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coraaLast one! (Yes, the spam will end soon, I promise.) This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart—partly because for all my life, but particularly as a teenager, my strongest social bonds were nearly always with other women. So it struck me odd how few strong female friendships we see in fiction (other than women's lit and chicklit).
Moderator: Mette Harrison (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metteharrison)
Participants: Holly Black (blackholly), Rachel Manija Brown (rachelmanija), Janni Lee Simner (janni), Sherwood Smith (sartorias)
For privacy reasons, I'm only including LJs/blogs of people on the panels if their LJs or blogs include their names in some kind of clear fashion, on the principle that the connection is therefore already public. That said, if I have miscalculated and you want me to remove either your real name or your blog link, or if you want me to use a different link, please let me know and I'll do so immediately.
Notes behind the cut. People are attributed by initials; Q/C indicates an audience comment or question. As always, transcribed fast and edited only glancingly, misattributions and errors are my own, assume everything outside of quote marks is a paraphrase. ??? indicates something (usually a name) that I missed.
(I missed the beginning of this panel, but Rachel tells me that I missed Mette talking about frenemies, and she talked about the idea of a warrior sisterhood.)
SS: In the past, mainstream fiction did better at female friendship than genre, because there were very few girls in fantasy. Many of the books she loves and rereads over and over are books that do feature female friendship—"Privilege of the Sword," in which one girl defends the honor of her female friend.
JLS: High fantasy actually doing better than contemporary fantasy at female friendship. Wants to see more of the dynamic where the girl, even if she has a boyfriend, still returns to her circle of female friends for support.
MH: Sisterhood: "Great and Terrible Beauty," "Rampant"
MH: Does urban fantasy or high fantasy do a better job? (Not to say one is better than the other, but how are they depicted differently.) Even when they have female protags, in urban fantasy the female characters are generally surrounded by men. When we have one very strong character, why don’t we have other female characters that are strong? Do strong women surround themselves with men?
HB: By "urban fantasy," do we mean the ass-tattoo urban fantasy or the older? If we’re talking about the ass-tattoo ones, one of the big tropes is that the major character has everything taken away from her and has to be hard all the time, so giving her a friend would be giving her a moment of rest... there’s an immense emphasis on how little the character is able to sleep and eat. The idea that she’d have a girlfriend who cared for her seems to be something she’s denied.
MH: "Deja Dead": one of the fascinating things about the major character is that she has a female friend. Is it a problem with length, where there isn’t enough space/pages in the book for those relationships to be fleshed out?
JLS: Maybe in high fantasy there’s more space to develop? It’s exciting even to just have more than one woman on-stage at the same time.
RMB: Disagrees with the idea that there’s not enough space because there’s often a friend who’s a guy (instead of or in addition to a romantic relationship), or sometimes even more than one. Unless the story is extremely stripped-down or short, there is usually room for friendships, they’re just not necessarily female friendships.
SS: There’s been a sea change, an idea of a female character who’s a lone wolf, on the run, without time or space for friends. That idea used to be applied to a man, but now it’s a woman. Perhaps giving that character a female friend is the next step.
MH: It sometimes feels like a swap-out, where the older model is the male main character with male friends, and now it’s a female main character but the secondary characters stayed the same.
RMB: "Maltese Falcon," the idea that your partner is your partner even if you don’t care for each other much.
MH: To what extent does romance overshadow friendships? Is the problem that people don’t have the energy to develop a romantic relationship and maintain female friendships?
HB: Or the thing that happens when all of your conversations turn into being about the boy. "He did this, what did it mean, what did it mean?"
JLS: In most cases they didn’t withdraw with the boy, they still wanted their female friends to be around to talk to, even if it was a lot of talk about the boy.
RMB: The big high where you can’t think or talk about anything other than The Boy really only lasts about three months, and then you go back to being sane and talking (with friends) about other things.
SS: Working out dynamics in your own life through fiction—it would be interesting to see fantasy take the next step and explore dynamics of friendship. (missed some of this)
MH: Dragged her friends around with her all the time, so even when wrapped up in the boy, still had the friends. It’d be interesting to see that dynamic in fantasy.
HB: It’d be a great quest story. The person you take with you is your friend(s), because they’re always there.
HB: Writers may feel that if they give the character anything other than the romance, that they’re giving them a break. They’re giving them something to their benefit, and so they’re trying to raise tension by taking things away. But she doesn’t think that’s true: the more relationships your character has, the more they can be threatened.
