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I Dream of Strong Heroines

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Let me start off this post by saying you know what I mean when I say “strong heroines”. I realize it’s not the best term: a heroine, by definition, is someone we look up to and seek to emulate. “Strong” as a descriptor seems both redundant and lazy somehow. When I say I’ve always been attracted to strong heroines–I mean the female characters that star in their own stories, who pull me into their adventures and make me long for their strength, their no-nonsense attitudes, their ability to Get The Job Done. 

They are smart, tough, and competent. They are all beautiful in their own way, as varied as their own backgrounds. They kick-ass. They make me want to be better than I am, to reach my full potential and more.

Growing up, it wasn’t always easy to find heroines in my preferred books and stories. Women frequently played a secondary–sometimes even tertiary–role in murder mysteries or sci-fiction. They were often love interests at best, and victims at worst. Television programs frequently featured a Heroine of the Week, a guest actress to play the part of the woman who is placed in jeopardy (all too-often by refusing the advice and help of the male hero) so that she can be conveniently rescued by said hero. I confess, I ate up these shows in the eighties. Not because I identified with the female characters in them, but because I identified with the men. Many of the shows I adored back then, I find uncomfortable to re-watch today. Men had the best roles, the best lines, got to do the fun things. I accepted that it was men who went on adventures and the women largely stayed home. Eowyn aside, the Fellowship of the Ring was a boys club.

But when I found a heroine I could admire, I grabbed on with both hands, even if the source material was a little problematic. Lessa from Dragonflight. Princess Leia. Harriet Vane from the Lord Peter Wimsey books. I wanted to be Laura Holt from Remington Steele. I devoured the Honor Harrington books by David Weber. Sam Carter in Stargate might have been ‘one of the boys’ but she was the scientist that was smarter than everyone else on team SG-1.

I cheered when Drew Barrymore’s Cinderella outsmarted the gypsies in this scene from Ever After.

 

It was simply brilliant–as was the scene at the end when the Prince rushes up as she’s leaving the castle. When she asks him why he’s there, he confesses he’s come to rescue her–only she’s already rescued herself.

This trend of loving powerful heroines continues today. I fell hard for Elsa in Frozen. I am a HUGE Peggy Carter fan (hence the T-shirt above). I love Phryne Fisher so much that I supported the crowdfunding for Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears. I love these ladies for their strength, their beauty, their abilities. I wish I had their confidence, their competence, their resilience. 

I am sadly aware I fall far short of their standards.

Recently, I’ve had a bit of a health scare. It’s rattled me hard, and while my condition is imminently treatable, I’m still in adjusting to both the medication and the notion that I need medication. More than anything, there is a disconnect between accepting that this is my new normal when it doesn’t fit with my mental image of who I am. It’s not part of a kick-ass heroine’s backstory.

Or is it?

Perhaps my definition of what makes a kick-ass heroine needs to evolve. Maybe she isn’t the woman who takes out the bad guys with a single punch, or patches a Stargate on the fly, or delivers a snappy one-liner while saving the world.

Maybe she’s the woman who works ten to twelve hour shifts, only to come home and take care of her family. Maybe she’s the cornerstone in a multi-generational household, the one that everyone looks to in order to make things right. Perhaps the very fact she’s still here, still trying, and still alive is a major achievement in itself.

Maybe she’s the one who speaks up even though her voice is shaking. The one who says, “No, that isn’t right.”

Being a kick-ass heroine isn’t just looking good in a catsuit, or solving multi-dimensional math equations while piloting a starship, or discussing with wit and erudition the dead body in the library. It’s both harder and easier than that.

It’s standing up for what you believe in, even when the rest of the world thinks you’re stupid for doing so.

There are more of us out there than you think. You’re more kick-ass than you think. Be your own hero.

The Art of Accepting Compliments

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My lilacs are at least twenty years old, having grown into enormous, rangy bushes that burst into lovely color every spring, filling the air around my house with their delicate scent. This is a photo taken last spring.The bushes were just starting to bud this year when a late April snow storm nipped them all. The buds all shriveled and died. The bushes themselves were damaged by the heavy, wet snow, with huge pieces breaking off and splintering down almost to the core.

