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dolorosa_12Day Twenty-Five: Favourite mother/daughter and/or sister relationship
Lorelai and Rory Gilmore (Gilmore Girls) and Cat and Bee Hassi Barahal (Spiritwalker trilogy, Kate Elliott)
I was really looking forward to today's question, as it is a subject very dear to my heart. I come from a very matriarchal family, have a close relationship with my mother and sister, and generally feel that families like mine don't get much in the way of representation. I want more stories where relationships between mothers and daughters are centred, and I want more stories about sisters who are close rather than antagonistic.
I like both the stories mentioned above because they show women who are very different from one another, but who are extremely close and understand each other well in spite of those differences. I also like that all four women deal with adversity through a combination of wit, empathy and a talent for reading other people and working out what they want. Lorelai and Rory talk at a mile a minute, barrelling through conversations at such a rate that their interlocutors are left baffled in the wake of pop culture references, in-jokes and wordplay. They don't talk like me, and yet they talk like my family, where we can sometimes lapse into our own language, full of indecipherable references, nicknames and reminiscences.
Cat and Bee are thrust into much more dangerous situations, and they handle them with grace and courage, gathering allies and winning people over with their intelligence, pragmatism and clear-headedness. Just as Rory and Lorelai are the most important people in each others' lives, Cat and Bee would defend each other to the death, and it's very refreshing to me to see a sisterly bond written as the most important relationship in these women's lives. (Technically Cat and Bee are cousins by adoption, but they were raised together by the same parents and so their relationship is like that of two sisters.)
One thing that I have always believed — and that this meme is causing me to believe more strongly — is that good stories about women cannot contain only one woman. She can be flawlessly written, a deeply interesting person, and the centre of her own story, but if she doesn't have meaningful connections with other women, I'm not interested. (Hi, Pacific Rim!) That's not what being a woman feels like to me. I have a mother, sisters, female cousins, aunts and great-aunts, and until recently, a living grandmother. I have close female friends all over the world, I have female colleagues and mentors. I also have a lot of men in my life, and my relationships with them are meaningful and important, but they are only half of my story.
That's why this question, and this meme more generally, matter to me. I'm interested in stories because I'm interested in people and the connections they forge, and I'm interested in women and the various types of relationships they experience. I need more stories about sisters, mothers, and daughters, because these are the stories in which I see my own life reflected.
Day Twenty-Six: Favourite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)
Day Twenty-Seven: A female character you have extensive personal canon for
Day Twenty-Eight: Favourite female writer (television, books, movies, etc.)
Day Twenty-Nine: A female-centric fic rec
Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!
Lorelai and Rory Gilmore (Gilmore Girls) and Cat and Bee Hassi Barahal (Spiritwalker trilogy, Kate Elliott)
I was really looking forward to today's question, as it is a subject very dear to my heart. I come from a very matriarchal family, have a close relationship with my mother and sister, and generally feel that families like mine don't get much in the way of representation. I want more stories where relationships between mothers and daughters are centred, and I want more stories about sisters who are close rather than antagonistic.
I like both the stories mentioned above because they show women who are very different from one another, but who are extremely close and understand each other well in spite of those differences. I also like that all four women deal with adversity through a combination of wit, empathy and a talent for reading other people and working out what they want. Lorelai and Rory talk at a mile a minute, barrelling through conversations at such a rate that their interlocutors are left baffled in the wake of pop culture references, in-jokes and wordplay. They don't talk like me, and yet they talk like my family, where we can sometimes lapse into our own language, full of indecipherable references, nicknames and reminiscences.
Cat and Bee are thrust into much more dangerous situations, and they handle them with grace and courage, gathering allies and winning people over with their intelligence, pragmatism and clear-headedness. Just as Rory and Lorelai are the most important people in each others' lives, Cat and Bee would defend each other to the death, and it's very refreshing to me to see a sisterly bond written as the most important relationship in these women's lives. (Technically Cat and Bee are cousins by adoption, but they were raised together by the same parents and so their relationship is like that of two sisters.)
One thing that I have always believed — and that this meme is causing me to believe more strongly — is that good stories about women cannot contain only one woman. She can be flawlessly written, a deeply interesting person, and the centre of her own story, but if she doesn't have meaningful connections with other women, I'm not interested. (Hi, Pacific Rim!) That's not what being a woman feels like to me. I have a mother, sisters, female cousins, aunts and great-aunts, and until recently, a living grandmother. I have close female friends all over the world, I have female colleagues and mentors. I also have a lot of men in my life, and my relationships with them are meaningful and important, but they are only half of my story.
That's why this question, and this meme more generally, matter to me. I'm interested in stories because I'm interested in people and the connections they forge, and I'm interested in women and the various types of relationships they experience. I need more stories about sisters, mothers, and daughters, because these are the stories in which I see my own life reflected.
Day Twenty-Six: Favourite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)
Day Twenty-Seven: A female character you have extensive personal canon for
Day Twenty-Eight: Favourite female writer (television, books, movies, etc.)
Day Twenty-Nine: A female-centric fic rec
Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!
