Another Rant About Kickass Heroines

In keeping with the post Evey Brett wrote on Sunday, I’m still on my own kick about the problem with kickass heroines. This is something I’ve been grousing about since before my House of Arkhangel'sk trilogy came out. My Anazakia is not what I’d call a kickass heroine. She’s just a girl. She’s not a victim or a damsel in distress, and she’s not a badass who knows martial arts, who can wield a mean sword or a Browning, or whose ability to conjure up powerful magic through sexual ritual blows more than minds. Ahem. Like I said, she’s just a girl—one whom I tossed into a really shitty situation and made her find her way.

On my regular post on the Paranormal Romantics blog a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Buffy marathon I’ve been having this month, and how it’s made me think about the kickass heroine problem all over again. I used to think it was Buffy’s “fault,” that everyone was emulating this successful formula in urban fantasy, but as I’ve been watching it through from the beginning, I realized that she’s just a girl. Yes, she has special enhanced strength as the Chosen One and trains hard to be a fighting machine, but she’s a well-rounded female character with wonderful flaws, who gets beaten down again and again, but gets back up because she has to. She makes dumb decisions in relationships with guys. She makes the hard decisions, too. She tries to make it through college while raising her kid sister and fighting demons, and has to deal with crushing debt from medical bills after her mother’s death. She has a bratty sister and she’s mean to her as often as not, like sisters are.

My favorite Buffy character, though, is Anya. A former vengeance demon demoted to being human, she has to make her way through the confusing world she’s found herself in after a millennium of having unlimited power. What I love most about her is her blunt speech, which rather than being rude and abrasive, is actually painfully real and honest in a way that exposes her heart.

Watching the episode “The Body”—one of the most brilliant hours of television-making ever, which should have won every award there is, but was never nominated, because, y’know, it’s just spec-fic, and “girl” spec-fic at that (grrr, argh)—in which Buffy’s mother is found dead of an aneurism, it’s Anya who reduces me to desperate, wracking sobs every single time I see it. There are “feels” all the way through the episode, but Anya’s blunt statements about not understanding what’s expected of her in the face of her friend’s mother’s death are utterly heartbreaking. At first, everyone is appalled at her, wishing she’d shut up and do the polite thing, because they don’t know what’s expected either. But she responds with the most heart-wrenchingly honest speech I’ve ever seen about death and loss on television.

Anya isn’t kickass either, even though she’s been a vengeance demon for a thousand years. She’s just a girl (or woman, as the show goes on, lest anyone think I’m infantilizing adult women with the “girl” term). She isn’t overly sexualized, or hyper-masculinized, or imbued with impossible strength or improbable weakness. She isn’t ridiculously smart, or annoyingly stupid. She’s human. That was the true brilliance of Joss Whedon’s series: human characters, with human strengths and weaknesses. And a nearly 5:1 ratio of female to male characters, just for a change. ;)

It’s frustrating that so many years later, it seems like we have less screen time for women, let alone realistic women, than ever. It’s frustrating that the response to that inequity for many seems to have been to create impossible women, just to compete with the complete lack of normal ones. But it’s heartening that this is a discussion that doesn’t seem to be going away lately, despite the lack of support for equality that seems to permeate the SFF world in particular. I just wonder if those in the Old Guard of both film and publishing have noticed that a female-centric and female-positive show like Buffy, ten years after it left the stage, still has a huge number of male fans. Because the excuse is usually that “girl stuff” doesn’t sell. Maybe it just hasn’t occurred to them that “people stuff” does, and girls and women are actually people. So let’s keep telling them until they get it.

The Magic of... Stress?

There is a lot going on in my life right now--both personally and professionally. Some of it's good (great even) and some of it's bad. What all of it is...is stressful.

Stress is one of those funny things where everyone reacts to it differently. Some wither under it while others thrive. Some stress eat while others lose 20 pounds in a week.

So what's so magical about that? The fact that sometimes your body surprises you.

Normally, I am an emotional eater. (I also just happen to like food, but the emotional stuff makes it worse.) I also suffer from depression, and stress usually makes that worse, pushing me into that metaphorical corner where I hug my knees to my chest and rock a lot.

Thing is at the end of January, I committed to changing my eating habits. I caved on one weekend with the extended family because there was yummy stuff EVERYWHERE, but otherwise, I've done really well.

