I was on a crosstown bus, fiddling with my iPod, when I looked up and saw someone reading the Daily News and noticed the back cover. Giant text: EXIT SANDMAN. And a photo of Mariano Rivera on the ground, clutching his leg.

A few hours later, I checked twitter and saw several tweets in a row, all saying, “Did Adam Yauch really just die?” My sister gave me my first Beastie Boys’ album when I was in ninth grade. For awhile, the tagline I had on this blog was “Fifty cups of coffee and you know it’s on.”

Yesterday was rough for New York.

So if there’s one thing I’ve focused on a lot in my six years of occasionally blogging, it’s female characters. Because aside from my own writing, I’m a huge consumer of media, I’m a feminist, and I care a lot about the way women are represented across media. So: female characters. I think about them a lot. And thus, non-shockingly, of the roughly seven billionty blogs that I read regularly, a fair amount discuss female characters.

This makes me happy: a lot of other people care, too! And it’s interesting. Reading other people’s thoughts have helped me sharpen and figure out my own, become a more active watcher/reader, and has given me recommendations that have led me to new shows/movies/books that I’ve loved. I’ve also had some interesting discussions when I’ve disagreed, but generally, I come away with a lot to think about. My opinion is: analyzing female characters = super cool.

Except for this one thing that I keep seeing with depressing frequency: explaining why one female character is awesome by talking about the flaws in another lady from the same genre. Or in other words, writing as if two female characters (often both generally pretty good characters, who are flawed in different ways) are in a competition to prove one of them is more awesome than the other.

Why? Why must we do that?

(Note: I’m not linking to specific posts from here because I’m talking about trends I’ve seen, not trying to call out anyone in particular.)

The first time I started to write this blog post (it’s gone through four drafts now) it was in response to a whole rash of articles I’d run into about how great Parks & Recreation is (and it is!). And specifically how great Leslie Knope is (omg SHE IS). And how that’s great, because Liz Lemon over on 30 Rock is a mess. Wait, what?

They’re both the central characters of NBC, Thursday-night comedies. And Tina Fey and Amy Poehler both were on SNL, and are friends in real life. People are used to talking about them as a unit. But unless you’re comparing specific facets of the two shows, why frame it as one character being better than the other? For that matter, if you aren’t talking about both shows to begin with, why detour into it just for that purpose?

I’ve also seen Community’s Britta Perry thrown into this mix occasionally. And here’s the thing: one of my closest friends really identifies with Britta. Another of my closest friends really identifies with Leslie.¹ But I actually think it’s super awesome that there are two very different female characters, both hilarious, so that two very different (but both hilarious) friends of mine have characters they can identify with.²

And just to drive home the point, here’s a video of Amy Poehler being awesome and refusing to fall into the sexist trap of pitting characters, shows, or her actual person against Tina Fey, because they are friends and they are both funny:

This is not an isolated issue of 30 Rock vs. Parks and Rec issue, though. I ranted about it on twitter a couple of months ago, when I ran into a cool blog post about how great Jane Foster of Thor is. And while Thor didn’t do much for me as a movie, I do like that Jane was a scientist devoted to her research above all. What distressed me was that someone immediately commented to argue that actually, no, the better female character from a superhero last summer was Peggy Carter of Captain America. Which again, why? Because they’re both women in superhero flicks? The characters have even less to do with each other than Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope, but the comment was definitely a case of “this character is better than that character.”

And then, more recently, I ran into the same thing again, in an article about how great Ellen Ripley is. And you know what? Ellen Ripley is pretty great! The Alien franchise is pretty great! But the article took a long detour through explaining how much Sarah Connor sucks. But, um. Sarah Connor doesn’t suck. And even if you think she does, her sucking doesn’t make Ripley a better character. The fact that they are both women from lady-led genre franchises does not mean that if you like one, you can’t like the other.³

Look, I am down with criticizing the Terminator franchise. And superhero movies. And 30 Rock, which I generally enjoy, but which also sometimes makes me go, “Yiiiiiikes,” and wince. I think critique is generally a good and important thing, yes, even when it’s critiquing a thing I enjoy. But critique can also fall into nasty narratives of its own: in this case, acting as if women have to be in competition.

