I wrote my way out: An unnecessary reference for an unnecessary review of the year

I have a lot to write about and a backlog of blog-posts that should have written months ago but we’re at the end of the year and my once-a week, a month, a every few months blog has changed it’s rhythm but I happy with that as this was, and still is supposed to be, for me and for fun. I re-started this blog for a number of reasons, which I covered in the initial re-viving blog post, and foremost of those has been to write more. Being in academia writing for classes, my dissertation, or something for publication makes me forget that I do enjoy putting words down for fun. This blog has been there for me to write the things that do not fall into those categories and try to write what comes to mind and on things that are less data driven in relation to science fiction, community, and anthropology/archaeology.

One of the good things to come out of this year, this blog, and twitter was the forum I moderated at Geek Girl Con. That forum was a great learning experience, wrangling amazingly creative people that I had never met before. It was extremely gratifying to facilitate a conversation that involved critiquing things that I love and at the same time help others understand a serious issue. Overall, Geek Girl Con was great and introduced me to an amazing group of people who are fascinated by the same media and social issues that I am. To me it showed that as much as there are tropes in science fiction media, there are also people who want to consume and produced better, higher quality, and more thoughtful media than currently exists. Seeing that enthusiasm was amazing and I hope to continue attending such great events or to bring such ideas to events that lack them.

Another positive to come out of this year was submitting my first chapter for publication based on my dissertation research. It’s in an edited volume rather than a scientific journal, and it’s currently being reviewed so hopefully people are kind and constructive so it actually gets published, but it was great to see something that I worked on go out into the world. It also happened to fall on a strangely appropriate anniversary, the day I decided to start writing about children and landscape in archaeology. That hilarious happenstance made me feel better about the work I have done in the last year, and last few years, demonstrating how sometimes you randomly decide something, stick with it, and for some reason it keeps giving back to you enough to continue doing it for the rest of your life.

Both of these demonstrated to me how individual moments create awesome and enduring events. The split second choice to do, act, say, or write can define important things tomorrow, in a year, or in several years and while there are an infinite number of possible things that can and will happen in 2017 it’s impossible to know immediately which will be the most important.

We are not things,or wait, are we?: Cosplaying as objects

I love cosplay. It is one of the best parts of attending cons: seeing it, doing it, and thinking about what I might sew or adapt next. Cosplay has also been central to the increasing numbers of women attending conventions . It makes cons a more welcoming environment for women because it highlights the combination of geek culture with the creation of costumes, an activity associated with women.

However, there are certain types of cosplay that bother me. While many people find revealing costumes uncomfortable, the ones that give me pause are more subtle. Specifically, I get uncomfortable when women cosplay as objects. My discomfort with this stems from the fact that I haven’t seen any discussion of this, which suggests complacency with seeing women dressed as objects and the gendering of the non-humanoid as female, including robots, objects, and even ideas such as the Nation state. Most often, these cosplays are robots, which have personalities and agency, but for every 100 woman dressed in an awesome TARDIS dress or costume you have only one male doing the same.

This also bothers me because as a possible replacement for revealing costumes, some women have turned to dressing as objects and that seems awkward. Obviously, dressing as an object does not mean you will be objectified but it seems an odd choice when one could cosplay as a women character. Additionally, the lack of representation of such adapted attire for men and the fact that it is more common for them to be the human male counterpoint or owner of the robot or object in question adds another layer of discomfort.

It reminds me that as much as cosplay has allowed cons to be more inviting for women the type of cosplay one does matters just as much. It reminds me about how important it is to think about who/what you are signifying when you cosplay. It is true that robots and other semi-sentient things, like the TARDIS, are awesome but are you choosing to be an object over an active woman character? If so, why does that appeal to you over the female character? How does this inspire or make others more comfortable? Or does your cosplay accidentally play into an agenda that does not support women?

Captain Marvel: Excited for Brie Larson, Disappointed in Marvel

I want to preface this by saying I am very excited for Brie Larson. She is an amazing actor and is going to make amazing movies as Captain Marvel. She will be awesome and play the part well, inspiring young girls to follow their dreams and go higher, further, faster, and more. The problem I have with her casting is not anything that she could control. Who I’m disappointed in is Marvel Studios for not taking the chance to fight a very real and very simple problem in Hollywood, ageism.

This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last but casting Captain Marvel as someone so young has character drawbacks and bothers me for some specific reasons. As a mixed race woman there were quite a few things I would never be. I would never be white, I would never be tall, and I would never be a natural blonde. These are three rather essential things for the Carol Danvers they are portraying in the Captain Marvel movie. However, one of the things that the comic book hero Carol Danvers had that I didn’t, but I could attain, was experience. Unlike teenage X-men or other young white woman superheroes, Carol Danvers was older and only became a superhero after she became a Major in the Air Force and had become the head editor at a magazine. She was a woman who had already had a full career, was starting a second and then picking up a third as a superhero.

That aspect of her character was something that someone who could not even come close to resembling Carol Danvers could identify with. By casting someone as young as Brie Larson, Marvel takes the one thing about that character almost any person could attain away from myself and many others who are looking for women heroes who are not crones, mothers, grandmothers, spinsters, immortal twenty-somethings, or girl geniuses but women who become extraordinary at any age.

Specific to the character of Carol Danvers, having cast a young actor there are three things that Marvel could do with her to deal with her youth, all of which are problematic:

Marvel writes her to be the youngest Major in US history

While this isn’t the worst choice, she would be referenced as some sort of wunderkind for quite a while in the series. Amazingly smart and able to be promoted so quickly, this choice would undercut Carol Danvers normalness. What I liked about Carol Danvers when I first read her character in Alias and then after reading the original Ms. Marvel series was that yes, she was an amazing super hero, but she was also a woman who liked to go shopping and wrote a book about her experience in the Air Force. She was already on her second career by the time she became a superhero and was leading an adult life that was not bound to her military service. Being the youngest major in history will not allow her to have that development and focus her life on her Air Force time rather than what she did afterwards.

Marvel takes away or changes her rank away from Major

So the character that Marvel is writing is Captain Marvel and not Ms. Marvel, although she is still, to my knowledge, portraying the woman Carol Danvers. If Marvel chooses to make her a Captain in the Air Force instead of a Major that’s fine. Brie Larson is old enough to be a Captain. However, by demoting her they are removing some of the agency and uniqueness from Carol. They would demote her for the sake of the movie, simplifying the moniker, and undercut the awesomeness as a character. She was also a high-ranking female officer that chose to step away from the game before coming a superhero. That’s awesome and they shouldn’t take that away from her because they chose to cast a younger actor.

Marvel writes her character to be between 30-40 anyways

Marvel doesn’t change anything about Carol and have Brie play a typically aged Major, as if Brie Larson is 35+. Inadvertently, or purposefully, Marvel supports the ageist practice having 20-year-olds play 40-year-olds showing women who are that age that they will never be young-looking enough. For younger woman, as we get through our twenties we’re supposed to have everything sorted out in our lives and be able to shoulder the world before 30. We’re supposed to be experts in anything we pick up by the time we are 24 and experienced aged professionals by 27. Then remain timeless in age until we reach 60 where we all become Meryl Streep.