Then all the stress factors hit...pretty much at once.

I looked at the work I'd put in and could see it disappearing. If I caved at all to the yearning for pizza and beer and doughnuts and... I'd be right back where I started. And then suddenly... I wasn't hungry. (On the down side, I wasn't hungry for anything, but...) It became easy (or at least as easy as it ever was) to say no thanks to all the bread and sugar and booze. That had NEVER happened before in my life.

And the depression corner? It still has its moments, but the paralyzing effects aren't there so much. In fact, I've done quite a bit of work around the house in the aftermath of all the stress. The work actually helped to hold the depression at bay.

Who'da thunk?

Somehow I doubt this weird mastery of my stress will last forever. But for some reason--whether the timing, my own self-awareness, or...magic--this time I'm truly doing okay (not great, but...hello...stress...)

Anyway... all of this got me to thinking about characters and how we sometimes insist that they behave the same regardless of the situation. I've now realized that sometimes--especially in the extreme circumstances characters tend to face--the most appropriate reaction is the opposite of normal. It's why Hermione occasionally had no answers. Why Buffy periodically found the depression corner and debated giving up. And it's why sometimes the character who shies away from everything gets pushed hard enough to find their strength.

Oddly enough, those are the moments that make them human.

Those are the moments that make me love them.

Movie Review: Cabin in the Woods

I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of horror movies. I never watched them as a kid and only started in high school because I was more or less forced to. Eventually, monster movies became okay, but the movies where people just go around killing other people? Uh... no. The closest I came was the first Scream movie because it made fun of all the tropes of horror movies.


When I heard the name Joss Whedon associated with the new Cabin in the Woods, I was tempted to see it. Then I saw that Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, was in it and I wanted to go. When friends kept saying how good it was, I started bemoaning both my husband's dislike of horror movies and our lack of a babysitter. In the end, I went through a rather expensive and convoluted plan to go with a girlfriend from high school.

I am happy to report that those tropes I mentioned? Cabin in the Woods used all of them AND made them have a purpose within the story. If you haven't seen me mention this elsewhere: Joss Whedon is brilliant.

The story starts with a rather odd clip that takes place in a lab type setting where two men (Sitterson & Hadley) are discussing work. My friend and I glanced at each other with the "What did we get ourselves into?" look in our eyes. Then the title flashed on the screen and the action moved to a college town (specifically the apartment shared by our two female leads: Jules and Dana). They're getting ready to go away for the weekend with Jules's boyfriend, Curt; the guy they're trying to fix Dana up with, Holden; and their stoner friend, Marty. (I missed a bit in here because of a phone call from my mother--don't ask.) They pass the requisite creepy old man who tells them not to go to the cabin. Of course they go anyway.

Scenes between the kids at the cabin are broken up by scenes in the lab/control-room where bets are being placed on outcome and other things that are a bit confusing at first. But, the control-room scenes are also the primary comic relief in the movie. As things progress at the cabin, people start behaving... strangely, and then during a game of truth or dare, a trap door in the floor is sprung and they go into the cellar to investigate. This starts the real chain of events in motion. And it's one hell of a fun ride.

I really don't want to give away more of the story, let's just say if you like the twists and turns Joss Whedon always worked into his television shows, you will love this movie. Plus, he made sure to cast some fan favorites: Amy Acker (Fred from Angel), Fran Kranz (Topher from Dollhouse), and Tom Lenk (Jonathan from Buffy). There's even a Firefly Easter egg that I totally missed :(

A couple complaints.
It needed to be longer. At 95 minutes, it was a pretty short movie anyway, but an extra thirty minutes would have allowed for more showing of how the college kids were manipulated, which would have made their personality changes more obvious to the viewer (as it was, we didn't see enough of them before being at the cabin to see the difference).
The end was... not what I (or my friend wanted). It wasn't a horrible ending, but it felt too easy--lazy almost. It was fine, but the movie opened itself up for some brilliant, crazy ending and it just wasn't there. I'm very curious to get the blu-ray and see if it includes an alternative ending (or more than one).

Overall though, Cabin in the Woods has taken its place as my favorite horror movie ever. If you're a fan of intelligent spoofs or of Joss Whedon's work, you should definitely check it out.