The Strong Female Character

There’s an excellent post tearing up Tumblr at the moment:

I don’t think writers realize that ‘strong female character’ means ‘well written female character’ and not ‘female character who punches stuff and shoots stuff.  ~ace-enjolras

Initially I reblogged with a simple “Yes, Yes, Yes, for the love of God, Yes!” but it occurred to me that a significant number of the 32,000 (and counting) who are enthusiastically liking and reblogging this bit of wisdom are doing it merely to say “I don’t like River Song.”

And that’s fine, Tumblr isn’t meant to be the Algonquin Roundtable, but if we’re going to get on our high horse about one-note oversimplification about something as complicated and nuanced as a human being, then we shouldn’t resort to kneejerks and generalizations.  And so, the unabridged version:

“I don’t think writers realize that ‘strong female character’ means ‘well written female character’ and not ‘female character who punches stuff and shoots stuff'”

Yes. Yes. YES, YES, YES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YES!  By Victoria’s Secret candyfloss shopping bags and La Perla embroidered tulle, by Eleanor of Aquitaine and C.J. Cregg, by Ambassador Delenn’s monologues in Babylon 5 and Kate Beckett’s in Castle, by Beatrice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Rose Tyler and the Marquise de Merteuil.  A “strong female character” means first and foremost a well-written human person with all the dimensions, senses, affections and passions that implies. She may have large breasts, she may wear high heels, she may love a man and opt for the Happily Ever After.  She may sacrifice for a worthy cause–or a stupid one.  She may win; she may lose.  She may smoke pot.  She may be smart or she may be dumb. She may be a bad role model. She may not subvert a single trope. She will most certainly surprise those who thought they had her figured out on page 5; she might even surprise herself. She might be a victim, she might be a virgin, she might be a screeching bitch. She might be a slut. Most of all, she will be an honest product of a writer – male or female – who understands their own life and their own feelings and their own soul, and has the unbelievable balls to put a piece of that out there before the world. She cannot exist without that.

Only in Gotham: I’ll have Batman Straight Up, and Put Him in a Dirty Glass

A quick follow up on that Gotham blog a few months back.

I’ve said for a long time – since the Fashion Week Riot of 2012, I believe – that if you’re writing stories of Gotham City and you never get Batman out of those grimy alleys, you’re not doing it right.  New York is a tapestry of the unimaginably funky, a kaleidoscope of the creatively unbelievable, and a ragout of the eclectically weird.  It’s fine to have the perv in the subway, the banger urinating in the alley and the homeless guy on 14th Street, but if that’s all you’ve got, damnit man, you’ve got no business calling yourself a writer, because you’re walking past THE BEST PARTS to show us crap we’ve seen a thousand times before.

If you’re not in the city,  don’t despair.   Open a new tab on your browser and Like a l’il ol Facebook page called Humans of New York.  You’ll find it a revelation.

If you are in the city, get your coat.  This watering hole in the NoMad Hotel in Chelsea is having more fun with Batman than you are, and we need to fix that.

Only in Gotham: Ordering Cocktails via Batman Tarot Cards

Ordering via pop icon tarot card.  Our favorite vigilante represents Dark, that makes sense.  I have no idea what Pammy’s supposed to represent.  Natural?  (There aren’t a lot of unnatural alcohols, are there?) Grassy?  Green?  Flowery?  The only thing that makes any sense for a cocktail is fruity, and you wouldn’t use her for that.  I say we go find out.  Who’s with me?

The pic that started it all Fashion Week Riots #AndYouCallYourselfAWriter #pfft http://t.co/WhZTilOD

— Chris Dee (@chrisdeecattale) January 9, 2013

Only in Gotham: Pac Man Dumplings at Red Farm

Only in Gotham: Dior Renovating

 

 

Gotham “To me, it’s like a great woman”

I was talking to someone the other day who really loved Mahmoud, the cab driver introduced in the later chapters of Inside an Enigma.  He wanted to talk about Gotham in Cat-Tales, how the city rises to become a character in some stories and, in others, its ordinary citizens like Mahmoud or Clair Sabana in NMK Inc can upstage the established Rogues they interact with.  As one who aspired to write Batman, he wanted some tips on crafting a Gotham that had those qualities, that was a character in itself and would generate those unique individuals an audience could connect with as something more than crime fodder.

