Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Why I'm raising a geeky child
My daughter is almost nine years old. She loves Doctor Who, can draw Star Wars, cheers when Star Trek TNG reruns are on tv, loved both Iron Man movies & can't wait for Thor. When she was little and she had nightmares, I told her she could bring anyone into her dream to protect her. For a while, it was Spike or Angel. Now, she has her choice of Doctor's at her disposal. She named our Dachshund Spike. She loves Wii, loves gaming and can't wait until she's old enough to have her own World of Warcraft account. Marian Call is one of her favorite musicians. She is a whiz at math and is fascinated by science and technology.
Some people think I'm raising my daughter up to be teased. Why would I deliberately introduce her to and encourage her to be vocal about her love of nerdy and geeky things? It's hard to believe that in this day and age, when the nerd really does rule the world, that we are still more concerned about keeping geekiness in the closet.
I am raising my girl to be a geek because I want her to grow up feeling comfortable in her own skin. I want her to not be afraid to express herself and share her ideas/opinions on ANYTHING as she gets older. I want her to not care what people think and that she should just feel comfortable being herself.
I realized that I had to raise her this way in kindergarten when she came home from school upset when boys told her that her Spider-Man shirt was a boy's shirt and she couldn't wear it. I told her that it didn't matter what she wore but she remained unconvinced. I didn't want her growing up feeling the way I did so I knew I had to do something.
Today, she tells everyone about Doctor Who, has me play my Geeky Mix playlist on my Ipod when her friends are in the car and she's very excited about helping out at GeekGirlCon. I think that the important think that she is learning is not that it's better to be a geek (even though it is!) but that it's important to do what you love, to be yourself and to not care what people say about you.
Some people think I'm raising my daughter up to be teased. Why would I deliberately introduce her to and encourage her to be vocal about her love of nerdy and geeky things? It's hard to believe that in this day and age, when the nerd really does rule the world, that we are still more concerned about keeping geekiness in the closet.
I am raising my girl to be a geek because I want her to grow up feeling comfortable in her own skin. I want her to not be afraid to express herself and share her ideas/opinions on ANYTHING as she gets older. I want her to not care what people think and that she should just feel comfortable being herself.
I realized that I had to raise her this way in kindergarten when she came home from school upset when boys told her that her Spider-Man shirt was a boy's shirt and she couldn't wear it. I told her that it didn't matter what she wore but she remained unconvinced. I didn't want her growing up feeling the way I did so I knew I had to do something.
Today, she tells everyone about Doctor Who, has me play my Geeky Mix playlist on my Ipod when her friends are in the car and she's very excited about helping out at GeekGirlCon. I think that the important think that she is learning is not that it's better to be a geek (even though it is!) but that it's important to do what you love, to be yourself and to not care what people say about you.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
GeekGirlCon...and where Care Bears Fit in...
In August of last year, the idea for GeekGirlCon took shape. In October, it really got going. We have two special guests lined up (Thank you Bonnie Burton & Trina Robbins!) and a lot of fun and informational events lined up. In Seattle later this year, we Geek Girls will take the city and the world by storm!!
This coming weekend will mark another All Hands On Deck open-to-everyone meeting. It will be Saturday, January 15th from 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at the Madison Park Starbucks at 4000 E Madison St., Seattle. There is a conference room there which we will be using. This is an important meeting, not just being the first large meeting of the New Year but we will be introducing our Board Members...and the California crew will be making the trip north to join our Washington comrades! I will be making the long 15 hour drive north beginning very early Friday morning. To help promote GeekGirlCon along the way, I will be traveling with one of my daughter's Care Bears and photograph the Bear with a GeekGirlCon promo card at various stops along I-5.For reference, these are the original 1980's Care Bear stuffed toys, not the remade 1990-2000's releases. I got them all for Christmas when I was about eight or nine when Care Bears were all the rage. I watched the TV show and the movies. I had the little plastic toys and the Care-A-Lot play set. They ranked up there with My Little Pony and my MLP & Care Bear toys regularly teamed up in adventures where they would try to save Strawberry Shortcake from the evil Decepticon Starscream...ahh the good ol' days...
Back to the plan for the road trip...
