Not going to do a Year in Review; plenty of far more articulate people are doing those. Not going to do resolutions; I never manage to keep them and end up feeling like a failure. Instead, let's all breathe a sigh of relief that this dumpster fire we call 2019 is over in a few more hours. Truthfully, I don't hold out much hope that 2020 will be much of an improvement, given the last couple of years, but depending on how you count, it's a new decade, and people are trying to be optimistic for the next Roaring Twenties.
I have a milestone coming up in the middle of next year, and I'm hoping to make some life changes with that in mind. (Again, not calling them resolutions, since that never works out...) But looking at a half-century, and seeing that I could be doing things better, differently, more mindfully – that's a good thing, right?
It will be a balancing act between wants and needs, work and home, me and family, and I'd really like for me not to get the short end of the stick by sacrificing everything for everyone else. Easier said than done, with a disabled adult child at home, but I am not the sole caregiver.
I intend to finish Book Two of a series I'm writing, then go back and reread Book One and see if I need to make any changes to continuity, and the make edits to Two; first priority. Second, I want to construct the risers for my collection once and for all, which may mean going online and seeing about finding the materials for free (I'd rather not pay for scrap if I don't have to). Third, quit smoking – for good this time.
I'd also like to get a website up and running for this stuff, something a little easier to manage than a blog. I have so much information about female action figures, and no good place to put it. The blog format is not ideal.
Anyway... here's to surviving 2019. See you on the other side.
Superheroines. Comics. Geek Grrls. Female action figures, past and present, photographed, critiqued, and coveted. The ramblings and rants of a collector and feminist.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Why Are We Still Debating Fake Geek Girls?
This post was brought to you today by a Twitter thread by Seanan McGuire (who is one hell of an author, if you haven't read her books – she also writes as Mira Grant), read the whole thread here. She begins with this:
When Star Wars came out, our older brother took me and my little brother to see it. The boys in my class were really into the action figures and toys and stuff. I remember enjoying the movie, but I didn't have any of the toys. I played with some of those boys, and was fine being Leia (the lone important female character), and don't remember missing having lightsaber battles since she never got one. The girls in my class, my friends, and the neighbor girls who were a year ahead of me in school weren't interested in it, though, and I drifted between the boys who played Star Wars and the girls who dressed Barbies and rollerskated.
I remember the Community Center playing movies in the summer, old black and white monster movies like The Deadly Mantis, and insisting I be allowed to go see them. I remember Channel 3 having an Early Show program at 3pm that showed movies, and they had theme weeks, and I'd rush home from school to watch when there were Godzilla or Universal monster movies on that week. I don't remember any of my friends doing that with me.
I watched Wonder Woman, The Six-Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Charlie's Angels, and The Incredible Hulk on TV when I could if there wasn't something else more interesting for my parents to watch. There was no shortage of heroic figures in my media consumption. I didn't have the toys to show it, though. (I honestly don't remember asking for dolls for WW, BW or the Angels, and I don't know that I would have received them. Not only did I grow up rural, I grew up working class – strictly blue collar. There might not've been extra money floating around for those toys even if I had wanted them.)
My first comic books other than the Archie digests from the grocery store were from a box I found at a garage sale and begged for. (And still have.) Among them were some Bugs Bunny titles, Spider-Man issues, and a couple of Where Monsters Dwell issues (Marie Severin cover art). They weren't mint when I talked her into letting me have them, and after kid-me read and reread them, they certainly aren't mint now, but I love them and they are awesome. But this, too, was a solitary thing. I have no recollection of sharing my joy of this with my other friends.
I was in 6th grade when I discovered Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. By then, I had already devoured the Trixie Belden mysteries. None of my friends seemed particularly interested in either series. (I'm still a little afraid to watch DuVernay's movie; the book was important enough to me that if the movie doesn't hold up to my girlish expectations it would be crushing... even though everyone says she did an amazing job.)
This is a long and winding way of saying my experience with female geekdom as a child was relatively painless. I was isolated and had no way to know what I was missing, outside of the toys I could see and didn't have. It was a little lonely and sometimes hurtful, but for the most part I think I was comfortable in my solitude.
Fast forward to adulthood. I managed to find another solitude-appreciating nerd in college, he's a bit more extroverted than I am, but we manage okay. I guess since I tend to avoid a lot of the social situations that could lead to my rejection, I haven't had many of the same "fake geek" bullshit experiences so many of my sisters have. The little RPGing I have done was done with a tight group of friends. When I played WoW, I was gamed with friends or alone because I didn't want to deal with the a-holes I knew were out there. Probably the worst I have experienced is the assumption that the action figures I'm buying are for a boyfriend/husband and not for me. That may be due to the fact that I carefully curated my experience to minimize exposure, knowing what lurked in the shadows; I made conscious decisions to limit myself to maximize personal enjoyment. (AND I SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO DO THAT! We're clear on that right? Women everywhere have to avoid things they enjoy because men are openly hostile or harassingly "welcome.")
