Female Besties?

Argh, I HATE that whole ‘follow your heart!’ trope thing. I mean, sometimes it’s nice to watch The Heroine be all inspiring and Doing The Right Thing because she’s just so Good she can’t possibly do anything else, but–

…look, I’m not that kind of girl. I’m actually pretty unemotional, very logical. And I get tired of feeling like I’m somehow deficient because my brain answers faster than my heart.

Here’s a few…

Raven and Starfire from ‘Teen Titans’: The episode ‘Switched’ explores their differences in depth and their helping to understand each other as they try to save their team mates (all guys).

Azula, Mai and Ty Lee from ‘Avatar; The Last Airbender’: The Princess of the Fire Nation and her two childhood friends, whom she views more as ‘tools’ than anything else. This is all before Mai and Ty Lee’s Heel-Face turn, where Mai turns on Azula to save Prince Zuko’s life and Ty Lee in turn save Mai from Azula’s wrath.

Kisara and Freya from ‘Histories Strongest Disciple Kenichi’. It’s a martial arts manga devoted mostly to guys and YES, there is considerable fan service. But there are some KICK-ASS female fighters. They are NOT simply eye-candy, but smart, brave and fearless gals. Kisara and Freya are the focus here.

They can best be described as ‘Master’ and ‘Disciple’, despite both being teens (albeit, Freya is older). Both start out as part of a gang called Ragnarok, of which Freya is on of the top three fighters. Kisara is one of Freya’s ‘Valkyries’ and she looks up to and admires Freya. She uses and weapon (a staff) and Kisara uses Tae Kwon Do. To make a long story short, Kisara refuses to use a weapon like Freya does, who believe it’s the only way for a woman to be equal to a man in a fight. Kisara doesn’t believe this (and proves it) and eventually leaves the Valkyries. Later, Freya and Kisara have a one-on-one match, with Kisara emerging the victor (after breaking Freya’s staff).

That’s all I can think of so far.

Word. And being told that somehow logic is inferior and we must always react emotionally. Which is counter to the idea of civilization in the first place. I mean, my emotions are telling to punch that guy in the face, but my brain is telling me he’s a living being who doesn’t deserve bodily assault.

I submit Hazel and Foxglove, supporting characters in The Sandman and main characters in the spinoff Death: The Time of your Life. Sandman in general offers a number of female buddy groups – Death and Delirium, Chantal and Zelda, Barbie and Wanda, Rose and Carla, the Triple Goddesses if we don’t count just pairs – but they stand out as the most realized, with the most adorably real dysfunctional relationship. And they certainly don’t spend a lot of time talking about men in in their lives; it takes their baby boy dying and being supernaturally revived for them to give him any more than a passing mention.

Another Sandman spinoff, Lucifer, also gives us the pair of Mazikeen and Beatrice. While at times abusive and hinted at being somewhat sadomasochistic, there’s clearly a lot of love between them. On the downside, their relationship doesn’t take up a lot of pages in the eleven volume series, but conversely its handled with excellent subtlety – writer Mike Carey tackles homosexuality, polyamory, prostitution and the forbidden love between a Lilim and a daughter of Eve at the same time without making any spectacle out of it.

Moving to another continent, Battle Angel Alita holds some surprises for a comic targeted and tailored specifically for 40-45 year old male Japanese office workers. The titular Alita and Lou Collins work together for many years, as equal from the start as two people can be when one toils on the ground and the other looks down from a paradisaical city high in the sky, and later on far closer. Although they do have a distinctly uneven amount of screen time, with Lou spending the first several books not existing and later being a disembodied brain in need of rescue.

So few options to grasp at. . .

I don’t watch much TV. Nostalgia Chick and Nella come to mind. Every other pair I can think of are characters in tabletop roleplaying games I play with friends. I suppose one way to avoid the media is to create our own stories like that.

The only two teenaged firebenders I can think off are Azula and Zuko, and they’re brother and sister. If you mean Mai and Ty Lee, they’re nonbenders, and really don’t go in for the controlling of boys. Mai’s a little hung up on Zuko and Ty Lee just likes attention. Now if you mean Ty Lee and Azula, it’s made pretty clear that Azula needs to control everybody, and fails at social interaction that falls outside that pattern. Ty Lee, who is there because Azula made it clear she would hurt people Ty Lee felt responsible for until she went with her, tries and fails to teach her to flirt.

From Six Feet Under, Ruth and Bettina.

Brenda and Claire – they’re sisters in law, but support one another.

I forget what her name was, but in the final season Brenda worked with a woman who became a good friend. Since I can’t remember her name, it probably doesn’t count.

Brandy:
Someone waaaay up at the top of the comments wrote that she didn’t know any women that didn’t have a bestie.I’m a woman who has never had a‘bestie’ relationship.

That was me. I apologize if I made you feel excluded or slighted; I was trying to draw from my own experience to show that this is a relationship that is very common in real life and yet scarce in fiction. (Although now, looking through this blossoming comment thread, I now think it’s less scarce than I did before. ^_^ )

Also, regarding Bones, I have never seen Brennan actually consider ‘giving the big guy a chance’.She considers the reasons why other people have those beliefs, she tries to understand the beliefs.I would not say she is in any way a ‘straw-atheist’ (?) as one person said.She is open minded to other perspectives, she considers concepts that are things she may have not thought about before and creates her own opinion and perspective from the information.

Also me.

(A strawman argument is when you put fake arguments in your opponent’s mouth and “prove” how ridiculous they are, rather like winning a fight against a dummy made of straw instead of a living opponent. Example: “All homosexuals want to have sex with children. Raping children is evil. Therefore, homosexuality is evil.” Since your premise about what your opposition wants is wrong, you haven’t proven anything about them.)

