worryingly jolly batman

Day One Favourite Lead Female Character
Day Two: Favorite supporting female character
Day Three: A female character you hated but grew to love
Day Four: A female character you relate to
Day Five: Favorite female character on a male-driven show
Day Six: Favorite female-driven show
Day Seven: A female character that needs more screen time
Day Eight: Favorite female character in a comedy show
Day Nine: Favorite female character in a drama show
Day Ten: Favorite female character in a scifi/supernatural show
Day Eleven: Favorite female character in a children’s show
Day Twelve: Favorite female character in a movie
Day Thirteen: Favorite female character in a book
Day Fourteen: Favorite older female character
Day Fifteen: Favorite female character growth arc
Day Sixteen: Favorite mother character
Day Seventeen: Favorite warrior female character
Day Eighteen: Favorite non-warrior female character
Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character
Day Twenty: Favorite female antagonist
Day Twenty-One: Favorite female character screwed over by canon
Day Twenty-Two: Favorite female character you love but everyone else hates
Day Twenty-Three: Favorite female platonic relationship
Day Twenty-Four: Favorite female romantic relationship
Day Twenty-Five: Favorite mother/daughter and/or sister relationship
Day Twenty-Six: Favorite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)

Day Twenty-Seven: A female character you have extensive personal canon for

Rowan Marlow. While both the older Marlow sisters end up doing something that it's safe to say they'd never have planned while ruling the roost at Kingscote, at least Karen does it for love (or something - personally I've always assumed that she slept with Edwin, decided that nice girls don't sleep with men they aren't in love with, therefore she was in love with him and that was that) whereas Rowan does it for duty.

And in my personal canon it's a mistake, she knows it's a mistake almost from the start, and she keeps on at it from a combination of stubbornness (including a refusal to admit to her family that she's made a mistake) and the idea that it will be like deserting a post in the heat to turn her back on it now.

And while there's always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm there's always been Marlows at Trennels, that's because it's entailed. In tail male, one presumes. That is, she's abandoned her own career aspirations only for her father or brother, when they've got bored with or exhausted the possibilities of their own careers to show up and say, "Move over, Rowley" (I always find it bizarre that Giles both imposes a nickname on Rowan which we've never heard before but orders a drink for her without asking her what she wants).

Oddly enough, Rowan claims not to have had much idea about a career when she decides to throw it in to run the farm (like Peter, the hero of Rivers of London she fancied being an architect, but couldn't manage the drawing side of it - Peter, on the other hand, is plainly fascinated by buildings, whereas I never get the idea that Rowan is).

She's a good rider, a very competent sailor (Giles would have much rather had her as his number two in that idiotic lark in Run Away Home) and a highly effective fast bowler, as well as being the person who should have been games captain, had all gone well.

And she's an urbanite. She is, on any basis, not farming Trennels out of any love of farming or of the land (she does like animals, but there's a certain sort of grim determination about it and she's competent because she'd always be competent at that sort of thing). Although she does tell Giles she's finding it OK, I always see that as being deflection.

So my head canon for Rowan has to be something that gets her out of the situation. She can see the dangers - when Nicola rejects (very politely) her suggestion that she become a vet (honestly, careers advice at Kingscote seems to be dire) and then adds that she realises she'd "be company for [her]" she comes out with the idea of them becoming terrible tweedy types known far and wide as the queer Miss Marlows.

What she actually needs is a war (in my headcanon which goes with the dating of immediately post-War for the twins arrival at Kingscote a very young Rowan Marlow helps Caitlin Naismith's "aunt" - then a prefect and in the Sixth - out of a window as part of the sequence of events which led to the latter going to France and becoming "la petite egorgeuse") or something else which disrupts things while she's still got a chance of getting out before she loses everything (I can't see Captain Marlow and Giles colluding to break the entail in her favour and, anyway, this still doesn't deal with the issue that she doesn't want Trennels).

If only Miranda had a brother! Rowan running the New York end of the art and antiques business would be just the kind of thing she should be doing, but I can't think of a way of getting her into it which she'd find acceptable within the constraints of the the situation and which her family would also see as reasonable. Simply deciding "That's it" and applying for a job that isn't Trennels isn't an option, so my head-canon has to involve a catalyst that gets her out of Trennels and makes her realise she can't go back.

Nicola I do see as instrumental in this - she's fended off Giles's enquiries, but Rowan has allowed Nicola to see more of her than she does Giles, and Nicola doesn't have a dog in the fight the way Giles has (Giles is not, I think, a particularly sympathetic character any of the times we see him, and particularly not in Run Away Home where he literally cannot understand why Rowan can't put the farm on hold to help him sail Surfrider).

And I do see it as somehow involving the Wests.




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