But, you're a Girl!

Yes, I own that t-shirt and no, I'm not going to apologise for it. I'm a Whedon Girl until the end! Also, I really wish I could afford a Force FX lightsaber, but my student loan probably wouldn't cover it.

Okay, let’s get this straight out in the open: I’m a geek. I think I’ve always been a geek. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I’d had it my way, I would’ve emerged from the womb clutching my lightsaber and demanding to know the location of the nearest star ship. Normally, this kind of declaration would label me the epitome of loser, but nowadays, people get geeky about all sorts of things, sometimes even relatively mainstream interests like cars, computers and obscure works of literature – hell, even collecting stamps; the point is everyone needs a hobby.

But, somehow, science fiction and fantasy fans seem to take things far beyond that, we take our passions and make them our obsessions, (believe me that’s the only way I can explain half the Star Wars stuff I own); I think that’s why many people outside the fan community are politely bemused by us. Of course, there are many casual viewers of science fiction and fantasy programming; we only have to look at the overwhelming success of Heroes, Lost and the British tea-time staple Doctor Who over the past three years to see that. Phillip Pullman and J.K. Rowling have both made their names in recent times, for writing fantastic fiction. But, for those of us who post on-line after every episode, who read the classic SF and Fantasy novels, who collect action figures, comic books and collectors items and who love getting involved in passionate debates with fellow fans; in many ways we’re in a league of our own.

So how do I fit into this equation?

Well, like I said, I’ve always been a geek. This fact has always been made harder by the additional fact that I’m a girl, usually for reasons made unknown to me. I grew up in the late 1980’s (yes, I am quite the youngling) and the first thing I remember being really obsessed with was the cartoon ‘Thundercats’. I was four years old and I insisted that my parents bought me all the action figures, which I still have. I used to hide behind the sofa every time Mumm-Ra showed up. I wanted to be Cheetara, so I could run really fast. I even tried to run up and down the garden several times pretending to be her, until I got a stitch. That’s dedication for you. I used to prefer to take my Lion-O figure to bed with me, instead of my teddy bear, I had to be forcibly pried away from it; figure that one out Freud!

I was often bribed into going to my ballet classes by promises to tape “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles” off ‘Going Live’ for when I got back. I wanted to be April O’Neal, which probably influenced my choice of a career in journalism, or maybe not. Those yellow jumpsuits were criminal. I quit ballet, but my passion for cartoons and SF remained. In fact, Mum insisted it was the only way she could get me to eat pizza. I used to sneak downstairs and watch repeats of Ulysses 3000 at 6 am, before I went to school. I really loved the Ewoks cartoon as well, but this was before I knew what Star Wars was. God, I was truly deprived.

The one thing I remember clearly about mealtimes was my Dad insisting we watched the BBC repeats of Classic Star Trek, in which I did my own distinct tone-deaf version of the wailing theme tune, complete with a dance I made up myself. I was an odd child, but Star Trek was always our father-daughter bonding time. I was left distraught by the end of "Wrath of Kahn", but Dad assured me Spock would be just fine. We reveled in Picard and Kirk's adventures and as I got older, I was sitting down excitedly to watch the pilots of Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It was so good to finally see a female Starfleet Captain.

I was the first person to get really into “Power Rangers” when it first came out. Call me a slave to cynical marketing ploys, but I really loved it. My parents bought me all the toys for my 9th birthday and every time we played it in the playground I had to be the Yellow Ranger. Screw all this Pink nonsense. Usually this game would quickly descend into ninja based chaos. I distinctly remember being sent to the head teacher for karate kicking someone in the face, so anyone who said cartoons don’t encourage gratuitous violence was clearly lying. I now prefer to take my anger at the world out on Halo, it’s just a pity I can’t shoot or take aim for toffee.

"But, you're a Girl!"

The increasingly common cry of my childhood became “But, you’re a girl!” or “Isn’t that boy’s stuff?” It drove me crazy. It wasn’t that I just wanted to be ‘one of the lads’, I was trying to keep up, sure, but I guess, what I really wanted to prove was that I could do everything just as well as they did. I spent my youth jumping around barns and running through the mud in the woods with army camouflage on, war-paint on my face, toy gun and walkie-talkie in my hands; I also played with my Barbie and sang along to Disney films. I never saw anything wrong in that. Although once, my 70 year old grandmother bewildered by my thirtieth viewing of The Empire Strikes Back asked loudly: “What on earth are you watching that for? That’s a boy’s film!" I replied simply: "But, that's what I like Nan!" She shook her head, like I was a lost cause.

