(The following is the first part of a new novel project I have been working on. As this is very much a first draft, I welcome feedback.)

An Address to the Governing Council of Aclia, on the matter of Proposition 14-S, the Keomitar Resettlement Act, by the Hon. Kovias Battlebone, Senator-Prime

We’ve all heard of it at Temple. Our priests remind us every time they want to make a point about the corrupting nature of magic – how Arthan Moonwater, once a Saint of Holy Erewas and the most powerful sorcerer our nation has known, became so obsessed with testing the limits of his abilities that he turned to murder, conjuring a fatal sickness and sending it to afflict twenty of his fellow priests before he was caught and punished at last. When the Council banished him to the Rock of Ateareath, home of the poisonous serpents the good Saint Erysethy had driven from Aclia, everyone assumed they would hear from him no more. After all, had not every criminal sent to Ateareath before then died of the serpents’ bite?

Yet we underestimated him.

He spread his magic across Ateareath’s rocks and cliffs and made it a green and fertile land in the image of our own. He charmed the serpents and made pets of them. He discovered that if he drank small doses of the poison from their fangs, he could keep his strength and health well into his old age. A hundred years after his banishment, he performed his most wicked, most audacious magical feat yet: he took seven serpents, two male and five female, and enchanted them into abominations, partly human and partly serpent, and bade them multiply. He called the new creatures Seshegari – a word which has no meaning, just some syllables he strung together into something that sounds exotic, yet now half of Aclian schoolchildren believe it’s some ancient word meaning “Poison-Born.” Some would call this a harmless mistake. I say it’s important to know that Seshegar is a meaningless word for a race of beings who were not created by Erewas of the Spheres and therefore dwell outside Its Grace.

Today the Seshegari are many. They cultivate the land Arthan made for them; they keep livestock, weave, and craft; they fish the waters off the coast. Theirs is a kind of parody of human existence, yet they know not Erewas. Rather, they worship as a god their own maker, Arthan, who lives yet, preserved by their poisons. For the last three centuries, Arthan has kept their population in check, but now they are growing too numerous as the sorcerer at last begins to weaken. When they become more than their land can contain, where will they go?

Where, my fellow Senators?

 My grandfather cast a vote in favor of the Act which allowed trade between the people of Aclia and the Seshegari of Ateareath. Seventy years afterward, my father spoke in favor of the Act which allowed Seshegari to work and study in Aclia. Unfortunate decisions, both, yet I understand quite well the sentiments behind them. Arthan, perhaps in an effort to redeem his corrupted soul, has been sending medicines made of Seshegari poisons to our shores almost ever since he created the abominations, and yes, I am aware we have benefitted from them. Thanks to these elixirs, we enjoy health that would have been beyond the power of citizens of Saint Erystheny’s time to imagine. We live twice as long. We have more time to learn, to create, to watch new generations rise. Given all that, many would say, we owe the Seshegari our friendship. Is this not true? Have you not been thinking of this, as you consider the justice of allowing these creatures to own Aclian land, perhaps even to form families with Aclian citizens?

I say no! No benefits we may have reaped from the Seshegari’s existence can obscure the truth that they are not a part of Holy Creation, not the work of Erewas of the Spheres.

I say that Saint Erystheny drove the serpents from Aclia for a reason.

We do not want them back.

Proposition 14-S has failed by a vote of five to four, on this eighth day of Dainalt, 718.

(This review contains Spoilers. If you are among the few proud geeks who hasn’t yet seen Deadpool and Wolverine, go see it and then come back to this review. You’ll have a blast. That’s my succint Spoiler-free review prologue.)

In the box-office smash Deadpool and Wolverine, love is a bitch.

When we first see Deadpool’s love interest, she is running across a wasteland plain toward our snarky hero, who watches her in awe. Since she’s clad in a red outfit, Chris de Burgh’s 1980s power ballad “The Lady in Red” scores the moment, leaving us in no doubt that what we’re witnessing is love at first sight.

Unfortunately, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has a rival for her affections, a smooth-faced, squeaky clean version of himself known as “Nicepool.” Many a lady might prefer this handsome, upright gent, so perfect that he even identifies as a feminist. But not this bitch. She refuses to be parted for good from her flawed, funny beloved, and later in the film she manages to break free of Nicepool and run to Deadpool once again, this time down a New York sidewalk to the tune of Eric Carman’s 1980s power ballad “Make Me Lose Control.” “Her!” Deadpool gasps, for once at a loss for a quip, and from that moment, the two sweethearts are inseparable. Dogpool’s slow motion leap into Deadpool’s arms is almost worth the price of admission alone.

What, you might be asking, is the name of this feisty and indomitable love interest? It’s Mary Puppins, also known as “Dogpool.” Her tongue hangs out, her eyes are lopsided, and most of her fur has fallen off. In short, she’s practically perfect in every way for Deadpool. Even if I had enjoyed nothing else about the movie, Mary Puppins, a.k.a. Dogpool, would have sufficed to make me glad I saw it.

In my previous post, I cited Deadpool and Wolverine as a movie brilliantly crafted to entertain its male target audience, though at that point I had only the trailer to judge by. I also mentioned that my husband was eager to see it. Well, he saw it, he loved it, and he told me I should see it. No other human understands what I like better than he does, so I asked him if he’d be willing to see it again, and take me this time. He answered “yes” without hesitation, and two nights ago, we went. Not only did I have a great time, but I understood why Matt wanted to see it a second time. The movie sets a breakneck pace from the very beginning and does not let up. The action and the jokes come so fast that “blink and you’ll miss it” is no figure of speech. You have to see it twice (at least) in order to take everything in, which might explain, at least in part, the movie’s sky-high box office take.