BONUS PROBLEM: Keeping the current love interest

In the comics, Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers current love interest is Colonel James Rhodes, currently played by Don Cheadle who was born in 1964. Brie Larson was born in 1989. He’s old enough to be her father but if they choose to play her as a 35+ woman she could be a perfectly fine love interest according to Hollywood logic.

The point here is that a lot of the things that make Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel cool involve her age-ency. AKA She had the time to develop skills at a regular pace. She wasn’t the best of the best before she became Captain Marvel, she grew into it after she had established a non-superhero life. I know Brie Larson can play that woman. But I also know that there were many other amazing actresses in their thirties would have done just as great of a job and Marvel could have done more to challenge ageist Hollywood casting practices.

Captain America: Love and Friendship

My last blog post on here detailed my anticipations and fears for Captain America: Civil War. While the movie did not stick to the Civil War plot as I understood it in that post, there was a superhero civil war in it and I was satisfied with the movie overall. It had a good action:plot ratio and the introduction of the newest Superheroes to our Marvel-verse, Black Panther and Spider-man, were spot on and make me excited for their standalone movies. (Though Spiderman: Homecoming may already be part of the Marvel Studios white-washing problem [ addressed in more detail: here, here, and here). P.S. Spoilers follow

Rather than revolve around a superhero registration act, requiring super heroes to “unmask” and work for the government in their crime-fightin’ capacity, it revolved around how and when the Avengers should be deployed. According to accords as we know them, which is not as well explained in the movie as I would like in order to choose “a side”, basically if you are part of the “Avengers,” as we have seen them in previous movies and if you sign the accords you are deployed as needed as defined by a UN subcommittee. If you do not sign, you are a global vigilante whenever you decide to step in and stop crises. Interesting discussion. How would we delegate power to control super-humans? And how would we deal with the fact that the majority of this team are US citizens that believe they are acting in the world’s interests.

This would all be fine if that ice-blast from the past, the Winter Soldier, hadn’t stepped in. (P.S. I <3 Stucky) Captain America politely refused to sign the accords and could fight crime within the US. That was until Bucky Barnes had to be involved and as we saw early in the movie, you so much as mention Benjamin Barnes and it’s kryptonite to Cap’s focus. Because of this, the specifics of the accords take a back seat to a discussion about love and friendship, the ties we create in life and how those endure into the future. The movie revolves around the fact that Cap makes bad decisions because he’s still in love with the past, which is slowly dying with each minute. The passing of Peggy Carter in the film demonstrates how the world that Cap grew up in no longer exists outside his mind and while we feel like he’s been around for a long time it’s been a few years since he’s thawed. He’s still a 1940s man in a 2010s world, with as much as he can learn about the present, his life experiences are still rooted in an age that no one on the current Earth understands, except of course, Benjamin Barnes. His dedication to saving Bucky is a way for Cap to preserve parts of the world that he grew up in even though he knows that that’s impossible. If Bucky hadn’t been implicated in the plot it’s unlikely that the Civil War would have erupted.

On the other side, we also see that the legislation that spurs the accords and our villain is motivated by love. Our villain is interested in destroying the Avenger because without superhumans, we have fewer superhuman-scale disasters. While his actions are extreme, since the accords don’t want to destroy the Avengers, his works expressed the feelings that many other people had towards the Avengers. A woman approaches Tony Stark after a speech to show him her son that died because of their actions, Black Panther’s father is killed because of a bomb, planted by the villain, aimed at destroying the Avengers, and Rhodie is seriously injured because Cap is trying to protect Bucky. Not all of these actions are linked specifically to Cap’s, they demonstrate how superhumans have changed the lives of people in serious ways. “Saving the world” has serious collateral damage and sometimes individual biases/friendships/loves cloud people’s judgement.

These reactions and actions feelings circle us back to the reason for the accords. Why does one super-powered American get to decide what is best for the world? Why does their judgement get more weight than others? Why does one individual’s friendship(s) matter more than the lives of others?

Blog update: No specific topic

My apologies for not having a blog post since April, a lot of things have been happening. Planned things, but things that took up my time and focus that were not this.

Moving: Back in the PNW for the next few months. Hoping to have a cooler summer.

Geek Girl Con Panel: I got accepted. Which is crazy, awesome, I am so scared and excited. It is such an important topic to talk about (Adaptation, Appropriation, and Influence) and has such power to impact the understanding of our world and art. Now I'm waiting to hear back about who may also be on the panel. I can talk about it of course, as a consumer and an academic, but I really want to have creators talk about their processes. I also want this to be a meaningful and positive discussion, not just a rag fest on how people don't do it well. Worst case scenario: I am there and talk about what I know and understand. Best case: I lead an awesome only semi-awkward discussion of the topic. Either way this will be great and scary.

Draft proposal: Submitted and waiting to hear

Wisdom teeth: My teeth are no longer wise but are healing well. Very strange experience.

Getting back to work: There are so many things I need to do that are all, like the Geek Girl Con panel, awesome and scary. Lots of writing, some solo work and some collaborative, some for publication and some for my proposal. They all require reading, so I have some trips to the library planned. Regardless, I hope to have a couple more blogs in the next few weeks. One discussing my response to Captain America: Civil War and another in my "series" of IAA. I hope to work furiously on these soon.

Thanks for reading and I hope to have more for you to read soon

Marvel and the American Government: The potential and danger of Captain America: Civil War

Civil War doesn’t come out for a few weeks but I’ve been catching up on the world they are living in through Agents of Shield. AoS has grown into quite an amazing show and is dealing with complex and layered issues, something you wouldn’t expect based on their first season.

Anyways, I have many trepidations about Civil War particularly because they’ve been marketing it as a sort of Marvel-Team version of Batman vs. Superman. #TeamCap versus #TeamIronMan and all that. However, that doesn’t do justice to the importance of the Civil War plotline. The Marvel “event” known as Civil War ran in 2006-2007 and as I’ve continued reading American comics, it has been the only event to maintain my interest. This was because Superheroes were dealing with an investigation of the role of government.

The interesting thing about that series coming out during the Bush-era was that the idea of going along with the government wasn’t quite as heinous as it is now. We knew there was wire-tapping and the Patriot Act but the surveillance state that we live in now is much more insidious than the one Marvel dealt with in 2006. For that reason, I am having a hard time deciding how I feel about the premise for Civil War, especially if they keep it the same. Based on the comics, I understand Iron Man’s position to be if superheroes do not participate in creating legislation to govern and register themselves the outcome would be even worse. Something akin to the Japanese internment camps but for superheroes. Captain America’s position is that the government should never require their citizens to share their personal identity and secrets. Both have their values particularly because in the comics the legislation is inevitable. It will pass, the difference is in its form.