In 1997, I was eleven and reading Tolkien alongside Dickens and Jane Austen. I discovered Star Wars for the first time that year, I saw a documentary and begged my mother to take me to see the Special Edition in the cinema. Seeing it for the first time on the big screen was a rush. That opening sweep of the Star Destroyer never gets old. I fell in love with the characters and I rapidly devoured every Expanded Universe Star Wars novel I could find. Mara Jade became my heroine! She kicked bum, wielded a lightsaber, made tough smart-ass remarks and even Luke Skywalker loved and respected her. That was my kind of SF girl. I still find it embarrassing to this day, that my first ever crush was on Mark Hamill. I was young, okay? No-one has any real taste at that age! Now, at the semi-mature age of twenty-two, I can safely say I see exactly what Leia saw in Han Solo. Harrison Ford, back in the day = Yummy!

Having overloaded on Star Wars in every possible way from buying all the tie-in books, encylopedias, character guides, video games and novels – you name it, I still have it. I sought out new fantastical worlds to immerse myself in. I watched old BBC repeats of the original 1970’s Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, just because I loved the Seventies kitsch of it all. They were both undeniably cheesy, but provided great evening escapism. I got hooked on Quantum Leap, mainly because it was undeniably hilarious seeing Scott Bakula in drag. I also still maintain that Sliders was great fun. John Rhys Davies (Gimli from Lord of the Rings) was in it , so it can't have been all that bad.

Finding My Inner Super-Heroine:

I also immersed myself in Marvel and DC cartoons. I was lucky to be growing up in the 1990’s, when superhero cartoons were having a new revival. I watched X-Men, Spiderman, Superman, Batman:The Animated Series and the Marvel Action Hour, which featured The Hulk, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four. I immersed myself in comic book culture, even though I had never picked up a comic book, so that when this decade’s comic-book film explosion happened, I already knew most of the character’s back stories. I thought Jean Grey, Storm and Rogue were beyond cool – and having gone back and started reading the original graphic novels – I still do.

But the thing I lamented most was that there were no girl’s superhero costumes. I could pretend to be a fairy princess to my heart’s content, but if I wanted to live out my childhood fantasies of being Bat Girl or Super Girl, I had to dress up in my brother’s costumes, which were a tad small on an eight year-old me. At school we had a “Heroes and Villains” fancy-dress day. I decided to go at Super Girl as I had just seen the 1984 Helen Slater film over Christmas and adored it. I had tiny red boots, the cape and even the Super-sign drawn by my cousin to pin on my chest. I like to think I looked rather cute, even if I did spend break-time zooming around the playground attacking bad guys and saving people. The only thing that annoyed me was when a teacher asked me quite innocently: "Oh, are you Superman?" To which I replied rather angrily, "No way! I'm Kara! I'm Super GIRL!" Call me a prepubescent feminist, but I was insanely cross that no-one knew who I was. It was the first time I fully realised how invisible and secondary many female heroines are in our popular culture.

My angry feminist expression was not unlike this, except smaller and cuter.

I still have the same costume problem today. I wanted to be a super-heroine last year for Halloween. I had the very narrow choice of some very slutty Wonder Woman or Bat Girl costumes. Absolutely nothing anyone sold was above a maximum 12 UK dress size, which I, most definitely, am not. I was a little infuriated to say the least. Why can’t bigger women wear those costumes and who makes these stupid rules? In the end, I had to buy a men’s Jedi costume, which was highly baggy on me and roll with it. Apparently, female Jedi don’t exist either. Although, tell that to Aayla Secura!


Vampire Slaying and Alien Conspiracies:

Going back to my childhood geek roots, it was 1999 when I got seriously obsessed with The X-Files. I was hiding behind the sofa a lot, but what hooked me was the building sense of paranoia and conspiracy, I loved trying to work out the mysteries and the adrenalin rush of unbearable suspense that held each episode together. Dana Scully was a fantastic female role-model and I had an immense crush on David Duchnovny (didn't we all?). I managed to get my English teacher to agree to let me write an X-Files short story for an assignment (this was before I even knew what fan fiction was) and he said it was one of the best pieces of writing he'd seen in ages. I even hand drew a cover for it. I still have it at home somewhere and I'm damned proud of it.

Naturally, having grown up in a post-feminist era, when Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit UK screens, I was the perfect audience for it. I’ve never fallen in love with a television show, the way I fell in love with Buffy. Here was a show that never underestimated a woman’s power and emotional complexities. Buffy may have been able to knock the stuffing out of any demonic foe, but she still doubted her self and still had to struggle through all the pain and the hard lessons of growing up, often with the fate of the world on her weary shoulders. I was drawn to the character Willow Rosenberg and it was through her struggles to find herself, that I found the courage to believe in my own self-worth and strength. I loved the show’s effortlessly funny dialogue, the knowing pop culture references and the way Buffy and her closest friends were allowed to change, learn and grow up before our eyes. Ultimately, Joss Whedon taught me that switching on a TV didn’t have to mean switching off your brain; that it could function and transcend itself as a true art form. Some might say it’s just a show about some hot blonde girl killing vampires; I say look a little closer and you’ll be surprised how deep it actually goes.

