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I am Woman, hear me kick ass.
Jul. 31st, 2007 11:54 amNicked from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dragonessasmith, and well worth my time.
Day 1: Make a list in your journal of the awesome women that you can think of.
Non-fictional:
My mother-She taught me how to have class by trying her damnedest not to tell me that my biological father was a wanker. Even after I disowned him, she apologizes if she slips up and says something crass. She's also the woman that taught me the difference between patience for the person you love and passivity. The older I get, the more of her backbone I see.
My grandmother-She's seventy-six, still does all her own home repairs, and is spending the week gambling because it's something she can do one-handed [she broke two bones in her arm a couple of weeks back]. She's the grandma that became cool as I got older. When I was young, she was kind of boring and ho-hum, but now that we can sit and talk, I love her to bits. She is, I'm nearly convinced, outlive every one of us.
My high school journalism advisor-I learned how to properly craft an argument by listening to what she had to say. My writing improved ten-fold because of her. I can look at my work critically now and not slash it into quite as many pieces.
Barbara Kingsolver, author-She writes book with characters who just happen to be female. There's no sobbing, no crying, no whining over ugly shoes or a lack of a sex life with the boss; she writes women who see outside of themselves and into the world. Sometimes those women do amazing things [Leah Price in The Poisonwood Bible]. Sometimes they don't, but still find out how far they can reach out and change the world in a smaller way [Taylor Greer, The Bean Trees].
Fictional
Zoe; Firefly-Because she was a warrior woman who was madly in love and didn't lose any of herself just because she fell for Wash. She knew what she was worth [a lot] and made sure that was what she got.
Taylor Greer, The Bean Trees-Plain-talking woman from a no name town who still manages to alter the world in a way that matters, if not to the world at large, than to the people who surround her. She's smarter than she realizes, but doesn't let her own opinion of her intelligence stop her from stepping up and doing what's right.
Buffy Summers-She will kick your ass if you look at her sideways. Yes, she's full of angst, but it's an honest angst for the most part. I can take some angst with my female character when the angst comes from the people around her dying.
Gert, Runaways-She's sarcastic, she's smart, she has purple hair, and she's not a stick. She also got to have the cute boyfriend. I love Runaways as a comic, but I think I would read it for Gert alone. She's a brilliant character; so much like so many teenage girls that it's easy to see why people like her. While the point of Runaways is to be kind of the "every kid" genre, Gert does it better than the rest. Yeah, she's got a telepathic link with a dinosaur, and that's awesome, but her brain saves her as often as Old Lace.
Ziva David, NCIS-In the tradition of Buffy, she will kick your ass if you look at her sideways. But there's also the fact that the writers of NCIS did right by Ziva and gave her a personality to go with being one of the token chicks. She kicks ass, but she's also smart and hard-working and knows how to pick her battles with Tony [something the writers never did for Kate].
Day 2: Rec women centric art/artistic creations.
People I don't know and inanimate objects:
Barbara Kingsolver-Writer. Because she writes books that make you think, and she writes women who surpass the ridiculous, disgusting images of women in modern fiction. Her women are more than sex machines who just want to bone the boss. Her women are people who have goals and lives. Even the women you don't want to emulate don't come off as one-note. Rachel Price in The Poisonwood Bible has a lot of qualities that irritate me, but I find myself appreciating that she finds a way to make her own way and make it honestly, even if she is shallow and racist and happy to be so. www.barbarakingsolver.com
Jo Chen-Comic Book Illustrator. Comics is a male-dominated industry, to be certain, but the women who are involved tend to be wicked talented and well-deserving of the praise they get. Jo Chen draws covers that are absolutely breath-taking. Check out the Google image search and tell me she's not brilliant. And because she's around, and being used on comics that are so high caliber [Runaways is a huge hit, as is the new Buffy series], and being so damned talented throughout, she's staking claim for women in comics who come later, the girls who are reading now who want to grow up and be the writers and illustrators later. Jo Chen kicks ass. www.jo-chen.com
Next Wave: Agents of H.A.T.E.-Comic Book by Warren Ellis. The point of Next Wave is to spoof comic books. The book contains asides and references to any number of sources while doing its damnedest to make sure that no one goes all serious and mopey during the story. There are no struggles between one's darker nature and greater hopes here. It's a shoot-em-up, knock-em-down, cause-explosions kind of awesome. And it also boasts three fantastic women in the line up. In fact, it's three women and two men; it's nice to see a line-up where the chicks aren't tacked on just for show. And not only is it three women and two men, but a woman is in charge, and she's good at it, and she will fucking own your ass if you try and mess with her. Yes, Tabby is a bit of a ditz, and it's used to the advantage of the team [a bad guy can't hurt her because she has no brain], but she's talented with her powers [she blows shit up], and she's evened out by Monica, the boss, and Elsa Bloodstone, a woman trained to kill monsters who can wield shotguns like they're nothing.