Another explanation, aside from it just being fun as all-get-out, is that it has more big-tent appeal than the trailer had led me to believe. In the trailer, the only female character we see in the action sequences is Cassandra, one of the film’s major villains; “villain” is one role the Anti-Woke Brigade doesn’t mind seeing a woman play, since the villain’s key responsibility is to threaten the world and then have her butt kicked in the climax, in this case by the two “silly boys” Deadpool and Wolverine. The trailer led me to believe that in this movie, hero-ing would be solely men’s work. Yet now I can see why the trailer misled me. To show an important female character other than Cassandra in the action sequences would have counted as a Spoiler. So, Spoiler Alert: there are women on Team Good, and while they don’t get quite as much screen time as I would have liked, they do get to shine.

The movie’s (human) female MVP is Laura, or X-23, played here (as in the film Logan) by Dafne Keen. She is one of the leaders of the Resistance, a group of superpowered fighters in opposition to Cassandra, who rules “the Void” with an iron fist and wickedly cruel telepathic fingers. Throughout the film’s first half, Hugh Jackson’s Wolverine, whom Deadpool is trying to recruit to save his corner of the multiverse from destruction, has resisted the Call to Heroism. But even though this Wolverine is from a different universe from the one we saw become fire-forged friends with Laura in Logan, something in her draws him out, and she persuades him to take up the heroic mantle and become the man he thinks he’s lost his chance to be. But lest I give the idea that Laura exists in the film solely to motivate Wolverine, be assured, the character is every bit the badass she was in Logan. In order to defeat Cassandra, Deadpool and Wolverine must neutralize the telepathic powers she uses to torture her subjects, and to do that, they need the mind-blocking iron helmet of the Juggernaut, the same “mofo” that a song over the closing credits of Deadpool 2 claimed could not be stopped. Laura apparently never heard that song, for stop him she does, and then decapitates him, throwing his helmeted head to Deadpool as she is drawn back into the battle with Cassandra’s henchmen. Our titular heroes could not save the day without her help.

I won’t Spoil the identities of the other members of the Resistance. I will say only that Laura is not a Smurfette.

Would I still have enjoyed Deadpool and Wolverine if Laura hadn’t been in it? Possibly. After all, I would still have had Dogpool. Yet I loved having Laura there, as it assured me that superheroines may not be a dying breed in cinema, after all. They may not get to be headliners; they may be only part of a team; but at least women’s roles in superhero films won’t be reduced once again to Love Interest or Villain, and I find that a relief.

The movie has its problems. For one, despite being well played by Emma Corrin, Cassandra isn’t a very interesting villain. Unlike the complex bad guys who are the heroes in their own mind, fighting for a cause they perceive as righteous, she loves to hurt people just because she can, and when an opportunity comes her way to hurt people on a massive scale, big surprise, she leaps at it. (Only Gravity Falls‘ Bill Cipher manages to get around my general disaffection with this type of villain.) The movie’s other bad guy, prepared to commit atrocities to accomplish a goal he believes in, is a bit more complicated but gets less screen time. Also, I’ve never been a big fan of Vanessa, Deadpool’s human love interest, whose entire identity can pretty much be summed up by the word “hot”; I’d hoped she might be better served in the third film after having been done so dirty in the second, but no such luck. She’s the movie’s dullest character by far.

All the same, I had fun, and I recommend the movie. Three and a half out of four stars.

Now, if Dogpool had bitten Cassandra to distract her at the climax, I would have given it a full four.

On this final weekend of July, 2024, Deadpool And Wolverine stands poised to become a smash hit at the box office. It’s Certified Fresh at 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, but more than that, the word of mouth from friends my husband and I trust has been incredibly positive. Anyone who isn’t a fan of Pixar can be forgiven for regarding the new Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman action comedy as the savior of this year’s thus far lackluster summer movie season.

I’m just not interested.

I never saw the first Deadpool, but I found Deadpool 2 a delight; it not only swept me up in its wave of irreverent humor, but it gave me a female character I could like and admire, Deadpool’s badass lady ally Domino, played by Zasie Beetz. Sadly, my interest in the third film sank like a stone when I learned Beetz would not be returning, and the details that emerged afterward regarding the film’s creators going all in on the bromance — this is Wolverine, after all — confirmed my suspicions that I was being cut out of the potential demographic for this new film. The trailer I saw didn’t help. In the main portion, the only female character to speak a line of dialogue was the villain, and her line — “Boys are so silly” — made me groan aloud, as the smallest hint of Straw Feminism spurs me to run for the hills. It did conclude with an amusing epilogue featuring Leslie Uggams, always a welcome presence, but its position within the trailer as a whole made it clear that hers is a bit role, not an integral part of the plot. Overall, it left me with an impression of a movie determined to deflect any and all of the accusations of “wokeness” and make it clear to its prospective audience that it is not, but NOT, part of the much-derided “M-She-U.” This may explain why Beetz wasn’t asked to return. Thanks to the determination and persistence of social media’s “Anti-Woke Brigade,” the same bitter crowd that turned Disney+’s enjoyable series Ms. Marvel into a guilty pleasure and raised a gloating howl at the disappointing box-office performance of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the era of the big-screen live-action superheroine, begun so auspiciously with Wonder Woman in 2017, seems to be over.

Now, the fact that Deadpool And Wolverine wasn’t made with me in mind does not mean it isn’t a good movie. Sources I trust say it’s great, and I hope they’re right. I want my husband to have the time of his life when he goes to see it. A good movie, whatever its target audience, is always welcome. What I wish, however, is that a few more genre movies of similarly high quality were made with me in mind, and on those rare occasions when they do emerge (e.g. the aforementioned Furiosa), the Anti-Woke Brigade would refrain from launching a barrage of attacks on their very existence and just let them be.