I’ve been telling people this is a metaphor for my life lately. I’m only partly joking. The last 14 months of my life (oddly enough corresponding with the current Presidency, don’t think I haven’t noticed) have been very difficult. The damaged lilacs, just on the verge of blooming, seem very apt these days as a depiction of my life.

But recently I ran across a thread on Twitter that made me pause. It was about self-deprecation with respect to your writing, but this is something I struggle with in general:

 

I shared the tweet, adding my own comment, “Guilty. I’ve been digging that groove deeper every day of my life. The problem is self-praise sounds like bull sh*t to me. Gotta work on both issues.”

This resulted in one of my Twitter friends suggesting looking in a mirror every day and saying something nice to myself. We tweeted back and forth on the subject, but the truth is yesterday was a bad day in so many ways and my ability to believe I was anything other than a horrible human being and a talentless hack was nil. I wasn’t very encouraging or cheerful in response.

I’ve tried doing the positive affirmation thing. I even went so far once as to record a bunch of affirmations so I could listen to them daily in a kind of meditative state. I created a journal, lovingly decorated, where I could record my kick-ass affirmations too.

I make talismans for myself, like the I Know My Value bracelet (because I love the Peggy Carter quote so much) and my Persistence bracelet I got from MyIntent.org.

I do these things because every day I need to reverse the well-worn narrative that’s been playing in my head as long as I can remember–the one that I was taught so well I took over the lessons long after the original input ceased.

There’s a Facebook post that’s been circulating on my feed recently about Jim Carey and his self-belief in his comedic talent, even when he was shot down again and again in the early days. I find that kind of belief and persistence admirable, but I don’t understand how someone can have it. How someone can make themselves believe if the belief isn’t there in the first place.

There’s a great scene in the old Steve Martin movie Roxanne, where Martin’s Cyrano-type character Charlie is accosted in a bar by a jerk who attempts to insult him by calling him “Big Nose”. Charlie comes back with, “Is that all you’ve got?”

In the ensuing scene, Charlie insults himself with 20 better insults than the one he’s just received.

 

 

I confess, I have long identified with Charlie. I’ve always been of the mindset that you can’t say anything to hurt me because I’ve already said worse to myself. But at some point, what is a useful coping mechanism for getting through middle school becomes a chain around your legs that prevents you from getting what you want out of life.

The thing is, I’ve always been better at accepting insults than compliments. I don’t trust compliments. When someone compliments me out of the blue, I have a tendency to squint and think, “What do they want?” On the rare occasions a compliment comes my way, my response is always padded with qualifiers. Thank you, but this isn’t my best work. Thank you, but actually, I’ve gained weight. And so on.

I’m working on a conversation between characters in the current book about this very subject, where the heroine explains how difficult it is for her to believe compliments about her looks after growing up hearing how ugly she was. Because I think this is important. I think we need to stop running ourselves down–our appearance, the decisions we’ve made in life, our abilities, our intelligence–all of it. I was raised to believe self-deprecation was far more appropriate than arrogance, but the laughable thing is arrogance will never be one of my flaws. I’ll be lucky if I stretch up to reach a point of self-confidence.

And yet most days, it’s a struggle not to fall back into the old patterns. Probably because arrogance and ‘putting yourself forward’ were portrayed as something far uglier to me than believing in yourself. But I know the power of the mind. I know the things you tell yourself on a daily basis are the things that come true. Maybe you don’t look at yourself in the mirror and think how ugly/old/fat you are. But perhaps you tell yourself you don’t deserve that raise, or you aren’t that good a writer, or you’ll never get ahead, or bad things always happen to you. On the surface, these don’t seem like terrible things to say to yourself. You probably think they’re true. But are they really true or is it that your belief makes it so?

In the past week two compliments have come my way that I do trust because I trust the people who made them. The first came from a friend I’ve known since college, who is well-aware of my sensitivity toward aging. Out of the blue, she said, “I know you won’t believe me, but honestly, I can’t see any difference in your appearance now than ten years ago. It’s like you’ve stopped aging.”