In the course of the same visit, I was flicking the dials and came across Anthony Bourdain eating dim sum in Brooklyn.  It was great:  Brooklyn, not Chinatown, and as Bourdain was contrasting the well-behaved crowd with the atmosphere of a dim sum seating in Hong Kong, an older woman tired of waiting got up to take the prized dumplings she wanted off a cart.  After that, Tony’s tour of the outer boroughs took him to an African restaurant in the Bronx and the proprietor talked about how difficult it was to bring over the people who knew how to do the kind of cooking he required and how expensive it was to get them the education they needed.  By this point, my friend was leaning forward towards the TV, elbows on his knees, absorbing every word.  And I thought “Okay, he can do this.”  Because that’s the part of being a writer that comes before stringing words together.  It’s being drawn to people and their stories.

Okay, so, my personal tips for writing Gotham and Gothamites:

A Gothamite’s View of the World

* THE MOST IMPORTANT STARTING PLACE:  Discard any idea from DC Comics that Gotham and New York are separate places or that Metropolis is an East Coast city that’s nearby.  What makes New York the uber-city it is is that it is the center of the universe for so many different fields and that makes it a nexus of an incredible cross-section of humanity in all its diversity.  There cannot be another Wall Street right across the river, another center of publishing, of advertising, of fashion, of theatre, of art, of news and broadcasting, another cluster of embassies around the U.N., etc etc.   Try to make New York, Gotham and Metropolis sister cities and you diminish all three.  Decide right now: Gotham is New York, Metropolis is a time zone away in what we call Chicago, and NEVER LOOK BACK.

* If you have no personal experience with New York, or perhaps a just few days as a tourist, do not despair.  You can pick up a fair amount of texture from movies and television, but you have to be smart in what you choose to mine for details.

NO: Friends or Seinfeld.  That is not New York.  That is LA-New York, and it burns.  Sitcoms in general: Mad About You, Will and Grace, How I Met Your Mother, should probably be viewed as an alternate universe.  Things may have the same name and general shape, but before you approach the guy in the red cape, you should figure out if it’s Superman or Bizarro.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION: these works hit a single non-representative note.  They can only be used in moderation with many other sources to round things out:

• Seven – This is pretty much Frank Miller’s New York and Hell would be an improvement. If this is your notion of NY, I know what your Batman story is going to be – “Gotham as Mordor”  – and I’m not going near it.  For balance and penance I recommend…
• Sex and the City – To call this a rarified view of the city is like calling a Christie’s auction of a Mickey Mantle rookie card a rarified view of baseball.  Yes, there’s stuff like the Paris Theatre on 48th Street, but you can get that from Annie Hall.  If you must mine this silly show, I recommend sticking with the first season or two before it became a vehicle for Sarah Jessica Parker’s ego, and fast forward anything referencing $400 shoes.  Even so, Gossip Girl is probably a better choice. (And honestly, if you want an insight into new restaurants, shopping, clubs and events to dress up for, I’d forget fiction altogether and go with Zagat, Yelp and Gotham Magazine.)
• Cruel Intentions, Tootsie, When Harry Met Sally, Serendipity, Crocodile Dundee, Big, Ghost Busters, Fame, Kramer versus Kramer, The Devil’s Advocate, Wall Street/Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, One Fine Day  – all display a different New York, a movie New York that is a very small slice  of the real thing.  The more of those slices you consider, the more well-rounded your Gotham will be.
  Everyone has their own cutoff for how old a movie can be to serve the purpose.  I think we can all agree Breakfast at Tiffany doesn’t make the cut, but some people my age can stretch to Midnight Cowboy and Dog Day Afternoon.  I’m not one of them.
• Real Housewives of New York City – there’s actually nothing to be gained here.  I just put it on the list as additional punishment for the Miller crowd.
• For Reality TV options that do have something to offer (albeit in that one-note capacity that should be taken with many, many others) I would look to the specific episodes or specific segments of Travel Chanel’s programs that feature NY locations.  From Rachel Ray’s $40-a-Day to the myriad of “Paradise” show that cover its pizza, steak houses and chips shops, these can be seriously out of date for real life vacation planning, but they’re handy for a writer wanting some local flavor.

