One Girl Revolution

[redbrunja]

gacked from droiche:

 Post a comment, and I'll give you a top 5 to provide. It could be anything.

Top 5 Fictional Ladies I Admire

1.) Iwaya Sumire, Tramps Like Us

2.) Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, Avatar: The Last Airbender

3.) Kusanagi Motoko, Ghost In The Shell

4.) Alanna of Tortall, Alanna: The First Adventure

5.) Eddi McCandry, War for the Oaks

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* Hit me!

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Top five het romances.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Well, given my tastes, it's inevitable that none of these are going to be anything that's normally shelved in the "Romance" section! ;)

1. Mara and Sheftu from Mara, Daughter of the Nile (http://www.amazon.com/Mara-Daughter-Puffin-Story-Books/dp/0140319298). YA, and YA written in the 1950s, so it's really pretty chaste, the action never goes any further than some swoony kisses; but this was I think the first love story that really, really clicked with me as a young girl, and that was *plenty* of action at the time. The more I think about it, the more it seems likely that this is really one of my ur-relationship texts that had me imprinting on patterns that I see in a lot of more recent favorites: the witty verbal sparring between parties; the trust issues (not quite full-fledged enemies-as-lovers, but for a while there Mara is secretly playing two sides against each other for her own ends, until with further experience she sees the corruption of one side and whole-heartedly throws her lot in with the other, at risk to herself); the attraction that may be sparked by looks, but is ultimately based on mutual respect for wit and bravery and strength of character; and both parties having complementary strengths and skills and getting to save each other's bacon at critical points in the story. (Also, that final scene...um, did you read it yet? Don't want to spoil you if not, so suffice it to say that a big bit at the end may be what ultimately kinked me hard for both hurt/comfort and "character goes ballistic when love interest is hurt by baddies" scenes...)

2. Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey, various Dorothy Sayers mysteries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Vane). This is another one of those really formative stories for me, and what probably left me with such a serious weakness for romances that are truly passions of the mind...and UST, for that matter, as theirs is a very slow, indirect courtship that's drawn out for years. Gallons of trust issues as well, although on a more personal level as Harriet's been badly burned by love before, and given both the era, and her own prior bad experiences, is understandably dubious that a man could truly respect a woman as his intellectual equal, or welcome such a bluestocking as a wife.

3. Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlander_(novel)) books. I avoided picking up this series for years, despite seeing it around all the time, because it was giving off romance-novel vibes, but finally saw enough reviews from folks who weren't fans of conventional romances that I finally took a chance, and was very pleasantly surprised. I love, love, love how it reverses so many of the tiresome tropes by having Claire be the one who's older and sexually experienced and Jamie be the young virgin; I love what a great partnership they have, with mutually complementary skills and strengths and knowledge -- this isn't one of those cases where "healer" means "token helpless girl who has to get rescued all the time by fighters". Claire and Jamie each get chances to rescue each other or fight for each other in their own ways. And while the later books as a whole just aren't as satisfying to me for various reasons, one thing that I do love is that they've consistently shown Jamie and Claire as still being passionate about each other; it's far too common to see older characters, especially ones who are parents and/or in a long-term marriage, be just totally desexualized, and that's very refreshingly NOT the case here.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

4. Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel La Motte, A.S. Byatt's Possession (http://www.amazon.com/Possession-Romance-S-Byatt/dp/0679735909). It's a tragically ill-starred relationship, which isn't generally a deal-breaker for me, and it's a double infidelity (Ash is married, La Motte is in a closeted lesbian relationship), which typically is a sticking point -- but the passion-of-the-mind aspect, which is absolutely central here as it's a relationship built on correspondence about writing, is strong enough to outweigh that squick. (It probably helps a lot that it's presented as a sort of madness, both parties deliberately cut it off after a time to try to prevent any pain to their original partners, and there are still all sorts of unhappy consequences anyway...) I'd also list the parallel modern relationship between Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey here -- it's so inextricably tied in to the Victorian story line that I can't really list it on its own, and while it's also very much an intellectual passion, the component of physical attraction is more immediate as they're working together in person, whereas the Ash/La Motte relationship is, other than their lost weekend together, purely a matter of correspondence...

5. Lian Nichang and Zhuo Yi-Hang, The Bride With White Hair (http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/bride_with_white_hair.htm). Epic tragic romance that hits oh so many of my pet kinks and tropes. Enemies as lovers, and trust issues by the bucketful! Books usually get me much, much more strongly than visual media, but there's just something special about this film. Brigitte Lin and Leslie Cheung were at the top of their game, the chemistry is great and the love scenes are astonishingly sensual for the time and genre.

Honorable mentions to Robin of Loxley and Lady Marion in the 1980s UK television series Robin of Sherwood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_of_Sherwood), Sarah and Jareth in Labyrinth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_(film)), Túrin and Níniel/Nienor from J.R.R. Tolkien (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BArin_Turambar), Amelia and Emerson in Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody mysteries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Peabody), and Oscar and André (Oscar is a girl, honest!) in The Rose of Versailles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rose_of_Versailles)...

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for these.

Shamelfully, when you posted this, I had not yet even started reading 'Mara', (I swear, my to-read pile is insane. Not to your standards, but to mine...) but prompted by this, I did. And I have to say, I REALLY like Mara. Although I'm sad that the queen is going to end up being evil - I have a soft spot for the Egyptian queens who said, 'fuck it, I'm ruling' and did.