Hahahahahaha. No seriously. I can see the changes, even if she can’t. But this friend isn’t prone to complimenting lightly just to do so, and I found myself oddly able to accept her kind words.

The second came last night. I’d had a horrible day to cap off an extremely stressful couple of weeks. Tearfully, I expressed to the SO that I wasn’t sure how much more I could take, given the past year. He had me sit down while he made dinner. He went all out–grilling steak kabobs with baked potatoes, and serving them with apple pie, salted caramel ice cream, and a bottle of Merlot. All my favorites.

And then he apologized for not realizing sooner I was struggling. “You just always seem so resilient.”

Resilient. I like that. I like to believe that’s true, and so it is easier for me to accept the compliment without any added ‘buts’. It also makes it easier for me to lift up my chin when the Next Bad Thing comes down the pike and say, “Yeah, I got this. I’m resilient.”

Those are the kinds of words–the ones I can believe in–that make it possible to undo some of the harm of a lifetime of negative self-chatter. 

Remember the lilac bush that isn’t blooming this year? The one that is such a perfect metaphor for my life right now?

I just took this picture just a few minutes ago.

Huh.

Well, what do you know?

 

 

A Little Writing Advice for 2018

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I don’t know about you guys, but I was glad to see the backside of 2017. In some ways, it was one of the most difficult years of my life. There was a lot of personal loss, and I finished out the year sick with a respiratory bug that has knocked me flat.

I just saw a tweet from George Wallace that read:

Sorry 2017. It’s not you, it’s me… Okay, fine, it’s you. Asshole.

It made me snort out loud. Yeah, that’s how I feel, 2017. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Yesterday was the first day I woke up without a fever and feeling remotely human in almost a week. Thank goodness I was off for the holidays! I began reflecting, as one does, over the past year. What I’d learned. What I would have done differently. How I intended to move forward into 2018.

I wasn’t yet coherent enough to put together a blog post. I just hammered out some thoughts on Twitter. Later, I thought it would be nice to turn them into a blog post, but I believe storify isn’t an option for Twitter threads any longer, so I decided to screencap them here instead.

I hope you find it useful. Here’s to a better 2018 for us all.

 

You Don’t Have to Wear All The Hats: The Indie Author’s Secret to Staying Sane

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I’ve worked with publishers and I’ve published on my own. One of the biggest differences between the two is how much work the publisher does on your behalf: cover art, editing, sending your book out to review sites and so on. There’s also the advantage of the built-in audience your publisher already has, the value of a larger group newsletter, as well as networking opportunities with other authors in the same publishing house. Sure, when you go indie, you retain more control over every little detail of your work. You get to set your production schedule, get to choose your cover artist, have the last word on editing, and receive a bigger share of the royalties. But there’s a reason publishers take the lion’s share of sales earned. 

You have to wear a lot of hats to be an indie author.

There are some people who love this. They relish having all the control. But there are others who are overwhelmed with spinning all the plates at once: finding a good cover artist and editor. Scouring the review sites to find ones that will accept your story. Lining up beta readers and ARC readers. Designing eye-catching graphics and running Facebook groups. Scheduling posts across the board to all your social media sites. Holding giveaways and writing guest blog posts. All the while working on the next release because we all know the next story is your best advertisement.

Where does anyone find the time to do all of this? Especially if you haven’t a freaking clue how to set up a newsletter or your attempts at  website design or graphics look as though a second grader created them?

The good news is you don’t have to wear all the hats. (Do you like my image above? It was from a Peggy Carter cosplay photo session I did last month 🙂 ) You are allowed to delegate.

The bad news is you might have to pay for that delegation.

Here’s my take on where you can and cannot skimp.

