astridv

Borrowed from practically everywhere.

I currently have 49 works archived at AO3.

Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 49 (the first thing I posted there), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it.

Apologise for the slowed pace of posting recently; RL intervened. In any event, please do feel free to continue discussion on any of the earlier posts.



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

The trouble with terms like "platonic" and "virgin" is that they suggest their opposites, so that the parameters of this question seem to be framed to limit possible relationships to those which have the potential to be romantic but aren't - the female equivalent of the "bromance" or "buddy show".

Except there aren't all that many iterations of that model floating around - Scott and Bailey, as aforementioned, Black Widow - except that was a relationship between antagonists with hints of a distinct sapphic, as opposed to platonic, fascination?

And a large majority of portrayals of female relationships out there posit inherently antagonistic or, at best, wary relationships between women - if the political advice is to keep one's friends close and one's enemies closer, female literary friendships seem to be posited on the assumption that women never know when one will turn into the other (at least, one knows exactly when; it's when an eligible man appears on the scene) so female friendships have to be the closest of all. As ever, Austen has the most subtle take on this trope: while Pride and Prejudice has Caroline Bingley and Jane Bennet in the "pretended friendship" model (with Elizabeth aware of and commenting on the game in progress) but also has Elizabeth and Charlotte Lucas, which is a real friendship and even survives Charlotte's marriage to - a minor subversion of the trope - a man who had previously proposed to Elizabeth. No, they aren't love rivals, of whom one carried off the crown and the other did not, but Lady Lucas and Mrs Bennet certainly spin the story that way.

There are good portrayals of friendship ensembles - Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed opens with the heroine's best friend giving bad news:

Samantha sighed. "Okay but remember: Don't shoot the messenger."
Now I was getting worried.
"Moxie. The new issue. Cannie, you have to go get one right now"
"Why? What's up? Am I one of the Fashion Faux Pas?"
"Just go to the lobby and get it. I'll hold."

This was important. Samantha was, in addition to being my best friend, also an associate at Lewis,Dommel and Fenick. Samantha put people on hold, or had her assistant tell them she was in a meeting. Samantha herself did not hold. "It's a sight of weakness,"she'd told me. I felt a small twinge of anxiety work its way down my spine.

There's also a good friendship with a character I'm pretty certain is a thinly disguised Kate Winslet - Good in Bed apart from being funny and romantic has what I can only describe as a nice line in what I'd call naturalistic wish-fulfilment (heroine ends up looking at the Pacific Ocean from a beach somewhere like Mailbu with an A-list Hollywood star, but unfortunately he's taken some distinctly bad Ecstasy and passes out on her, so she has to deal with the situation by taking step by step instructions from a doctor friend of hers in Philadelphia over her mobile phone).

But the female friendships are a distinctly minor note, nice but not foregrounded. As they are in Bridget Jones. And I can't cite Legally Blonde for everything.


So, tough one, this, especially if sisters are excluded. Need they be? If sisters are included it widens the field no end - for example, one of the things I really enjoy in Ankaret Wells' work is the relationships between sisters; it's a major plot driver in Firebrand and in the two Requite books, The Maker's Mask and The Hawkwood War what's fascinating is how the similarities and differences between three sisters play out, with a stronger undercurrent suggesting that if Tzenni Boccamera can once and for all break free of roles and expectations instilled in the nursery, literally nothing can stop her.

Ultimately, though, I think for the time being I'm going with Heris Serrano and Lady Cecilia de Marktos, in Elizabeth Moon's Serrano Legacy series. They're two characters who grow and develop because of their friendship, and their friendship develops with them, and the final appearance of Lady Cecilia just has me crying (and there are other female friendships galore throughout the series - Brun, in particular, has a gift for it, so when she comes up against someone where her natural charm just doesn't cut it and where we appear to be sliding back into the "natural rivals whose prey was the same: men"* mould it should signal - and in fact does - that there's something about to go radically wrong with this universe. And, guess what - when it does go radically wrong it's the strong bonds between different women - aunt/niece, big sister/little sister, mother/daughter - that get things fixed - though the aunt/nephew bond is pretty important, too).



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*Scarlett O'Hara on female friendship, quoted without the book.