GOOD

“I love the city in an emotional, irrational way, like loving your mother or your father even though they’re a drunk or a thief. I’ve loved the city my whole life — to me, it’s like a great woman.” ~Woody Allen

• Woody Allen movies – the gold standard for New York movie making.  Manhattan Murder Mystery might be a little dated, but it’s not like the 21 Club has changed much.  Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives and even the universally loathed Anything Else have something to offer for the New York watcher.  (You watch enough Woody Allen movies, you start to notice weird things.  For some reason, Central Park almost always means exposition.)  New York Stories, though Woody only did one part of the trilogy, obviously tops the list.
• As Good As It Gets – If this flick had nothing to offer but the contrast between Melvin’s Manhattan and Carol’s Brooklyn, it would be on the list.  It has much more.
• Castle Seasons 1 & 2 – Even though this series is filmed in LA like my first category of no-nos, the early seasons went out of their way to bring an authentic New York flavor.  Unlike most shows set in the Big Apple, it touched a lot of different subcultures rather than just icons and geography.  The later seasons are still very enjoyable, but as the show’s focus changed over time, it lost its edge making the most of the NYC setting, IMO.
• Law and Order, Law and Order Criminal Intent – Both series get around the city and get into its subcultures and niches.  Because it’s actually filmed there, it also gets into its neighborhoods better than LA-based competitors like Castle.  The main drawback is simply that it’s been around so long.  On any given weekend, 3 channels have marathons running and no formula can stand up to such saturation. Remember why you’re watching.
• Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations – Tony keeps it real.  Whether it’s the aforementioned Outer Boroughs episode, the segment on Street Food, secret chef enclaves, or the New York segment of a report on Mexican immigrants in the food service industry, I’ve rarely seen Bourdain touch on a New York story that he didn’t nail.

What are your favorite TV and movie New Yorks?  Comment here or tweet me.

Q&A: Rewrites, Flashbacks and Firsts

I opened up my Tumblr to take some questions about Life, the Universe and Everything, and the first round gave me a chance to talk about some of the pivotal moments in Cat-Tales, from the decision to tell Selina’s origin story Cattitude to the famous “Clips episode” Do No Harm – to stories like Red Cape, Big City and Deja Vu All Over Again that weren’t flashback-intensive but revealed some of the most important moments from the past slowly and incrementally.  And oh yes, if I could do it all over again, what would I change?

---

If you could rewrite Cat-Tales in its entirety, are there any story lines or characters which you would handle differently now?

---

Are you planning on writing another flashback story like “Do No Harm” or just planting little bits here and there?

Guest Blog: Bad Yeti

When my good friend “The Enigmatic Mr. Wu” started to blog about writing, I knew I wanted to feature him here as a guest blogger.  Why?  Because Mr. Wu is also Thundering Monkey, a name some of you may recognize as a Poser artist featured in the Cat-Tales Gallery, and frankly, several of his pictures display a better understanding of storytelling than we see in the output of certain professional writers.  There is real artistry in finding the psychological moment in a scene and in knowing how to convey it. 

Or, as a friend of mine put it recently, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, you better choose those words carefully.”

So I give you a blogger of fewer words than most of us, which belies a marvelous clarity of ideas.   

(Mind you, when I asked him to do a guest spot, I didn’t realize he’d be bringing a yeti.)

Don’t Let Bad Yeti Happen to You

A few days ago, I was watching The Mummy 3.  Don’t ask me why, some things cannot be explained.  I was watching the Mummy and I came upon this scene:

………… I know, right?  What was that?

You have to ask yourself, how something like that made it into a 145 million dollar movie?

What really bothers me about this scene, other than the way it damages the movie, is that it’s painfully, obviously bad, and someone made a large amount of money for writing it , while some of the best storytellers I’ve ever read, will never be paid for the work they do.  I’m not sure what is more terrifying; the idea that a Yeti Field Goal was in the original script and no one cut it, or that it wasn’t in the script, but someone said “the third act needs punching up, you know what this movie needs ? A sweet Yeti field goal!! Hell Yeah!  Or the fact that in the months that it took to model, texture, animate, render and composite this sequence into the movie, the idea that it was stupid, and hurt the movie never gained traction. What The Mummy 3 really needed was for someone to say no.

This is why you need a good Beta reader.  A Beta reader serves many useful functions. They give you valuable feedback on your story. They might spot opportunities that you missed or have an alternate way of saying something that makes your scene funnier, or sadder, or scarier, but perhaps the most important service they provide is to give you one more chance to stop something bad from getting into the world.  When all people remember of your story is the stupid scene with the Yeti field goal, your reputation as a storyteller has been harmed. They may be unwilling to give you another chance.

