Urban Fantasy with a heroine who has female friends plz?

[bookpire.livejournal.com]

Seriously why do women hate other women in these stories?

Okay I’m not looking for an answer really since we all know why Hamilton needs to demonize any female character that isn’t Anita. But I’ve started to notice a really, really unhealthy trend with this idea that main female protagonists can’t and won’t get on well with ‘normal’ women or anything with a vagina. 8I

If their blonde their Satan, if their good looking their probably snobs or sluts who need to be shamed, shamed, shamed until the cows come home. Their often put in danger so the heroine can ‘look better than the rest of her silly gender’ or, at the worst are often just there to be raped or killed to push angst. 8/ (Stuffed in a fridge of how I hate this trope)

Rosalie and Jessica from Twilight – Their pretty and blonde, Jessica who has a boring generic name (and my first name so F-you Meyer for that) is shallow and jealous of Bella because *gasp* she wanted Edward. Rosalie hates Bella in a similar way because she was supposed to be Edwards mate. Cheap wish fulfilment against all those blonde girls who get hot guys in real life...yay.  

Ronnie from Anita Blake – Started out as Anita’s best female friend but descended into jealous bitch as Hamilton began to lose what little brain cells she had left.

Cherry the were leopard- VANISHED FROM THE BOOKS around the same time the books started getting shit, hmmmm.   

But it’s not just the Anita Blake series either, the Sookie Stackhouse series might actually be WORSE when it comes to the main character hating other women, which, considering the stuff it’s up against for biggest Misogynist Award (Twilight, Anita Blake) it’s pretty impressive. >>

Sookie hates her own female family members, and the author justifies it by writing situations where Sookie can be so much better than them. Sookie walks in on Crystal (who is pregnant) cheating on her husband Jason (oh and Jason set it up so Sookie would find her and slut shame, wonderful people) then says something along the lines ‘no wonder you always lose your babies’ because Crystal has miscarried a lot. Seriously take a drink every time Sookie calls a woman a bitch and you’ll be dead after one volume, and people WANT Anita’s family to appear in the books? D8

Okay the obvious reason this appears in stories is the Authors actually do have a vendetta against pretty (often blonde) women. There’s a chance they were pretty insecure when younger, so their wish fulfilment heroines are going to be their venting tools for all the times the pretty popular girls picked on them at school.   

And that’s not to say the blonde alpha bitch isn’t real, I had one at my school, but this self-indulgence of writing a main BETTER then every other woman on the earth is just....no.  

Would be be so bad if a heroine had a girl as a best friend or for support instead of it always being 'shes one of the guys and is better then all other females?'

Comments

[muse-books.livejournal.com]

I am not sure given Crystal's history, she and Sookie were never actually friends, really can count.

She has had a long friendship with Tara and gets on fairly well with the other waitresses including Holly and then there is Amelia from New Orleans who lived with her a while.

Carley Davidson of the series of that same name has a friendship with her neightbour/assistant Cookie as well as her sister.

A lot of these series with female protagonists do take the lone wolf trope found in a lot of detective fiction where the main character is very much a loner though may have a sidekick of some sort.

[moonbeamdancer.livejournal.com]

Same here, Sookie was always up front about the fact that she didn't like Crystal and that she thought Crystal wasn't good enough for Jason.

[ladymina.livejournal.com]

Word, Crystal already f-ed up much earlier and showed a lot of stupidity
She liked a lot - if not all of the other waitresses, and her conflict with one of her old friends was at the same time a conflict between a church sect and the newly discovered supernatural (Arlene joining the Fellowship of the Sun) and not about eithers personality.

Also Jason is shown as even a bigger slut through several books and she has told him off too, so the treatment is mutual for female and male 'sluts'

I also wouldn't call Crystal her family per se, she manipulated a situation in a way that made another were turn Jason and then managed to worm her way into his heart anyway. Seriously I mean seriously, she was very selfish from her first appereance.
I have also stopped reading Sookie books, but the last ones I read she even got along pretty well with Pam the blond vampire lady

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

LA Banks' Vampire Huntress Legend. It takes a while to get more female characters, but eventually it does and they're all supposed to be fabulous in their own right.

More fantasy than Urban Fantasy:

Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra. One of the protagonist's close allies is a female of another species. The character also bonds with several other powerful women ... though also of other species. She doesn't do well on having human female friends.

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

In the Kate Daniels books by Ilona Andrews, Kate has a best friend Andrea, who is just as tough as Kate, And Kate isn't even slightly threatened by her.

[elentiriel.livejournal.com]

Definitely agree with you, and in the newest book of the series Gunmetal Magic you get to see that Andrea is just as badass as Kate and doesn't threaten Kate's position at all.