  1. Pay for an outstanding cover. No, seriously, you can’t let your BFF with Photoshop make your book cover unless he or she is a graphic artist and is looking to expand their portfolio. For one thing, you can get in a lot of trouble if your cover artist isn’t using royalty-free images (or images they purchased) that have been licensed for cover art. But even more importantly, if your cover art looks like it’s been done by an amateur, if it doesn’t match genre expectations, then readers will give your story a hard pass. People DO judge a book by its cover. And a crappy cover will sink even the most amazing story. You have a nano-second to catch a reader’s eye and make them take a second look with your story. Don’t blow it with a crappy cover.
  2. Pay for quality editing. Yes, good editing is expensive. There’s a reason for that. An editor doesn’t just correct your grammar and punctuation, though that is important. A good editor tells you when you use repetitive phrases or actions. When your story has continuity errors or plot holes you could drive a truck through. When you are writing outside genre expectations. A good editor meets deadlines and does more than give your story a cursory read. It may take time to find an editor that’s a good match for you, but when you find him or her, cling to them for all they are worth because they are worth their weight in gold. Readers will notice crappy editing and comment on it in their reviews.
  3. Formatting: if you can’t figure it out, pay someone to do it. There are lots of people out there who offer formatting for all the major outlets for reasonable fees. Nothing pisses a reader off more than weird formatting on their e-readers. Yes, there’s software out there like Calibre that will put your book in the different formats, but if you want elegant formatting–pretty chapter headers or reliable reading across the different file formats–pay someone. If you have to cut costs (and believe me, I’ve been there) teach yourself how to do it.
  4. Graphics: Social Media Posts and Teasers. This is a tough one for me because there are some great options out there for creating your own, like Canva. However, I simply don’t have the time right now to learn how to make sophisticated graphics. I can make a serviceable image, but an elegant one? Not so much. If I have to chose between spending 3 hours messing around with Canva to produce an image that looks cheesy or write 3 K on the WIP, I’m going to choose the WIP every time. Eventually, my skills will improve. But in the meantime, I’ll pay someone to give me this:It doesn’t have to be expensive. Talk to your friends. You probably have friends who would love to make something like this for you without charging you an arm and a leg. Or again, find that graphic artist looking to expand their portfolio.
  5. Marketing: You have to do it. You can’t simply launch your book like Noah releasing a dove from the deck of the Ark, hoping it will eventually return with evidence of dry land. I wasn’t able to nail down exact numbers but read that in 2014, Amazon reported at least 5 K new releases each day. You might think that’s insane, but what’s really crazy is expecting your book to get singled out among the pack for notice if you make no effort to call it to anyone’s attention. I highly recommend Bad Red Head Media’s 30 Day Book Marketing Challenge. Get it. Read it. Do it. If you want to pay someone to promote your book you can, but this is one area if you’re willing to do the legwork yourself, it will pay off.
  6. Create a Book Bub account for yourself. If someone follows you, boom. They get notified every time you have a new release. Post that link on your website so people can find and follow it. Easy. Free.
  7. If you don’t have a clue what you’re doing, consider hiring someone to teach you the ropes at first. Yeah, you hear me say ‘hire someone’ a lot, and believe me, I know what it’s like not to have the funds to do that. But you only have a couple of options: Teach yourself or pay someone to do it for you or pay someone to teach you to do it yourself. I’m a big believer in hiring the right help to teach you how to do it for yourself.
  8. Don’t have the discretionary funds to pay for the right help? I get that. Then join groups/lists/sites where you can learn what you need to know for free. Consider offering your services to another newbie needing to learn the ropes. I like the ‘watch one, do one, teach one’ philosophy because I think (aside from being a cool thing to do) sharing what you’ve learned helps you retain those lessons. Face it, if you only ever set up a newsletter once every few years, you’re going to forget how to do it.
  9. Decide what’s really important to you and what works best. Don’t waste your time on things that frustrate or annoy you. If participating in every Facebook group or wasting hours on Tumblr is not your thing, don’t do it. You only have so much time and most of it should be spent working on the next story. Because even though it isn’t sexy or cool to say it, THE NEXT STORY IS YOUR BEST ADVERTISEMENT. Sure, there are lots of people out there willing to teach you how to make your next book a bestseller but if you aren’t writing and releasing on a regular basis, it’s all for naught. Readers are like stray cats: feed them and they will come. Stop feeding them, and they will drift off in search of food elsewhere.
  10. Check out the time-saving options for scheduling posts across various sites. Crosspost whenever you can. This post will automatically appear on my Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Tumblr pages. When I use Hootsuite to schedule a post, I can set it to post to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook simultaneously. Simplify your life whenever you can. But pick a schedule and post regularly. Your audience, like stray cats, will expect you at certain times once you establish your schedule. Don’t disappoint them.