The best thing your Beta reader can do for you is to be ruthlessly honest with you about what they feel works and what doesn’t. Their reactions will probably mirror your readers. The best thing you can do for them is not take criticism of your story personally. When they tell you something doesn’t work, it’s not a slam on you. It’s not calling you stupid or saying you’re a bad writer.  It’s not about you, it’s about the scene, and if it’s not working, it’s better for you to know now than when the Ebola monkey of a scene has escaped into the wild. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to thank them in the author notes. They spent their valuable time to make your story better, so mentioning their input is just the classy thing to do, and as Rob Burgundy says, you should always stay classy.

---

Originally published as Don’t Let Bad Yeti Happen to You at enigmaticmrwu.blogspot.com.

How to Succeed in Comics Without Really Trying

Had a few comics-related conversations over the holidays, and particularly their similarity to theatre. Comic books, like stage productions, cannot show elaborate cinematic scenes. They suggest, and the audience (or reader) fills in the rest from their imagination. Panel 1: close up on a Bat-glove, fist cocked. Panel 2: DEMON minion lying on the floor. You don’t SEE Batman attack (reminder if you haven’t seen the Arkham City trailer, you haven’t seen CGI Keysi Shakespeare the way it’s meant to be played), you create it in your own mind, and that folks, is why fanboys are more INVESTED in these characters and these stories. We are more possessive because they truly are OURS more than something we only see in a movie or on television.

Because of that similarity, and because theatre has had to reinvent itself for thousands of years to keep entertaining in a changing world, the modern comics professional can learn a lot from the theatre world. The big one to consider today is literally the difference between a theatre that failed in the last 10 years, and one in the same city that kept its lights on and is still performing shows. The philosophy is simplicity itself:

Look on every single performance of every single show as your one and only chance to win over someone in that audience and make them a lifelong theatre goer. Someone out there has never come to the theatre before, and what they see and hear and experience tonight could be so overwhelmingly magical for them that they are hooked for life.

Look on every single performance of every single show as potentially the last straw for someone who has seen one bad show too many.

Remember The Dark Knight? That movie brought people into comic shops for the first time. They were looking for Batman. If what was in the comics DELIVERED what they wanted, some of them would have come back. (And maybe some comic shops that have closed in the last 2 years would have weathered the storm, but that’s a question for another day.)

But it doesn’t take a movie. It doesn’t even take a cartoon. SOMEONE is be walking into a shop for the first time EVERY DAMN DAY. Every issue of every comic is a chance to win them.

Every issue of every comic is also a chance to LOSE them. There is a misconception out there that because fanboys howl and complain, because they have always howled and complained, that it’s fine and even desirable, to anger, disappoint and insult them. And it isn’t necessary to master or even understand the basic tenets of storytelling because a bad story will pass the time for the next 6 months as well as, or better than, a good one. There is a reason it is writers with roots in or ties to other media who are having exponentially more success than the hacks: because they understand real readers and audiences. They know that those hundred guys on forums are not representative of anything. The vast majority of readers you never hear from either way. They like it and they buy again, or they hate it and they don’t.

Things can be bad enough for long enough that the most vocal and committed fans decide enough is enough. We’re seeing that happen in increasing numbers, but those are the extreme cases. Every issue of every comic IS a chance to lose one of those diehards, but it is also infinitely more probable it will lose a hundred casual readers. Particularly when the actual goal is to cause maximum offense. It’s not okay to know something is wrong but wait until next year to fix it. Every single issue of every single comic is an opportunity to win or lose. And like life, you simply don’t know how many chances you have left. The Reaper is out there, folks, and there are major titles whistling in the graveyard, acting like it doesn’t matter, they’ll fix it next year. It really doesn’t seem to occur to them that there may not be a next year.

It’s a new year, and I wanted this entry to be an optimistic one. I want to offer more encouragement to those pros out there who honestly do seem to be trying to fix this. I know things that have been breaking for 20-plus years can’t be fixed in a day, but unfortunately, that’s what’s required here.