RMB: Have been wondering for a while why she didn’t like the ‘ass-tattoo’ urban fantasy, and it’s because the stakes are too simple: there’s a lone character who never gets a break, and the tension rises predictably, and it’s kind of dull. There are two YA urban fantasy series that she’s read: "Circle of Magic," L.J. Smith, about a coven of teenage girls (and some boys) with complicated romances, but the relationships between the girls in the coven are given at least equal weight in the story, and they’re also very complicated. There’s both a standard heterosexual triangle between two girls and a guy, and a platonic "triangle" between two girls. "House of Night" by PC Cast and Kristin Cast, with a big complicated love pentagon, but also complicated female friendships: a rivalry, a best buddy, associated best buddies, etc. No reason you can’t have romance and friendship.
JLS: Isolation thing is very dangerous too: in abusive relationships there’s often an isolation of the woman from her friends, and so normalizing that is problematic.
HB: Older urban fantasy is often very much about friendships: Charles de Lint’s Newford books, "War for the Oaks"
MH: "Paranormal Romance" as a term for the very relationship-oriented urban fantasy.
SS: Some of the books are high drama, where the expectation is that the romance is on maximum overdrive.
JLS: The Anita Blake books are a model for a lot of supernatural romance, and in the early books she did have good friendships—trying on bridesmaid dresses for her best friend’s wedding, etc. But that faded away.
MH: What happened?
JLS: They became more romance-y and as they do, the friendships fade out.
Q/C: In one of the later books, the last remaining female friend is nasty to Anita because she’s jealous of all of her men.
???: Well, she does have about seven!
MH: Harry Potter phenomenon: girls will read about boys, but not vice versa. Is there an idea that male readers will be bored by female friendship.
SS: The more action you have, the less time you have for sitting around talking.
RMB: But why the male friendships?
JLS: "Avatar: The Last Airbender" has enough female characters to have both female friends and female enemies. The girls were part of the action.
RMB: There’s a perception in our culture that women’s things are boring and unimportant, so women’s friendships are boring and unimportant, therefore if you have a couple of women talking (and not talking about men) they must be boring and unimportant. "Gossip Girl" etc. is some of the most denigrated literature, and the covers are all about girls doing things with other girls. She had that expectation herself that boys would be bored by a particular bit in her manuscript, and was completely wrong.
JLS: I’ve never had a boy ask me if there was a lot of girly stuff in the books, but has had parents ask that.
MH: There’s a sense that chick flicks or chick literature, stuff where most of the central relationships are female, would be uninteresting to men. There may be some truth to that, but that’s different than fantasy.
MH: What books would pass the Bechdel test?
HB: Sarah Rees Brennan’s "Demon’s Lexicon," which contains a rivalry—but not over the boy. They’re fighting about a job they both want, and they really are good friends throughout even though that argument is a strain.
RMB: Sherwood Smith, Tamora Pierce, Pamela Dean, "Sister Light, Sister Dark" by Jane Yolen. Has a female friendship that’s broken up not by a guy, but by the shadow-sister/mirror image of the main character.
JLS: Tamora Pierce, "Sun Sword" books by Michelle Sagara
SS: Sarah Rees Brennan’s "Demon’s Lexicon" and sequel. Pamela Dean, "Tam Lin"
MH: Carrie Ryan’s "The Forest of Hands and Teeth", "Rhymes With Witches" by Lauren Myracle
HB: Libba Bray’s "Great and Terrible Beauty" books
MH: Last question: what would you like to see in the future, as fantasy evolves?
JLS: More working together toward shared goals. More women on stage so that it just happens, vs. having to make it happen.
RMB: More badass women in warrior school.
HB: People writing something positive, finding a way to make positive female friendships part of a story in an interesting way.
MH: A female friendship arc can be put in a book, where sometimes things are good and sometimes bad, and you might have a problem and work it out as friends.
Sarah Rees Brennan (audience): "Magic Bites" by Ilona Andrews—originally she thought it was same-same, the girl is tough and surrounded by men and has no female friends etc. Then she realized that the book was setting up the clichés to knock them down, and the main character winds up with female friends, etc. Able to see that the tropes aren’t necessary for urban fantasy.
Q/C: Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels trilogy, where in the later books the main character brings together a circle of women.
Terri Windling (audience): Ellen Kushner’s "Privilege of the Sword." Midori Snyder’s "Queen’s Court"
Q/C: Robin Hobb’s recent Dragon books.