They aren’t. They don’t have to be. Instead of talking about which awesome action heroine, or which hilarious sitcom lady, or which superhero’s ladyfriend is greatest… well, why not enjoy how many of those characters there are? Instead of fighting over who gets one slice of pie, let’s enjoy the fact that the pie is getting bigger. Pieces may have slightly different flavors, and some may still be undercooked or not to your taste, but the pie as a whole can still be delicious and filling. And wow that metaphor got overextended.

The point is: this isn’t Highlander. There can be more than one awesome female character at a time.⁴ Not all of them are to everyone’s taste, and denigrating one does not make another seem more awesome. But it does fall into the sexist tropes of thinking of all women as being in competition, and that one representation of women is enough. Neither of those things is true. Let’s please not write as if they are.

Despite the fact that I have a writing tag on this blog, and the fact that a good 90% of my free time is spent writing something in some form or another, I get weirdly self-conscious posting about, you know, writing. But a couple of weeks ago, I attended the Big Sur Writing Workshop (which focuses on children’s and YA writing), and I wanted to get this out before the memories vanish, a) because it was a cool experience; and b) because not a heck of a lot of information showed up when I googled, so hey, wayward searchers, here you go. A month late, but what can you do? There’s a reason this isn’t called Becky Allen’s Timely Blog of Frequent Updates.

What happened was, way back in November or so, I saw a link to the writing workshop on kidlit.com, and had a moment of, “Hey, that looks cool, someday when I have a finished manuscript, a few days of PTO left for the year, and enough advance warning to set aside the money, I should think about going to that.” Then I did a doubletake, because 1) I was only about 25,000 words from the end of my major rewrite of my WIP; 2) I was pretty sure I’d have at least five days off rolling over to the 2012, plus all of that year’s PTO; 3) the application wasn’t due until February, which was plenty of time to save, plan, request dates off, and finish the darned rewrite. Which… whoa. I emailed a bunch of my friends asking if I would be totally crazy to apply, because it seemed like a pretty huge step. You know, the one between “I am writing this novel type thing for fun in my free time,” and “I’m actually polishing this in an attempt to get it published.” And my wonderful, supportive friends said, essentially, “Apply or we’ll beat you up,” and so I did.

During the brief orientation, Andrea Brown summed up the weekend like this: It’s bootcamp for people who are writing for kids and teens. Everyone is assigned to two critique groups, each led by an awesome member of the awesome faculty, and sorted roughly by genre (I was working on YA high fantasy, and the other pieces in my group ranged from YA and MG urban fantasy to mystery to scifi). The groups meet twice each, with time to work on revisions between them. (Okay, a lot of that “time to work on revisions” could also be called “time you would normally use for sleeping,” but hey. Bootcamp.) Aside from crit groups and working time, there are additional panel-type sessions, some over meals. These included agents discussing queries; editors doing a Q&A that covered, er, covers, as well as e-books and the future of publishing; a general Q&A with agents (which also delved into e-books and the future of publishing, come to think of it); and a fascinating panel on book-to-film/TV rights.

So, what did I get out of it? This is my list. Your results may vary, consult an expert, this is not an infomercial, etc.

1) I got over some of my “ack am I good enough what am I doing why do I think I’m good enough (etc etc)” anxiety. Because the thing is, while I’ve been writing for fun for just about as long as I can remember, I’ve never taken a single creative writing class, I’ve never been part of an official crit group, and I have yet to actually, y’know, submit anything. My ability to judge my own writing has always been all over the place; some days I am ridiculously, supremely overconfident, and other days I’m convinced I’ve been fooling everyone who supports me, and especially fooling myself, because why did I ever think I could do this? So after a weekend spent letting strangers read my stuff for basically the first time ever, I feel like I’ve got a bit more of a grip on things and a more realistic sense of where I am, writing-wise.

2) I got to meet awesome people. I am not exactly known for my excellent social skills when dealing with crowds of strangers, but it turns out talking to other writers is easy. When in doubt, say, “So, what are you writing?” Works like a charm, every time.