People I do know:
miriam_heddy-Her drawn-out thoughts about various shows and ideas have helped hone my feelings on feminism and gender as portrayed in various media. There are House episodes I don't like to watch because I feel their view of women is low-brow and rude, and I'm gald I can see the difference between how women are portrayed and how they could be portrayed. [So we're clear, I think House gets women right more often than most shows, but there's still need for improvement.]
The flist at large-I have, by total accident, accumulated a flist that seems to be almost 100% female. I don't know how it happened, but I'm certainly glad it did. Some of you squee, some of you go deep, and some of you give me pretty, shiny icons. Whatever you do, you do it well, and I love every inch of it. I don't have a female community out in the world because I would apparently have to travel half the globe to get the kind of line-up I would actually like.
And a special note to all female fan fiction writers:
I don't care if I think your work is shit. I don't care if you go out-of-character, or May Sue something to death, or try and tell me that I "don't understand character X like I do". I will twitch when you write badly, and I will groan when you fuck up your grammar, and I will sometimes wish, in a desperate, weeping manner, that you never write another word until you prove to me you can actually read, bu I will not, ever, be sad to see you writing. I will be frustrated, and I will be annoyed, and I will be happy [because fan fiction, done well, makes me happy], but I will not beg you to stop. And I won't beg you to stop for one reason:
PASSION. Somehow, somewhere, fan fiction came in and not only gave fans a voice, but female fans a voice. Fan fiction, by and large, is written by women, and it doesn't matter if it's written well or written terribly, what matters is that it's written by women. And they're passionate about it. The passion gets a little scary, sure, but it's passion, and it's genuine, and it's women using their brains to produce something. It's wonderful.
However [come on, you had to know it was coming], I ask a small favor. Take a tiny, eensy bit of that PASSION [yes, the all caps are necessary], and pour it into something else. Take that PASSION and point it at politics or school work or the rights of all those women whose stories you read on a regular basis. Take that PASSION and use it to tweak the world. And if you've got a little more extra PASSION, use it to chnage the world. Doesn't take much, really, just sheer determination, and the way most of us stake a claim on the OTP, I'm thinking determination isn't an issue.
dragonessasmith, and well worth my time.Day 1: Make a list in your journal of the awesome women that you can think of.
Non-fictional:
My mother-She taught me how to have class by trying her damnedest not to tell me that my biological father was a wanker. Even after I disowned him, she apologizes if she slips up and says something crass. She's also the woman that taught me the difference between patience for the person you love and passivity. The older I get, the more of her backbone I see.
My grandmother-She's seventy-six, still does all her own home repairs, and is spending the week gambling because it's something she can do one-handed [she broke two bones in her arm a couple of weeks back]. She's the grandma that became cool as I got older. When I was young, she was kind of boring and ho-hum, but now that we can sit and talk, I love her to bits. She is, I'm nearly convinced, outlive every one of us.
My high school journalism advisor-I learned how to properly craft an argument by listening to what she had to say. My writing improved ten-fold because of her. I can look at my work critically now and not slash it into quite as many pieces.
Barbara Kingsolver, author-She writes book with characters who just happen to be female. There's no sobbing, no crying, no whining over ugly shoes or a lack of a sex life with the boss; she writes women who see outside of themselves and into the world. Sometimes those women do amazing things [Leah Price in The Poisonwood Bible]. Sometimes they don't, but still find out how far they can reach out and change the world in a smaller way [Taylor Greer, The Bean Trees].
Fictional
Zoe; Firefly-Because she was a warrior woman who was madly in love and didn't lose any of herself just because she fell for Wash. She knew what she was worth [a lot] and made sure that was what she got.
Taylor Greer, The Bean Trees-Plain-talking woman from a no name town who still manages to alter the world in a way that matters, if not to the world at large, than to the people who surround her. She's smarter than she realizes, but doesn't let her own opinion of her intelligence stop her from stepping up and doing what's right.
Buffy Summers-She will kick your ass if you look at her sideways. Yes, she's full of angst, but it's an honest angst for the most part. I can take some angst with my female character when the angst comes from the people around her dying.
Gert, Runaways-She's sarcastic, she's smart, she has purple hair, and she's not a stick. She also got to have the cute boyfriend. I love Runaways as a comic, but I think I would read it for Gert alone. She's a brilliant character; so much like so many teenage girls that it's easy to see why people like her. While the point of Runaways is to be kind of the "every kid" genre, Gert does it better than the rest. Yeah, she's got a telepathic link with a dinosaur, and that's awesome, but her brain saves her as often as Old Lace.
