For some reason, everybody hates female childhood friends. They are deemed to be a little bit sexist, as they are always a bit in the shadow of the male protagonist.

Now this status is easily explained as RPG, like many genres for that matter, originated in a time that female emancipation was still in a very early stage, so females were still deemed inferior to males in general back then. Gaming is also considered a man's world, and the male players would therefore identify themselves with the male hero....

Now this makes female childhood friends also annoying in their behavior, as many boys deem girls annoying for several reasons. And the typical cliché characteristics of female childhood friends come forth from these views, and the outdated views on women in general.

• The female childhood friend is quite often far more mature than the main protagonist. This makes her very prudent to bust the hero's over-excitement-bubble many times and put him back with his feet on the ground. The main protagonist quite often hates that.

• It's not that the female childhood friend is really trying to hold him back. Mostly she is supportive of his ambitions, but she merely tries to make him be realistic.

• Either the female childhood friend thinks she's merely slowing the hero down, or she thinks the hero can't do without her. There seems to be no way in between.

• Very often, she's secretly in love with the main protagonist, but doesn't dare to express her feelings. Quite often, she does a very poor job hiding it, making her feelings very obvious. Now the protagonist himself is mostly completely ignorant of the friend's affections, sometimes hurting her due to not very subtle remarks or actions. This also comes with the girl being more mature than the boy, and thus the girl sooner being into sexual orientation than the boy (which is by the way based on reality, as girls do mature quicker than boys). It is however very different if the protagonist and his female childhood friend will actually end up in a relationship or not.

None of these rules are written in stone, and actually there are even female childhood friends that fit none of these rules. And I shall list a few whofollow the rules and a few who break these rules.

Luna - Lunar Silver Star Story

Luna is the female childhood friend of main protagonist Alex, and she fits nearly ALL the rules I described above, still the story line is better than these clichés imply. Luna is a kind of a foster-sister as Luna was raised as an orphan by Alex' parents. She is clearly not as big a fan of Dragonmaster Dyne, whom Alex idolizes, yet she does seem supportive of his ambition to follow in Dyne's footsteps. She is however concerned for his well-being so she keeps him on the ground when he goes too far. When she gets mad she's downright horrible and she's not afraid to scold Alex, nor anybody else for that matter, yet she does appear to be forgiving on anybody. Now clichés also apply to her when she gets herself kidnapped by the Magic Emperor and the game from that point circling about rescuing her, however I already said it, the story is deeper than the clichés imply.

Ruby - Lunar: Eternal Blue

Ruby is downright terrible. She's extremely arrogant and jealous. She has been with Hiro since he was an infant. Hiro is however only interested in her as a good friend and not as a lover. Ruby keeps insisting otherwise though, also a bit blinded to see that romance between her and Hiro is impossible due to her being a dragon and Hiro being a human. Hiro will eventually fall in love with Lucia, and although she does support Hiro in his quest to get Lucia safely to the holy city of Pentagullia, she keeps insisting that Lucia should not get any ideas. Eventually she'll find a male dragon and get affections from him, and then her jealousy over Lucia disappears and then she becomes a lot more bearable.

Sue - Grandia

Sue fills some of the rules of the typical female childhood friend, but not all of them. The picture of her makes her proudly show "the legendary armor" (which is just an apron, and if you play the game you'll find out soon enough what this is all about, as it's the first event of the game in which we see her). Sue is Justin's childhood friend. Some horrors in her past made her mature too quickly making her too mature for her age. She desperately tries to keep up with Justin, which will eventually get to her. She's pretty dominant, sometimes even bossy, and tries to act a bit like she's his mother. Justin is sometimes a bit overenthusiatic and Sue does keep him on the ground. Where she is bit different is the fact that she has no romantic interest in Justin at all, and only regards him as a good friend, or maybe as a kind of brother. Sue is the first to deduce that Justin is actually in love with Feena who joins the party later, and that Feena returns those affections, and she even teases the two about it.

Lucca - Chrono Trigger

Now Lucca fills nearly none of the "rules" I set above. Yet she's a female, and she is the childhood friend of main protagonist Crono.

Lucca is a technician and an extremely good one at that. She's also very loyal and supportive to Crono, as evidenced when she risks her life to get Crono out of prison. Although she's very extremely intelligent, she does not really show herself more mature than Crono, nor is she the one to keep Crono on the ground. She completely treats Crono as an equal, and since neither of them show a romantic interest in the other, they can show that equality even more.

