangle a man than to fear him. -- Queen Christina of Sweden. (claimed by shield_wolf)
47) I'm moved by contraries, by opposites, the strength that was my mother's eyes, the beauty of my father's hands. -- Judith Jamison. (claimed by wizefics)
48) Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. -- Han Suyin. (claimed by slowmercury)
49) People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant. -- Helen Keller. (claimed by j_a_lie)
50) I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. -- Lillian Hellman. (claimed by anonymous_sibyl)
51) Traditions are the guideposts driven deep into our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of. -- Ellen Goodman. (claimed by elvenpiratelady)
52) Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat. -- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (claimed by sabethea)
53) In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul. -- Mary Renault. (claimed by lazy_neutrino)
54) The trouble with man is twofold. He cannot learn the truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple. -- Rebecca West. (claimed by cranberry_crash)
55) It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't. -- Mignon McLaughlin. (claimed by zoe_chan)
56) A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country. -- Mary Astor. (claimed by liseuse)
57) There is nothing so skillful in its own defense as imperious pride. -- Helen Hunt Jackson. (claimed by rose_griffes)
58) The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. -- Muriel Rukeyser. (claimed by prolix_allie)
59) The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you "come to terms with" only to discover that they are still there. -- Ingrid Bengis. (claimed by katharos_8)
60) I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me. -- Jane Rule. (claimed by kazaera)
61) You dare to cry out Liberty, when you hold us in places against our will, driving us from place to place as if we were beasts. -- Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. (claimed by snorkackcatcher)
62) I sometimes wish you had not so many lofty virtues.... I assure you little sins are far less dangerous and uncomfortable. -- Emmuska Orczy. (claimed by bonniedoll)
63) I am treating you as my friend, asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses. -- Katherine Mansfield. (claimed by lexie_b)
64) A whisper can be stronger, as an atom is stronger, than a whole mountain. -- Louise Nevelson. (claimed by daphnie_1)
65) I swear to keep the dead upon my mind,/Disdain for all time to be overglad./Among spring flowers, under summer trees./By chilling autumn waters, in the frosts/Of supercilious winter--all my days/I'll have as mentors those reproving ghosts. -- Gwendolyn Brooks. (claimed by dead_sexydexy)
66) We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story. -- Maxine Kumin. (claimed by red_day_dawning)
67) Time...is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary. -- Ivy Compton-Burnett. (claimed by biichan)
68) The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. -- Ivy Baker Priest. (claimed by edenfalling)
69) The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. --Flannery O'Connor. (claimed by reluxi)
70) There are hurts so deep that one cannot reach them or heal them with words. -- Kate Seredy. (claimed by lorelei_lynn)
71) Of course I realized there was a measure of danger. Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any good reason to refer to it. -- Amelia Earhart. (claimed by bofoddity)
72) Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are. -- Madeleine L'Engle. (claimed by doyle_sb4)
73) There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch. -- Bette Davis. (claimed by resolute)
74) Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? -- Jane Austen. (claimed by sporkyadrasteia)
75) If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, these women together ought to be able to turn it right side up again. -- Sojourner Truth. (claimed by veracity)
76) When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot? -- Kathleen Norris. (claimed by dragonclaws)
77) By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd grown up. -- Eve Babitz. (claimed by redsnake05)
78) Oh, God, why don't I remember that a little chaos is good for the soul? -- Marilyn French. (claimed by jain)
79) They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness. -- Louise Erdrich. (claimed by midnightxgarden)
80) The deadliest feeling that can be offered to a woman is pity. -- Vicki Baum. (claimed by bonstar)
81) We are so vain that we even care for the opinions of those we don't care for. -- Marie Egner von Eschenbach. (claimed by romanesca08)
82) Rights are liable to be perverted to wrongs when we are incapable of rightly exercising them. -- Sarah Josepha Hale. (claimed by rivrea)
83) The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years. -- Agatha Christie. (claimed by opheliet)
84) You should know how terrible a weapon belief is, especially in the wrong hands. And how do you tell which hands are wrong? -- Diane Duane. (claimed by loopily)
85) What matters it if they do forget the singer, so they don't forget the song. -- Frances Watkins Harper. (claimed by mindabbles)
86) Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. -- E.L. Konigsburg. (claimed by takemeback)
87) Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time. -- Margot Fonteyn. (claimed by shiiki)
88) We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. -- Marian Wright Edelman. (claimed by ligia_elena)
89) I shall be an autocrat, that's my trade; and that good Lord will forgive me, that's his. -- Catherine the Great. (claimed by idea_of_sarcasm)
90) Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee...I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now. -- Margaret Atwood. (claimed by schmoo999)
91) We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. -- Iris Murdoch. (claimed by dartxni)
92) Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought. -- Mary Lyon. (claimed by athenejen)
93) My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed -- my dearest pleasure when free. -- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. (claimed by sanstexte)
94) So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. -- Brenda Ueland. (claimed by inlovewithnight)
95) The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. -- Agnes De Mille. (claimed by romanticalgirl)
96) Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways in science, in politics, in every bold intention. -- Shirley Temple Black. (claimed by sheepfairy)
97) It's funny how your initial approach to a person can determine your feelings toward them, no matter what facts develop later on. -- Dorothy Uhnak. (claimed by little_murmurs)
98) Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both. -- Alice Stone Blackwell. (claimed by osmalic)
99) Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after. -- Anne Morrow Lindburgh. (claimed by fell_beast2)
100) I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision. -- Eleanor Roosevelt. (claimed by amathela/ amidalashari)
101) Why couldn't she have two lives, or why couldn't she be satisfied in one place? -- Nella Larsen. (claimed by roh_wyn)
102) The vows one makes privately are more binding than any ceremony...or even a Shubert contract. -- Beatrice Lillie. (claimed by doctor_sneeze)
103) The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. -- Martha Graham. (claimed by mahoni)
104)We want things to be easy for our children, and we know from sad experience that the world can be unkind to girls who do not please, who speak out, who go their own way. But we know from experience, too, that the role of the good girl can be a hollow one, with nothing at the center except other people's expectations where your character might have been. -- Anna Quindlen. (claimed by effaced)
105) We specialize in the wholly impossible. -- Nannie Burroughs. (claimed by cirrussundog/Parhelion)
106) Not only are there as many conflicting truths as there are people to claim them; there are equally multitudinous and conflicting truths within the individual. -- Virgilia Peterson. (claimed by cyloran)
107) It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between. -- Diane Ackerman. (claimed by gehayi)
108) If I waited to be right before I spoke, I would be sending little cryptic messages on the Ouija board, complaints from the other side. -- Audre Lorde. (claimed by caramelsilver)
109) Our whole lives are lived in a tangle of telling, not telling, misleading, allowing to know, concealing, eavesdropping and collusion. When Washington said he could not tell a lie, his father must have answered, 'You had better learn.' -- Germaine Greer. (claimed by pandore27)
110) Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again? -- Rosa Parks. (claimed by ladysarahii)
111) Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. -- Coco Chanel. (claimed by savepureness)
112) The difference between ambition and discontent is quite a fine line and sometimes it is hard to tell which is which and which you are feeling. -- Rachel Field. (claimed by ultimi_scopuli)
113) Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit. -- Martha Gellhorn. (claimed by erinya)
114) Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility. -- Robin Morgan. (claimed by lanoyee)
115) There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augues not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgement. -- Pamela Hansford Johnson. (claimed by marinarusalka)
116) I fear waking up one morning and finding out it was all for nothing. We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark. -- Whoopi Goldberg. (claimed by ladycolete)
117) Our biggest problem as human beings is not knowing that we don't know. -- Virginia Satir. (claimed by ariestess)
118) Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route. -- Elizabeth Kenny. (claimed by were_lemur)
119) The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. -- Harper Lee. (claimed by tammy_moore)
120) I really, deeply believe that dreams do come true. Often, they might not come when you want them. They come in their own time. -- Diana Ross. (claimed by butterfly_kate)
121) [T]here is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture -- in front of us -- our own little mirage that we think is the future. -- Lorraine Hansberry. (claimed by snapelike)
122) People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it. -- Marsha Norman. (claimed by afterthree)