Some fiction that centers girls and women — for instance, Oscar-bait films like Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, and Past Lives — remains relatively safe from attack. Yet when a fantasy, sci-fi, or action-adventure film with a female lead fails to generate strong box-office numbers, the Brigade seizes on this as evidence that women just aren’t interested in these genres and therefore it’s a waste of time for makers of these types of films to consider women as a potential audience. All we care about is romance, they declare, so this is the only type of movie we should star in; we have our things (almost always romantic comedies, occasionally a good costume drama and, surprisingly enough, horror), and they have theirs (everything else). Yet what is the general attitude toward romance, the kind of story it’s acceptable for a woman to lead? It tends to be dismissed out of hand as subpar and undeserving of any serious attention. If stories were written with women in mind, the thinking seems to run, they must be silly, shallow twaddle. Where does this attitude come from? Is it a conscious or unconscious misogyny that sees the female audience as undeserving of anything more “substantial” (assuming, of course, that romance inherently lacks substance)? Or is it that too much of the stuff marketed to female audiences is, in my opinion, just not very good? Where does one problem end, and the other begin?

I can’t help comparing current and recent “chick flicks” (a descriptor altogether lacking in respect) to the 1930s and 1940s “woman’s pictures” (a descriptor slightly more respectful, but still segregating the movies meant to appeal to women from the rest of cinema), and the comparison isn’t in today’s favor. In both the “chick flick” and the “woman’s picture,” the search for love lies at the center of the female protagonists’ stories, but in recent romantic comedies (romantic dramas scarcely figuring into it anymore), the stakes tend to be low. Audiences don’t have to worry whether a couple will end up together because they already know they will, whatever phony obstacles the screenplay might toss in their path. Worse, very little effort is put into helping the audience understand why the two people are drawn to each other in the first place, what each likes and admires about the other; she’s cute, he’s cute, they have “chemistry” (even when they don’t), end of story. Characterization also remains at surface level, so the personalities and performances don’t linger in the memory once the movies are over.

Contrast that with some of the best of the “woman’s pictures,” movies like Three Comrades (1938), In Name Only (1939), Greta Garbo’s body of work, especially Camille (1936), All This and Heaven Too (1940), Now, Voyager, Random Harvest (both 1942), and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). The makers of these films took the trouble to craft interesting and complex characters that an audience could make a real emotional investment in. When the couples got together, it mattered. When they didn’t get together, it mattered. The filmmakers wanted to give their audiences something good, because — at least it seems to me when I watch the films — they actually cared about said audiences. Perhaps that lies at the heart of the difference: the caring. Today’s makers of “chick flicks” don’t care enough about the stories they’re telling or the audiences they’re aiming for. It’s hard for me to respect a movie, or a filmmaker, that doesn’t respect me.

If women are meant to be satisfied with a small corner of the cinema world, then let the makers of the movies in that corner remember their audience is made up of people who, as Jo March puts it in 2019’s Little Women, “have minds and souls as well as heart.” I beg them: don’t keep doing a half-assed job because you think that in our quiet desperation we’ll gobble up any slop you put in front of us; instead, take honest pride in bringing a story of genuine quality to life. Speaking as someone who rarely bothers with romantic comedies unless they’re Jane Austen adaptations, show you care about me as a consumer, and I’ll start caring about you and your work.

But that still leaves the other problem to deal with, the idea that stories about and for women, however good they might be, have less value and importance than stories about and for men. In her brilliant study A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930 – 1960, Jeanine Basinger quotes critic Richard Corliss: “How can I defend a film as art if I include [on a Ten Greatest Films list] any Hollywood produce among the received masterpieces? After all, Potemkin (which I admire but don’t really like) is the very stuff of cinema — but Now, Voyager (which I love but am afraid to admire) is only a movie! As a result, the typical ten best list wound up looking like screening selections for an undergraduate course in Seminal Cinema 101. And the Now, Voyagers of the film world were relegated to a mind-closet containing all of the critic’s secret sins.” I wonder just how many more of critics’ “secret sins” are classic-era “women’s pictures.”

If the people making the films by and about women have somehow absorbed the idea that their films don’t matter much in the long run into their subconscious, small wonder they put so little effort into them. The worm eats its own tail, and I don’t see any clear solution than to tackle it one movie at a time.

My husband will be seeing Deadpool And Wolverine, and afterwards I’ll ask him to give me a full report. It will be a little longer before I venture out to the multiplex again (unless, it turns out, the trailer was totally misleading and there is in fact a female character I can like and admire). Perhaps the creative team behind Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice will show they care about me as an audience? They are behind the smash Netflix series Wednesday, after all.

Yesterday, March 8, was International Women’s Day, a fact to which a Facebook friend alerted me. I need to mark March 8 down in my mental calendar, for outside of Facebook I saw no mention of International Women’s Day in media or online. I’d hoped I might read a reflection or two on the Opinion pages of cnn.com or The Guardian Online, or a list of outstanding and/or impactful female authors on Tor Publishing’s reactormag.com, but no. Of the media sites I frequent, only Rotten Tomatoes chose to honor the day with a list of Best Women-Directed Movies of the twenty-first century, which includes Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives, which are nominated for major Academy Awards, and Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, which should be.

My thoughts on International Women’s Day have been mingling with my thoughts on the Oscars, set to air tomorrow night (3/10), as when I reflect on the women in or close to the public eye who have inspired me most, they’re nearly always the women who make art — and I mean art in its broadest sense, encompassing not only painting, drawing, and sculpture but novels, poems, short stories, musical compositions of all kinds, film, and television. Female screenwriters and directors are among my pantheon of heroines. Justine Triet (writer-director of Anatomy of a Fall) and Celine Song (writer-director of Past Lives), even if you don’t go home with Oscars, I honor you in my heart.