[estllechauvelin.livejournal.com]

Xandra Vardan in the new Immortal Empire series by Kate Locke is close to her sisters. Well, developments near the end of the book will likely cause some tension between her and all of her family in the future, sisters, brother, and father included, but although the heroine does turn out to be "special" it's not in a "better than all those other evil and/or pathetic women" kind of way.

In general most of the narrators in the Women of the Otherworld series tend to be on friendly terms with each other, but they're scattered geographically and it's hard to say how much they're interacting as friends when they don't need each other for help. They do all look out for each other as they're able.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

They do seem pretty close- Cassandra is described as Paige's "surrogate mother-in-law" i.e. she drives her crazy but it's because she cares. Elena's daughter was named after Paige. Savannah goes on vacations with Elena and Jaime. Elena and Jaime have a few heart-to-hearts when they meet up in Broken. There's a few mentions of everyone getting together for drinks in Spell Bound.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Seconded, all of this! This is why just having a "strong female protagonist" does not a feminist series make if she's the ONLY strong female, or pratically the only female at all (that is, all the important/main characters besides her are male---like, oh, say, in Anita Blake!)

A related thing that bugs me is the tendency to class 'girly' as weak, bad, gross, etc. I'm all for heroines who are tomboyish or otherwise not traditionally feminine, I think that's great and women come in ALL types* but just because a woman isn't "girly" herself, is it necessary for her to put down and loathe the idea of girliness? Honestly, I find *that* to be downright sexist--shunning something because it's associated with women, and women suck. I've never encountered a more blatant and hardcore case in UF fiction than Anita (thank goodness) but it seems to crop up here and there in itty-bitty barbs with heroines who otherwise aren't bad at all in that department. I remember getting yanked out of a story for a moment that I was otherwise enjoying (I think it was either an October Daye book or maybe Discount Armageddon) was some remark like that in the heroine's internal monologue.


*although with urban fantasy, it does always seem to be the same type so far in my experience--not traditionally feminine at all, but only to a socially acceptable point (never a truly BUTCH woman), and still sexy/conventionally attractive, especially when she "cleans up nicely" for some occasion (bonus points if she HAS to dress up and complains about it)

[pith]

it seems to crop up here and there in itty-bitty barbs with heroines who otherwise aren't bad at all in that department

I know :( I hate the petty remarks about other women's clothing or that they "aren't looking their best" or anything along that line. I doubt we'd see a fight between two guys where one of them makes snarky comments about the fit of the other one's jeans, you know?

[marveen.livejournal.com]

This. First-wave feminism seemed to infest a lot of fantsy with the "traditional feminine pursuits are, like, icky" mindset, so we have female heroines who are a whiz at anything "tomboyish" but fail at anything feminine--even if the skills involved are essentially the same. (I seem to remember one who could tie her shoes and tie a bow tie but tying her hair ribbon was just impossible. Can you say "psychosomatic"?)

[pith]

Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld books

Seanan McGuire's October Daye books

Jes Battis's OSI books (although most of the protagonist's female friends are co-workers, admittedly)

[loree.livejournal.com]

Seconding the Toby Daye books - not only does she have female friends, but with very few exceptions the other women in her books are all powerful in their own right.

[gillywoo.livejournal.com]

I've just discovered Seanan Macguire - love the october daye books and Discount Armageddon - the Aeslin MIce are my most favourite characters ever :) Also Kalandra Price Grave Witch novels - Alex Craft has a best female friend as well

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

HAIL THE AESLIN MICE!

[loree.livejournal.com]

HAIL!

[everstar3.livejournal.com]

HAIL!

(That entire book is worth it just for the Aeslin Mice, imho.)

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

The Aeslin mice were the only things I found worthwhile in that novel. :P

[pith]

I'm not smitten with the books, to be fair. I find them pretty generic urban fantasy, but at least the author is trying something different, which I appreciate.

[everstar3.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, the Toby Daye books don't really hit their stride until the third book, An Artificial Night. For whatever reason, I found the series really came alive from that point on and I'm enjoying the hell out of them.

[akaibara.livejournal.com]

The Hollows series by Rachel Harrison. They were a balm to my soul in a post-Anita world.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

KIm Harrison? The main character is Rachel Morgan. :)

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

The one problem I have with that one is the only reason the female partner is okay is that "the heroine is so hot even the women want her, even though she's straight." It kind of undermines the relationship as a friendship for the first 6 books or so.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say that's fair to Sookie. For one thing, Crystal was awful, and for another, Sookie was very angry with Jason for putting both of them in that position. The only other females I recall being in her family are her Gran, who she loved very much, and Claudine, her cousin, who she also got on well with. She does have friendships with Amelia, Pam, and Tara, and some of the girls she works with, and she likes Jason's current girlfriend well enough. She's also friendly with Halleigh Bellefleur, and ironed out her issues with Portia. The only females I recall her out and out despising were Debbie Pelt and her cohorts, and she had pretty valid reasons for that. Well, her and the new vamp that's just showed up to claim a betrothal to Eric, but in Sookie's shoes, I wouldn't like her much either.