One other thing I would add: be authentic. I confess, I struggle sometimes to balance the author side of me with the part that is enraged about world events or just wants to post pictures of my pets. Don’t work so hard at presenting your brand that you show your readers someone who doesn’t actually exist. Yeah, there’s a risk in revealing your real self. You might lose readers. But truthfully, your real self is revealed in every word you write. So what do you really have to lose?

Bottom line: if you have the time, energy, and skills to teach yourself what you need to know to be a successful indie author, go for it. But in those areas where you have doubts, where your skills are subpar, hire the right help until you can master those skills. There are some things I believe should always be left to the experts–cover art and editing being the biggies–but be ruthlessly honest with yourself. If you’ve been skimping on services because you can’t afford them, consider saving up to give your story the best launch possible before releasing it into the world. After all, you want that dove to bring back an olive branch.

Wonder Woman: Polarizing Fan Division Mirrors US Politics?

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There’s been a lot of talk about the new Wonder Woman movie. We went to see it opening weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it for many reasons, not the least of which was watching a superhero movie which featured a female star. You’ll probably find more elegant analyses elsewhere. I wish I’d kept track of some of them because they made me fist pump the air and shout ‘yes!’ when I read them. And there was a truly beautiful piece on Tumblr, which of course, since I didn’t reblog it, I can’t find now, but fans chimed in with the bits that moved them, each building on the other impressions and reactions to the film. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but it won’t be easy.

My husband asked me as we left the theater if I wanted to run around punching bad guys or go to the gym. I thought about that for a moment.

“Yes.” I nodded. “I feel like I could, at any rate.”

He said he wasn’t surprised. That’s usually how he felt on leaving some testosterone-fueled summer blockbuster. Lord knows, he has a LOT more of those to choose from.

While I enjoyed Wonder Woman very much, will probably see it again at the theater, and have every intention of buying a copy when it comes out on DVD, it wasn’t perfect. It was a superhero movie, which means in places very simplistic, with over-the-top bad guys, and slightly predictable plots. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but thoroughly entertaining, nonetheless. I’d seen Guardians of the Galaxy 2 a few weeks before, and I have to say, I enjoyed Wonder Woman more, even though I’m a huge Marvel fan.

Much has been made of the importance of this movie to women–seeing a female lead in a genre typically given over to men. How many significant female characters are there in most action/superhero movies? If you’re lucky, maybe one, though Marvel did a great job with including more women in GOTG2. Bottom line, women in action movies are usually someone for the hero to rescue, or her death is the motivational trigger for the hero’s journey.

Some people like to point out this isn’t the first time we’ve had female leads in our entertainment. After all, Wonder Woman was a 70s television show.There was the Bionic Woman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watch Supergirl now–and (spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the penultimate episode to the season finale) I know some people were taken aback by the fact that Supergirl sent her boyfriend, Mon-el, to safety while staying behind to prevent his mother from successfully invading Earth. And he went. The season finale was remarkable in that all the people in charge and making decisions about the safety of the planet were… women. I didn’t even notice that at first, until my husband mentioned it.

We also had the short-lived Agent Carter, who galvanized nearly every female fan I know with Peggy’s iconic line, “I know my value. Anyone else’s opinion of me really doesn’t matter.” Fans have embraced this line as a personal mantra in the forms of bracelets, T-shirts, necklaces, and even tattoos. The kind of demeaning disregard for her abilities that Peggy Carter dealt with at the end of WW2 is recognizable to many of women in the workplace today as something ongoing, that must be battled daily. As too are the negative lessons we’ve learned throughout life: from our parents, from society, from our peers. Being able to recognize we hold inherent value is hugely freeing for many women, as is the moment when Elsa releases her powers in Frozen.

