Fame

The past few years have seen an explosion in discussions about the role of gender in the nerd & geek communities. In case you've been stranded on an island with Oliver Queen, a hashtag search for #GeekGirls should give you plenty of reading material.  I've contributed to these discussions myself, notably with this post: Hear it for the Heroines.  A video posted recently, and a post by friend and fellow author JC Cassels, prompted the following entry.

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I am a geek. I am a nerd. I am a female.

I am memorable.

I have always been these things.  I watched GI Joe and He-Man cartoons, purloined my brother's comic books and begged to play D&D with him.  I spent as many hours with the Atari Basic programming cassette as I spent with "Missile Command" and "Pac-Man".  I adored "Turtle Tracks".  I kicked my brother's whining ass, beating Castle Wolfenstein and DOOM long before he did.  The very first story I ever wrote was science fiction.

You'll remember me.


Yes, this made adolescence rather painful.  I doubt, however, that it was more or less painful for a nerd/geek boy. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care what other people thought or said about me. Those snide comments and date-less nights, though, made me who I am.


Don't you know who I am?

I don't take the easy road.  Anything worth doing is hard.  You want me to do something?  Tell me I can't.  I knew that using Cassandra Davis as a pen name would hurt sales.  I decided I didn't care.  If someone is so ignorant as to live in this century and still believe that the quality of storytelling is dependent on the gender of the storyteller, then I don't want that idiot reading my books. I'll sell fewer books, but as long as that is a reflection on the idiocy of a few and not on the quality of my writing, I am unconcerned.

Remember.


When you grow up marginalized, when you grow up "different", you become a grown up who dares.  You dare to believe. You dare to fight for what you want.  You dare anyone to stand in your way. You set the sky on fire.

I am unafraid, unapologetic, unswayed.

They'll remember.

If I'm doing my best, it won't matter what name I use.  I will live forever because my story will learn to fly. Every boy or girl, woman or man, who reads my books, will take a part of it with them.  The story will become a part of their lives.

Fame, and a name, are what you make of them.

Let's Hear It For the Heroines

I do so love a good heroine.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m still madly in love with Han Solo, Captain Reynolds, Apollo, and any man to sit in “the chair” on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. But, come on, girls like me don’t get guys like that.  I can, though, become my favorite heroines.

That’s why I think all this talk about the need for “positive female role-models in media portrayals of women” is a bunch of bunk.  “Positive”--that’s just another way of saying “perfect women who are smart, wordly, virtuous, independent, emotional honest, and responsible citizens”.  In a word: BORING.  Pop Quiz: who did you love more, Scarlett O’Hara or Melanie Hamilton?  Yeah I thought so.  Authors don’t (or shouldn’t) write perfect role-models because perfect people are too unreal.  Do you know a perfect person in real life?  Someone without a single fault?  I highly doubt you do.  Characters should be people that we can associate with, or at least recognize as being realistic copies of people we encounter every day.

That isn’t to say we need to be raging alcoholics like Starbuck, or have the myriad psychological disorders of Ripley or Sarah Connor.  We can, though, be unabashedly awesome at our jobs, fiercely protective of our young, or really good at delivering snarky one-liners in the face of gruesome death. (Though, really, spend the energy avoiding the gruesome death and save the snark for when the YouTube re-enactment is filming.) Laura Roslin certainly wasn’t perfect, but I’d sure as hell rather vote for her to be our next president instead of the choices we currently have! Yes Kaylee was naive and hopelessly pining after a man with severe commitment issues, but damn wouldn’t we all like to have her skills with engines? And come on, even a sarcastic cynic like me can appreciate a woman so positive that “there’s not a power in the `verse can make Kaylee stop being cheerful”.

Instead of encouraging girls and young women to be a Madonna-like (speaking of the Holy Virgin Mother, not the pop star, obviously) paragon, let’s teach them to celebrate the good in themselves while acknowledging the bad.  Teach them to recognize that the literary, movie, and television characters they encounter have flaws because they are based on real women.

Real women have flaws.  Battling and, if we are very lucky, over-coming those flaws makes us better women. Honestly sharing our stories, even the painful bits, can make us Big Damn Heroes for the next generation.