I hope that people will follow the Care Bear road trip on Twitter and also visit www.geekgirlcon.com to learn more about us and maybe even decide to make a donation. If you like the GeekGirlCon mission of promoting awareness of and celebrating the contribution and involvement of women in all aspects of science fiction, comics, gaming and related Geek culture, then please make a donation and help us make this the biggest convention of 2011 and beyond!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Care Bears, GeekGirlCon and a Road Trip!
As I announced on Twitter, I will be making the long 15 hour drive north this Friday the 14th from Northern California to Seattle for the All Hands On Deck meeting of GeekGirlCon. However, I will not be travelling alone!
I will be taking one of my daughter's Care Bears with me to help promote GeekGirlCon along the route. Originally, these were my Care Bears and I passed them down to her. She has them all, including Grams, the baby bears Hugs & Tugs..and even one Care Bear Cousin, Cozy Heart Penguin!
I will be taking pictures of the bear with a GeekGirlCon promo card at various stops along the trip. With the way the weather has been going, you may even see a picture of the Bear in the snow!! I will be tweeting these pics so that you can follow along on the road trip too! Sooo...which Bear would you like to see on the trip? Wish Bear? Tenderheart Bear? Good Luck Bear? Cheer Bear or Funshine Bear? Send in your votes by twitter or blog comments & then tune in Friday Jan 14th to see which Bear is going to be designated official GeekGirlCon Promo Bear!!
And if you feel so inclined, please visit www.geekgirlcon.com to learn who we are, how you can help or to make a donation! Thank you and I look forward to reading your votes!
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Editing of Huckleberry Finn is just politically correct censorship crap
I am an avid reader. I'll read almost anything that can hold my attention past the first chapter. However, I've always enjoyed the classics. I've read Gone With The Wind so many times that I'm actually on my third copy. To Kill A Mockingbird still makes me cry. The Grapes of Wrath could have been written about my own family who drove to California from Oklahoma with every possession they owned piled on their trucks, hoping to escape the drought of the Dust Bowl and find hope in the Golden State. I think that's why I am taking it so personally that they want to sanitize the language of Huckleberry Finn.
True, Huckleberry Finn does use the N-word a lot. This, of course, has led to the book being banned in school districts by supposedly educated paranoid intellectuals. Is it really so painful for children, usually teenagers, to read that word in print, especially if it is used as a point of discussion within the class? Just because we have a black president, do we have to sanitize historical literature so we will not be able to find any derogatory speech that someone might find offensive? What does this accomplish, other than to hide our country's past in a cloud of PC bullshit? Yes, I said PC bullshit. I've always found political correctness to be complete bullshit and this is taking it a step too far.
By destroying classic American literature to clean up the language, we are destroying an important part of our nation's history: the bad part. The use of the N-Word in books like Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Gone With The Wind and To Kill A Mockingbird is representative of where we were in the past and how far we've come from that time. Of course there is still racism in this country but attempting to scrub it from our history will not make it go away. Banning books has never resulted in anything positive. Sanitizing history will never make up for any atrocities or prevent them from happening again. I wish these so called intellectuals would remember the most important lesson we learned in school.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
True, Huckleberry Finn does use the N-word a lot. This, of course, has led to the book being banned in school districts by supposedly educated paranoid intellectuals. Is it really so painful for children, usually teenagers, to read that word in print, especially if it is used as a point of discussion within the class? Just because we have a black president, do we have to sanitize historical literature so we will not be able to find any derogatory speech that someone might find offensive? What does this accomplish, other than to hide our country's past in a cloud of PC bullshit? Yes, I said PC bullshit. I've always found political correctness to be complete bullshit and this is taking it a step too far.
By destroying classic American literature to clean up the language, we are destroying an important part of our nation's history: the bad part. The use of the N-Word in books like Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Gone With The Wind and To Kill A Mockingbird is representative of where we were in the past and how far we've come from that time. Of course there is still racism in this country but attempting to scrub it from our history will not make it go away. Banning books has never resulted in anything positive. Sanitizing history will never make up for any atrocities or prevent them from happening again. I wish these so called intellectuals would remember the most important lesson we learned in school.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Grrr...#NoJossNoBuffy
Buffy Reboot Sans Joss? Can I get a Hell No?
I have been waiting for a BtVS or Angel movie since the shows ended/were canceled. Last year, the Crazy Kuzui's were linked up to another Buffy remake movie that, besides having no Whedon input, was rumored to star Megan Fox as Buffy. Since even remembering that thankfully false rumor makes me throw up a little in my mouth, let's move on.