Also among the nominees is Maestro, a biopic of composer Leonard Bernstein, directed by and starring Bradley Cooper. It might be a very good film; its Best Picture nomination and Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggest it is (although, at 79%, it’s the lowest ranked among the Best Picture nominees. And I admire Bernstein’s work, especially his score for West Side Story. Yet I can’t summon the slightest desire to see Maestro, as I’ve pretty much lost patience with the oft-told tale it tells, of the Erratic and Self-Absorbed Male Creative Genius and His Less Gifted, Long-Suffering (TM) Wife. (In the 1991 coming-of-age movie Paradise, young Thora Birch, wondering aloud what the adults around her mean when they describe a female acquaintance as “long-suffering,” notes, “They never say it about men.”)

Reviewers of Maestro have mentioned that Carey Mulligan, as Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, gives a great performance (she’s nominated for Best Actress) and that the narrative does take the time to show her as a complex and interesting figure who does more than just suffer her husband’s whims. That’s good to know. Yet, sadly, history has already told the story. Bernstein’s compositions have made an impact that will last for generations to come, while the only reason anyone knows anything about Mrs. Bernstein is because she’s, well, Mrs. Bernstein, the not-quite-as-great woman in the shadow of the great man. This kind of story has been told very well, my favorite iteration being Anais Mitchell’s sublime musical Hadestown. Yet I’m just so darn tired of it, especially when Hollywood so rarely flips the script.

This isn’t to say that we never see good movies about women of creative genius. In 2016 we saw two such films, the Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion and Maudie, about folk artist Maud Lewis. Yet there’s no long-suffering man in Dickinson’s life; as a single woman, she’s free to compose haunting, profound poems, isolate herself, and slowly lose her sanity without forfeiting the audience’s sympathy or admiration. As for Maudie, even though she’s the creative one in the marriage, she’s still a put-upon wife, enduring her husband’s mercurial temper and jealousy. Biopics, of course, must at least appear to stay true to history, but the fictional depictions the movies give us of women who make art tend to be worse. Little Women (1994 and 2019) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) notwithstanding, there’s a long tradition of portraying their drive to create (as opposed to procreate) as wrongheaded, if not downright unnatural. Sometimes she’s a straight-up monster with ice in her veins (e.g. 1941’s The Great Lie, 2011’s Young Adult, 2023’s Tar); other times, she’s made to pay for her misguided priorities with her life (e.g. 1948’s The Red Shoes). A man may be forgiven for putting his art ahead of his personal relationships — he’s a genius, after all, and the world would be poorer without his efforts — but for a woman, it’s a deadly sin.

Yet all is far from gloom and doom in this Women’s History Month, for despite the mixed messages our popular culture sends us, women still make good art.

Tony winner Anais Mitchell, Oscar winner and nominee Billie Eilish, Victoria Monet, Ashlie Amber, Gracie Abrams, Keturah Allgood, the Shindellas, Corook, Tyla, Tate McRae, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ariana Grande, and many other ladies are still making music.

Women like Justine Triet, Celine Song, Kelly Fremon Craig, Raine Allen Miller, Sammi Cohen, Laurel Parmet, Charlotte Regan, Nicole Holofcener, Noora Niasari, A.V. Rockwell, Domee Shi, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Sarah Polley, Jane Campion, Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig, Sian Heder, Ava DuVernay, Cathy Brady, Heidi Ewing, Fernanda Valadez, Jasmila Zbanic, Chloe Zhao, and Emerald Fennell still make movies.

And Juliet Marillier, Kate Elliott, Kate Forsyth, Shannon Chakraborty, Sharon Shinn, Madeline Miller, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Naomi Novik, Saara El-Arifi, Tasha Suri, Alix E. Harrow, Katherine Arden, C.M. Waggoner, Robin Hobb, Lois McMaster Bujold, Margaret Rogerson, Jordan Ifueko, N.K. Jemision, Nnedi Okorafor, Claire North, Jennifer Saint, Natalie Haynes, Genevieve Gornichec, and many other fantastically talented women are still writing insightful and moving works of SFF.

Happy International Women’s Day from the Gray Geek Lady.

2024 has been an interesting year so far. I’ve finished one script for the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company — a new Christmas piece, which I hope will be performed this coming December — and I’m working on another. I’m also teaching an online Composition course for the first time in years, and I can feel myself growing more comfortable and confident with this mode of teaching as Winter Quarter 2024 nears its end. And while I’ve been recording videos for use in my course, I’ve also begun putting on film some thoughts that would have previously appeared in this space. I’m “the Gray Geek Lady,” representing Generation X on YouTube.

For my 2023 Reading Year In Review, I have singled out my three favorite reads of the year, the unquestioned highlights of an overall solid year. I’ve filmed a vlog about each of them.

First, Brandon Sanderson’s Tress of the Emerald Sea, my springtime read.

Then, Shannon Chakraborty’s superlative The Adventures of Amina Al-Sifari, my summertime read and my favorite of the three.

Finally, Saara El-Arifi’s The Final Strife, my year-end read, the first volume of the epic series The Ending Fire. This work deserves far more attention than it seems to be getting.

I already know what I want for my fifty-fifth birthday, coming up in March 2024: tickets for me and my husband to see Beetlejuice the Musical at Atlanta, GA’s Fabulous Fox Theatre. I’m already familiar with the story. I’ve listened to the Original Broadway Cast recording, and the songs are tuneful and fun and at times even poignant. So I know it’s going to be a wonderful time, a perfect celebration for a woman who has loved live theater in general, and musicals in particular, nearly all her life.