In a world with unpredictable superpowers, governments would be afraid. So their reaction would be to legislate, police, and surveil, using the only things in their power to maintain order and control, especially, when it’s clear that The Avengers can’t protect from those with bad intentions. But that’s the comics. What has caught my eye about AoS is that they are dealing with these issues in a very realistic way, providing the importance and depth of the Civil War premise. Using the Agents to examine how regular people feel about those with powers they are providing the parallels to the real world, the hate of illegal immigrants and discussion about how government(s) are involved in the lives of citizens, demonstrating the potential importance of the film.

However, I still worry about Civil War because it’s most comparable film is Age of Ultron. The issues in the comics are more about talking than they are about fighting in the streets, which is not what we’re seeing from the trailers and definitely not what we got in Age of Ultron. Not all Marvel movies have serious issues at their heart but the interesting discussion in Ultron of whether humanity is capable of peace was not the main focus. Rather than develop and use the beauty of Science Fiction as a critique and discussion of ourselves it was about blowing up large buildings.

Civil War can’t have that sort of treatment because the enemy is each other. There is no “big bad” we can throw this discussion onto. There is only the deeply polarizing and complicated issue about the relationship between the individual and the state. What rights do we give up as citizens in order to have other rights allowed to us? The right to healthcare may involve a loss of privacy in order to access that healthcare anywhere. However, people give up their privacy in so many ways already but to private companies rather than the government. We just don’t think about it when we sign into Facebook or Twitter or forget to turn of GPS tracking on Google Maps.

The only why that I can see Civil War being truly successful is if they can make audiences believe both sides of the argument and that will require more dialogue than punches. And if that happens, it will be probably be the most important Marvel movie made so far.

IAA – P2: Pan-Asian Culture in American Visual Media – Dr. Strange v. Firefly v. Kung-Fu Panda 3

I mentioned this in my inspiration post that there were two roads towards this section of the blog. The general one being in reaction to JK Rowling’s mishap with Native American and Caucasian American History and the second was watching Kung-Fu Panda 3. The two are related via the trinity of influence, adaptation, and appropriation because although I enjoyed Kung-Fu Panda 3, I also wondered why I felt more comfortable with their use of East-Asian culture than I did with Firefly. And then the Dr. Strange trailer had to drop. And I was like well…this just stirs up a bunch of mixed feelings. So I’m going to write about how each of these different visual media fairs against the IAA scale. 1 being not too X, 10 being way too X.

Firefly/Serenity (2002, 2005)

What: One of the most beloved, and slighted, science fiction shows known within western culture and Science fiction fandom. Essentially a space-western, except everyone swears in Chinese.

How is it related to Asian culture: Everyone swears in Chinese and there are some signs at one point apparently in Chinese. There is also clearly Asian influence in some costume designs

What initially made me concerned: Everyone swears in Chinese, and in the movie there is some clear influence East-Asian pop cultural references. However, there are no main characters that are Asian in the crew nor can I remember ever seeing an Asian person actually in the show.

Influence: 4

Appropriation: 7

Adaptation:2

Why: There are clearly Asian influences in Firefly, the name of the ship and the clothing styles for Inara, they also even use Chinese as a language to swear in. The problem with all of this is the lack of actual Asian representation in the show. As much as I enjoy the diversity of Firefly, especially the number of highly capable women and the representation of Afro-Caribbean/-American actors, there are no people I can remember in the entirety of the show who are actually Asian. There are like a billion characters that draw from American “wild west” tropes but none that are actually Asian, even for use in stereotyped forms (ninjas etc.). You get an English gangster but not one Asian one. As much as I love Firefly, and the idea that these COULD have been developed had the show continued, that’s still no excuse for the lack of Asian representation in the first season. Even the movie doesn’t do much to further rectify the problem, the villains of the namely Empire still don’t represent the culture that they are supposed to be from. The problem with this, having the aesthetics and the language without the physical representation, is, as I addressed in the first blog, that those cultural behaviors are rarely expressed without people. Goods can travel, but language requires regular speaking contact and we can see even in America’s own history that when Asian cultures are present in the Wild West, which they were, they bring their language and a whole host of other cultural traits. To create a future based on this blend without the actual people makes it rate high on the appropriation scale.

Kung-Fu Panda 3 (2015)

What: The third installment in a series about a Panda who does Kung-Fu. It is set in a mythical China where there are no humans and all animals are anthropomorphized. Everyone eats vegetables and there is no cannibalism of other species.

How is it related to Asian culture: The story is about Kung-Fu and set in China.

What initially made me concerned: Why are none of the major voice actors of Asian descent? Is it accurately portraying Chinese cultural traits?

Influence: 10

Appropriation: 3

Adaptation:10

Why: Kung-Fu Panda has a lot of things going for it that make it more on the influence and adaptation side than appropriation. The biggest probably being the fact that Chinese studios are actually involved in the making of at least number three. However, as much as this helped to maintain the authenticity of the foods and aesthetics, and even a Chinese version of Kung-Fu Fighting at the end, there are aspects of the movie that rate along appropriation. For me the biggest problem is that the major speaking roles, except Oogway, are all voiced by Caucasian actors. While this is a kids’ movie, and when it is dubbed anyone could speak the role, it’s frustrating to see an almost stereotypical representation of Chinese culture voiced by a Caucasian man. While Jack Black is admittedly hilarious, and the movie is fun, it’s bothered me that as the franchise has continued Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan, who voice Viper and Monkey, are continually sidelined for additional quips by the male comedians who are often, in this context, not that funny. So even though it’s definitely adapted, animals for people, heavily influenced, it still gets a rating of 3 for appropriation.

Dr. Strange (2016)

What: The most recent Marvel solo movie about a brain surgeon who gets in a car accident and is unable to perform surgery who goes to Tibet/Nepal to find himself after his accident/surgery. Finding himself included finding magic

How is it related to Asian culture: The entire premise for his “magic” centers on Eastern Asian philosophy and in the original comics he learns from a 500 Tibetan Man how to harness powers based on these East Asian philosophies and magic.

What initially made me concerned: A many Doctors and Surgeons in the United States are now of Asian descent and it would have been the perfect chance to ethnicity swap a major but not super critical Marvel character. While the did not do this to the good Doctor himself, they did gender swap (which is positive) but also ethnicity swapped the teacher of Dr. Strange to being white.

Influence: 7

Appropriation: 7

Adaptation:1

Why: Dr. Strange is a strange Marvel character and like Thor represents an aspect of Superheroism that is sometimes hard to reconcile with ultra-modern technology and people with genetic mutations. However, it also made a lot of sense at the time it was written. The problem is that the movie did not do anything to rectify this very historically contingent use of Asian culture. And to a degree they made it worse. The basic premise for Dr. Strange is that a highly successful Neurosurgeon, who is basically a giant jerk, gets into a car accident and the surgeon who reconstructs his hands is unable to make them steady enough for Dr. Strange to go back to surgery. So goes on a quest to figure out who he is and where does he go? Tibet of course. Which is where he eventually learns the arts of astral projection and mysticism. Yay! In the 1960s having that be a white guy made sense, in 2016, personally, I think it would have been better to cast an Asian actor (who goes back to examine his heritage during a time of crises and builds upon the fact that many in the medical field are not white). Anyways, in the comics, he learns from a 500 Tibetan man how to do this. Well, who gets to be that? Tilda Swinton…Well that’s ok, I’m happy that it’s a woman. I’m not so happy that the implication that Tibetans 500 years ago were white, or that an Ancient spirit decided to live in Tibet and choose to be white, or the implication essentially that Caucasians are better at being Asian, or the idea that Marvel couldn’t write a good movie-worthy Asian character. None of those things are good and so as much as Dr. Strange is influenced by Asian culture, it didn’t do much adapting, and instead decided to appropriate.