Since I only watched the first season and a half, I will bow to your expertise in Brennan’s portrayal overall. My specific problem with the Christmas episode, though, was the way the interactions between Brennan and Booth were framed. Booth tracking her down to tell her that she should “give the big guy a chance” was portrayed as reasonable instead of intrusive and disrespectful. Brennan defends her beliefs, but she doesn’t try to convert Booth. It’s a one sided discussion where the atheist needs to learn a lesson about Christmas joy and “being open minded” (in scare quotes because telling other people they’re close minded for not agreeing with you is insulting at best).

I didn’t like the way Brennan quietly leaving the group and allowing them to celebrate Christmas together was shown as pushing her religion on other people. Other peoples’ desires for her to conform to their expectations should not be Brennan’s responsibility. I didn’t like how her distaste for the holiday was the result of traumatizing childhood memories, an emotional reason, instead of any of a number of logical reasons such as the religious overtones or the rampant materialism and greed. That implies that disliking Christmas is a problem that needs to be fixed instead of a perfectly legitimate opinion.

And that, I think, is what an atheist does; they ask questions and actually consider the answers and how it fits for them.

I think that’s equally applicable to followers of all religions (or the lack thereof).

As an agnostic/sorta atheistic, I will ask questions when I’m actually interested. Other people volunteering unsolicited information about their beliefs is often more harassing than helpful. Many of these religious beliefs I have heard justified multiple times; Would-Be Converter #46 is not going to contribute anything new to my life, and their inability to respect my judgment is just going to irritate me.

Although “give the big guy upstairs a chance” may honestly be the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard, especially given that it was addressed to a scientist, a profession based on the logical examination of evidence. There is nothing in that statement that provides any sort of support; I might as well give unicorns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster a chance.

The only thing that comes to mind that’s not yet posted is Nanoha and Fate from the various Lyrical Nanoha series. They easily pass [1] and [2] (there really aren’t any significant men in the show at all to begin with, so…), and [3]. Fate is originally introduced as a ‘dark rival’-type character to Nanoha, and their becoming friends is one of the major plot elements of the first series. For [4] and [5], I suppose a lot of what’s shown involves them fighting together. I think they come off as pretty equal, too; around the end of the first series, Fate says something like “I’ll save you next time,” which does happen at the start of the next season. I think that this sort of thing happens fairly often in ‘magical girl’ series, but this is one of the examples I know.

I also think that it goes beyond friendship at some point. Although this is never stated outright, it seems that way to many of the show’s fans [and in the third season, they start sleeping in the same bed - it's certainly farther than some canon straight couples in anime get (yes, Keiichi and Belldandy, I'm looking at you)]. Several of the people who work on the show (including the original Japanese voices for the characters) think so too.

I should mention as a slight caution that there are some questionable transformation scenes, particularly in the first two series where the case is underage. Secondly, does this qualify as “media oriented towards adults” or not? I think so, as generally what I read is that the intended audience was the subset of the ‘magical girl’ audience which are adult males, but I’m not that good at judging it for myself (and since it was produced in a different society it makes it more difficult).

Nathanael:
Casey,

Utena lends itself to a disturbing number of different readings because it gets quite incomprehensible.(I am fond of Chiho Saito’s comment that “The revolution had already happened in Mr. Inohara’s head”)

Er…my ONLY QUALM (‘cuz I’m a stickler) is that it’s Mr. Ikuhara, not Inohara…and I do love his attitude towards all the analysis of Utena which basically amounts to “you can interpret it however you like, I just love lesbians.”

Hmmm. Kahlan and Cara from Legend Of The Seeker. They essentially start out as enemies forced to work on the same team, because until recently Cara was working for the bad guy, and she also killed Kahlan’s sister under orders, so there are some issues there. But Kahlan slowly comes to trust Cara, and to see that she was a victim of the Big Bad in her own way, and now genuinely remoseful, while Cara comes to see that feelings are not a sign of weakness, and they both end up appreciating, helping, and caring for one another.

Myka and Claudia from Warehouse 13 have a wonderful friendship, and I’m so pleased that we’ve gotten to see more of them interacting in Season 2. Claudia clearly admires and respects Myka a lot, I think probably more than she does anyone else in the cast, and Myka adorably alternates between being the cool older sister-type (teasing Pete together, agreeing to teach Claudia martial arts, high fiving at the end of For The Team) and mom-like concern. Oh, and one of the things the show does well in general is throwing in a bunch of cute little details – like Myka’s super proud grin in the background when Claudia says she knocked out Todd using “that arm thing you taught me.”

The Descent had some good ones. I don’t know if Juno and Sarah can qualify (like Heavenly Creatures, they would most definitely be a negative friendship anyway) because Juno did have an affair with Sarah’s husband before he died. Although that was just one of many things Juno did, and not even the worst. But they had quite an interesting relationship, where Juno keeps accidently hurting Sarah or acting selfishly, and then clumsily attempting to make up for it and making everything worse. And then it ends really badly. Anyway, I also really liked Sarah and Beth, and Becca and Sam, which were both much more positive, healthy relationships. Beth’s pretty much Sarah’s pillar of support after Sarah’s family died in a car crash, and the level of caring and kindness beneath the snarky comic-relief exterior is lovely. Sarah pays her back in a big, if rather tragic, way too, and their last scene together is possibly the most heartbreaking in the movie. Becca and Sam were mostly in the background, but I really enjoyed their dynamic all the same. See, Becca’s very much the protective safety-oriented take-care-of-everyone leader-type already, but especially so when it comes to Sam, her younger sister. And Sam is affectionate, but finds her sibling basically parenting her all the time to be pretty annoying too, as you would. I liked that they clearly had a good relationship in spite of the problem, and that they didn’t need to be spotlighted to accomplish this.