Now, I suspect this is a kind of result of a horrible translation (which was at the time Chrono Trigger was released in rather a rule than an exception), but she does call Marle a "cutie" in a rather suggestive way, upon their first meeting, which may slightly imply Lucca to be a lesbian and feeling a bit attracted to Marle. However the game never elaborates any further on this possibility, and especially on the views on homosexuality in general back in the day, I deem the possibility of a bad translation more likely. I also deem it possible Lucca called Marle a "cutie" in order to tease Crono a bit for "having found himself a girl-friend", slightly hinting to the fact that Crono and Marle would in one of the good endings of the game marry and even have children.

Rebecca Streisand - Wild Arms 5

Rebecca is the childhood friend of main protagonist Dean Stark, and yes, she does fit the entire cliché pattern of the female childhood friend very well. Although Rebecca can be very annoying and immature over the entire course of the story, she can when she really needs to put Dean back on track show more maturity and wisdom and she manages pretty well to bring Dean back to reason most of the times, yet his enthusiasm and his motto that you can do anything as long as you don't give up, does inspire her, so it should be said, she actually *is* learning a lot from Dean too.

Now Rebecca appears already slight far in sexual orientation, yet she feels embarrassed to show that. This is evidenced when Dean finds her erotic poems and she found out he read a few lines of them. Although it's pretty normal for a girl her age to have fantasies like that, but taboos, eh?

Rebecca does also take note that when Avril Vent Fleur enters the party that Avril does also have affections for Dean, and she's very extremely jealous about that. Yet she does accept Avril as a friend.

Although she'd rather die than to admit she's in love with Dean, everybody already deduced her feelings towards him... except Dean himself, who is totally ignorant about Rebecca's feelings, as well as Avril's feelings for that matter. I cannot really say if Dean does not find the two ladies unattractive. It's clear that Dean is sexually not yet mature enough to return their affections, much to Rebecca's annoyance, often resulting her to call Dean "insensitive". Dean's actions as a friend in general show that Dean is pretty sensitive, actually, especially when the going gets tough. Ah, I guess Rebecca is just not fully in control of her own emotions and feelings... Perhaps an adult woman should give her some guidance....

Tifa Lockhart - Final Fantasy VII

Now Tifa appears a bit odd in this list, but yes, she and Cloud do know each other from their childhood. Now the story line filled up with unclarities and mistranslations, but I am to understand that it was Tifa who convinced Barret to hire Cloud for the course of AVALANCHE.

A few flashback show Tifa and Cloud as teens, in which it appears clear that Tifa has romantic feelings for Cloud. She wanted him to promise to save her life someday as she wanted to experience what it's like to be saved by the man you love.

A promise Cloud eventually upheld, when he saved her from Sephiroth's destructive rage in a Mako reactor, although he was disguised at the time (as he couldn't face her, as he was ashamed he was not the soldier he wanted to be), so Tifa never knew until it was revealed much later it was actually him who carried her out of that reactor.

Now Cloud even makes his own version of events in the past and Tifa knows that Cloud's story is in essence true, but that some vital parts were lies, particularly Cloud's role in the story. She does however not contradict him out of fear of losing him or embarrassing him.

When Aerith comes into the game who also feels attracted to Cloud, we can see Tifa act jealously, however Aerith does not seem interested in taking Cloud away from Tifa, but rather into forming a love triangle. Something Tifa does not appear to be entirely happy with. Yet as Aerith does show pretty heroic and selfless, most of all when she deliberately gets herself kidnapped in order to save Barret's daughter Marlène, Aerith does seem to demand Tifa's respect. Tifa is also shown pretty emotional when Aerith gets herself murdered, and if you have her in your party during the event, you can see Tifa petting Aerith's head as her last greeting to her.

What makes Tifa, stand out a bit could be because she appears a bit older than the others in this list and her love story with Cloud being a bit more mature than the other ones, and also by far more complicated. Tifa does also show herself more than the others as an independent woman who is very well able to claim her place among men, and the men even accepting that from here without question. We can see she does allow Barret to come pretty close to her though, but it is very clear she only regards him as a friend and that his feelings towards her are the same. Cloud is also not the super-enthusiatic protagonist. He is actually very cynical and rude. Still Tifa does fulfill the clichés as she does love and care for Cloud, and she actually softens Cloud's cold views on things a bit, and such Cloud's facade of not giving a shit about the world being softened up by Tifa (and also by Aerith) does make her fulfill the role of the girl who keeps the boy's feet on the ground.