A Galaxy of One's Own

Not so long ago in a galaxy close to home science fiction was purely the realm of geek testosterone, but the Broads have invaded. As more and more women enter scientific and technology fields, more and more of them are writing, reading and watching science fiction books and movies. Female science fiction writers are changing the face of science fiction and men don't seem to mind.

Mostly gone are the days when female characters in science fiction were simply "trophies to be rescued, or smoldering, sexual beings that really didn't contribute to the overall plot other than as the hero's love interest." (Michaela Drapes, Burgundy Nails and Rose Tattoos: The Women of Cyberpunk)

When Star Wars A New Hope came out in 1977, this shift was just beginning and the Princess Leia character was a woman who could rescue as well as be rescued, shoot a blaster better than just about anyone, and in the next breath negotiate a treaty. (About the only thing that might have made Leia better would have been to give her a lightsaber, but I digress.) In any book or movie the writer creates expectations about her work. Audiences expect sequels to continue in the same vein as the first installment. That's why many Star Wars fans skim over the stilted dialogue and overblown special effects of the second trilogy - that's what we expect from George.

I also expected Padmé to be from a similar feminist mold as Princess Leia, not the simpering gestator she turned into in Revenge of the Sith. I expected George to once again be at the forefront of writing about strong female heroines, but he fell far short of the mark. Not only did Padmé not stack up, but other female characters were poorly representated as well.

Case in point, Lucas repeatedly missed opportunities to show female characters as equal in power to their male counterparts and often these changes would not have altered the overall story. Not once do any of the female Jedi on the Council speak - all of the lines spoken by Jedi Council members are from male members.

I also found it a bit too coincidental that the Twi'lek female Jedi, Aayla Secura, is dressed nearly as scantily as any other Twi'lek female in the Star Wars movies, but all of the other female Twi'leks are slave girls or part of the Coruscant "entertainment industry." One assumes that slave girls don't have much choice in how skimpy their attire is, but a Jedi would. Maybe Secura chose the skimpy outfit, but the coincidence makes me wonder. There are two male Twi'leks in the movies; both are clothed in long robes.

Back to Padmé. In Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, Padmé showed promise. Like Leia, she still didn't have a lightsaber, but other women in Star-Warsland did, which was a step forward. Padmé was highly educated, had reached the pinnacle of political success on her homeworld at a very young age, stormed her own palace with her handmaidens a la Artemis and fought off nasty monsters on Geonosis.

Once Padmé became pregnant, though, all that changed and all she did was sit around wringing her hands over Anakin's fate and talking about losing her job because of the pregnancy. This latter point seems totally out of sync with what is supposed to be a near-post-utopian society. Also, Padmé's inaction is completely out of character as is dying of a broken heart without seeing to the welfare of her children. Truer to character would have been a heartbroken Padmé going on for the sake of keeping her twins safe and to continue her opposition to Palpatine by being integral to the forming of the Rebellion.

I suspect that George wanted to have an Ophelia moment for Padme (floating on that coffin-barge with flowers in her hair) despite the fact that in Return of the Jedi Leia remembers her mother. How that's possible if Padmé died when Leia and Luke were minutes old, I don't know. I suppose you could attribute it to the Force, but neither Padmé nor Leia are ever considered to be particular Force adepts in the movies.

Still, I could let that go if Padmé had had a better end. It would have been much more poignant if Anakin had actually hurt Padmé in some way (domestic violence during pregnancy is much more common than one might think), but she manages to survive long enough to deliver, then to ask her trusted colleague Bail Organa to adopt Leia, ask Ben to take Luke to Tatooine - and then dies. A broken heart could even have been a contributing factor, but the difference is she would have taken care of loose ends instead of ending her life in an act of selfish suicide, which is essentially what she did.

Last Thoughts

Where the heck was Mon Mothma? She had an action figure, why wasn't she in the movie? Evidently, in the novelization, Padmé is busy working with Bail Organa organizing a coalition of Senators who are against Palpatine being invested with more power, but that it was cut. If that's the case, you know it's going to end up in another DVD version down the road. Maybe that's what happened to Mon Mothma as well. That bit of the story would have gone far to make Padmé seem less like a doormat.