I thought at the time that the idiots studio execs, in charge of this fiasco would have realized that the true Whedon fan base would not only refuse to grace this movie with a single peso but would actually rise up and demand that the studio not even bother. Apparently, they have not learned their lesson.
That's right kids..from the geniuses who canceled Angel comes ANOTHER attempted reboot without Joss.
Warner Bros has announced it is going to have a rebooted version of Buffy with a whole staff of writers, directors & producers that had nothing to do with the much loved series. You know..the series that everyone still talks about? The one that people quote, watch repeatedly on DVD & have sing along parties to? Yeah..that series. The script writer, Whit Anderson, said that she loves Buffy. Great. I love all these people who say "I love your idea! I'm going to rewrite in the way that I think it should go!" I love Buffy/Angel too. Guess what I did? I wrote a fanfic. Did I take it to a studio to get a new movie going? Of course not...I don't have those kind of contacts..
But I digress...
A reboot is not needed. I loved the classic Joss snarky response to this announcement and I know that Buffy will not be Buffy without his mind, wit and humor. Of course, the only true way that this can be fixed is for Whedonverse fans to boycott this movie and make it flop.
So far, two Whedon actresses have spoken out. Jenny Mollen (Nina the Werewolf in Angel) tweeted today "I will only say this once. Without Joss, there is no Buffy!" In response, Julie Benz (Darla) claimed "Never have truer words ever been tweeted." Not exactly poetry or a scathing indictment but gets the point across in 140 characters or less.
Let's see if this project is still in the works six months from now. I am hoping that the core fan base, who are already loudly screaming their disapproval, are able to quash this stupid idea back into the nothing from whence it came.
Then I can return to the world where I last saw Angel standing in the rain, holding his sword & proclaiming "Personally, I kinda want to slay the dragon."
Let's go to work.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
I'm a Geek Girl & I'm proud of it dammit!
The past couple of days on Twitter there has been a debate over what, or more specifically who, actually qualifies as a Geek Girl or Gamer Girl. This was brought up when the ladies of Team Unicorn released the following video Geek And Gamer Girls. Showing four amazingly hot women surrounded (and covered a la American Beauty) by comic books, light sabers and game controllers, they sang about their love of all things gamer & geek related. One thing that was a little upsetting to some people was that it was a parody of the same Katy Perry song that was used in July by The Screen Team entitled Comic Con Girls. For the record, several of the people who made or appeared in the Screen Team video have said that there is absolutely no plagiarism and that there is plenty of love to go around.
The real controversy happened when many Geek & Gamer Girls cried foul at the depiction of the women in these videos as hot, claiming they don't represent the average Geek Girl. That leads to this question:
Who the hell is the average Geek Girl?
My Geek cred? I grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek. I played hours of Atari and Nintendo until I had finally won Pitfall and defeated Bowser (in Mario 1, 2, & 3!). I didn't play D&D only because my cousins wouldn't let me create a new character. Planet of the Apes? Awesome!! I read Tolkien before the movies came out & thought Gollum was the creepiest creature ever. However, in junior high and high school, it was very uncool to be a geek. You didn't want to be known as a Trekkie. You didn't admit to playing video games. If you wanted to be accepted, you conformed...so my geeky tendencies were hidden in the back of the closet. I was finally able to release some pent up geekiness my senior year when I dated a guy as much into Star Trek, Star Wars, comics and movies as I was. I was finally in a crowd of AV geeks who wanted to be filmmakers. And I was happy. Skip ahead a few years and I was back where I was in high school. Conforming to fit in. And I hated it.
After my daughter was born, it was just the two of us. I decided that there was no point trying to please people that I didn't really like in order to have friends. If they didn't like who I really was, then why the hell was I trying to make them happy at my expense? Releasing my inner geek came slowly as it had been in hibernation for years and wasn't really fully released until I discovered World of Warcraft...and my love of gaming took over. Now, I don't care who knows that I love Doctor Who, Buffy and Angel, or that I would love to learn both Klingon and Elvish. The only reason I haven't been to Comic Con, DragonCon or Pax is because of a serious lack of funds. I'm not a Rocky Horror virgin and wish we had local midnight showings again. I will recite the entire Holy Grail script and think that we should definitely get a flash mob together that acts out the whole damn movie. I am also proud to say that I'm helping pull together the first ever GeekGirlCon which will debut in Seattle next year.