I don't want to take away from the lived experiences of the women I have seen getting harassed in real time online. Women driven from the internet, from Twitter, from gaming, whatever, because male geekdom found their mere presence unholy. The fact that my wounds are superficial in comparison, doesn't mean I deny the deeper wounds of others. (On the contrary, it makes me want to fight for them, protectively.)
Am I less of a geek because I have been unwilling to hang myself up as a target? No one who knows me would call me timid, but I don't enjoy being the butt of anyone's jokes (being the girl between two brothers will cure you of that right-quick). I just want to enjoy the media that makes me happy without people telling me I shouldn't like those things now, when I have all along, even if they're not telling me directly. Because honestly, when people are shitty to one of my sisters, that means they've been shitty to me. I always seem to be arriving too late to the scene to prevent it from happening, and maybe it's too big to "prevent" anyway – perhaps triage is all I can provide – but I'll be damned if it happens in my presence.
We don't have to earn our place to be here. We don't owe anyone anything. There are no dues to be paid, no entrance exams. And we've got
I am continually astonished by men who claim that the mere existence of women is political and "forcing social justice into fiction." I've been a geek girl since I was three years old and obsessed with Doctor Who, My Little Pony, and Vincent Price. – SMcGI grew up in a very small town in a rural farming community. Across the street from my house was a corn or bean field, depending on the crop rotation that year. Mice in the walls every fall when they harvested. My consolidated high school was around 400 students, the population of my hometown at the time was 550. Small.
When Star Wars came out, our older brother took me and my little brother to see it. The boys in my class were really into the action figures and toys and stuff. I remember enjoying the movie, but I didn't have any of the toys. I played with some of those boys, and was fine being Leia (the lone important female character), and don't remember missing having lightsaber battles since she never got one. The girls in my class, my friends, and the neighbor girls who were a year ahead of me in school weren't interested in it, though, and I drifted between the boys who played Star Wars and the girls who dressed Barbies and rollerskated.
I remember the Community Center playing movies in the summer, old black and white monster movies like The Deadly Mantis, and insisting I be allowed to go see them. I remember Channel 3 having an Early Show program at 3pm that showed movies, and they had theme weeks, and I'd rush home from school to watch when there were Godzilla or Universal monster movies on that week. I don't remember any of my friends doing that with me.
I watched Wonder Woman, The Six-Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Charlie's Angels, and The Incredible Hulk on TV when I could if there wasn't something else more interesting for my parents to watch. There was no shortage of heroic figures in my media consumption. I didn't have the toys to show it, though. (I honestly don't remember asking for dolls for WW, BW or the Angels, and I don't know that I would have received them. Not only did I grow up rural, I grew up working class – strictly blue collar. There might not've been extra money floating around for those toys even if I had wanted them.)
My first comic books other than the Archie digests from the grocery store were from a box I found at a garage sale and begged for. (And still have.) Among them were some Bugs Bunny titles, Spider-Man issues, and a couple of Where Monsters Dwell issues (Marie Severin cover art). They weren't mint when I talked her into letting me have them, and after kid-me read and reread them, they certainly aren't mint now, but I love them and they are awesome. But this, too, was a solitary thing. I have no recollection of sharing my joy of this with my other friends.
I was in 6th grade when I discovered Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. By then, I had already devoured the Trixie Belden mysteries. None of my friends seemed particularly interested in either series. (I'm still a little afraid to watch DuVernay's movie; the book was important enough to me that if the movie doesn't hold up to my girlish expectations it would be crushing... even though everyone says she did an amazing job.)
This is a long and winding way of saying my experience with female geekdom as a child was relatively painless. I was isolated and had no way to know what I was missing, outside of the toys I could see and didn't have. It was a little lonely and sometimes hurtful, but for the most part I think I was comfortable in my solitude.
Fast forward to adulthood. I managed to find another solitude-appreciating nerd in college, he's a bit more extroverted than I am, but we manage okay. I guess since I tend to avoid a lot of the social situations that could lead to my rejection, I haven't had many of the same "fake geek" bullshit experiences so many of my sisters have. The little RPGing I have done was done with a tight group of friends. When I played WoW, I was gamed with friends or alone because I didn't want to deal with the a-holes I knew were out there. Probably the worst I have experienced is the assumption that the action figures I'm buying are for a boyfriend/husband and not for me. That may be due to the fact that I carefully curated my experience to minimize exposure, knowing what lurked in the shadows; I made conscious decisions to limit myself to maximize personal enjoyment. (AND I SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO DO THAT! We're clear on that right? Women everywhere have to avoid things they enjoy because men are openly hostile or harassingly "welcome.")