3) I got a solid reminder that this is an industry, and that people who write books are not some kind of magic fantasy species, and the people who work in publishing are, in fact, actual human beings. In fact, they seem to be generally nice, passionate, awesome ones. And while this entire point may make you go “duh,” because, um, duh, but I suspect that I’m secretly not alone in needing that reminder. Even though the internet has gone a long way towards demystifying the whole how-a-book-becomes-a-book process, it has also made it very easy to stop thinking of the people involved as people and instead think of them as mystical guardians of some sort, and to look at people who’ve been published as special chosen ones rather than as writers who worked hard. But interacting with actual humans goes a long way towards overcoming that, and makes the whole thing seem like an actual attainable goal rather than an impossible dream.

4) And finally, of course, there’s what it’s done for my novel. Which… whoa. Because here’s the thing: I have amazingly creative, analytical, brilliant friends who’ve been brainstorming and beta reading and cheering me on for years, and I honestly don’t think that I would have finished my rough draft, let alone my revised draft, without them. But by virtue of being my friends, and being involved with the process, they’re also somewhat invested in it. Having a group of people with fresh eyes, who don’t know me or where I’m coming from or what I think I’m writing about, look at my first two chapters was eye-opening.

It was enough to make me look at my own novel in a whole different way. The “But why?”s and “I don’t quite get it”s were intimidating, but but also answered a whole lot of questions I never thought to ask. And it wasn’t just a matter of sorting out what’s on the page from what’s in my head: it was about figuring out why what’s on the page was there. Figuring out how to make people connect with it in new ways. Figuring out which pieces work and which don’t. And by thinking about those things in the first two chapters, I also ended up with a bunch of revelations about the novel as a whole. That, of course, is the good news.

The bad news is that by suddenly seeing my novel in a different way, by asking whys that hadn’t occurred to me before, by seeing ways that shift in focus and a different perspective could make the whole darned thing stronger, I now have to put in the work. Restructure, rewrite, revise. Will draft #3 be a ground-up rewrite (again)? A revision with a strong basis in what I’ve already got? A matter of shifting some scenes and simplifying some needless complications? I don’t know yet. It’s been a month and I’m still trying to work it all out. I just know there’s a lot left for me to do.

But that’s the thing: the bad news is actually good news. I’m writing this novel because I love writing, and I love this story — and I love what it’s evolving into. So while I may groan about all the work I have to do, it’s work I love doing. And that’s pretty awesome.

So back to the greater point: the writing conference. Was it worth it? Definitely. It was fun, it was invigorating, and it’s given me a heck of a lot to think about. It was an incredibly intense weekend, and I’m so glad I went.

Sometimes, I am very much my father’s daughter. You see, at our family Chanukah party last month, my dad and I got into an argument (the type that’s probably better described as a friendly bickerment) about cell phones. Dad had just gotten a new phone, and when he purchased it, he had the nice Verizon employee switch off all potential web browsing, email, general internet, and even text messaging options.

My dad wants a phone. He wants to be able to call people and have them call him. That’s all he wants.

All of which is fine and dandy. Not what the bickerment was about. That came in when he insisted that my shiny black iPhone is not a phone, it’s a computer. Which, on the one hand, is true. It’s a teeny, tiny computer that I carry around in my purse, which happens to send and receive phone calls.

And so we spent half an hour arguing: “It lets me call people! That makes it a phone!” “All a phone does is send phone calls! That’s why they call them phone calls!” “You don’t get to define the word just because you don’t want to pay for a smartphone!” “I don’t want to pay for a computer plan when I just want a telephone!” “But it is a telephone!” “It is not!”

We eventually reached a consensus of, “You’re wrong,” “Your FACE is wrong,” and I stormed off to talk to more reasonable cousins, like the pre-teens who won’t talk to you unless you can quote Monty Python sketches with them.

All of which is to say, I suspect my feelings about ereader tablets are irrational and unfair, but god damn it, ereaders are for READING BOOKS, not watching movies.