Q/C: Relationship with her twin sister where her sister’s husband had to find space in the relationship between the sisters, and the same for her best friend and best friend’s boyfriend. "You figure out how to work with our relationship rather than our relationship going by the wayside."
Moderator: Mette Harrison (
metteharrison)Participants: Holly Black (
blackholly), Rachel Manija Brown (rachelmanija), Janni Lee Simner (janni), Sherwood Smith (sartorias)For privacy reasons, I'm only including LJs/blogs of people on the panels if their LJs or blogs include their names in some kind of clear fashion, on the principle that the connection is therefore already public. That said, if I have miscalculated and you want me to remove either your real name or your blog link, or if you want me to use a different link, please let me know and I'll do so immediately.
Notes behind the cut. People are attributed by initials; Q/C indicates an audience comment or question. As always, transcribed fast and edited only glancingly, misattributions and errors are my own, assume everything outside of quote marks is a paraphrase. ??? indicates something (usually a name) that I missed.
(I missed the beginning of this panel, but Rachel tells me that I missed Mette talking about frenemies, and she talked about the idea of a warrior sisterhood.)
SS: In the past, mainstream fiction did better at female friendship than genre, because there were very few girls in fantasy. Many of the books she loves and rereads over and over are books that do feature female friendship—"Privilege of the Sword," in which one girl defends the honor of her female friend.
JLS: High fantasy actually doing better than contemporary fantasy at female friendship. Wants to see more of the dynamic where the girl, even if she has a boyfriend, still returns to her circle of female friends for support.
MH: Sisterhood: "Great and Terrible Beauty," "Rampant"
MH: Does urban fantasy or high fantasy do a better job? (Not to say one is better than the other, but how are they depicted differently.) Even when they have female protags, in urban fantasy the female characters are generally surrounded by men. When we have one very strong character, why don’t we have other female characters that are strong? Do strong women surround themselves with men?
HB: By "urban fantasy," do we mean the ass-tattoo urban fantasy or the older? If we’re talking about the ass-tattoo ones, one of the big tropes is that the major character has everything taken away from her and has to be hard all the time, so giving her a friend would be giving her a moment of rest... there’s an immense emphasis on how little the character is able to sleep and eat. The idea that she’d have a girlfriend who cared for her seems to be something she’s denied.
MH: "Deja Dead": one of the fascinating things about the major character is that she has a female friend. Is it a problem with length, where there isn’t enough space/pages in the book for those relationships to be fleshed out?
JLS: Maybe in high fantasy there’s more space to develop? It’s exciting even to just have more than one woman on-stage at the same time.
RMB: Disagrees with the idea that there’s not enough space because there’s often a friend who’s a guy (instead of or in addition to a romantic relationship), or sometimes even more than one. Unless the story is extremely stripped-down or short, there is usually room for friendships, they’re just not necessarily female friendships.
SS: There’s been a sea change, an idea of a female character who’s a lone wolf, on the run, without time or space for friends. That idea used to be applied to a man, but now it’s a woman. Perhaps giving that character a female friend is the next step.
MH: It sometimes feels like a swap-out, where the older model is the male main character with male friends, and now it’s a female main character but the secondary characters stayed the same.
RMB: "Maltese Falcon," the idea that your partner is your partner even if you don’t care for each other much.
MH: To what extent does romance overshadow friendships? Is the problem that people don’t have the energy to develop a romantic relationship and maintain female friendships?
HB: Or the thing that happens when all of your conversations turn into being about the boy. "He did this, what did it mean, what did it mean?"
JLS: In most cases they didn’t withdraw with the boy, they still wanted their female friends to be around to talk to, even if it was a lot of talk about the boy.
RMB: The big high where you can’t think or talk about anything other than The Boy really only lasts about three months, and then you go back to being sane and talking (with friends) about other things.
SS: Working out dynamics in your own life through fiction—it would be interesting to see fantasy take the next step and explore dynamics of friendship. (missed some of this)
MH: Dragged her friends around with her all the time, so even when wrapped up in the boy, still had the friends. It’d be interesting to see that dynamic in fantasy.
HB: It’d be a great quest story. The person you take with you is your friend(s), because they’re always there.
HB: Writers may feel that if they give the character anything other than the romance, that they’re giving them a break. They’re giving them something to their benefit, and so they’re trying to raise tension by taking things away. But she doesn’t think that’s true: the more relationships your character has, the more they can be threatened.