Science fiction is better in general about depicting diversity and equality among the sexes, which is probably why I have been a die-hard fan my entire life. I was fortunate to have grown up in the 70s and 80s, when women’s rights were improving. Believe me, it was a shock when I discovered that as recent as the late 70s, women still had to have the approval of male family member to open a bank account or rent a car. Think about that for a moment.

So the Wonder Woman movie, with a female lead and a female director, did some great things. Gal Gadot pulled off a nearly impossible feat, depicting a Diana both naive in some respects, but confident in her beliefs, unwilling to back down because something might not be safe, walking into a fight against hopeless odds because it was the right thing to do. She was sexy without being sexualized, for which I give the director, Patty Jenkins, full credit. Drawing on real athletes to depict the Amazons was sheer genius, giving the right amount of realism to their scenes. I think there could have been more women of color, especially in roles other than nursemaid to a young, recalcitrant Diana. (I like to think because Diana was so valued in the community, this job was considered both a high honor and a curse) I don’t think we need even casual storylines where powerful, white woman turn the rearing of their children to women of color. I also believe that with so many women turning out to see a female lead, more were hoping to see something of themselves as well.

There were other aspects of the movie they got right, though. Sameer, wanting to fight but being prevented because of his color. Chief, a Native American displaced by Steve’s ancestors, making ends meet any way he can. Charlie, with his PDST that made him nearly useless as a sharpshooter, but they kept him around anyway. I was surprised–and pleased–that there was no neat bow attached to resolving his condition, as I had expected.

And let me say here it was no mean feat for Chris Pine, a fine actor in his own right, and having carried the weight of the Star Trek franchise on his shoulders when he took on the role of Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek movie, to do what he did in Wonder Woman. He did an amazing job of being exactly what he was–a love interest and supporting actor. Bravo, Mr. Pine. Well-done.

But the thing that makes this movie different from every other venture before it is that it was financially successful. More than successful, it smashed records. THAT is ultimately what determines whether we get more of the same. It belied the notion that people won’t go to see a movie with a female lead (along with Rey in The Force Awakens, and Jyn of Rogue One–but these were more ensemble pieces than WW). It means that Hollywood might finally recognize women will gladly pay to see more than romcoms and that we make up a bigger part of the audience than they realize. And that a movie with a female lead can appeal to both men and women.

I can’t tell you how frustrating it’s been as a die-hard sci-fi fan to hear producers cancel shows because they aren’t capturing that highly prized demographic: young men ages 18-24. Let me tell you, they don’t make up the majority of the crowd at sci-fi conventions. They weren’t the ones buying calendars, mugs, graphic novels, and photo ops with their favorite stars. Many of them don’t have the discretionary income of the older fan, in particular, the middle-aged woman who loves cosplay. Who can afford to travel, or is an obsessive collector, who in other words, does NOT fit the magic demographic but has money to spend.

In many ways, fan reaction to Wonder Woman has been more interesting to me than my own. Only like with The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and the new Star Trek show, Discovery, a certain kind of fanboy is raising a ruckus, complaining of the invasion into his sacred space, railing against the introduction of women and people of color as more franchises follow these leads. If you’re not familiar with GamerGate or the targeting of the Hugo Awards by the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies factions, I’ll summarize here: there is a subset of fans who want to see sci-fi and fantasy return to the ‘old school’ they grew up with. White, male heroes, standard ‘spaceship battles’, no POC in key roles, women relegated to love interests or victims only. Perhaps I’m overstating my case, but I think not.

Another example of the protest against diversity was the howl of outrage that went up when The Force Awakens didn’t have a white male lead. When Rogue One followed suit, demands for a fan boycott of Star Wars went out. (That went well, by the way. TFA  was the fastest movie to gross one billion–only 12 days. RO did the same in 39 days…)

More recently, some Star Trek fans are wailing about the trailer for the new series, in which the leads appear to be women of color. They called it no less than “white genocide in space.” Their anger over the casting–in particular, the failure to have a white male captain–and subsequent complaints over the ‘terrible direction’ the franchise was going led original cast member George Takei to take them to task over it.

