legionseagle: Juliet (The Dice Were Loaded From The Start) - People put forward the argument that this problem of dire baggage is also true when writing male characters like Draco, say. I would, however, argue that there's a difference. If one sets out to write Draco as a half-way sympathetic character one has to get round various aspects of the little brat's canonical characterisation, certainly. But those aspects are not things JK Rowling put there because she thought they were what women readers were looking for, or which were intended to make Draco sympathetic in the first place, whereas Gwen's being "the heart of the team" is. You're told by TPTB that you're supposed to like her and identify with her and the natural response is, "Who, me? Why?" -