RMB: Have been wondering for a while why she didn’t like the ‘ass-tattoo’ urban fantasy, and it’s because the stakes are too simple: there’s a lone character who never gets a break, and the tension rises predictably, and it’s kind of dull. There are two YA urban fantasy series that she’s read: "Circle of Magic," L.J. Smith, about a coven of teenage girls (and some boys) with complicated romances, but the relationships between the girls in the coven are given at least equal weight in the story, and they’re also very complicated. There’s both a standard heterosexual triangle between two girls and a guy, and a platonic "triangle" between two girls. "House of Night" by PC Cast and Kristin Cast, with a big complicated love pentagon, but also complicated female friendships: a rivalry, a best buddy, associated best buddies, etc. No reason you can’t have romance and friendship.
JLS: Isolation thing is very dangerous too: in abusive relationships there’s often an isolation of the woman from her friends, and so normalizing that is problematic.
HB: Older urban fantasy is often very much about friendships: Charles de Lint’s Newford books, "War for the Oaks"
MH: "Paranormal Romance" as a term for the very relationship-oriented urban fantasy.
SS: Some of the books are high drama, where the expectation is that the romance is on maximum overdrive.
JLS: The Anita Blake books are a model for a lot of supernatural romance, and in the early books she did have good friendships—trying on bridesmaid dresses for her best friend’s wedding, etc. But that faded away.
MH: What happened?
JLS: They became more romance-y and as they do, the friendships fade out.
Q/C: In one of the later books, the last remaining female friend is nasty to Anita because she’s jealous of all of her men.
???: Well, she does have about seven!
MH: Harry Potter phenomenon: girls will read about boys, but not vice versa. Is there an idea that male readers will be bored by female friendship.
SS: The more action you have, the less time you have for sitting around talking.
RMB: But why the male friendships?
JLS: "Avatar: The Last Airbender" has enough female characters to have both female friends and female enemies. The girls were part of the action.
RMB: There’s a perception in our culture that women’s things are boring and unimportant, so women’s friendships are boring and unimportant, therefore if you have a couple of women talking (and not talking about men) they must be boring and unimportant. "Gossip Girl" etc. is some of the most denigrated literature, and the covers are all about girls doing things with other girls. She had that expectation herself that boys would be bored by a particular bit in her manuscript, and was completely wrong.
JLS: I’ve never had a boy ask me if there was a lot of girly stuff in the books, but has had parents ask that.
MH: There’s a sense that chick flicks or chick literature, stuff where most of the central relationships are female, would be uninteresting to men. There may be some truth to that, but that’s different than fantasy.
MH: What books would pass the Bechdel test?
HB: Sarah Rees Brennan’s "Demon’s Lexicon," which contains a rivalry—but not over the boy. They’re fighting about a job they both want, and they really are good friends throughout even though that argument is a strain.
RMB: Sherwood Smith, Tamora Pierce, Pamela Dean, "Sister Light, Sister Dark" by Jane Yolen. Has a female friendship that’s broken up not by a guy, but by the shadow-sister/mirror image of the main character.
JLS: Tamora Pierce, "Sun Sword" books by Michelle Sagara
SS: Sarah Rees Brennan’s "Demon’s Lexicon" and sequel. Pamela Dean, "Tam Lin"
MH: Carrie Ryan’s "The Forest of Hands and Teeth", "Rhymes With Witches" by Lauren Myracle
HB: Libba Bray’s "Great and Terrible Beauty" books
MH: Last question: what would you like to see in the future, as fantasy evolves?
JLS: More working together toward shared goals. More women on stage so that it just happens, vs. having to make it happen.
RMB: More badass women in warrior school.
HB: People writing something positive, finding a way to make positive female friendships part of a story in an interesting way.
MH: A female friendship arc can be put in a book, where sometimes things are good and sometimes bad, and you might have a problem and work it out as friends.
Sarah Rees Brennan (audience): "Magic Bites" by Ilona Andrews—originally she thought it was same-same, the girl is tough and surrounded by men and has no female friends etc. Then she realized that the book was setting up the clichés to knock them down, and the main character winds up with female friends, etc. Able to see that the tropes aren’t necessary for urban fantasy.
Q/C: Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels trilogy, where in the later books the main character brings together a circle of women.
Terri Windling (audience): Ellen Kushner’s "Privilege of the Sword." Midori Snyder’s "Queen’s Court"
Q/C: Robin Hobb’s recent Dragon books.
Q/C: Relationship with her twin sister where her sister’s husband had to find space in the relationship between the sisters, and the same for her best friend and best friend’s boyfriend. "You figure out how to work with our relationship rather than our relationship going by the wayside."