I have an ereader that I very much like. It’s a black and white Nook. It’s started to go a little wonky with age, but I plan to use it until it falls apart, because it’s more or less perfect for my own, personal reading habits. It’s great for subway reading: it fits into my purse, I only need one hand to hold it (and that same hand can turn pages, or, I guess, “turn pages” since actually it’s hitting a button); it’s light enough to carry around everywhere I go¹; it holds roughly a million bajillion books, so if I finish one while I’m out, I’ve got plenty more loaded up to read; I can buy books from my couch (dangerous!) including finding a lot of things I have trouble finding in stores; and all the public domain books I want are easily found and free (did I just download the entire Sherlock Holmes canon? Why yes, yes I did).

Now, I realize that absolutely all of that is true of all color, tablet, 3G, and other various ereaders that are out there. In fact, there’s nothing my elderly Nook can do that they can’t. Which is kind of the point.

I bought my Nook to read books on. It’s black and white, which means it’s eink rather than LCD, and thus easier on my eyes for long periods of time. I mostly use it on the subway, so I wouldn’t be able to do internet-related stuff on it anyway. And if I’m not on the subway and want to do internet related stuff, I have my laptop for that, or if I’m out and about, my iPhone.² And when I’m using it at home, if I want to watch a movie… well, I probably want to have a movie on WHILE I’m reading my book, which I couldn’t do if my book and movie were playing on the same device. Besides which, I have a TV which has cable, a DVD player, and Netflix streaming hooked up, which makes for a much better movie-watching experience than something I’d have to hold on to or prop up. ³

So basically what I’m saying is: for all of those bell and whistle features, I’ve got something else that’s more effective. I don’t need and am not interested in a tablet, and if I was, instead of getting a hybrid ereader-tablet-thingy, I’d go whole hog and buy an iPad, probably. Which seems to be the crux of the matter: iPads are great for many things, but they aren’t really ereaders. Yes, they can be used for reading electronic books, but they’re designed for all kinds of other things and they also happen to let you read books. The Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire and others like ‘em seem to be chasing that market, which is only tangentially related to reading, hoping to catch on by being significantly less expensive. And that may well be a winning strategy! I am not a business person, and clearly am not the market for those devices, so what do I know?

Well. I know that I don’t want a tablet that also happens to let me read books. I want an ereader: a device designed for reading books, that doesn’t have to do anything else, damn it.

(Dad is still wrong about my iPhone, though.)

You know how some people get wanderlust, and just have to move, or find a new job, or make a massive life change every few years to stem off boredom? I’m not generally one of them. Except with this blog, which is now on its third home. Whew.

“But Becky!” you might cry. “Isn’t moving your blog without bothering to set up some form of redirect pretty much the worst way to build up or maintain an audience of actual readers?”

To which I would say, “Thank you for being so concerned! But no. The worst way to do that, I suspect, is actually to only update twice in one year.” Then I would probably pause and think about it, and say, “Oops.”

So if you’ve found me somehow, hello! Nearly all of my old, old, old blog entries have made the leap, except for some that were so embarrassingly earnest that I winced upon rereading and decided the internet didn’t really need to see them any more.

As for what happens now, well, if I were the sort of person who made a lot of New Years resolutions, I’d almost definitely have resolved to blog more. But I’ve had various online journals since roughly 1998, and history indicates pretty strongly that I’m not cut out to be a regular blogger. I’m okay with that, but it’s why I wanted to downsize from a blog that was a whole domain, to this little personal site. Rebecca-Allen.net still exists for my online professional life, but this new space feels much smaller and cozier, like a return to my old Geocities collective of web projects, albeit with less Sailor Moon fanfiction.

So anyhoo: if you’re reading the RSS feed, click on over! I’ve got a lovely new template up and running and relentlessly tweaked. We’ll see how long it lasts before I decide I hate it.