Attending without Attending: Twitter as replacement for attending a conference

I may have mentioned this before but I’m an archaeology PhD student and I’ve been using this blog to explore my interests in sci-fi and anthropology. In the last few days, or more by the time anyone reads this, my two interests collided on my twitter feed. Although I was probably the only person excited to be missing both Emerald City Comic Con and the Society for American Archaeology meetings, it was actually a great way to experience both events simultaneously.

While I considered attending both events, I went to neither but found that twitter provided much of the excitement of attending without shelling out the dough to do so. The only reason that was possible though was because there were a dedicated group of individuals at both convention and conference that were tweeting about the goings on at each. So, while I haven’t heard a single panel or attended a paper talk, I got to experience and comment on some cool new things happening in both areas.

I really enjoy comic conventions but they always a mix of awesome and horrible. Awesome to see comics creators, look at or wear cosplay, and buy exclusive art. Horrible to be in crowds, the price of food, and the lack of places to sit when you are tired. So I’ve “been” to a few comic cons now using twitter, following friends or creators through their attendance. And it’s been great, I get a cross section of the panels that were highlighted, see great cosplay of characters , and see the great commissions and prints that people pick up along the way. This of course doesn’t replace the feeling of actually being there and getting a duck-face selfie with a favorite writer but it’s a more relaxing and cheaper way to stay involved with the comics community.

I had become accustomed to this with comics conventions but this was the first time that I used twitter to "attend" a major archaeological conference. I went to and presented at three conferences within the last year so the idea of another seemed absurd. So I vicariously attended by following a great group of archaeologists who tweet and following the #saa2016.

Although it doesn’t replace being there and getting to share a beer and talk about the moon, it did give me a great way of interacting with new archaeological research and issues in archaeology. And in some ways, it was better than attending the actual conference. I got to see tweets about a lot of new research and examine how the archaeologists I followed absorbed those talks. It also highlighted some interesting things about archaeologists on twitter. Namely, the ones who use it to livetweet are also the ones who care about many of the same things I do: education, ethics, digital mediums, and preservation in archaeology.

It was awesome to see so many people interested in changing the culture of the field talking with each other and collaborating via Twitter. It also made me realize how rich the SAAs could be if more archaeologists collaborated via this social media platform. It is a very easy way to get research into the public sphere, which is part of the mission of archaeology, and allows direct discussion amongst peers in a relaxed environment. I have many classmates who have twitter accounts but few of them use it to share their research and conference experiences. Maybe it’s not important to them that their research gets this sort of press but it does tend to skew the social media, twitter-sphere, of archaeology to those already interested in digital mediums rather than representing a true cross section of the discipline.

That self-selection both in comics and in archaeology makes me wonder what I missed from the two cons but it gave me a great chance to experience both without leaving my home. While it would have been better to attend one or the other, seeing the other on twitter, their representation in social media is important to keep those who can't attend informed and use it as public outreach.

Influence, Adaptation, and Appropriation: Part 1 – The inspiration

At the beginning of March in response to a pop-culture piece, the specific one I can’t recall it may have been J.K. Rowling, I posted the tweet:

“Pan-culturalism and appropriation in the "future": Dealing with using cultural designs and culture in Sci-Fi worldbuilding”

And one of my friends, suggested I submit it as a panel for Geek Girl Con. So, at the end of March I did with a slight modification to the idea. I retitled it to be the same as the above post and made it more general about using cultures that are not your own to build fantastical worlds. I posted on Facebook about this and people were supportive, both interested in examining this concept and posting ideas for which Science Fiction and Fantasy works should be part of the discussion. Since that time, I’ve been thinking about this topic (Today’s inspiration being Kung-Fu Panda 3). My primary thoughts being, “Am I qualified to lead a discussion about this?” and the following, “I should really put some of my thoughts about this down.”

I am not a writer of science fiction or fantasy, unless you count archaeological interpretation (zing!). I am primarily a consumer with a little bit more education and a compulsion to write my ideas down. I am also a woman of mixed-race so I have a tendency to complicate issues and investigate them within my more complex experience as a human, adding academic insight where possible and if possible.

So let me unpack my tweet a bit. (Anthropologists love unpacking, maybe because we travel alot) It came in response to the use of another culture by someone who was not of that culture to create a fictional story and world. Not necessarily a bad thing but that person was most likely white and was using another culture for personal gain. This got me thinking about how in science fictional futures there is an assumed blending of cultures where as humans progress through time our distinctions between cultures become more blurred and essentially this only one “human” culture. And following the current world trajectory that future is often heavily influenced by Asian cultures and most often East-Asian cultures. We see this in Blade Runner, Firefly, and the re-make of Total Recall, to name a few examples.

This hypotheses, of a blending of cultures, isn’t too far off. We’ve seen in the last 100 years the loss of much of our language diversity and many issues in anthropology boil down to globalization. There are very few, if any, cultures on our planet that have not heard of or interacted with technology in some way and most “traditional” cultures are still influenced at least indirectly by general improvements in medicine and other sciences. So, it is not far-fetched to assume that in the future, assuming we follow our current path, humans across the globe will be more similar to each other in the future than they are today.

However, how you portray this blending is important. Specifically, all of the above listed examples, and there are many more, do not display the biological blending that is also predicted for our globe. They instead preserve modern racial distinctions and grab the symbols of another culture. And there, my friends, is the rub. There is no example in the history of humanity where you have heavy, and dominating, cultural influence without biological mixing and the problem with not portraying that is it allows modernly powerful ethnicities to take on the cultures of others without giving those people their due.

It is, unfortunately, appropriation rather than adaptation or influence and the relationship between the three is what I will explore in more detail in following posts.

The longest Easter Egg hunt, or why I always get excited when they mention Roxxon

While I’m currently living without my weekly dose of floppies, I keep up on Marvel (not much of a DC fan...yet?) through the shows and movies. Upon starting Season 2 of Daredevil last weekend, I was reminded about a very interesting company that continues to be name-dropped.Roxxon.

Why do I care about these hints at Roxxon? Well, it’s because it could set us up for one of the most controversial portions of the Marvel Universe. And that of course is, New Thor.

New Thor was controversial for a number of reasons, most of which are related to gender, something incorporated into the series, and the alteration of the name of Thor from name to title. This is not an unheard of practice and technically the inscription on the hammer always states that the wielder of Mjolnir held the power of Thor, not necessarily that the person who held it was named Thor. The hammer had been wielded by others in the past but in contrast the Marvel-Now Thor has separate Thor and Odinson who, while at first upset that someone else could wield his hammer, has quietly fallen into a nice supporting character while he deals with the issues of what has made him unworthy. And so far (although I’m not fully caught up) it looks like this is a pretty permanent switch.