Ziva David, NCIS-In the tradition of Buffy, she will kick your ass if you look at her sideways. But there's also the fact that the writers of NCIS did right by Ziva and gave her a personality to go with being one of the token chicks. She kicks ass, but she's also smart and hard-working and knows how to pick her battles with Tony [something the writers never did for Kate].
Day 2: Rec women centric art/artistic creations.
People I don't know and inanimate objects:
Barbara Kingsolver-Writer. Because she writes books that make you think, and she writes women who surpass the ridiculous, disgusting images of women in modern fiction. Her women are more than sex machines who just want to bone the boss. Her women are people who have goals and lives. Even the women you don't want to emulate don't come off as one-note. Rachel Price in The Poisonwood Bible has a lot of qualities that irritate me, but I find myself appreciating that she finds a way to make her own way and make it honestly, even if she is shallow and racist and happy to be so. www.barbarakingsolver.com
Jo Chen-Comic Book Illustrator. Comics is a male-dominated industry, to be certain, but the women who are involved tend to be wicked talented and well-deserving of the praise they get. Jo Chen draws covers that are absolutely breath-taking. Check out the Google image search and tell me she's not brilliant. And because she's around, and being used on comics that are so high caliber [Runaways is a huge hit, as is the new Buffy series], and being so damned talented throughout, she's staking claim for women in comics who come later, the girls who are reading now who want to grow up and be the writers and illustrators later. Jo Chen kicks ass. www.jo-chen.com
Next Wave: Agents of H.A.T.E.-Comic Book by Warren Ellis. The point of Next Wave is to spoof comic books. The book contains asides and references to any number of sources while doing its damnedest to make sure that no one goes all serious and mopey during the story. There are no struggles between one's darker nature and greater hopes here. It's a shoot-em-up, knock-em-down, cause-explosions kind of awesome. And it also boasts three fantastic women in the line up. In fact, it's three women and two men; it's nice to see a line-up where the chicks aren't tacked on just for show. And not only is it three women and two men, but a woman is in charge, and she's good at it, and she will fucking own your ass if you try and mess with her. Yes, Tabby is a bit of a ditz, and it's used to the advantage of the team [a bad guy can't hurt her because she has no brain], but she's talented with her powers [she blows shit up], and she's evened out by Monica, the boss, and Elsa Bloodstone, a woman trained to kill monsters who can wield shotguns like they're nothing.
People I do know:
miriam_heddy-Her drawn-out thoughts about various shows and ideas have helped hone my feelings on feminism and gender as portrayed in various media. There are House episodes I don't like to watch because I feel their view of women is low-brow and rude, and I'm gald I can see the difference between how women are portrayed and how they could be portrayed. [So we're clear, I think House gets women right more often than most shows, but there's still need for improvement.]The flist at large-I have, by total accident, accumulated a flist that seems to be almost 100% female. I don't know how it happened, but I'm certainly glad it did. Some of you squee, some of you go deep, and some of you give me pretty, shiny icons. Whatever you do, you do it well, and I love every inch of it. I don't have a female community out in the world because I would apparently have to travel half the globe to get the kind of line-up I would actually like.
And a special note to all female fan fiction writers:
I don't care if I think your work is shit. I don't care if you go out-of-character, or May Sue something to death, or try and tell me that I "don't understand character X like I do". I will twitch when you write badly, and I will groan when you fuck up your grammar, and I will sometimes wish, in a desperate, weeping manner, that you never write another word until you prove to me you can actually read, bu I will not, ever, be sad to see you writing. I will be frustrated, and I will be annoyed, and I will be happy [because fan fiction, done well, makes me happy], but I will not beg you to stop. And I won't beg you to stop for one reason:
PASSION. Somehow, somewhere, fan fiction came in and not only gave fans a voice, but female fans a voice. Fan fiction, by and large, is written by women, and it doesn't matter if it's written well or written terribly, what matters is that it's written by women. And they're passionate about it. The passion gets a little scary, sure, but it's passion, and it's genuine, and it's women using their brains to produce something. It's wonderful.
However [come on, you had to know it was coming], I ask a small favor. Take a tiny, eensy bit of that PASSION [yes, the all caps are necessary], and pour it into something else. Take that PASSION and point it at politics or school work or the rights of all those women whose stories you read on a regular basis. Take that PASSION and use it to tweak the world. And if you've got a little more extra PASSION, use it to chnage the world. Doesn't take much, really, just sheer determination, and the way most of us stake a claim on the OTP, I'm thinking determination isn't an issue.