This past weekend, Beetlejuice the Musical made the news, and not in a good way. Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and a male companion decided to take in a Broadway touring company performance of the show in Denver. They took advantage of the darkened theater to indulge in heavy petting, raucous singing, and vaping, eventually becoming so disruptive that the ushers asked them to leave. They resisted, and in the end, theater security had to escort them from the building — but not before Boebert, in a tantrum any sane person over the age of sixteen would be embarrassed by, gave the easily recognizable Narcissist’s Call: “Don’t you know who I am?”

When the news broke, social media went wild. Plenty of folks expressed outrage and called upon Boebert to resign from Congress, noting that some politicians have been hounded from office for less disgraceful behavior. But Boebert had her defenders, their most common point being some variation of “who among us hasn’t made out in the back of a darkened theater?” As might be expected, these reactions split along political lines, with those who share her views defending her behavior and those who disagree with her politically demanding her resignation. Yet my frustration with her, indeed with the whole incident, has nothing to do with politics. This is not a political blog and I have no plans to turn it into one. I don’t speak on this kerfuffle as a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Constitutionalist, or what-have-you. I speak as someone who loves and values the theater.

The theater is in my blood. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a part of my life. My father taught history at a small community college in a tiny south Georgia town, hardly an expected cultural mecca. Yet this little college in this little town had a secret weapon: an amazing theater department, which regularly put on productions that infused that lazy community with life and energy, giving them something to look forward to every season. My father, an excellent actor, played everything from Moliere’s titular Miser to the cold-blooded Judge Danforth in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible to the equally cold-blooded but more tuneful Edward Rutledge in the musical 1776 to the cantankerous Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner to the the noble Duke Theseus in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My mother also excelled on the stage, playing, among other things, the wise, funny Mrs. Paroo in The Music Man and the harried, ultimately tragic Edith Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank. My sister and I often found ourselves at rehearsals when babysitters could not be found (and when babysitters were found, they were often theater majors). When we were little, we spent our time running through the hallways and playing in the empty classrooms, but as we grew older, we began to pay attention to the shows being rehearsed. Peterson Hall, the home of the productions, became a kind of second school, teaching us about Shakespeare and Greek mythology, the Salem Witch Trials, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Holocaust, and the Ed Sullivan Show (this last when Mom and Dad played Mr. and Mrs. MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie) — only twice as much fun as school has any right to be. Whenever the chance arose, we too auditioned and acted.

When I look back over my life, this stretch of time — from age six to about fourteen — has a glow about it, a glamor. So much of my happiness was bound up with the theater, rehearsing plays, performing in plays, and of course watching plays. Even my memory of the smell of freshly painted sets holds magic for me. As such, I have a bone-deep understanding of the value of the theater, and open, unashamed disrespect for the medium hits me where I love. As both an audience member and a performer, I want people like Ms. Boebert and her defenders to understand one crucial point:

A live play is not a movie.

Movies may be great works of art, and watching a good movie at a theater can be a wonderfully immersive experience Yet a movie differs from a play performance in a couple of key areas. First, when you watch a movie, what unfolds before you is removed from you in time and space. The actors aren’t going to look out from the screen and see you or speak to you, and the audience has no impact on the performances they give.

Second, a movie is a finished product. It will exist forever in its present state, as long as it is maintained. If you see a movie, fall in love with it, and go back to see it again the following week, you’ll be seeing exactly the same movie, even though a second viewing generally prompts a deeper look. Likewise, when you rewatch a movie you loved as a child and find it isn’t as good as you remembered, the movie hasn’t changed; you have. Again, as with the factor above, the movie isn’t influenced by the audience’s response. It is itself, whether we love it or loathe it. Hurl popcorn and/or empty soda cans at the screen, and the movie goes merrily on.

On both these points, live theater is quite different. The actors are performing, and the action is unfolding, in the same time and space as the audience, which creates (or at least should create) a more intimate and collaborative connection between the audience and the play and performers. Unlike a movie audience, a live theater audience can influence the performance, and no two performances of the same show are exactly the same. I learned this when I played my first role at the age of ten, one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I picked up on which moment in Shakespeare’s comedy were expected to rouse a vocal reaction from the audience; I learned the phrase “Hold for laughs.” When the audiences responded to us, when we sensed they were with us, we fed off their positive vibes and ended the evenings on a natural high. But when we had a “dead crowd,” we were usually exhausted by the end, having given all our energy while getting nothing back. In both cases, we acted our hearts out, but we “crushed it” hardest when our audiences vibed with us. How does the song go? “What is it that we’re living for? Applause, applause!”

Another thing I learned, as one experience on stage followed another, was that even the “dead crowds,” though they might be less vocal, still valued what we gave them. They came to the theater to see a show. If people had no interest in paying attention to what was happening on stage, they didn’t come. That seems so obvious, but apparently, nowadays, it isn’t. Boebert’s behavior showed very clearly that she didn’t care about the show she was at the theater to see, and for me, the biggest mystery in this whole brouhaha is why she chose to go at all, when she and her companion could have saved money by going to a movie instead — preferably one of those “so bad it’s good” movies that no one makes any solid emotional investment in.

Boebert, I’ve heard, is going through a divorce at the moment and is in an emotionally fragile state. I won’t judge her for that; I can even sympathize. Nor will I judge her for things others on social media have mentioned, her lack of formal education (which shouldn’t be an excuse not to crack an occasional book) or her wardrobe choice on the night in question. But for displaying contempt for the art form I love, I will judge her, and harshly. I will judge anyone who does that, whatever their political stances may be.

