And another thing...

[ivy03]

Another thing I've been turning over in my head a lot lately. I am deeply enjoying The Musketeers on BBCA. The Three Musketeers was one of my first favorite books. I adored it as a preteen. I so wanted to be a musketeer. In high school, at a carnival, there was a photo booth guy that would photoshop your face onto whatever fictional character you

Comments

[momerath4]

Did I ever tell you how much I hated rap sessions? And those cutesy little exercises we did that involved going around the circle and saying gooey things about everybody in the group? It felt to me like we were playing right into a stereotype of how a women's a cappella group should be.

Tamora Pierce has done a lot with female warrior protagonists in the realm of YA fantasy. There are parts in her books where women who are friends fight alongside each other, and the friendship isn't portrayed in gooey sentimental terms. But if you're looking for stories that focus on organized groups of female warriors with the friendship as a major theme, then yeah, it seems like there is a hole in the literature.

[jethrien]

Jim Hines tries with The Stepsister Scheme, but I was kind of meh.

[ivy03]

I enjoy Jim Hines' series of gender flipped book cover photos, but I've never felt particularly drawn to any of his books (and you seem to be meh about him a lot).

The problem with a request like this is that, of course, even if a book/show has a group of female warriors, there's no guarantee I'll even like it. It's just that with men, I'm spoiled for choice. And with women...I have Xena. And that's kind of it.

[jethrien]

I really liked Libriomancer, just not the other stuff so much.

[bigscary]

Anime.

[bigscary]

I suppose I should qualify this. A lot of them are very male-gazey. Watch BGC (either). Do not watch Strike Witches. Repeat DO NOT WATCH STRIKE WITCHES.
Do watch Sailor Moon.

[ivy03]

Now this makes me want to watch Strike Witches. (Which I've never heard of.)

[xannoside]

By BGC, he means Bubblegum Crisis.

[natashasolten]

What immediately comes to mind is Xena (though it's been years) wherein I recall female and male bodies/cleavage were treated quite equally and the "warrior" friendship was tight and NOT emotionally giggly.

[ivy03]

I was actually thinking about Xena today. Not just for Xena and Gabrielle--though Xena is a classic clam, which is very rare in characterization for a woman (and rampant for men). But also for the Amazons. They were a society of warrior women shown to have politics and power struggles and loyalties and friendships and didn't spend their time passing around candles and saying complimentary things about each other. They were sexualized, but as you say, Xena sexualized EVERYBODY. It was equal opportunity ogling.

Compare this to the Amazons in the pilot of Hercules, which were just world of no.

[trinityvixen]

Not quite on the point you want, but I have to chime in with Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett. It's a stand-alone novel within his Discworld books, so you don't need to know everything else about the series to read it. It's about a woman who goes off in search of a boy who went to war by pretending to be a boy going off to war, so there's a lot of deconstruction of what it means to be "manly." "Manliness" takes many forms for a woman literally trying to pass as a man, to form the bonds a man would form with other men (especially in a war setting), and how being perceived as a man actually changes her approach or appreciation of a lot of things. I cannot recommend it enough for playing with the tropes you love while still involving women.