There’s another theatre principle: the miracle. It’s 30 minutes to curtain, the paint is still wet, they’re finishing off the second act costumes with a glue gun, the props table fell over, breaking the decanter we need for the first scene, the leads are having a shouting match in their dressing rooms, the fire marshall is seizing all the pyro earmarked for the end of the first act, and the ASM is locked in the costume loft. But the show goes on because even though it is f-ing IMPOSSIBLE to overcome all that in less than half an hour, we dig in and do it, because we gotta. Because we give a damn.

So maybe, just maybe, this can be an optimistic entry after all. All you guys need to do is dig in and give us a miracle. If it sounds like a lot to ask, look at your cousins in theatre who’ve been doing it for just over 5,000 years.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com

Please Drink Responsibly

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There is something profoundly wrong with people who don’t like Dickens, but even they allow that A Tale of Two Cities has one of the greatest openings in the English language. The Great Gatsby opens well too, and is also one of the rarest of rarities: a spot on perfect movie. AMC has a collection of films called “Essentials,” films from Casablanca to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that everyone should know. They are part of the collective vocabulary. They are required for cultural literacy. In literature there’s the Five Foot Shelf. In music, it’s Synchronicity and The White Album, South Pacific and Into the Woods. If you seek out what’s good in many fields, you feed your imagination and will be a better artist for it.

That’s the positive side. The flip side is also true. Imagine a professional athlete that ate nothing but Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Would any of us be surprised if this guy failed to win the New York marathon? For that matter, would any of us be surprised if he failed to finish and fell down dead at Mile 18? No, of course not. Because this guy who uses his body to do what he does has been pouring poison into it.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, a composer, a creative in any field, then your imagination is the bread and butter machine. Since you’re also a human being, it is the most magical and sacred part of you. That alone is a good enough reason not to flood it with poisons, but I’m talking about something beyond just being human. I am talking about being a creative. The imagination is what stretches beyond the literal and mundane and the goings on in your digestive tract. It is what connects with something higher and better, and channels a little piece of the infinite when you make something that wasn’t there before. If you pollute it with garbage, the result will be the artistic version of that wheezing pathetic “athlete” gasping his way through the race.

No, I do not read comics anymore. It’s more than not giving DC even $2.95 worth of encouragement for something that is truly bad, it is declining to live on a toxic waste dump. It is refusing to take poison into my imagination. Not only is it bad for me, it’s going to be bad for anything I write.

You are what you eat. And drink. We’ve all seen the creative output of the drunk drivers out there, professional and amateur. It’s time for those of us who are not three sheets to the wind to start staging some interventions.

But let’s return to the Best of Times, because there is a new artist to welcome to the Fan Art Gallery, and she’s certainly kept her imagination fueled with the best of raw materials. Check out the beautiful work of Anya Uribe, an absolute master of feminine curves, color and form.

The Virtual Visitor Center is decked out for the holidays. In Second Life, as in Cattitude, as in Real Life, Cartier wraps itself up in a bow for Christmas. More information on the Cat-Tales website, or residents may teleport directly to the Visitor Center.

Random Equinox even has an update for his spinoff fic: Don’t Fear the Z.  And as if that wasn’t enough, we had two lovely developments over the Thanksgiving break: The Macy’s parade was good enough to open with Aviator Snoopy, providing yet another opportunity for the slow-witted to realize that the inspiration for the Catwoman abomination–the virtual SIGNATURE of the new direction that failed to grasp anything that defined Catwoman and got absolutely everything wrong–was, in fact, based on a cartoon dog. How symbolic do you want it? They didn’t understand anything at all about Selina, right down to the CAT in Catwoman. A symmetry such as makes the angels weep, if it wasn’t so effing sad. And, finally, the forum’s running gag of Batman’s Black Friday Protocol finally has some artwork:

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com

Cupsize is not Characterization

I’m pretty sure the most popular entry in this blog is the one from late April: Women Lacking Complexity—For SCIENCE! about blogger Jen McCreight’s initiative Boob Quake.  Wow, who would have thought it?  The most popular blog was about tits.

Yes, there are two big issues looming when it comes to women and comics. Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical flourish, there are two. Let’s deal with the D-cups first, because there is a reason they go on the cover: Men like breasts.  A couple months ago, Warner Bros posted screencaps to Arkham City, the sequel to the Arkham Asylum computer game.