I was both surprised and saddened over this kind of fan reaction. C’mon guys, have you seen Star Trek? It’s like the most diverse show ever! A black woman, an Asian men, and a Russian (during the time of the Cold War)–all bridge officers on a show taking place in the late 60s. Spock was of mixed race. Heck, the Vulcan philosophy was ‘Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.’ It was the first show to depict an interracial kiss (even if it was only because the Aliens Made Them Do It), and they tackled weighty issues such as racism, ageism, and more. Yes, the original series was in some ways as sexist as hell, but it was written at a time when WOMEN COULD NOT RENT A CAR OR OPEN A BANK ACCOUNT WITHOUT MALE PERMISSION. To even have women bridge officers was amazing. To have a black woman in a role as someone other than a maid or cook even more so.

So when the same kind of trolls began complaining about the ‘women only’ screening of Wonder Woman in Austin, TX, I wasn’t surprised. I was surprised some New York lawyer would file a complaint against the theater, however. It’s not like the theater was ONLY going to have women-only showings. There were more opportunities for men to attend than that one (or two) women-only showings. But a guy in New York didn’t like the theater’s ‘uppity’ attitude about it on Facebook, nor the mayor of Austin’s support for the idea, so yeah, complaint filed.

That’s when it occurred to me that this rift in sci-fi and fantasy fandoms is so much more than the old-timers protesting against the new guard. It’s more than some disgruntled geeks saying you can’t possibly be a Marvel fan unless your playpen was lined with old Spiderman comics and you teethed on the entire catalog of the Fantastic Four. It’s more than a protest against girls in the boys-only clubhouse.

It’s our current political climate in microcosm.

It’s a bunch of fans who are angry at having to share with people that aren’t like them. It’s fanboys who’d rather trash the playground than to let ‘the other’ in. When you have privilege, it’s hard to see that letting others be equal doesn’t diminish your privilege in any way. Frankly, I don’t see any difference between those that call themselves ‘real fans’ versus those that call themselves ‘real Americans’. It’s the same sort of destructive mentality that denies the very foundation of the thing they profess to love.

Hey, I get that your fandoms are important–even lifesaving–to you. They’re important to me too. There are days when seeing something fandom related online or knowing I have a show or movie to look forward to seeing is the only thing that gets me through a crappy day. I have scores of fandom friends who share stories, artwork, and squee over our favorite characters and shows. It’s what makes life more than just going to work so you can try to pay the bills.

But women, POC, people with different sexual orientations or of different religions–we’re not the bad guys here. It seems to me that a sci-fi fan would understand that better than almost anyone else, so it hurts when I see fans get up in arms about diversity and equality. It hurts, but it makes me angry, too. We’re all in fandom because we need something from it. We need the strength of our heroes. We need the courage of their convictions, to do the right thing when it may cost us more than we can bear. We’re all pre-serum Steve, before he becomes Captain America, and Peter Parker, before the radioactive spider bite.

We’re that tech guy in the Triskelion who has to decide what to do when ordered to push the button that will launch the Insight codes. The good guy refuses to do it, even though he knows he will probably get killed for refusing to implement it. He’s literally shaking with fear, but he refuses because Captain America told him to stand up for the right thing.

Be the good guy.

I read somewhere once that every villain sees himself as the hero of his own story. These days, I’m seeing far too many people who think they are Captain America, when they are really Red Skull. Who insist they are Diana Prince, when in reality, they are Dr. Poison.

There is an ugliness to political discourse in this country I don’t think we can ignore. It would be nice to sit here writing my lightweight romance stories and never think twice about politics again. But we’re being forced to fight for our rights and, in some cases, our lives. Even the planet.

I’m not leaving fandom. I’m going to continue to read, write, and play there. I’m also going to vote my conscience, and protest against what I see as being wrong and unfair, and to stand up for anyone I see needing help to the best of my ability.

And yes, dear husband, I’m also going to the gym.