123) One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph. -- Virginia Woolf. (claimed by adararosey)
124) Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many. -- Maggie Kuhn. (claimed by avendya)
125) Pleasure was not the principle of our home. I learned early in life that to laugh before breakfast was to cry before dinner. -- Diane Trilling. (claimed by refche)
126) He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things. -- Margery Allingham. (claimed by nurturing_roads)
127) Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition. -- Florida Scott-Maxwell. (claimed by aranel_took)
128) If only no one had told them I was mad. Then I wouldn't be. -- Kate Millet (claimed by alizarin_nyc)
129) Some there are who are much more ashamed of confessing a sin than of committing it. - Marguerite of Navarra, The Heptameron. (claimed by avalonestel)
130) Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language -- this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable. -- Adrienne Rich. (claimed by boredom_doodles)
131) Beware of the danger signals that flag problems: silence, secretiveness, or sudden outburst. -- Sylvia Porter. (claimed by samodiva)
132) Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish. -- Anne Bradstreet. (claimed by redshoeson)
133) She decided, without ever deciding, that she would continue travelling by night. It was too important a matter, this talking to people and listening to them, to do it lightly or often. -- Robin McKinley. (claimed by misura)
134) We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. -- Anais Nin. (claimed by miss_morland)
135) Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine you'd fall so high. -- Joan D. Vinge. (claimed by joanne_c)
136) I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me. -- Clare Boothe Luce. (claimed by vana_tuivana)
137) There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them. -- Greta Garbo. -- (claimed by tanrien)
138) A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose. -- Hortense Calisher. (claimed by watermelontail)
139) Never give up; and never, under any circumstances, no matter what -- never face the facts. -- Ruth Gordon. (claimed by tanaquilotr)
140) I have noticed that as soon as you have soldiers the story is called history. Before their arrival it is called myth, folktale, legend, fairy tale, oral poetry, ethnography. After the soldiers arrive, it is called history. -- Paula Gunn Allen. (claimed by reddwarfer)
141) Why should we strive, with cynic frown,/ To knock their fairy castles down? -- Eliza Cook. (claimed by redsiodaslair)
142) The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality. Reality is above all else a variable. With a firm enough commitment, you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before. -- Margaret Halsey. (claimed by xahra99)
143) How can any woman see the whole truth within the bounds of her own life? How can she believe that voice inside herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been living? And yet the women I have talked to, who are finally listening to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that has defied the experts. -- Betty Friedan. (claimed by loony4lupin)
144) Secrets find a way out in sleep...It is the place where there is no pretense. -- bell hooks. (claimed by kiarasayre)
145) She had observed that it was from those who had never sailed stormy waters, came the quickest and harshest judgments on bad seamanship in heavy seas. -- Susan Glaspell. (claimed by tarie)
146) The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who would be friends. -- Shirley MacLaine. (claimed by fly_to_dawn)
147) You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. -- Jessica Mitford. (claimed by odd_persephone)
148) Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. -- Susan B. Anthony. (claimed by elendiari22)
149) It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. -- Sally Kempton. (claimed by carmarthen)
150) Reason has no power against feeling, and feeling older than history is no light matter. --Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (claimed by attilatehbun)
151) Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. -- Pema Chodron. (claimed by da_angel_fics)
152) Oh, I am arm'd with more than complete steel,/ The justice of my quarrel. -- Aphra Behn. (claimed by array_of_colors)
153) To have a good enemy, choose a friend; he knows where to strike. -- Diane de Poiters. (claimed by fateschewtoy)
154) There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own. -- Katherine Anne Porter. (claimed by spacellama)
155) But childhood prolonged cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell. -- Louise A. Bogan. (claimed by maia_cyllene)
156) All my life I have lived and behaved very much like [the] sandpiper -- just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something.'" -- Elizabeth Bishop. (claimed by idea_of_sarcasm)
157) Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. -- Irene Peter. (claimed by xenokattz)
158) My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next. -- Nora Ephron. (claimed by comeon_eileen)
***
If you have any questions, ask them in the comments, and I will do my best to answer them.
Good luck to all of you! I hope that some excellent stories come from this!