My friend Snickle over at Random Piffle brought up the interesting notion of the German Spieltod, "which is basically a death in a play that must occur for dramatic purposes, but is carried out in a silly way. In Buddenbrooks, a main character dies suddenly of a toothache at the point where it was most dramatically necessary for him to be dead. Padmé's death by losing the will to live was supremely silly and lame."

I have a hard time believing even the Force couldn't help a woman deliver a child in the contraption George concocted for the delivery scene. Women in reality are fighting tooth-and-nail for dignity during childbirth, and here's 1950s-style childbirth depicted in a near-utopian society. The message is, no matter what girls, you can't ever deliver your own babies under your own steam.

I wore my "Someone's got to save your skins" Princess Leia t-shirt to see Revenge of the Sith and am so glad I did, if only to remember what potential Star Wars had for females in science fiction.

Secret Diary of a Clueless Newbie

I'm researching agents and editors, so spent my lunch hour combing the stacks at my local Borders, based on my internet research. Came across this site and had to pass it on. Does this mean I should toss my Locus collection?

Do you know where your bunny slippers are?

One of my critique partners has been published! I'm taking this as a personal compliment. Kathleen Long's "Get Bunny Love" has just debuted in stores.

Beatrice Love believes in fuzzy bunny slippers, feng shui and positive Chi.  Nathan McNulty believes in rules and decorum, and runs his event planning firm with an iron fist. When her free-spirited spunk crashes headlong into his need for control, fuzzy bunny slipper fur flies. In a battle of wills, they'll both discover there’s nothing so life altering as a dose of Bunny Love.

A Romance Junkies review warns that this book "will most certainly cause uncontrollable fits of laughter," and it's true. I'm so happy for Kath and can't wait to go buy my copy of "Get Bunny Love" (which I will do, today). I'm living vicariously through Kath until I get to go to the Show myself. Kath will be having a book-signing at the Celebrate Romance event in Baltimore, MD this weekend.

Naked Dukes and Other Things

There are so many things rattling around in my head today that it's hard to choose what to blog about. So I'll start with something naked, which is always fun.

This weekend one of my writerly friends Sally Mackenzie is having a book-signing at Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, MD for her book "The Naked Duke." Proper Philadelphian Miss Sarah Hamilton's life is turn upside down when she awakens from her innocent slumber to find herself in bed next to a handsome--and exceedingly naked--man! I wonder what nakedly pithy phrase she's including in her autographs?

On a more serious note, check out John Stewart's hilarious appearance on Crossfire a while back. Comparing Crossfire to a World Federation Wrestling-- does it get any better than that?

I'm no political pundit, but there's some interesting, ahem, "entanglements" that other bloggers have uncovered about the Jeff Gannon/James Gukert "Gate."

On other fronts and backs, I started Donald Maass' "Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook" last night. My assignment is to figure out who my personal heroes are. Joy. Like that's going to happen.

Mommy Freaking Madness

There's been a rash of books and articles (Newsweek, Salon) lately on how "intensive parenting" is driving women off the deep end, ruining marriages and creating spoiled kids. I have a few thoughts as an anxiety-ridden working mother in a major metropolitan area.

(1) YES, we need a national standard for daycare and we definitely need affordable part-time daycare, which doesn't currently exist. Daycare providers, a center or a home provider, ulitimately need to make money. They make more money on full-time care than on part-time, it's that simple.

(2) I want my mommy. I want to live closer to my extended family. Daycare is great, but sometimes you just need grandma. Unfortunately, our jobs are here and mom is there. Sucks, really.

(3) Letting your kid sleep with you is sometimes about getting some sleep yourself -- even if it means being attacked every night by the twister toddler feet -- instead of being about "co-sleeping." Let's see, would I rather rock/pace/soothe in some other way at 3am for nearly an hour or just set the kid in between us and we all go to sleep? Cause, y'know, I get sooo much more sleep if I just let her cry it out. Sure, I can sleep through that. Yep.

(4) Society trying to push women around is nothing new. Read getupgrrl's "And The Soup Of The Day Is: It's All Your Fault!" rant. The question is, what's the motivation behind "intensive parenting" today?

(5) "Divorce is down, but more marrieds are unhappy because men still do squat." Bah! Husbands do help. Mine does. He's a true partner and all men should take notes. I wanted a partner and didn't settle for less. Yes, there are still a lot of ego-centric little boys who can't deal. Don't settle. If you have one of these, tell him to grow a pair and then let and expect him to do his share. Don't micromanage him. You picked him as a father, let him do it his way and make his own mistakes. Could we maybe learn from each other?