Willow Rosenberg - coolest TV character. Pretty much ever.

Geekdom is the world's best ice-breaker:

For my final day of secondary school, I dressed up as Princess Leia. My Mum used an inordinate amount of hairspray, but I managed to put my real hair into the trademark buns. Running down the corridors zapping my friends with a plastic ray-gun was pretty funny, as was climbing over an insanely tall fence to get to the pub in that gown. At University, desperate to bond and make new friends during Fresher’s Week that weren’t purely interested in getting smashed on whatever was available every night, I introduced some new friends to the short lived, but much loved space western Firefly. Pretty soon we were having Firefly marathons every other night and holding ‘Lost Night’, where we gathered around my TV in halls and tried to work out what the hell was going on that island. Answers on the back of a postcard, please, as we’re still waiting! By then, I had a small crowd of friends to go and see the big-screen film Serenity with. It was great to share the experience of watching it on the big screen for the first time and our shrieks of horror as one beloved character met a fateful end deafened at least two rows in front of us. Some of us even considered forming a grief support group. Whedon really knows how to break a fan girl's heart. The fact remains, that I've always used my love of science-fiction and cinema to break the ice and start a conversation and some of my closest friends have been made by using the "geek offensive". Sometimes trivial knowledge can be a beautiful thing.

Passionate and Damn Proud:

Several years and a lot less cash later (thanks a lot Ebay!) and little has changed, I still indulge my obsessions: I’m addicted to Battlestar Galactica at the moment, Kara Thrace is my ultimate troubled heroine; I collect Buffy action figures and all the Buffy Season Eight comic books as they are released; the moment a new SF film comes out I’m rounding the troops to go stake out the cinema and any new project by Joss Whedon tends to bring out a severe attack of the fan girl squeals in me. I post online and inevitably get sucked into arguments and debates. It’s just too much fun not to join in. I've even been known to play the odd Dungeons and Dragons campaign with shiny nine-sided dice.

Kara Thrace a.k.a."Starbuck" - kicking ass for SF women everywhere.

Yes, sometimes the fact that I'm a girl still comes up in conversation; but for the most part, my male SF-loving friends find it refreshing to have a woman in the mix. Although, I still maintain there is a very small minority of male fans that still feel threatened by the growing female presence in the wider SF fan community. It's like they think we're gate-crashing their exclusive clubhouse - well, I'm sorry to break it to you boys, but women have always enjoyed science fiction and we're not going away anytime soon. This occasionally exclusivist attitude often frustrates me as I've always believed that gender is irrelevant when it comes to the things you love and following your passions. I'll never be a lipstick loving Gucci girl - but so what? It doesn't deny me the right to be both feminine and sociable as the mood takes me. The world's big enough for all sorts and just because my tastes might not be quite as mainstream, doesn't mean I can't still have a voice.

The SF geek stereotype for most outside observers is still a slightly overweight spotty male with zero social skills, who still lives with his parents and obsesses about space babes, video games and spaceship specifications. Let's face it - this image doesn't help or serve any of us and it's about time it changed. I determined to challenge the deceptive myth that female SF fans are a silent minority and prove they are worthy of equal acknowledgment.

Ultimately, putting gender issues aside, what I love about being a SF fan is the passion and devotion fellow fans always bring to the party, from a painstakingly intricate convention costume to an encyclopedic knowledge of vast fictional worlds to the numerous fanzines, websites and campaigns that have sprung up over the years. When the SF community falls in love with something, they fall in love hard. Plus, most of them have the strangest sense of humour known to man or fish. Who else would consider writing parody songs about Vulcans, Hobbits or Jedi Knights or think building their own life-size Dalek called Tarquin is the definition of comic genius? It’s our eccentricities and penchant for irreverence than make SF fans so much fun to be around, no matter what our backgrounds or genders.

The fact is I’m a SF Girl and a geek and I always will be. It’s in the blood. I love getting passionate and excited about a new show or movie that is coming out or buying the latest novel and spending a day getting lost in another fantastic world where the stakes are high and nothing is as it appears.I love arguing about which superheroes would win in fight or whether the Enterprise could blast the Millennium Falcon’s backside into oblivion. (No way! – is the answer to that one). Pointless obsession to some, it may be. An endless source of gloriously good fun and thought provoking debate? Always.