A movie house may be a palace, but a theater is a temple. Treat it as such.

I’ve found one of “those lines” again, a passage from a book that resonates with me so perfectly and precisely that I feel the author is speaking directly to me. It appears in the thirteenth chapter of Shannon Chakraborty’s swashbuckling Arabian Nights fantasy The Adventures of Amina Al-Sifari, when the title character, a middle-aged sea captain called out of retirement to rescue a young woman from the clutches of a power-hungry sorcerer, is bonding with her former navigator’s wife, Nasteho, over their mutual need to raise their children with love and care yet still hold onto something of their own.

“Our hearts may be spoken for by those with sweet eyes, little smiles, and so very many needs,” Amina tells Nasteho, “but that does not mean that which makes us us is gone. And I hope … part of me hopes anyway that in seeing me do this, Marjana [her daughter] knows more is possible. I would not want her to believe that because she was born a girl, she cannot dream.” (184)

Amina’s conflict here is not my conflict. I’ve written in this space before about my decision not to become a mother and the factors that went into it, so I don’t need to go into a great amount of detail on the matter again. Yet a character doesn’t have to represent me fully in order to speak to me, and and it brought me joy when I heard Amina put into clear, common-sense language something we’d all do well to understand: motherhood does not, and should not, swallow a woman’s identity whole. She doesn’t stop being a person with interests, ideas, and, yes, ambitions of her own, and any demand for full self-abnegation is unreasonable. Amina wants to be a good mother to her daughter, and her love for Marjana and desire to protect her is a major driving force throughout the narrative. But part of that, as she says, lies in showing the girl that she can do anything, be anything, she chooses. One of the crucial tasks of feminism lies in making certain that the question we start asking our children when they’re around five years old, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, is just as relevant for little girls as it is for little boys. Thanks to Amina’s example, that question will be plenty relevant for young Marjana, and that gladdens me.

This isn’t the only thing I love about Chakraborty’s heroine, who has one a spot among my favorite characters in the fantasy genre. First, even though Amina is a bit of a rogue and doesn’t always, or even often, play by the rules, she has a strong moral sense, being fiercely loyal to her seafaring companions and strongly protective of the young woman she has set out to rescue. She might initially take on the rescue mission out of a desire to protect her family, whom the girl’s grandmother vows to destroy if Amina doesn’t do what she wants, but she quickly sees that the villain — a truly loathsome piece of work — must be stopped, for the greater as well as the “lesser” good. For all her flaws, she is a hero, always delightful to see in this Age of Grimdark.

Also, Amina sometimes gets in over her head. Sometimes she’s at a loss to see how she’ll get out of certain situations. Yet she remains tenacious, determined, and above all, resourceful (as I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite traits in a heroine). The fact that she sometimes needs help makes her Crowning Moments of Awesome (TV Tropes) all the more rewarding.

Furthermore, despite her non-traditional calling, Amina isn’t a “Not Like Other Girls” kind of woman, which pleases me in particular because it would have been so easy for Chakraborty to go that route, as other authors have done with female characters who play “masculine” roles. While I do wish Dalila the Poisoner were not the only woman in her crew, at no point in the narrative does Amina express contempt or even disapproval towards women who have made different choices. Nasteho could have been just the wife of Majed the navigator, begging him to stay home with his family and reject the dangerous mission — after all, haven’t we seen this hundreds of times before? — but instead, she and Amina become friends. Amina’s developing bond with Dunya, the girl she rescues, also plays a vital role in the story; as we learn more about Dunya, we see Amina evolving into the kind of mentor we all wish we could have.

In short, Amina Al-Sifari is well worth spending time with, and she’s surrounded by an engaging cast of supporting characters. The world is both richly detailed and agreeably lived-in, and the plot engrossing, as these characters we care about face ever more dangerous obstacles. Five rollicking stars.

It’s late August, and the middle-aged nerdwoman’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of DragonCon, that annual Labor Day weekend celebration of all that is strange, weird, and fanciful, from novels to comics to movies to television to games to costuming. This year will mark my twentieth trip to downtown Atlanta, GA to soak up the atmosphere, greet old friends and make new ones, and gather all the ideas my head can hold of what books to read, shows to watch, and stories to write. I’ve loved every Con, even 2020 when panels and other events were hosted virtually. But this Con is special.

(Yes, I know I say that about every Con, but I mean it this time…)

Among my favorite things about DragonCon is the opportunity it gives me, and any/all of us of the nerd persuasion, to learn and talk about things we love with others who share those passions. If you’re a new Con-goer, it won’t take you long to find your people. Do you love historical fantasy or science fiction with a Steampunk flair? Come gather at the Alternate and Historical Fiction Track. Enjoy shows like Doctor Who or PBS Mystery or Masterpiece Theatre? The Brit Track has you covered. The Science Fiction Literature Track covers both classic and modern print science fiction. (This year I get to serve as a panelist for a discussion of Gender Roles on Anne McCaffrey’s Pern, Sunday at 2:30 p.m.) In the generic Fantasy Literature Track, fantasy of all sub-genres is discussed, yet a more specifically targeted High Fantasy Track covers works with an Epic bent. There’s also a track aimed at aspiring SFF authors, the simply named Writer’s Track, a gold mine of useful advice. Animation, Anime, Comics, Costuming, Horror, Star Trek, Star Wars, and more have their own Tracks where fans can share their thoughts and ideas and learn from experts who have worked and/or studied in those fields. One of my favorite days of the year is “DragonCon-Mobile-App-Goes-Live Day”, when the list of all activities and events becomes available online and I can tap into each Track’s schedule to mark the panels I’m interested in. I have my favorites. I spend a lot of time bouncing between the Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature and Writer’s Tracks, with not infrequent visits to the Brit, Animation, and High Fantasy Tracks, but I look over everything on offer, because something might surprise me, like, say, a Jim Henson trivia contest hosted by the Puppetry Track.