I'm in the middle of reading The Mommy Myth by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels and I am hearing the battle cry of "No More!" I do remember my parents being more relaxed. I remember Steeler Superbowl parties where empty beer cans were made into a pyramid. I remember hiding in the hallway watching adults party while I was supposed to be in bed. I remember watching TV most evenings. And wouldn't you know it, I turned out OK. I got good grades in school, managed to avoid making really stupid decisions and generally have a nice life.

Last thoughts. There's a moment that struck me more than all of these articles and books and, believe it or not, it's from TV. When character Lynette on "Desperate Housewives" hits bottom after downing her kid's Ritalin meds, she ends up alone on an abandoned soccer field (what better place for a down-and-out soccer mom?). Two of the other female characters track her down and Lynette says that it's over, she can't do the mom thing anymore. She's terrible at it, she says. The other two chime in with how difficult things were for them and it makes Lynette stop and think. We should talk to each other more as women-who-are-also-mothers, not just talk at each other. (My name is not "Lauren's Mom" any more than it is Mrs. Scott Blah-blah!) We all feel like we're effing things up 90% of the time.

Rejection Sucks

In the mailbox yesterday was one of my SASEs, which is usually a bad thing. And it was. I keep telling myself that the agent rejection was a rejection of my query letter and synopsis and not my actual novel, since it never went that far. I'm allowing myself 24 hours to wallow, and I can't even manage that because I'm already plotting my next move -- finding out when I can go to one of Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel Workshops. I haven't submitted a query to him yet, but I plan to, and want my synopsis to kick a$$ first. And it obviously doesn't yet.

If you're a fellow despondent writer, remember to follow Dara Girard's advice to use rejection letters for origami practice. Then go cheer up Philip, he's having a bad day too.

Google in Klingon

I'm not kidding. There are bigger Klingon nerds than me. I love those Google people!
DaHjaj 'oH [a] QaQ jaj Daq Hegh!

A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words

Just discovered political cartoonist Ann Telnaes. It was hard to choose which of her pieces to link to -- one of the many burka parodies, the Fairytale Princess bits she's done with Six Chix or the Katharine Hepburn tribute. I'm probably going to have to buy Telnaes' book.

Songs About Jane

Listening now: Maroon 5's SONGS ABOUT JANE

They call themselves "neo-soul" which seems pretty accurate to me. I could listen to Adam Levine's crooning all day. He thinks he's a bady boy, but how can he be when he sings lyrics like: I'll fix these broken things/Repair your broken wings/
And make sure everything's alright/My pressure on your hips/Sinking my fingertips/Into every inch of you/Cause I know that's what you want me to do.

They'll at least tide me over until U2's new CD comes out.

So. That happened.

Reading now: Suzanne Brockmann's FLASHPOINT

I love how this woman writes. Deep POV, angst and yet there's a quirky sense of humor there too. In each book I count the pages to the first Star Trek and Star Wars reference. She always has a character somewhere who is a computer geek, and this time it was the heroine. Geek girls unite!

When I read one of Brockmann's books, I don't write anything of my own since I can't put her stuff down long enough to think. Plus, I'm procrastinating big time because I'm intimidatd by the story that I've conjured. In FLASHPOINT Brockmann sets up a new story about a woman who was held captive in Kazbekestan and tortured in numerous ways. It's really going to be interesting to see how she handles this woman's journey to finding a stable relationship in a future book. I've been grappling with that kind of story myself and am afraid to write it. Both Brockmann and Laura Kinsale, another of my favorite romance writers, write about seriously relationship-challenged people and show them creeping toward normalcy. More to the point, especially for Brockmann's stories, there isn't the typical happily ever after ending. Sure, they do end up "together" in the end, but it might not be married and usually those characters pop up in other stories with some kind of bump in the relationship. You get to see that it's not all Prince Charming leading Princess Aurora down the happily ever after "Once upon a time."

Giblets

It's kind of intimidating coming up with a suitably sardonic first post, let alone a fitting title. Welcome to Novelog, home of my novel writing and reading musings on the web. I've finally caved into the blogging phenomenon. Stay tuned for more from me on the woes of novel writing and my other interests: web site design (the day job that I actually enjoy), ancient history and religions.