So Thor and Roxxon, how are they related? Well the first major villain that Thor battles is a Roxxon affiliate. For those of us trying to figure out the identity of Thor this seemed to point to Agent Roz Solomon, the Odinson’s new love interest. Regardless of who Thor now is, if you haven’t read the comics yet, the mention of Roxxon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by name has important meaning for what Marvel Studios could be planning for the future.

With the success of comics like Ms. Marvel and other lady-led titles, Thor included, fans are hungering for a female-led Marvel movie but sadly, the first one isn’t slated until 2018. While this is still a few years off, it is likely that Marvel is planning on making more woman-led movies and in my opinion Thor would be a damned fine choice. She has an established world, would require minimal “origin” story, and it would be easy for Thor: Ragnarok to contain events that somehow makes the Odinson unworthy. Because of this, every time I hear the name Roxxon or catch it attached to some object, I wonder if that’s a breadcrumb towards a Thor movie with a different Thor. Specifically, Agent Carter and Daredevil have both begun digging into the nature of the company and based on what we’ve seen so far it wouldn’t be improbable for them to expand their range to working with materials from another world.

While it’s far-fetched and Thor isn’t the most well-known of Marvel’s woman Super Heroes, I think they are setting themselves up for a very long hunt that could end with an amazing and new person picking up Mjolnir.

PPPs – Part 3 – Comic book adaptations

I’m going to talk about two Paranormal Police Procedurals that I watch that are adaptations from comics, iZombie and Lucifer. While I enjoy both of them, I worry about this adaptation trend. This isn’t a bad way to adapt comics but is in some ways lazy. Rather than dealing with the complexity inherent in the stories of the source material TV adaptors just take a known structure and add the comic characters. This isn’t always the case with comic adaptations, such as The Walking Dead, but with two series using this same formula within two television seasons it’s starting to become suspicious.

Beyond that structure, they are interesting shows in their own right but, like Sleepy Hollow, it is their likely paranormal premises that will determine the endurance of their shows. Like Sleepy Hollow, which shares the same network, Lucifer draws from Judeo-Christian roots for their paranormal world. iZombie, the show, draws from Zombie lore, exclusively. This comes in contrast to the comic, which combines zombies, were-beings, ghosts, and vampires into one “undead” group depending on how the two souls of a human leave the body. The show has yet to, and may never, explore this aspect of the comic.

iZombie is my current favorite of the two. iZombie has it’s problems, some of which I touched on in a previous blog, but it’s paranormal premise allows for a very long run of the show. If there are infinite murders, there are infinite possible personalities that Liv can take on and we can have a show that every week is fresh and different as long as the writers continue to write interesting people that get murdered. This pattern can get boring, as there’s no reason to keep watching if it’s always different, but the writers have created 3-4 subplots that allow the series to fit this system without going out of style. Those are:

1) Zombie-ism is related to a drug

2) That drug is big business

3) Zombie-ism is big business

4) There is a big corporation trying to do something with zombie-ism and energy drinks

5) Zombie-ism is virus based so a cure is possible.

While this seems complex and perhaps too many plots for one show, it allows links between episodes that vary depending on the amounts of each subplot and moves both over-arching and within episode plots. Once these are resolved it’s not improbable that the Zombie stories start to reach outside Seattle, for individuals and issues farther afield, but at its present pace it seems unlikely that they’ll resolve all these plotlines soon.

Now onto Lucifer. Lucifer is good, well he’s actually bad, well actually he’s sort of himself and really putting a value on what he is or is not doing really isn’t valuable. Anyways, the show is funny and Lucifer is charming although it occasionally falls back on tropes. These tropes and it’s use of a Judeo-Christian paranormal premise, like Sleepy Hollow, make me question how long the show will hang around. While there are police sub-plots developing in Lucifer, these are not unique to the PPP genre and don’t really utilize what makes PPPs interesting. From that, the biggest problem I foresee with Lucifer is what the actual paranormal sub-plot is and how long can this actually go on for. Lucifer’s only sub-plot, that connects each week, is the will-he-or-won’t-he go back into the Hell business. This is probably related to the sub-plot of why-the-hell-pun-intended-is-officer-Decker-not-subject-to-Lucifer’s-powers but at this point we don’t know. The problem with this is that, even though beings from heaven have as long as they’d like to wax poetic and be will-the-or-won’t-they about God, it can only go on for so long before audiences are bored.

Therefore, if he goes back the show ends or he does some sort of weird and probably not satisfying part-time thing and if he doesn’t go back then we keep playing this game, no reason why God should stop pestering him, and my assumption would be that Lucifer loses his powers. Which may begin a cycle of, “Oh no I’d like those back please” that reignites the previous yes/no on Hell discussion. There are more possibilities than what I’ve outlined but based on the current sub-plots I’m not sure where they’re going. Thankfully, the premise is more open-ended than for Sleepy Hollow and there is the possibility of an infinite yes/no to Hell. Also because most of the murders are not directly tied to the supernatural element it’s likely that it could go on indefinitely and the problem is how long can they keep Lucifer, person and show, entertaining without commitment.

Both have potential to be long running series but the way that they develop their supernatural elements will eventually make or break each one. Shows similar to Lucifer, such as Sleepy Hollow and NBC’s Constantine, have had trouble keeping their Judeo-Christian lore straight and making the world development steady enough to sustain a long-running series. While there isn’t a show similar to iZombie in relation to its supernatural element, it has the potential like other shows that work on the girl with many faces premise, Dollhouse and Orphan Black, to get boring if the character of the protagonist doesn’t solidify. Essentially, while linked by the overarching plots, iZombie may fall into “theme” episodes with changes to the protagonist’s identity masquerading as character development. I hope both continue for a long time, or at least as long as Grimm has, but like all good stories careful planning is what will allow each to tell important meaningful stories rather than fizzle out.

PPPs – Part II – The Faltering of Sleepy Hollow

Let me preface this by saying I loved Sleepy Hollow. I really did. The first season blew me away and made me question every other ridiculous show idea I had ever heard of because they really hit it out of the park. Season 2 did not have this same effect and season 3 has me even more disappointed. Some of you who know me may go “Hey wait, you watch Once Upon A Time which is much worse than Sleepy Hollow” and I do not deny this but unfortunately OUAT started out mediocre and continues to be that same low-level Pork Rinds level entertainment. Sleepy Hollow began as a Hannibal Steak and has slowly become McDonalds. But why, why has this happened to one of my favorite TV shows?

In the case of Sleepy Hollow, it begins with the premise for the show and the constraints that their paranormal concept put on the development of a long running PPP series. Brief concept synopsis: A Sleepy Hollow Sheriff, Abigail Mills, meets Ichabod Crane who has woken up 200 years after the American Revolution.

They are the witnesses of God to prevent the coming apocalypse and the headless horseman that Ichabod fought 200 years ago was one of those horsemen one of the harbingers of Moloch who wants to bring the dead into the world of the living and create chaos.