I don't want to take away from the lived experiences of the women I have seen getting harassed in real time online. Women driven from the internet, from Twitter, from gaming, whatever, because male geekdom found their mere presence unholy. The fact that my wounds are superficial in comparison, doesn't mean I deny the deeper wounds of others. (On the contrary, it makes me want to fight for them, protectively.)
Am I less of a geek because I have been unwilling to hang myself up as a target? No one who knows me would call me timid, but I don't enjoy being the butt of anyone's jokes (being the girl between two brothers will cure you of that right-quick). I just want to enjoy the media that makes me happy without people telling me I shouldn't like those things now, when I have all along, even if they're not telling me directly. Because honestly, when people are shitty to one of my sisters, that means they've been shitty to me. I always seem to be arriving too late to the scene to prevent it from happening, and maybe it's too big to "prevent" anyway – perhaps triage is all I can provide – but I'll be damned if it happens in my presence.
We don't have to earn our place to be here. We don't owe anyone anything. There are no dues to be paid, no entrance exams. And we've got
Friday, February 1, 2019
Black Action Figures: Just the Ladies (Almost)
There are not many black characters in pop culture. People of color (POC) are vastly underrepresented in the media we consume to entertain us. Certainly, there have been some inroads to inclusion, but there are still wide chasms to bridge. (And I won't even get into the pay gap; I am so not qualified to talk about that.)
Since today marks the first day of Black History Month, and the truly wonderful #28DaysOfBlackCosplay, it got me thinking about dearth of black action figures (that goes hand in hand with the lack of black characters), which made me wonder how many I had in my collection. Sadly, this won't take that long...
I have one dude displayed who's black. I don't typically display male figures, even if they come with the female ones, but Ty and Tandy are kinda literally codependent. They need each other, so they're displayed together.
So including my codependent guy, 33 black characters (more or less). That is pitifully small, when you consider my collection is edging up on 700.
If you love diverse media, support it. If you want to see diverse characters, demand them from the studios that create them. Hollywood saw, clearly, that a black superhero movie could succeed, beyond their dreams of avarice. Black Panther shattered records, and good for them! Let's see more of that, please!
For another resource, totally dedicated to this kind of thing exclusively, visit: Black Action Figures.
Since today marks the first day of Black History Month, and the truly wonderful #28DaysOfBlackCosplay, it got me thinking about dearth of black action figures (that goes hand in hand with the lack of black characters), which made me wonder how many I had in my collection. Sadly, this won't take that long...
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Aveline de Grandpré: Assassin's Creed McFarlane, 2014 This was the first female playable assassin in the game. Some fanbois lost their shit because cooties. |
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Guinan – played by actor/comedian Whoopi Goldberg Playmates, 1994 There were a few different versions of Guinan's character. This one is from Star Trek: Generations Basic Series. |
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Lily [Sloane] – played by actor Alfre Woodard: Star Trek: First Contact Playmates, 1996 On the card, she is merely "Lily, Zephram Cochran's Assistant," but in one Star Trek source, she is DR. Lily Sloane. |
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Maggie: Evolve Funko, 2015 I don't know anything about this game. The fandom wiki page says her surname is Lumumba. She looks pretty badass. |
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Martha Jones – played by actor Freema Agyeman: Doctor Who Character Options, 2013 Martha was available singly and in box sets. The one above is from the Companion Box Set. |
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Michonne – played by Danai Gurira: The Walking Dead McFarlane, 2013 Michonne has a few different iterations of her character, this one is the TV Series 3 version. |
I have one dude displayed who's black. I don't typically display male figures, even if they come with the female ones, but Ty and Tandy are kinda literally codependent. They need each other, so they're displayed together.
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Cloak: Cloak and Dagger box set Toy Biz, 1997 This was a collector's set that came out way before the tv show. This pair has been in another 2-pack, and separately as 6-inch and 3 3/4-inch figures. |
If you love diverse media, support it. If you want to see diverse characters, demand them from the studios that create them. Hollywood saw, clearly, that a black superhero movie could succeed, beyond their dreams of avarice. Black Panther shattered records, and good for them! Let's see more of that, please!
For another resource, totally dedicated to this kind of thing exclusively, visit: Black Action Figures.
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