Kim Harrison has decent female friendships. A good deal of the the focus in her series is on the relationship between Rachel and Ivy, and Rachel also has positive relationships with Ceri and Jenks' wife, whose name I can't recall right now.

Kelley Armstrong's books also feature strong females who rely on one another. Her books shift POV from volume to volume, but all the ladies like each other, for the most part, and work together to solve whatever the supernatural problem is.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I was about to say...all the people Sookie doesn't like, she's got valid reasons not too like and shown in the books.

Unlike Anita who pretty much hates all females on sight because they MUST be trying to 'steal' her 'sweeties' and MUST be OMG SOOOO jellous of her harem of subserviant men. Or they are so pathetic and weak...and girly... Anita tells us these things and we are never shown why this is true. That is extra grating IMO.

[bookpire.livejournal.com]

sorry I guess I didn't explain my reasons for disliking it well enough ^^;

But the reason dislike the Sookie series is because the whole story is written in a way where your pretty much not allowed to like alot of the female characters, I wouldn't call it less obvious then the Anita Blake series, but I do notice alot of heroine centered morality when it comes to sookie and her thinking of the women she meets. As in you'll tell right away if their bad people. 8/

Also the slut shaming and...'gay' female relationships in the books rub me the wrong way.

[c-l-craft.livejournal.com]

On one hand, internal sexism is a thing. A lot of really toxic behavior is taught to young girls as a part of classical gender roles and society's view of women.

On the other hand this is fantasy and if there can be vampires who ride motorcycles and write romance novels then I should be able to get some sexism free female relations. :l

Rachel Morgan might be something you would be interested in, it's very female positive and the main character forms a lot of strong connections with other women.

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

Well, that's why so many authors encourage us to "write what you would want to read." I've finished one novel that I'm trying to get published and working on two more, and one of the main things that the AB verse has taught me is to make sure my MC isn't the only woman around and doesn't project any unjust hatred onto other women. So, in a way, LKH's absurd prejudice against blonde women and women in general has taught me to write better. For instance, the MC of my urban fantasy novels is a black woman with a Korean best friend. The only women she dislikes in the novel are her abusive aunt and one of the villains. No slut-shaming, no vendetta, nada, because that's a huge turn off to me and I hate reading about he-man woman hater girl protagonists.

So while this is a bad trend, I think there are enough good writers out there writing kick ass, non-prejudiced ladies. We just have to make sure to look out for them and spread the word.

One final thought: I also think some of this woman-hating stems from the protags being tomboys. So the author is stereotyping tomboys, i.e. assuming that girls who have boyish tendencies hate blonde hot chicks. Which is just stupid. Some of the nicest women I've ever met are feminine and I love that about them. It's got a lot to do with just not being well-rounded people, I think. Women aren't one dimensional. Tomboys can get along with girly-girls and vice versa. These authors don't meet enough people, methinks.

Okay, I'm done, kthxbai. Smart post. Me gusta.

[bookpire.livejournal.com]

say, don't you make videos on youtube? 8o I think I've seen your name before.

Also yeh, I've notice there seems to be this hate on feminine things in alot of the books I dislike, or the heroine will want their cake and eat it too which can be even more annoying 8/ more so when shes doing things she looks down on other women for doing.

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do Snark Theater, if you've ever heard of that. It's sarcastic reviews of the Anita Blake novels, starting with Narcissus in Chains.

Agreed. I can't stand protags who hate on either side--the tomboys or the girly girls. There's a happy medium that these authors seem to skip right over. I'm happy people are putting positive examples of non-prejudiced heroines in the comments. I want to read some of these novels just to remember there's still hope.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

You can see this toxic pattern replicated from Twilight right into that horrid 50 Shades trilogy. I'll have to try some of the things recommended here though. I could definitely use a break from all of these blonde hating female protags.

[ardeth30.livejournal.com]

Well, since the 50 Shades trilogy was originally Twilight fanfic (IIRC) that's not a surprise.:p

[ardeth30.livejournal.com]

I see Women of the Otherworld has already-but not the young adult series associated with it. She's got two trilogies (Darkest Powers and Darkness Rising) that take place along side the Women of the Otherworld series; if I remember right those two trilogies are part of a larger series made of 4 trilogies. But I read that years ago and possibly got it mixed up with other books.

The Mercy Thompson series and the Alpha and Omega series (both take place in the same world) are pretty good.