And to get things started on the right foot, here is a picture of my cat:

During a meeting at work a few days ago, we were scrolling through a collection of MSNBC videos, and stopped on this one. If you’ve got a moment, check this out:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

[Summary for those who don't do video: an NBC news segment from the early 80s, which reports on a mystery illness found primarily but not exclusively in gay men, which wrecks the immune system. A third of the people who have it have died, mostly of Kaposi's sarcoma or pneomocystic pneumonia. The CDC has just released a report saying they don't know what causes this, but they think it's a new, deadly STD, which as of yet has no cure, but is becoming a serious health problem.]

What struck me watching the video was how much it seems like science fiction, since it’s practically the set up for a horror story. There’s an outbreak of a mystery illness, which seems to come out of nowhere, gets spread around quickly, and next thing you know, hundreds of thousands of people die, and the story begins. Except that it’s nonfiction, and, as is probably clear to anyone watching today, the video is a very early report on HIV/AIDS, even before it had that name. And the video is relevant this week because this past weekend was the 30th anniversary of the first published reference to HIV, which appeared June 5, 1981, in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

But frankly, does being non-fiction mean this isn’t a horror story, in a way? At this point, the count of people who’ve died is in the millions, and while there’s effective medication for those who can afford it and have access to treatment, there’s still neither a cure nor a vaccine.¹ And here in the U.S., now that there are effective medications, there’s also not urgency left around the virus, and so people continue to get infected, and both here and globally, people continue to die.

Wow, is that depressing. Another depressing fact: anyone born in the last 30 years has never lived in a world without AIDS. Which isn’t mind-blowing or anything, but it was very much on my mind in the last few weeks, as we at the TheBody.com began gearing up for coverage of AIDS at 30. In fact, it was on my mind enough that I actually wrote a whole article on it:

AIDS Is Older Than I Am: Musings From Generation Y

I don’t want to make it sound like HIV/AIDS was some sort of specter that haunted my childhood. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, I didn’t even know anyone with HIV growing up. My first memories of the world around me begin around 1990, and HIV is among them, in a handful of jumbled, confused moments. I think it was like that for a lot of people my age who hadn’t been personally touched by HIV/AIDS: It was a huge deal when we were kids, but not necessarily in ways we understood.

When I was 7 or so years old, I remember a wild round of boys-chase-girls, girls-chase-boys, sort of free-for-all tag on the playground. A boy grabbed me, and in my frantic attempt to get away, apparently I bit him. A few minutes later, my teacher pulled me aside and told me I had to go stand by the wall for 10 minutes (the harshest punishment known to second graders, not to mention unfair to boot, since he grabbed me, but after 20 years, I think I’ve come to terms with it). My teacher explained the reason for my miniature detention: “Biting is really dangerous. Because of AIDS.”

Feel free to read the whole thing. And, if you’re interested, we’ve actually got tons of other perspectives, from people living with HIV, advocates, doctors, and community members. Check it out: 2011: Thirty Years of AIDS.

I think I’m going to try to do round-ups instead if individual reviews this year, because on the one hand, if I do individual reviews, I put them off until I’ve forgotten what I thought about what I read; on the other hand, when I don’t write book reviews, I don’t update this blog (which was not meant to be a book review blog, but whatchagonnado? *shrug*).

So!

Darkwing Duck: The Duck Knight Returns by Ian Brill, art by James Silvani
I was a latchkey kid in the early 90s, which means I watched The Disney Afternoon pretty much religiously, and Darkwing Duck was absolutely always my favorite. (I can live without TaleSpin or Rescue Rangers, but I own DW on DVD.) When I found out through comics-savvy friends that DW was being reborn as a comic book, I was super psyched, even though comics aren’t particularly my thing. My BFF got me the paperback collection of the opening issues, and let me say, it’s delightful. Heroism! Adventure! Family! Hijinks! Gosalyn yells “Keen gear!” Aside from the nostalgia, it was a great story, and a really fun read.

Sapphique by Catherine Fisher
I snapped this up as soon as I saw it in a store (the first non-e book I’ve bought in months) and I really wanted to love it — but I didn’t. It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t find it satisfying, either. Details at Active Voice.

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
If anything, Bleeding Violet had the opposite problem of Sappique: I read it practically in one sitting and loved it as I turned the pages… But a few minutes after I set it down and paused to catch my breath, I started noticing flaws. Details of that, too, are over at Active Voice.