In general, this means that they draw from Judeo-Christian biblical lore and to a certain degree pre-Judeo-Christian monotheism myths. That’s the realm they are working from with a bit of American folklore, the headless horseman and Salem witches, mixed in to rationalized why the hell this would happen in the Northeast of America and not somewhere with exponentially more historical, archaeological, ancient depth. This sounds a bit absurd but also awesome. Two witnesses, one an awesome Black Woman Cop and the other an upper class White Dude actually from the 1700s, have to stop the apocalypse. Also cool: underground revolutionary tunnels, archives, flashbacks to the revolution, and hilarious problems about dealing with modern technology.

Problem: Where do you go from there?

In my mind, the show would have run 4 seasons (or up to 7 depending on how deep you went into the biblical stuff). One year for each of the horsemen, or harbingers, and then ended with some sort of awesome epic thing. You create your world around this struggle and the impending apocalypse and each year raise the stakes as something goes just a bit wrong even as people are working together to stop it from happening and you stay within the realm of Judeo-Christian-American-Folklore.

Problem: That’s not what they did.

Within 1.5 seasons, Moloch and all his horsemen are defeated, and instead of weekly investigations of murders related to these horsemen and the impending apocalypse, the show is devolving slowly in season three into borderline random paranormal villains killing people. There technically is an overarching story and villain but those are shakily related. Additionally, Abby went from a local Sheriff to an FBI Agent making it exponentially harder to explain why the hell Crane is around all the time and can solve all the murders.

Basically, seasons 2-3 expands Sleepy Hollow’s paranormal world outside their American-folklore-centric- Judeo-Christian premise to encompass all myths from all times and all cultures. The villain switches from Moloch to Pandora, a character from Greek mythology and generally unrelated to monotheistic beliefs, and her minions who range from Chinese to Caribbean demons. Essentially, Sleepy Hollow broke their own internal paranormal logic opening the show up for questions such as “Why didn’t Pandora and Moloch team up to defeat the witnesses”. Good Question. Because when the show started Pandora wasn’t an idea in the minds of the showrunners, that’s why.

This sort of borrowing without world-building is what is slowly eroding this show. While it builds on the strong and enduring idea of a police procedural, its paranormal support has hindered the development of the world of the show which, at least in the beginning, seemed to have a great foundation of concepts and ideas.

PPPs: Paranormal Police Procedurals – Part I

As I’ve said before, I watch a lot of TV and most it is sci-fi or fantasy oriented in some way. Why? Because if I want something realistic I live in a city where a colleague had two of her students witness gun violence over the weekend. I don’t need to pretend stuff like that happens when it actually does. Anyway, I had noticed a few years back, about when Castle began, that there was a new formula for “hit-show”. Police officer + some atypical profession that helps solve crimes. I see this as starting with Bones in 2005 and continuing into the present.

However, it wasn’t until last year when my friend mentioned how she had a hard time watching police procedurals that it hit me, a new version of that formula had come into being. The Paranormal Police Procedural (PPP). The formula now being police officer + person with magical/special ability. Like regular police procedurals there is a certain amount of boredom that comes from their formula. To combat this though, unlike regular police procedurals that often have to fall back on romance (or lawyering) to fill in the gaps, paranormal police procedurals can fill in those gaps by providing background on the paranormal half of their show. There of course are romances anyways but they don’t have to share the weight of the story in the same way.

I’ve wanted to write about them as a sub-genre for a while but couldn’t figure out a good way to do them. So I’m going to follow up on this blog with a more detailed explorations of some PPPs but here are some preliminary thoughts the genre.

Of the four main PPPs (Sleepy Hollow, Grimm, Lucifer, and iZombie), each of these uses a different paranormal pretense for the show though they can be grouped into a number of tuples such as based on folk tales, based on comics, related to Christian beliefs, normal-turned-not-normal-person etc. The longest running of these has been Grimm (recently aired its 100th episode) and Lucifer just started this last January. So there are plenty more shows that could get on the market and take advantage of this system. But what does it matter? Why the sub-genre?

As I mentioned above I think it is born out of an easy way to get a “hit” show and extend it’s lifetime over multiple season. We haven’t eliminated murder so there are infinite ways for the paranormal sidekick to be useful in that respect but the problem is that, depending on the premise for the paranormal aspect and it’s development and depth, there is only so much paranormal to draw on. The success story being Grimm, which recently aired it’s 100th episode, and, besides shows that get cancelled in infancy, the great start but faltering Sleepy Hollow.

They also draw on rising popularity of science fiction and fantasy in television in general. While these have always been TV accessible genres, the number of these shows increases each year and expands out from network television into Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu productions as well. As technology expands and becomes more complex there are more ways for these to become interesting fiction stories and toe the line between explorations of science and fantastical uses of scientific premises. Essentially, PPPs combine the best of two worlds. The shows draw on two long standing-human fascinations, the obsession and fascination with death and of the inexplicable. Put them together and you generally have a pretty great show, even if it’s nothing like it’s source material.

The following blogs will explore some PPPs in more detail and examine how it is the paranormal premise, and not the police procedural portion, that appears to affect long-term watchability and consistency in a PPP.

Reading in the “Wrong” Order: Reading Marvel now before reading Marvel then

I’ve mentioned in other posts that I started collecting and actively reading brand-new comics in 2013. Honestly, it was a great time for me do it. I needed a hobby in the new place I was living and it got me out of the house at least once a week. And of course the comics that were produced then, and now, continue to get better and better IMO. But I’m not the “classic” fanbase that someone, we don’t know who in the comics industry, is trying to pander to. Instead, I’m part of the “new” “wave” of “evil” “millennials” “who” “knows” “nothing” “about” “comics”. Yes because I need a different gender, race, and age to understand, appreciate, and interpret good storytelling and art. It’s not like those are subjective, things that change as you age, or are part of the basic enculturation of all people in the world. But I digress, as the Lady Swift would say “Haters gonna hate.”

Collecting late led me to a few interesting things. The main one, like the Star Trek new movie series, is that it convinced me that there was something worthwhile in the older versions of these stories. They weren’t just campy stories with too many words per panel that gatekeepers thought were some sort of glorious nerd bible.

The main series that convinced me to go back and read the older versions were Kelly Sue DeConnick’s run on Captain Marvel and Charles Soule’s run on She-Hulk, which will be the foci for the rest of this post. Both comics were re-launched as part of Marvel Now, although the redesign for and run of Captain Marvel began slightly before they started using that term; and brought characters first created in the late 1970s into the ‘Now’.

Both were fantastic. The characters were flawed and centered on women with real responsibilities and problems, minus the saving-the-world-from-pending-doom part. DeConnick and Soule crafted these books with the care that I wanted from comics and their great stories were integrated with art by Emma Rios and Javier Pulido that captured the awe and draw of each character. Art is a large portion of the comics game and everyone judges books by their covers so having the amazing writing of DeConnick and Soule accompanied by such imaginative styles was truly exceptional.

