wherein Liz rambles about writing and gender and stuff like that

There are a couple posts on metafandom about gender roles and writing, in which people lament the impossibility of writing female characters, or lament the persistence of stereotypes and wonder why there aren't more useful gender role-models or such-like.

I have a weird feeling reading those posts, because I had that issue back when I was, oh, fifteen or so? I had an idea for a fantasy quest story with a girl as the questing heroine, and then I thought to myself, "No, wait, I can't do that; Tamora Pierce already did that." And about five seconds after that, I wanted to smack myself, because seriously, how many thousands of stories are there about boys going on heroic quests, and I thought I couldn't write a girl on a heroic quest because I'd read one other version of that story?

Oy. ( But that moment was in-your-face enough that I became aware of the issue... )

*scurries off to bed*

help! last-minute Yuletide beta request!

Is anyone willing to do a last-minute beta on my Yuletide story? I think it's fairly comprehensible even without specific fandom knowledge (I certainly tried to make it work that way, anyway), and I've been pretty careful about canon-accuracy on my own, so what I really need is someone to read it over and see if I managed to successfully paste on a sort of unifying theme, and tell me if my transitions are wonky or my characterizations seem flat.

I can give more details via email if you're willing to help.

ETA: Thank you, uminohikari! And I was a whole hour and fifteen minutes ahead of the official deadline this time, vs. the latest Femgenficathon where I think I squeaked in with about ten minutes to go. Not much of an improvement, really, but I'll take what I can get. :-)

*wants it to be Christmas already*