The gullible souls who bought into the Brubaker/Cooke scam and continue to believe that flat-chested and short hair are the hallmarks of a dynamic empowered woman started frothing at the mouth: Look at those breasts!  How can it be!  It is the goggle-whore costume we have all been trained to defend as practical no matter how nonsensical the word is as applied to any costume in any comic including the one this displaced.  It is black and not purple, she has no long flowing hair cascading luxuriously out the back of her cowl, how can she have breasts that can be seen without special lenses?! It does not compute.  The horror, the horror!  How dare they defame the good name of Catwoman by giving her a body men will enjoy looking at!

I really had hoped the Iranian cleric that started the whole Boob Quake thing would have woken those silly women up. Because if you buy into the idea that boobs are bad and there is something wrong with men who like them, then you’re standing with Fahas Ahardtime Acceptinghalfthehumanrace-majad.  That doesn’t strike me as very enlightened or feminist, ladies, but hey, you don’t see the problem with the whore/stripper/ambiguous street trash origin, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

For those who aren’t irrevocably committed to the doctrine of Men Suck, let’s briefly revisit why the male of the species like the breasts. I’m sorry Notting Hill fans, there is an actual reason and it’s not “because they’re stupid.” It’s because we’re primates. For a long, long, long, long time, the male approaching a female for mating purposes is looking at a rump. Now fast forward a few million years.  We’re all walking upright. What in the general vicinity of the new eyelevel looks like that? There’s nothing perverse about it. Men are hardwired to notice cleavage. Put it on the cover, they’ll notice your cover. That’s not an automatic sale, but it gets their attention. What you do then is up to you.

Which brings us to the second issue when it comes to women in comics: who they are as opposed to how they look.  Let’s start with a quote from a creative writing forum, which was sent to me after the recent blog on Fridging:

“As it was explained to me by a comics professional years ago at a convention panel on the topic, the vast majority of comic writers are men who simply don’t understand women. Since they don’t understand women (and earn more by churning out stories as quickly as possible), they save time by reducing women to cliched roles as either the girlfriend or the victim.”

I include the elaborate provenance – that this is something told to a reader in a con/panel situation—because there is always the possibility that it is simply not true. That it was given in the context of “Look, we don’t serve up all these rapes and murders because we’re sad little trolls who can only feel like men by bringing down women.”  If that was the tone of the panel, then this could have been presented as a simple expedient.  Rather than debating if there is any palpable difference between murder of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis and the murder of Duncan in the Scottish play, the above quote diffuses the situation quickly without controversy by playing into the widely held preconception of comics writers as arrested adolescents.

The irony is if that’s true and not an invented excuse, it’s completely unacceptable.  Women are 53% of the population.  You can’t be a professional writer in any medium and “simply not understand” half the human race. You’re going to embarrass yourself, embarrass the idiots who hired you, and you’re going to fail—over and over and over.  So let’s cut these guys a break and reveal the key to writing the kind of female characters that the entire audience will love.  Then everybody will be able do it and that removes “I don’t understand lumpy people” as an excuse.  The following has been said elsewhere, but never as well as by the late Harold Ashman:

“In every classic musical, one of the first three songs belongs to the heroine.  She comes downstage, often sits on a convenient planter or bale of hay, and sings about what she wants from her life.  And the audience falls in love with her… and they spend the next three acts rooting for her to get it.”

It is, honest to god, that simple.  And that complex.  Start with what she wants.  If Cattitude succeeds where other Catwoman origins have failed, it is because it is grounded in what Selina wants from stealing: a restoration of the love and safety she felt as a child, which she came to associate with the wealth and comfort she knew in her parents’ home.  I cannot accept that the ability to pee standing up somehow short-circuits the ability to understand that simple human motivation.  What we want is seldom a function of gender.  The best art and jewel thief in the world comes from privilege and not poverty because the root associations make sense.  If any man wants to step up and explain what in his anatomy screws up his comprehension of something that shampoo simple, I would be fascinated to hear it.

Food, shelter, love, freedom, a sense of self-worth.  None of them have anything to do with reproductive plumbing.  If you “simply don’t’ understand” women, then you simply don’t understand people and if that’s the case, you have no business writing at all.

Now, if you don’t get a particular subset, join the club!  Twilight fans, the gals who take the Sex and the City bus tour, the Real Housewives of anywhere… Don’t ask me, fellas, I’m as confused as you are.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com

Originally posted with the title ( . )( . ) for humor.  Edited to the descriptive headline for happier indexing.  Sorry, Google.