Once I finished each series, or I should say in the case of She-Hulk the series finished on me, I went in search of more to learn about the development of these characters. With Captain Marvel, I went back to the source of Carol Danvers, Ms. Marvel, by reading the Essential Ms. Marvel. With She-Hulk I picked up the, She-Hulk: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 by Dan Slott. I expected both to be a bit problematic, because I was reading in the age of Social Justice Warrior comics obviously, but I was surprised by which was more problematic.

The original Ms. Marvel run went from 1977 through 1979 and the Essential volume covered issues 1-23 of the original series and Marvel Super-Heroes Magazine #10-11. While campy, with questionable costuming, Carol Danvers of the 1970s was an interesting and likeable character. In certain ways, I enjoyed this Ms. Marvel more than the modern Carol Danvers. She was more brains than brawn, something I could relate to being a petite woman getting a graduate degree. She was also unapologetically feminist arguing for more pay, editing a magazine for women but not necessarily about “women’s” things, and living on her own without a significant other. Cool and interesting in its historical context, cool and interesting today. There are problems with the way she speaks and some of her actions, which can be read as third-wave feminist but can also be read as stereotyping women’s behavior. Regardless, she was a great start to the character and I hope they blend this origin with the modern Carol Danvers when the write the script for Captain Marvel.

The Dan Slott She-Hulk: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 covers issues 1-12 from the 2004 series and 1-5 from the 2005 series and my review is less favorable for this set of comics. Although written in a more modern era, this run of She-Hulk didn’t impress me with it’s “progress”. Not that all comics need to be progressive, but Dan Slott made me disappointed with the use of She-Hulk in comics especially when this is the series many Amazon Reviewers use to compare to the work of Soule. The art is good enough, though more similar to stereotypical comics art, and Slott’s Jennifer Walters comes off as lazy and almost incapable in her practice as a lawyer. The use of the law in it is loose and the meta use of comics in the firm comes off as campy and pandering to older audiences. Seriously, do you really think in world were superheroes exist comics books could be used as legal precedent? Additionally, Jennifer seems to have lost any sense of gravity or depth, she hooks up with random guys (not a problem) but then always feels bad about it, an annoying trope for female sexuality. There are some good moments in the comic and some solid characters but it didn’t come off as particularly heartfelt or interesting and it definitely made me appreciate Soule and Pulido’s run on the comics even more. (Where the law is based on real law and She-Hulk is actually Hulky)

So what is the problem with reading Now before Then, in the “wrong order”? Nothing, inherently. Good stories and art are, at least hypothetically, timeless. For me it was the unintentional expectations that I put on these stories. It’s hard not to assume that something written in the 1970s will necessarily be bad, sexist, and trope-y or at least more so than stuff written in the last 15 years. But clearly, that wasn’t the case. These examples demonstrated to me that progress isn’t a one way street and it was a reminder that realistic and important portrayals of women and other minority characters have happened in the past.

Furthermore, what’s important about supporting such stories now, and reading and promoting those that did that in the past, is the real fear that comics, and other media, will falter and fall again on stereotypes rather than keeping us moving forward. Supporting books like She-Hulk and Captain Marvel that are able to highlight a character’s regular and super strengths help to keep us moving forward but we also need to be aware that they aren’t the first to make steps in the right direction and that once is not enough. Progress is a constant struggle and requires readers and creators to be aware of the fight.

Two Lesbians Who Talk About Nothing Other Than a Man

This is partially due to my slow, and ongoing, estrangement from Doctor Who but there is something very specific that this show has done to irritate me. I mentioned this in my previous post and it’s “two lesbians who talk about nothing other than a man.” This probably happens in other places, as I have a strong memory of this being true, but Doctor Who, and very particularly the seasons with Matt Smith, have done this so often I can’t stand seeing the very awesome and progressive pair in an episode.

My criticism piggybacks on the fact that since the departure of David Tennant, and I can’t speak to any of Peter Capaldi’s run, the development and use of female characters on the show has been really infuriating (and even during the pre-Matt Smith seasons of the reboot it wasn’t amazing). The series during that time had a lower percentage of episodes that passed the Bechdel test and, in general, fans were getting annoyed with the poor development of female characters . As an actual archaeologist, but one who LOVES to suspend her disbelief, my personal annoyance was with the backstory of River Song (another post for another time). Beyond that, this came at the same time as comments made by makers of the show along the lines of “the time isn’t right for a female Doctor”. Yay! Nothing like telling a good portion of their fan base that they can only ever hope to be the sidekick until some eventual time when we want it enough.

Anyways, I was, and continue to be, very pleased that Doctor Who has introduced regular LGBTQ characters into the show who are unabashedly together and live during the Victorian era. A sort of double middle finger to anyone who might want to suggest that Doctor Who needs to be historically accurate. Or that any FICTIONAL story has a need to be historically accurate. They are awesome badass women who are not only in a same-gender marriage but are also in an interspecies/racial relationship. It’s a person of a different Alien/Earth race instead of a person of color but that’s ok, it still adds an extra level of intrigue to their relationship especially combined with their prominence in the show.

HOWEVER, after watching a few episodes, I noticed most of their conversations are about the Doctor. Yes, he is the main character and we probably wouldn’t be seeing these characters if it wasn’t for some mess the Doctor has made but dear god the writers had a walking Bechdel test at their fingertips and still managed to muck it up. The two are in a relationship and still the majority of their dialogue revolves around talking about a man. It’s one of those infuriating tidbits, which on top of the other dissatisfaction I’ve had with Doctor Who, made me bored and annoyed. Even further, while regulars on the show, their characters continue to be poorly developed, as most of the other female characters are, and, at least in my watching of the show, felt like caricatures. Madame Vastra comes off as haughty and cold without reason and Jenny feels like a “yes, ma’am” occasional ninja with no real personality. Additionally, M. Vastra talks down to Jenny all the time and Jenny just sort of takes it, even though they are partners, which seems like an unhealthy way to portray a partnership, even if one of them used to be a maid. I hope this improves because it’s a damned fine place to start but I want these characters to have a real relationship not just be a box checked off of the diversity list.

The Girl with Many Faces

I really like watching TV. Like a lot. Which means I watch a lot of shows that aren’t very good. *cough* Once Upon a Time *cough*. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the ways that these shows are bad *cough* writing and character development *cough*. It just means I accept their flaws and move forward accepting that is how it is going to be. However, a few tropes have started to bother me because they have shown up in multiple shows that are good and that I like. While not necessarily bad tropes, I find the repetition of a plot device between shows rather fascinating. The two main ones that have continued to bother me are a) lesbians who only talk about men b) the girl with many faces. In this post, I’m going to talk about the latter as I need to remember my other example for a) before I write about it.

The girl with many faces is a trope I noticed specifically in iZombie (a show that I adore) and Dollhouse (a show that I liked a lot). It also appears to varying degrees in other shows such as Agent Carter (which I adore) and probably Alias (a show I haven’t seen) but to varying degrees. What is the girl with many faces? Well, she’s essentially whatever you want her to be. In the case, of iZombie and Dollhouse she is the main character but in almost every episode she takes on either all or part of an entirely different persona.