Arrows of the Queen, Arrows Flight and Arrows Fall by Mercedes Lackey
… Look, I didn’t mean to reread these, but I was sick, and it was snowing, and as I’ve mentioned before, the first book fits squarely into stories of my heart territory. I wanted something warm and friendly and familiar.¹ I can spot flaws in this series that I didn’t when I was a kid, but it’s one of the few series where they don’t bother me or take away from my fun.

Unfinished: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Aaaaaaarg. This was the second time I tried to read this. And I really, really did try, for almost a month before I gave up. I just…couldn’t…get through it. I understand why the book is a classic, I understand why it’s important. I understand what it was doing. I just couldn’t slog through it. I feel sort of guilty, both because leaving a book half-finished kind of irks me, and also because, as I said, I do get why the book is important and a classic, but… it just wasn’t gonna happen. (Also, I’m pretty much over anything where all the women are whores.)

So that’s January. Here, have a Disney Afternoon video to go out on:

It’s been awhile since I’ve shared a subway anecdote, so here’s a bit of holiday hilarious from my errand-running today: on the train home, two sisters (maybe ages seven and eight) were sharing a candy cane — sort of. It was clearly the little sister’s, and she was working hard to suck it into a perfect point. She kept holding it up for her sister and then pulling it away before her sister could actually lick it. Her sister was clearly growing increasingly grumpy about this, but the younger girl found it too hilarious to stop.

Finally, the little sister actually did hand the candy cane over. The older sister took it, gave her a smug look, and bit off that carefully-created point. She handed it back with a smile. (My own sister adds, “See? Little sisters are the worst!”)

On the assumption that I won’t have a chance to update with the rest of my 2010 books, here’s the list:

#49: The Comet’s Curse by Dom Testa. Middle grade scifi about a bunch of kids on a space ship. Totally delightful!

#50: Soulless by Gail Carriger: steampunk urban fantasy. Fun romance, and I liked Alexia a lot (though I didn’t think she was much of a detective). This was also the first time I’ve ever actually gotten the werewolf thing.

#51: All Through the Night: A Troubleshooter’s Christmas by Suzanne Brockmann (reread). One of the most satisfying books I’ve ever read! I spent the other books about Jules and Robin squeeing that they need to get maaaaarried… and they do!

Happy holidays!

First things first: I bought an e-reader! Specifically, I got B&N’s Nook, original black and white flavor. Technically, I bought it back in November, and Ash was the first book I read on it, but I bring it up now because once I had it, I checked out the Baen Free Library. The library offers some of their books as free e-books, and I noticed On Basilisk Station among them. I decided to give it a try because one of my good friends loves the Honor Harrington series, and hey, it was free.

I let her know I’d downloaded it, and she said, essentially, “Great! Uh, there’s a lot of technobabble in it, FYI.”

And oh boy, was she right.

The thing is, I really wanted to enjoy the book, and there were pieces I really did. As a character, Honor was fine — heck, a determined young leader who’s going to do what’s right no matter how much pressure there is to give in to corruption? Who wins the respect of her crew that way, and turns a rag-tag bunch into an elite force to be reckoned with? Those are all things I love. And make it a space opera? Heck yes!

Unfortunately, all the things I liked about the book were buried. This got a little long, so have a cut: Read this article »

Last week, I listed a bunch of books YA books that I’d read planned to review later. Well, later is now, at least for two of them, lumped together for no other reason than they’re short, and they’re both sequels.

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld is the sequel to the awesome steampunk Leviathan. In this installment, Deryn and Alek go their separate ways in Istanbul: Deryn’s got a secret mission to help the Darwinist powers hold the Dardanelles out of Clanker hands, while Alek’s looking for allies to help him end the war.

Blue Fire by Janice Hardy is the sequel to The Shifter. In it, Nya and her friends are still wanted by the Duke for some nefarious purpose — and when her friends are arrested, Nya has to sneak into enemy territory to try to get them back.

Both books are great — and you can read why I thought so in one convenient entry over at Active Voice.