Choosing panels is always fun, but this year there seems to be more of what I go to DragonCon for. Most years I’ll have one or two empty blocks of time in my schedule, when I can’t find a panel that intrigues me so I wander through Artists’ Alley or the Dealers’ Room or grab a meal. This year, almost every hour has at least one panel or event marked in it. Many of the hours have multiple panels competing for my attention. Take Friday at 2:30 p.m. The Diversity in Speculative Fiction and Fantasy Track is hosting a discussion called “Empowering Heroines: Unveiling the Might of Female Leads.” At the same time, the Alternate and Historical Fiction Track is hosting, “Herstorically Speaking: Women You Should Know.” I could learn a ton from either of these panels. How am I supposed to choose between them? I expect that circumstance will end up making the final choice. I’ll file it away under “Problems I’m Happy to Have.”

Yet on Friday and Sunday evenings, I will have an even better problem. The 5:00 – 8:30 p.m. blocks of those evenings often feature panels I’d be glad to take part in, but no can do, because those stretches of time belong to the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company. Sunday night we’ll present a revival of our audio dramatization of Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!, originally performed in 2001. I will be playing one of two narrators. If you think narrators don’t have any fun, well, you haven’t read Pratchett.

ARTC’s Sunday night shows are generally devoted to well-crafted adaptations of well-known SFF authors’ work. Friday nights, however, showcase original scripts by the company’s writers, including Kelley S. Ceccato (that’s me). This year, in addition to a new episode of Ron N. Butler’s popular series Rory Rammer: Space Marshal and the next installment of Mercury: A Broadcast of Hope, ARTC will premiere my newest play, A Pane of Black Glass, a loose adaptation of the folktale “The Robber Bridegroom.” This time, I’m directing the piece as well, and I’m tremendously proud of my cast. I still recall the summer of 2004, when ARTC performed a play I’d written for the first time and I heard those wonderful actors breathe life into my story. I’d never felt a rush quite like it. The company has performed quite a few of my plays since then, and that thrill has never gone away. I’ll never get used to it, and I don’t want to.

Only six more days to go! Will I see you there?

By the way, you haven’t really experienced DragonCon until you visit the Caribou Coffee stand at Peachtree Center. If there’s a way to make a coffee geek-centric, they know!

I’d originally intended to write a simple Facebook post expressing my love for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ latest episode, the musical “Subspace Rhapsody,” but I realized I had too much to say on the matter, not just about Strange New Worlds but about my history with Star Trek in general. I’ve always loved the show and its multiple incarnations, but now, at last, I feel like the show loves me back.

I can remember being fifteen years old and devouring the original Star Trek series in syndication, and seething when my local channel decided to discontinue it and air something far less interesting (I can’t recall what) in its place. I’d seen the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in the theater and loved it, but I was still catching up on the original TV show, trying to make sure I saw every episode at least once. As I watched, I took the characters, especially Spock — the more out-of-the-ordinary the characters, the more I’m inclined to bond with them — to my heart, even though I noticed the episodes varied, sometimes widely, in quality. (For those who might be wondering about my favorite Star Trek: Original Series episode, it’s “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Yeah, I’m a bit basic in that regard.) In those days I was an expert at “gender-flipping,” imagining my favorite characters as female, so the fact that the show’s women were either window dressing (e.g. the Enterprise’s female crew members) or villainous (95% of the show’s female guest stars) didn’t turn me away from it. But as I grew older, I grew less and less satisfied, less patient with a pop/geek culture that so rarely showed women acting as heroes. I can’t say I fell completely out of love with it — I still enjoy quite a few of the episodes — but it fell into the general category of science fiction TV shows in which only evil women got to be active and resourceful and to play key roles in the plot. That was my adolescence for you.

By the time Star Trek: The Next Generation came along, I was a young woman, and while I’d learned to accept my least favorite aspects of the original show as being a “product of the time,” I hoped for something more, something better, from the new one. To some degree, I got it. The women of this new Enterprise were at least a little more than simple window dressing, there to be seen and not much else. They actually did things, and sometimes those things had fairly significant impact on the plot. Yet something was still missing. After Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) was written out of the series, the only remaining series-regular women were therapist Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) and ship’s physician Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) — caregivers, women with “soft skills.” Nothing ought to be wrong with that; “soft skills” can be very powerful. Yet rarely were they portrayed as decisive or game changing. Troi and Crusher could contribute with those skills, but couldn’t save the day with them. Day-saving was up to the men, who, not coincidentally, were the fan favorites, the stars of all the best-remembered and most highly regarded episodes. The ladies were “hero support,” sidekicks — better than window dressing, but still not heroes.

The first Star Trek series to do well by its female characters came along next. In Deep Space Nine, both Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) and Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) were competent officers who could fight when put to it. Even better, they were flawed, complex characters with interesting backstories, and the show would put them in situations where they had less-than-easy moral and ethical dilemmas to confront. This series, the darkest Trek up to that point, was by no means perfect — for one thing, the Ferengi get far too much screen time for my liking — but it holds up for me as the first series in the franchise to show its women taking decisive action in a good number of the episodes. Star Trek: Voyager continued along these lines, but I only watched a handful of the episodes; for me, while I appreciated what it was trying to do, it never quite captured the magic of the earlier series, perhaps because I found the supporting characters rather dull and one-note. The one character I did like, Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine, got a chance to shine in the recent Star Trek: Picard, and Kate Mulgrew’s Captain Janeway also appeared to advantage in the underrated Star Trek: Prodigy, showing that they could work beautifully when written well. But Voyager began my Trek slump, which lasted through Enterprise and ended with the dark, intense, sometimes confusing Star Trek: Discovery. Discovery has its detractors, many of them criticizing the show for being too “woke,” but it revitalized the franchise, with other Trek shows — Picard, Prodigy, Lower Decks — following in its wake.