Fat is Flavor

Chef Josh Grinker recently blogged a list of “Things Chefs Don’t Want You To Know.” The explanation for #1 (There is butter in everything) began like this:

In every culinary school in America, they hammer home the same three-word mantra to students day after day, year after year, until it’s like a little voice in your brain that guides virtually every culinary decision you will make for the rest of your career: ‘Fat is Flavor.’

Now, this isn’t a cooking blog, and if there are any nutrition proselytizers out there who want to make the case for their fat-free, salt-free, gluten free, lentil and tofu roulade being just as tasty as a deep dish with pepperoni and sausage from Giordano’s, they can lump it. Because there are two key elements in Grinker’s statement which are the gateway to serial success or—in DC Comics’s case—serial failure.

First of all, the three little words are true. I could spend a day perusing the Good Eats clips on youtube for Mr. Science-style demonstrations explaining that reality molecule-by-molecule, but again, this is not a cooking blog. The point is, regardless of what you say on the convention floor, no matter what you put in the press release or tell the columnist from IGN, and no matter what would be convenient for you personally or professionally, no matter what creates a political pain in the ass for you personally or professionally, the bedrock principle on which you base your decisions has to be TRUE. One example off the top of my head: readers like the theme rogues. You can accept that and build your one year arc around Croc, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Joker, Harley Quinn, Riddler, and Two-Face and be on your way to the hit of the decade, or you can reject it, stage a parade of faceless mobsters and serial killers, and then grouse that grumble that you’re never as popular as that other guy.

Assembling the list of wrong ideas DC has about life, the universe, and everything would be a daunting task, and not necessarily a productive one. Because the second key in Grinker’s statement is that repetition of the founding principle(s) until it becomes an instinct. There are some major figures out there who are so consistently wrong in everything they say and do, they’ve definitely got the instinct mechanism working, it’s just based on faulty base principles.
From “Bruce Wayne is the mask” to the fallacy of Millerism, they have core ideas, those ideas just happen to be wrong. But there are others who have no little voice leading them in any direction. They go from mediocre to pretty good to clinically insane, from really bad to slightly above average to “oh hell, the syphilis got to their brain.” That is the mark of a writer, editor, or manager who is stumbling blind. They have no root principles, so every choice brings them back to square one. They’re a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel, and whatever gusts hit them last will determine where they go next.

Look, things do change in this world. One of the major reasons the Titanic went down is because everything Captain Smith knew was wrong. It was based on based on 30 years of experience, but on that ship on that voyage in those waters: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here’s the catch: other things do NOT change. There is a reason the term is bedrock principles. Some things simply are, they are constants, they do not alter. “You know how you cook a great steak? You slather it in butter, throw it on the grill, paint it with more butter.” Because fat is flavor. The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can’t. Can they make it so we don’t like sweet anymore? No, no they can’t.

Find the true bedrock principles, repeat them until they become a little voice in the back of your mind shaping every decision you make, and you might just rock the world. Insist that fat isn’t flavor… well, enjoy your empty restaurant.

Meanwhile, the Cat-Tales kitchens are bustling these days. Electron 29: Chapter 4 is out. Compilations of Books 1 through 4 are out in ebook formats for Kindle, Sony, Nook, iPhone/iPad/iPod, and pretty much everything as well as new print-ready pdf editions. Individual Tales 1 through 50 are also available, and several have new covers showcased here, here, and here. The last ten tales (through #60) will be out – both individually and as the Book 5 Compilation – in time for Christmas. New installments of both spinoffs: Capes & Bats by Wanders Nowhere and Don’t Fear the Z by Random Equinox are in the pipeline and may actually be out by the time you read this, and an amazing new artist is soon to debut in the Fan Art Gallery. And oh yes, Batcatfever will kill me if I don’t mention that the forums have been quietly devouring the latest snippets from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

The Fallacy of Fridging

This is dedicated to the ones who scream “Fridge” if anything bad befalls any female character in any context…

The Overthinking It Flowchart of Female Characters
from Overthinkingit.com

Fridging, for the happily unenlightened, is taken from the title of the list “Women in Refrigerators” which notes the number female characters who are killed, raped, or otherwise brutalized… but mostly killed and decapitated so their heads can be left in the hero’s refrigerator.  One of the creators, Gail Simone, has explained the original point simply enough: if you want women & girls to read comics, maybe killing off all the characters they like isn’t such a hot idea.  The original list, however, has been used as the foundation for any number of essays, deconstructions, and blogs who, in the words of whatever Kennedy said it, seem to want the luxury of having opinions without the bother of having thoughts.  The complaint–and it’s a fair one up to a point–is that the women and their deaths are just plot devices.  It’s not the story of their deaths, it’s the effect their deaths have on the hero.