What’s cool about this? Well, audience members of different personality types can identify with the character depending on who they are in the episode. She can be anyone’s Mary Sue or fanfiction character, taking on the traits you want including butt-kicking, seduction, and intelligence. She can be confident or meek having tech skills or be handy with sewing. The world is her personality.

What isn’t so cool? Well, sometimes the development of female character as an individual is lost. This point often becomes part of character building. In iZombie, Liv is constantly battling with who she is on and off particular individual brains. However, characterizing Liv is still sort of difficult and comes into a sort of stark contrast with Gwen, the character in the comic that iZombie is based off of, who gets memory flashbacks but does not take on the personalities of those individuals. In Dollhouse, this comes with Echo’s increasing self-awareness but still Echo is essentially a tabula rasa for whatever the writers decide who she’s going to be. In both cases, there is a need to write at least two parallel personalities and sometimes the life of either the “true” main character or their “personality of the week” falls a bit short.

Beyond how well this is executed, it was an interesting trope to identify because it perpetuates an odd facet of gender in America. To a certain degree, women are taught to be what they are told to be. Meaning women are taught that whatever someone tells you to be you sort of should be. Women’s behaviors and personalities are encouraged to be more adaptable than men’s. This isn’t always true but I don’t think it’s accidental that both Dollhouse and iZombie focus on females who changes personalities as opposed to males. It is true that both do have male characters who take on different personalities but most cases these examples don’t highlight the extreme differences between one personality and the next, with much more detail given to the female personalities than the males. Or there are a larger number of female-centric episodes as opposed to male centric episodes. The one exception that I can recall is in season 1 of iZombie where Lowell mentions he’s on “gay brain.” However, almost every other male zombie appears to be unaffected, or only minimally affected, by the personalities of those they eat. Dollhouse also had Victor, a male doll, but it’s difficult for me to recall more than a few episodes that had his new persona as a main focus.

This isn’t necessarily a bad device. I really like(d) both of these shows. They have (had) good action, story, and writing with awesome female leads (and we need more of them). But why do cool women have to also be something like 30 other women. Yes, as a young girl I wanted to be all things awesome but at the same time it would be nice to have cool female characters that didn’t have to change all the time to fit the situation. And there are good examples of this, but at the same time why does it appear so often? Is it really so difficult to write one, stable although reflective and evolving, female personality?

The Rule

Note: This blog was initially written as part of an application for the comic website Panels on 25 Feb 2016. - Paulina

I didn’t start buying floppies until I was 22, just before I finished my first year of graduate school. It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy reading comics, I did, it was that as a kid my parents encouraged the use of the library. Also we were middle class and at the rate that I read manga buying them really made no sense.

Anyways, soon after I started collecting I became interested in the diversity of the comics industry. While not something I had actively cared about before I started collecting, the more I learned about it the more I realized that lack of diversity had kept me from pursuing my interest in American comics as a child. As a 9-year-old girl of mixed-race (Filipino-Polish if that matters to you) it was much easier to pick up manga like Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, or Inu-Yasha and relate to those characters than it was to start reading Batman where 1) there was no clear place to begin 2) it was hard to imagine myself as a stupidly wealthy middle aged white man.

So this got me thinking and after a year of collecting and going religiously to my local shop and grabbing up whatever sounded cool I realized I was adding too many books to my list and I needed a way to pare down the possibilities. (Not that you necessarily should, I just didn’t have the income to support my growing habit). And after some thought I came up with one rule:

No diversity within the comic or its creation, no way its getting my money as a full-priced floppy.

What does this mean?

It means that I don’t buy comics for full price that are made by white males about white males.

What doesn’t this mean?

-It doesn’t mean that those stories are bad.

-It doesn’t mean that the stories I’m left with are good.

-It doesn’t mean I would buy any story that met that criteria.

-It doesn’t mean I won’t ever read those stories.

-It doesn’t mean that I won’t eventually purchase those stories.

It was a way to merge my passions and meet my economic need. I could promote diversity in comics by putting my money where my mouth was and pre-ordering books with main characters who were women and/or people of color and/or stories that women and/or people of color made. To boot, it’s a pretty easy rule to remember and follow.

After I started filtering books by this rule, I realized how many new titles, creator owned and those promoted by the big two, didn’t meet my qualifications. It was a comics Bechdel test and there were months that would go by where no new titles followed my rule AND sounded interesting enough to purchase. Also like the Bechdel test, I knew it isn’t/wasn’t a perfect rule. Furthering the parallel though, it made me think seriously about all those stories that didn’t have women or people of color as main characters or as key creators.

Most of us know that what keeps women and people of color from entering the industry is an intersectional problem that involves the conception and a perpetuation of the idea that those industries “are” middle-class and white and male. This is a problem in almost all nerdy industries. More striking to me was the lack of women and people of color as main characters. What was it about a story that involved a “young boy discovering his destiny as X” that required him to be a) a boy (or male or gendered at all) b) illustrated as Caucasian. Was there some sort of special penis requirement for this destiny that also required the palest of complexions with European features? No, there wasn’t. Instead, these stories revealed a level of contentedness with “industry” standards and a lack of questioning of the ideology of the “typical” comic-book character. The industry assumed a white male audience and so they continued to give that audience stories that they could easily identify with. It wasn’t that white-male audiences couldn’t identify with diversity, we all know they can, it’s just that the industry didn’t think to make them try.

Thankfully, this is changing and every week more titles are coming out from DC and Marvel and Image that mimic the reality of comic book reading audiences. Where the characters and creators are increasingly diverse in age, gender, sex, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class background. But I keep my rule anyways. Partially because my comics are piling up in another state and I’m not adding any books at the moment but also because it’s still a good rule to have. If a comic can’t find a woman and/or a person of color to be a part of its creation, in any capacity, and they don’t have them incorporated into the story in a significant way is it an artistic choice or just laziness?

A long time ago

I started this blog almost 4 years ago after my graduate interview. At one point on the interview someone mentioned how important it was to write and that writing everyday can help improve your writing. (write write write, oh did I mention write?) So I did. For the last year (quarter?) of my undergraduate degree, I wrote something like 250 words everyday. It wasn't very organized, or good, and expressed opinions that I'm not sure I'd agree with today but I was younger and less aware and I'm not going to remove them because it's important to know where you came from.

Anyways, I'm going to start this blog up again because I've been finding myself attracted to small-blog writing jobs related to my hobbies and academic interests and, therefore, I need more updated writing samples if I'm going to apply to them. Additionally, (which is my current favorite transition word) there are a lot of things circulating my head that are not academic (aka related to my thesis) or explicitly creative that I've been wanting to write about. So this will be where I'm going to put those poorly constructed thoughts. I have also been bugging people about starting a blog but clearly not fully committed to the idea. So we'll start here, see what happens, and then maybe invest in something more substantial later on.

The current eventual plan is to have 2-3 blogs related on a central site. Those blogs will be 1) About my current research 2) A side project that I refer to as my "back-up" thesis 3) hobby/review material. These may intersect and cross over etc but those would be the three main topics of discussion. My next post will be a short blog I wrote for an application to Panels.