Am I blond? Yes, even more so when I can afford the bleach. Am I skinny? Not quite but I'm getting there. Am I pretty? My man thinks so and apparently there are others in agreement so I'll take their word for it. Does that mean I'm not qualified to call myself a geek? Hell no.
Women as a group always put other women down. There is always an "Us vs Them" the "Ugly Girls" vs "Pretty Girls". What we need to realize and get over is that by segregating ourselves into specific cliques and shunning those that "don't belong" to a particular group that we are making it damn easy for others to stereotype us. Can you game if you're pretty? Yes. Can you dress up as Wonder Woman if you're overweight? By all means, go for it. We need to pull together and realize that our differences make us special and we should embrace that. Otherwise, we're no different than the snotty high school bitches who told us we weren't good enough to sit at their lunch table. We swore then that we would never be like that and that we'd never tell someone that they weren't good enough. Then, given the chance, we're the snotty high school bitch, telling other girls that they can't claim the Geek Girl title because they don't meet the criteria that was established.
I hope that by bringing these issues out, people will talk about it and stop the cycle from repeating. Otherwise, we're doomed to live our lives in little segregated groups when we really all love the same thing.
The real controversy happened when many Geek & Gamer Girls cried foul at the depiction of the women in these videos as hot, claiming they don't represent the average Geek Girl. That leads to this question:
Who the hell is the average Geek Girl?
My Geek cred? I grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek. I played hours of Atari and Nintendo until I had finally won Pitfall and defeated Bowser (in Mario 1, 2, & 3!). I didn't play D&D only because my cousins wouldn't let me create a new character. Planet of the Apes? Awesome!! I read Tolkien before the movies came out & thought Gollum was the creepiest creature ever. However, in junior high and high school, it was very uncool to be a geek. You didn't want to be known as a Trekkie. You didn't admit to playing video games. If you wanted to be accepted, you conformed...so my geeky tendencies were hidden in the back of the closet. I was finally able to release some pent up geekiness my senior year when I dated a guy as much into Star Trek, Star Wars, comics and movies as I was. I was finally in a crowd of AV geeks who wanted to be filmmakers. And I was happy. Skip ahead a few years and I was back where I was in high school. Conforming to fit in. And I hated it.
After my daughter was born, it was just the two of us. I decided that there was no point trying to please people that I didn't really like in order to have friends. If they didn't like who I really was, then why the hell was I trying to make them happy at my expense? Releasing my inner geek came slowly as it had been in hibernation for years and wasn't really fully released until I discovered World of Warcraft...and my love of gaming took over. Now, I don't care who knows that I love Doctor Who, Buffy and Angel, or that I would love to learn both Klingon and Elvish. The only reason I haven't been to Comic Con, DragonCon or Pax is because of a serious lack of funds. I'm not a Rocky Horror virgin and wish we had local midnight showings again. I will recite the entire Holy Grail script and think that we should definitely get a flash mob together that acts out the whole damn movie. I am also proud to say that I'm helping pull together the first ever GeekGirlCon which will debut in Seattle next year.
Am I blond? Yes, even more so when I can afford the bleach. Am I skinny? Not quite but I'm getting there. Am I pretty? My man thinks so and apparently there are others in agreement so I'll take their word for it. Does that mean I'm not qualified to call myself a geek? Hell no.
Women as a group always put other women down. There is always an "Us vs Them" the "Ugly Girls" vs "Pretty Girls". What we need to realize and get over is that by segregating ourselves into specific cliques and shunning those that "don't belong" to a particular group that we are making it damn easy for others to stereotype us. Can you game if you're pretty? Yes. Can you dress up as Wonder Woman if you're overweight? By all means, go for it. We need to pull together and realize that our differences make us special and we should embrace that. Otherwise, we're no different than the snotty high school bitches who told us we weren't good enough to sit at their lunch table. We swore then that we would never be like that and that we'd never tell someone that they weren't good enough. Then, given the chance, we're the snotty high school bitch, telling other girls that they can't claim the Geek Girl title because they don't meet the criteria that was established.
I hope that by bringing these issues out, people will talk about it and stop the cycle from repeating. Otherwise, we're doomed to live our lives in little segregated groups when we really all love the same thing.
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