Of course the same can be said of Duncan or Hamlet’s father, but nobody ever bemoans king-snuffing.

Look, I know these Fridge-Screamers are good people, most of them, and they’re honestly trying to help, but the fact is, they are the problem, not the writers. These well-meaning souls seem to think they are educating the rest of us by dissecting women’s roles in fiction in the ways shown here. In their minds, it’s writers putting women in these categories that keep them from being full and equal human beings alongside the men. We who might actually enjoy these outings are like savages worshipping a radioactive idol, not realizing that the glow we find so fascinating is bad for us.

Well, sorry, fact is, the Fridge-Screamers are the ones who have a faulty understanding. Because the thing that keeps these women from being full and equal human beings is that THEY’RE NOT. They’re not real! They are CHARACTERS. Characters in stories are going to repeat certain patterns and fit into certain roles. You accept that in order to experience the story in the same way you buy a ticket to a movie. It is literally the price you pay to get in on the experience. We could play this same stupid game with the men, because they too have a role to play in any story. But we don’t dissect them for 180 kinds of imaginary subtext simply because they have testicles—and that is the only thing that is keeping them on a higher shelf than the women. The women aren’t as real because of these analysis matrices taking everything they say, do, or wear out of the context of the story and run through the defensive paranoia filters of every silly blogger out there who read the syllabus for a women’s studies course one time and imagines she has amazing new insights.

Look, there are misogynist trolls out there masquerading as writers, as editors, as movie directors. They are not hard to identify. That seems to be the problem, actually. Sally Sophomore doesn’t feel like an enlightened intellectual pointing to the sky and saying “It’s blue.” On the contrary, there is a predisposition to reject the obvious simply because everyone can see it. “All you people, the peasants, you think the sky is blue because that’s what your eyes tell you. You’re not as wise and wonderful as me. I am one of the elite who can appreciate the particular un-blueness that so eludes your simpleton mentality.” While Sally is harmless (annoying as hell, but harmless), she does contribute an awful lot to the noise pollution that keeps real issues from being discussed. That’s a pity, but hey, that’s the Internet.

It is Monday, so a brief CT update is order. I really don’t know where to begin at this point, which probably explains the diatribe on Sally. I guess Electron 29: Chapter 3 would be a good start. That’s out! I don’t usually release stuff over the weekend, and I know how it slips by a few readers when I veer off schedule that way, but the way things are going, I can’t be that choosey about when things get done. Anyone who misses an update, hey, there’s the newsletter, the forums, Twitter, ffnet author alerts, and this paragraph. If all that escapes ‘em, DOUBLE CHAPTERS NEXT TIME! Woohoo! They can have a Cat-Tales readathon.

Anyway, one of the main reasons for the big time crunch is the ebook conversion. The Book 1 compilation as well as all the individual B1 tales are done, and Book2 is so far along that it will probably be up on the website by the time you’re reading this. That brings us up to the present, but things don’t line up for the future by themselves: writing on chapter 4, conversions of Book 3, prepping the fan art gallery for a new artist, all these things are in the pipeline, along with one other treat I’m trying to arrange by Christmas… *stops and takes a deep breath* …which is why I can’t afford much blog time to shout out to all the Purple Catwomen at New York Comic Con…

The forum’s own “Glitch2” as Eddie in this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldofrandsom/5063929074

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwick/5066797000/

…Let alone recap “Why men like boobs” for the new crop of terminally confused whackadoodles. I’d like to, along with a few other issues that cropped up over the summer, but the Tales come first, and the commentary on non-tales matters comes second. Today we got Overthinking It out of the way. It’s a start…

That said, Kitty can really use an extra set of hands. So… I’m thinking it might be time to get an intern again. Since we now have a virtual visitor center in Second Life, I’d prefer an SL resident. If you’re interested, stop by the Cat-Tales Visitor Center in Second Life and send me a notecard. If you’re not in SL, you can send me a PM through the forum, but I’m giving preference to SL people on this one.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com