Motherhood is often presented as a beautiful, tender experience: new mommies cradle their babies and coo, bedrooms are given a fresh coat of paint and decorated in celebration, and everyone smiles and sighs happily. The fact is, motherhood is tough, and it takes a lot of energy, moral fortitude, and plain old-fashioned physical strength to be a mom—and all kinds of people are moms, heroes and villains alike.

It’s no surprise that some of the fiercest, butt-kicking-est characters in sci-fi and fantasy stories are moms—and that many of them are also people we would definitely not want to cross in real life. The ten women on this list are not always the main characters of their stories—or, in fact, good people—but they all have exhibit lethal Mama Bear tendencies worthy of our admiration.

Cersei Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin

Cersei is The Worst. This is known. She’s cold, manipulative, incestuous, murderous—in fact, if you can think of a negative adjective, Cersei likely embodies it. The only people she’s even slightly warm to are members of her direct family (when it comes to select siblings and cousins, a little too warm), and her sole redeeming human trait is her absolutely insane dedication to her children. An argument can be made that Cersei’s driving motivation is the prophecy that predicts all of her children will die; her willingness to salt the earth after Joffrey’s assassination is a thrilling reminder that she’s a mother who will do anything to protect—or avenge—her offspring.

Cordelia Vorkosigan in The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Cordelia Vorkosigan could have been a more sedate character, willing to settle down and leave behind the sturm and drang of conflict and politics, until the War of Vordarian’s Pretendership saw her son Miles kidnapped and endangered while still in the uterine replicator Cordelia had placed him in after a poisoning attempt almost killed the gestating baby. When Cordelia goes after Count Vordarian to rescue her son, she walks away with one of the most badass maternal moments of all time. We won’t spoil it here, because everyone who has read it knows what we mean when we say Cordelia goes shopping, and anyone who doesn’t deserves to experience her sheer moment of awesome for themselves.

Ripley in the Alien films

Ellen Ripley is one of the fiercest characters in SF/F in general: man or woman, parent or not. But she is a parent—both literally (although her daughter grew old while Ripley slept, off-course in her escape pod, after surviving the initial contact with the xenomorph in Alien), then later figuratively, as an adoptive mother to Newt in Aliens. When she emerges, strapped into a loading dock exoskeleton, and hisses “Get away from her, you bitch!” at the Alien Queen, it’s another one of the most badass mom moments in fictional history.

Visser One in the Animorphs series, by K.A. Applegate

The Yeerks are undoubtedly the villains of the Animorphs books: alien parasites seeking to overrun Earth and enslave—or destroy—humanity. But Visser One, a.k.a. Edriss-Five-Six-Two, in a human host, conceives twins and considers them to be its own children—to the extent that Visser One attempts to forestall an invasion of Earth, not because she cares anything at all about the billions of humans that would die, but because she cares about her own two human children. It’s an, er, unconventional maternal instinct, but definitely a 10 on the scale of Maternal Awesomeness.

Charity Carpenter in The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher

Charity Carpenter dislikes Harry Dresden and has turned her back on the magic that her daughter, Molly, inherits from her—but none of that matters when one of her seven children is in danger. At that point, Charity becomes one of the few people Harry—and anyone else in Chicago with half a brain—is afraid of. The second one of her kids is in trouble, Charity hulks out and, wielding a four-foot hammer and wearing her own bespoke body armor, she starts kicking butt like only a mother can.

Molly Weasley in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

Some might argue that Molly Weasley spends most of the Harry Potter books in a much more nurturing and traditionally feminine mother role, but none of that matters, because she also gets the most maternally awesome moment in a series filled with them (after all, Harry survives as a baby because his own mother chose to sacrifice herself to protect him). It’s one of the most famous moments from the story: when Ginny Weasley is threatened by Bellatrix Lestrange, Molly kills the Death Eater with a curse, shouting “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!”—a nice Ripley moment of her own.

Nicolette ‘Mama Lo’ Peltier in the Dark Hunter series, by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Mama Lo is literally a Mama Bear, or, more accurately, a Katagari who can transform into a bear. She created Sanctuary after the deaths of her two sons, and considers its inhabitants to be her children, in a sense. That means whenever Sanctuary is threatened, everyone had better get out of Mama Lo’s way, because she has vowed that no mother with a child under her protection would ever feel the pain she felt—and kids, she means it.

Areena Mansfield in the In Death series, by J.D. Robb

Mansfield only appears in one book of Robb’s long-running futuristic police procedural series, but she makes an incredible impression as a mother you don’t want to mess with. When her evil, manipulative former flame Richard Draco pursues a relationship with Carly, the daughter he fathered (and she put up for adoption) decades before, she reveals the girl’s identity to him in order to end the inappropriate relationship. When Richard is only encouraged to seduce Carly—his own daughter—Areena snaps into Mama Bear mode and murders Richard while performing with him on stage, swapping out a prop knife for a very real one. It’s an act so logical the reader can’t help but root for Areena to get away with it.

Alana in Saga, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughn

Saga is one of the most complex, deeply-imagined, and well-told sci-fi epics running, and Alana is easily its most interesting character. Profane, kinky, and wonderfully complicated, the through-line for her character is always her fierce determination to protect her daughter Hazel—and her husband, Marko—from the legions of people seeking to murder them and take Hazel away. It’s impossible to convey Alana’s awesomeness in just a few lines—check out Saga on your own to witness one of the fiercest moms in history in action.

Sarah Connor in the Terminator universe

Like Ripley, Sarah Connor is a mother who literally goes to the ends (end?) of the earth to protect her son, who she knows will be humanity’s last hope when the machines attain sentience and launch an all-out war to eradicate humanity. What’s truly remarkable is Sarah’s transformation from a soft, normal young woman in 1984’s The Terminator to a toned, butt-kicking warrior in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and beyond, demonstrating the depth of her commitment to helping her son survive and become the hero of the future.

Who is your pick for SF/F’s fiercest mom?