Finding Myself in the Story – Fandom and Feminism

I’ve never been good at keeping a diary. When I was 9 I was obsessed with the concept of having a notebook with a lock – but I’ve never had a tendency to regularly write in one. ‘My life isn’t interesting’ I used to complain, and get bored writing about things that happened in my day to day existence. I think it was that feeling that drew me to fiction, both writing and reading.

The girl who could move objects with her mind and read more books than anyone else was one of my first

From Enid Blyton (I know) to Roald Dahl, to JK Rowling, my childhood was filled with the fantastic and the unbelievable. Fairy tales and magic were the things that filled my nights, and early mornings and every scrap of thought I could spare during the day.

I surrounded myself with these stories, not just on paper but on television and in film also. An over exposure to ’90s superhero cartoons gave me an appetite for all things Marvel and DC although I never got much further than watching the cartoons and eventual movies – I never had access to affordable comics. They captured my imagination just as much as fairy tales and fantasy did though. If you had asked me I would have said that superheroes were fantasy stories told with modern explanations (an over-simplification, I know but still). This carried on to science fiction with Star Wars and, when I was a little older, Lord of the Rings.

All of these worlds that I felt were more interesting, more compelling, more filled with possibility than my own captivated me. I used to come up with my own stories and adventures within them, manipulating the characters into scenarios that I thought were best. I didn’t know the term ‘fanfiction’ but it was something that I was engaging in before I knew what it was. Although my experience of fandom was more isolated than most people’s (we had dial up landline internet until I was 17), I would still have counted myself as a member of all of these fandoms.

I lived in desperate hope that I would one day receive my Hogwarts letter – no matter how late it was

One of the reasons I used to like to make up my own versions of the story was that, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t anyone like me in those stories (I know this breaks the first rule of fanfiction – don’t insert yourself into the story- I was young). There were girls, yes, but they were incredible action girls, or they were beautiful sorcerers, or they were geniuses – and despite all of these incredible qualities they were rarely the main character – the main character was almost always a ‘normal’ boy. Now he almost always discovered something incredible about himself by the end of the story, but as a child I couldn’t understand why it was always this character I identified with the most, and yet this character was almost never a normal girl like me. there was never a girl who was awkward and shy, or nervous and bookish but still desperate to be taken on an adventure. I couldn’t see myself in the confident super powered women that were on screen or in the story, but I could imagine being taken on an incredible adventure by a wizard.

These women are among my favourite characters, but they were never anything less than incredible to me

 

There were exceptions to this and I know that there have been countless arguments about the lack of women in fantasy and science fiction blockbusters – all of which are far more eloquent than I – so I’m not writing to complain about the lack of female characters in these stories. What I’m writing about is the fact that I still loved those stories, they still took my breath away and allowed me to imagine new exciting worlds, and imagine that although I was a girl with no skills that I could see would be of use in a fire fight, I could still find a place within them. The question of female representation is an important one that people need to keep asking but I often find myself even now often questioning whether it’s still acceptable that I love Lord of the Rings and I raced to watch the new Star Wars trailer like everyone else? I’d like to say it is. That doesn’t change the fact that I was asking those questions at 9 years old – I can’t believe that other girls weren’t.

I know that the landscape is changing with more and more stories with female protagonists from all walks of life are being released every day, and I love that that’s something I’m getting to experience. I feel like those stories are filling me up and I can’t get enough of them.

Just some of the stories that I’ve lost myself in lately

I’d love to be able to tell the girl who imagined going on adventures in Middle Earth that those stories are coming. I think that she would still want Middle Earth and Hogwarts and galaxies far far away, but she’d want new worlds as well, where awkward, shy girls get to tell the story too.

Beautiful, beautiful boys!

Why is it that every time I open up a novel recently that the boys aren’t just described as ‘handsome’ or ‘has a nice smile’ but as “cross my heart, hope to die, beautiful creatures” (Not a reference to the novel of the same name but now that I mention it, I’m fairly sure it offends in this way too)?

Don’t they all look pretty?

It’s not that I have a problem with the word ‘beautiful’ or men being described using a word that up until relatively recently was solely associated with women. I’m all about gender subversion. Give me a million superhero girls and damsel gentlemen and I won’t complain an inch. It’s more the frequency which “beautiful” has been cropping up as a descriptor that is starting to grate on my nerves.

Ultimately my issue with it is twofold: the first is that it seems to me to be lazy writing. If a female character is ever simply described as “beautiful” I tend to (metaphorically) close the book on her. It may be the word used to describe all that is good and wonderful and aesthetically pleasing about the skin around another person’s skull but it’s boring. (Side note- I have no problem WHAT-SO-EVER with the word ‘beautiful’ being used in real life. In real life people are allowed to be clichéed and say soppy things to the people they would like to hug and kiss and do the dishes with forever, etc. But I expect a little bit of variation from fiction.) How many books have you read, or indeed films have you watched where the title character (be they male or female) descends the staircase/sobs at the ball/shrugs off a compliment and is answered by the love interest with an incredulous “But you’re… (Big Moment here folks) BEAUTIFUL”. Followed by a groan from the entire audience and tears of joy in the protagonist’s eyes (I will forgive Howl’s Moving Castle for this as it handles it well and one of the primary themes is appearance). This was an incredibly annoying theme for ages in reference to women which most literature at least attempted to kill.

Think about it- when was the last time you read a description of a female character that described her as simply “Beautiful”? (Twilight doesn’t count for this half of the argument as it sins on almost everything) It isn’t allowed anymore. Female characters are acknowledged as being more nuanced, more interesting and more than their looks. I mean, there are books that have gone so far as to disregard certain love interests purely because they fail to describe the girl as anything but ‘beautiful’. And this is good – not just because of feminism and empowerment but also because it makes for more interesting reading. We get to see inside a character’s head, see how they really feel and not have a label stuck onto their significant other that basically says “I like you because your parents DNA combined to make face shapes that I like and would subconsciously like for my future progeny”. (How romantic).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=975OStgcPyM

JK Rowling announces new book for adults

JK Rowling, author of the phenomenal Harry Potter novels has announced she is working on a new book for adults.

The novel will be published by Little, Brown, Book Group, leaving Bloomsbury, who published Harry Potter.

Rowling said her success with Harry Potter offered her an opportunity to explore “new territory” and with that it seemed right to move to a new publisher.