#women ocs

I rarely see anyone writing middle-aged women characters around here, and some of what I do see tends to come off as little more than little-old-lady parodies. Jokes about aches and pains and hot flashes. Yeah, those are inherent with aging, but the descriptions of being tired get… tiresome.

Sometimes, strength can be found in age.

An example:

He notices…

Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but he doesn’t think so.

Running the clippers over the back of her head, shearing off several months of hair reveals new gray behind both ears. The salt-strewn patches seem larger than they should in their sudden revelation, rather than the subtle intruding creep he’s noticed in his own hair over the last few years. He says nothing, pausing to look at the tuft of silver curls in his fingers.

“What’s up?” she asks.

Not knowing what else to do, he hands it to her over her shoulder.

She’s silent for a moment, as if she’s staring at her own mortality in her hands. “How much is there?”

“A lot.”

They both suspect the same cause.

[Heroic spoiler of monumental badassitude]

She lowers her hand, dropping the tuft for it to join the rest on the floor. She takes a breath. “Are you still okay with… moving forward today?”

“Yes. Of course.” His response is immediate and firm, and he grips her shoulder, locking her gaze in the mirror. “That’s how you earned this,” he says, indicating the mudhorn inked there. “It’s just another kind of scar. We’re both riddled with them. We’ll both earn a lot more before we’re done. You know I understand this.”

So yeah, pairing Mando with a woman his own age and having her be a badass is possible.