Which brings me to Strange New Worlds.

This show technically qualifies as a spin-off of Discovery, in which Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romjin) appeared, all three “legacy characters” from the original series. Fans liked them, and those in charge decided to develop a prequel-to-the-original series that would center on them and add a few more legacy characters along with some new faces. The creative team behind Strange New Worlds have sought to capture the spirit of adventure, the energy, and the optimism of the original show. For my money, they’ve succeeded, as this new show has everything I love about the original Trek (the aforementioned adventure, energy, and optimism) and none of what I hate (the sexism). With my memory of those afternoons spent with syndicated Star Trek back in the ’80s strong in my mind, I can’t help but relish seeing Nurse Christine Chapel (played by Jess Bush in Strange New Worlds) and Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) finally become the heroes they always should have been.

One of the aspects of the show I appreciate most is the care with which it approaches its legacy characters. The creative forces behind it know that much of its audience will have watched the original series, perhaps even to the point of committing whole episodes to memory, and if their prequel incarnations are too far out of line with the “Captain Kirk years” versions of themselves, that audience will turn against them. Accordingly, while we get to know Chapel and Uhura in more depth and detail than we did in Star Trek, everything they do in the new series aligns perfectly with what we know about their “future” selves as we saw them in the original show. They aren’t revamped into martial badasses, and they don’t need to be; we have security chief La’an (Christina Chong) and helmsman Ortegas (Melissa Navia) for that. Like Troi and Crusher of TNG, they have mostly “soft skills.” Yet Strange New Worlds puts them into situations in which those “soft skills” can be the game-changers, the difference-makers. For example, a recent episode, “Charades,” finds Spock and Chapel aboard a shuttle investigating a newly discovered life form; unfortunately, the life forms identify the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock as “defective” and rewrite his DNA so that he’ll be fully human, like Chapel. Chapel, as anyone who has seen much of the original show knows, is in love with Spock, and a fully human Spock just might be able to return her affections. But that isn’t the man she knows and loves, so she takes it upon herself to save that man and restore his true, full identity. When scientific know-how can’t do the job, she gathers the courage to confront the life forms and persuade them to give her what she needs to turn Spock back into himself again. With honest love and pure bravery, she saves him and becomes the episode’s hero.

In the musical episode, “Subspace Rhapsody,” it’s Uhura’s turn, and Celia Rose Gooding, a Broadway veteran, makes the most of it.

[Spoilers for “Subspace Rhapsody” ahead]

Exploring an uncharted portion of space, the Enterprise is sending out communication probes, one of which includes a Broadway show tune, “Anything Goes” as sung by Patti LuPone. Shortly afterward, the crew find themselves in a “fold” in which they start singing whenever their emotions run high or strong. This leads to a series of catchy tunes and an opportunity for the cast to show off abilities we hadn’t guessed they had. La’an wonders in song about her closed-off personality and the possibility that she might train herself to take more risks, especially where her crush on the visiting Jim Kirk is concerned. Number One gives both Kirk and La’an tuneful pep talks, sharing her experience and hard-earned wisdom. Chapel sings in celebration of having been granted an anthropological apprenticeship, even though this apprenticeship will take her away from the Enterprise and from Spock, with whom she’s been in a tentative relationship since “Charades.” Spock, having learned to open his heart, sings of how it feels to have it broken. Perhaps not trusting in Anson Mount’s abilities as a singer, the episode gives him only a tense cut-short duet with his girlfriend, with whom he isn’t seeing eye-to-eye on how they should spend their time off together. Uhura, for much of the episode, is witness to all these musical shenanigans, observing them with an eye to figuring out a solution to the problem. Yet Uhura has an advantage: she knows musicals and understands how they work, so she starts to study the ways in which the fold fluctuates whenever the musical numbers happen.

Of all the characters on the original show, Uhura counts as the biggest missed opportunity. At one point, actress Nichelle Nichols was prepared to quit the show in frustration with how little she was given to do; Martin Luther King Jr. himself famously persuaded her not to, pointing out that she was making a difference just by being seen on the bridge, week after week. King’s point was well taken — among those inspired by her presence was a young Whoopi Goldberg, who shouted in excitement at seeing an African-American woman on television as something other than a maid — but the show continued to underutilize the character, though Nichols seized the few opportunities she was given. The writers couldn’t figure out just what a “communications officer” was supposed to do, other than open hailing frequencies and relay messages. Strange New Worlds doesn’t change Uhura’s job title, but rather, it expands upon it. When Gooding finally gets a song in the second half of “Subspace Rhapsody,” it’s an exploration of just what being a communications officer means. Her song takes her through a discovery of her own importance, even as it gives her the needed insight into what will finally disrupt the fold and free the Enterprise from becoming the main set on the show Crazy Ex-Starship Crew. At Pike’s urging, she persuades the entire crew to join her in an ensemble number that will blow the roof off. The ship is saved thanks to Uhura, her knowledge of musicals, and her ability to “keep people connected.”

Strange New Worlds succeeds beautifully with characters like Chapel and Uhura because its creative team understands that the path to heroism doesn’t have to lead through combat training. That’s why it may just be my favorite Trek series of all.