Writing at Rosarita Beach Cafe Posts

First off, I apologize for disappearing for roughly two months, but March did hold a lot of surprises for me to deal with, and shortly after Easter my family had to do some traveling for one of our birthday presents, so planning for that got in the way of things. However, as someone who participates in the art of writing, I feel I would be doing a disservice if I did not post about the writer’s strike going on right now.

Let me start out by saying I fully support the writers in their efforts. Going without late night talk shows or other forms of television entertainment for a while is worth it if it grants them leverage in securing better contracts regarding their employment, and it gives me the opportunity to read some of the books I’ve been meaning to for a while now. And I am not alone in standing with the writers; a vast number of late night hosts on air stated they stood behind their staff even though it meant they would be unable to do their jobs, perhaps because the majority of them had been in the writers’ positions in the past. Now, it could be the case that those same hosts know their shows cannot be as good as they are if they do not have the strong team of writers that they do, and just think in terms of self-preservation, but whatever their motives are, they are undoubtedly good allies to have in this conflict.

The strike is not just limited to live television, though. Movies and television alike will be affected, and considering how the writer’s strike of 2007 lasted just over three months until February of the following year, things could be significantly delayed, but that’s the point. Remind the executives as well as the actors that without compensating their writers fairly, good looks and charisma can only sell so much. In entertainment, writing is everything. Someone could have amazing concepts for a movie or TV show, but without quality writing, there will be no way it can succeed. If your entertainment model relies strictly on celebrity cameos and product placement, then you can’t make a quality product.

One possible answer for the executives is to just go in and replace all the writers who want better contracts with ones who might be content with the current status quo, and that would be an option if it weren’t for valuable allies like the talk show hosts previously mentioned. Some, like Seth Meyers, constantly refer to their writers by name in pieces they discuss as part of their show, and even have them on to say a few words or even do a segment or two, which only helps their case; they acknowledge on air that they see their writers as more than just people who type out what they say during rehearsals and shows, but they are actual people that even the audience gets to know as they are.

So I probably won’t have any new television to watch for my birthday in a couple of weeks. I’ll live. So I might have to spend a few weeks or a few months reading or doing my own writing. Somehow, I’ll manage to carry on. If the writers’ strike succeeds, then perhaps we might get a quality of entertainment that surpasses what it was prior to the strike. Pay your workers fairly and you are all but guaranteed to see a boost in morale, and consequently a boost in productivity and quality. Stand with the writers.

            No, I haven’t started down a path towards writing science or advanced calculous text books.  I cannot foresee any future where that is even a remote possibility. Mainly, this topic came to mind because a new season of a show that I and many others have been enjoying returned this week, and before I actually watched the premiere of it, I thought I’d write a post about how it followed a formula, why that worked, but also the dangers of continuing to follow a formula in writing fiction.

            The “formula” of the series I have been watching is more or less set up as one would play a video game, with each episode of the season serving as a different level within the game; the first reward for the inciting incident being a new outfit, as well as each episode containing its own “boss” which the protagonist needed to defeat. Even at the end of the seasons, much like in various video games, the same protagonist is rewarded with some item, weapon or otherwise, that would have made a fair number of previous tasks easier in comparison. The writers of this show, at least for the past seasons, have stuck to this formula, and so far it has worked itself out, though not solely due to following the equation the writers made for themselves. The quality of that writing was also held up, and so the series held up, but the writers do need to be cahereful.

            Excessive use of using these formulas can take away from the impact of an artistic creation. Some of the Dan Brown books are evidence of that. The first series to employ that formula is very effective. The second, it is less shocking to the reader. Eventually, it just becomes too easy for the consumer of that media to guess how whatever installment they hold in there hands, and be somewhat disappointed to find that they were right from the start. At some point, writing in formulas becomes boring if we are not given new substance to focus on.

            Then again, sometimes these formulas are necessary as a building block of an outline, if nothing else. Some foundations are good, but they need structure to them. If the premise of a series is building a criminal empire, focus less on expanding the lore of the world and more on taking inspiration from works such as The Godfather. That is not to say the entire backstory of the characters being used need to be rewritten to match Vito or Michael Corleone, rather just draw inspiration from how each character rose to power and adapt it to fit your story. Let me be clear, I am not advocating for plagiarism of any kind, rather writers can draw upon other great artists, using the same technique, but adding their own spin on it. There is a quote attributed to Stanley Kubrick stating that every story has already been told, and that it is our job to improve upon it. That is precisely what I am advocating to be done.

Yes, dear readers, after nearly a three-month hiatus, I have returned. After Halloween of 2022 I was very busy between events to prepare for and carry out in December that I just decided to focus on all of that and keep up with my own mental health that I let this blog slip through the cracks. While I could make some kind of serious post about the importance of taking care of yourself and not letting every factor of the outside world bother you, there is something a bit more pressing on my mind this week: M&Ms.

Alright, perhaps M&Ms are not as pressing a matter to me personally as I would hope the first blog post after my hiatus would deal with, but I had it on my mind for what seemed like an unusual amount of time, so perhaps this is my way of coaxing it out of my mind. After complaints (near as I can tell, only from one network) about redesigns of cartoon mascots, the Mars candy company announced it was replacing its classic “spokescandies” with actress Maya Rudolph, and I, at least, have one question: why?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Maya Rudolph. She was among the cast when I first started watching Saturday Night Live, and it would bring me so much entertainment to see her make appearances in shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place, but replacing these mascots that have been around for over sixty years just because some people had a melt down over some updates animators tried? It wouldn’t have been cheaper to issue a press release asking who really cares about it? If I waited sixty years to change the pair of shoes I was wearing, people would think I was messed up in the head…I mean for reasons other than what my psychiatrist has heard. What truly baffles me about it is the backlash was about putting these mascots, who again have been around for over sixty years, in different style of footwear. Were they just sitting on the couch with M&Ms and thinking “wow, these really taste different now that they’re not in thigh-high boots,” or was it some commentary on the kind of footwear they wanted to see? A word of warning for everyone who for whatever reason thinks the way I just described; Maya Rudolph will most likely not be in the same type of shoe for her tenure as the M&M spokesperson.

Perhaps one of the reasons the Mars company decided to make this change was just to make headlines, and they fully intend to go back to the mascots after the executives feel that the people who complained moved on to other things. Get everyone talking about your candy so that on some level, the people who hear it in the news start craving the product. All of the free advertising they’re getting from this has to be lightening the burden on their marketing department. Maybe they intend to do something like what Planters did after they killed off Mr. Peanut in January of 2020, just to come back in a Superbowl commercial later that year. Perhaps then we’ll get the press release similar to what is written above, if that is indeed what happens. Regardless, the final word on the matter will be the same: It’s chocolate, get over it.

            As October draws to its end, I felt it only natural to discuss the subject of monsters as today’s post, and not the kind one would find in black lagoons or Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. More specifically, two different kinds of monsters, three if you count what the mind is capable of on its own. Horrors of a much scarier nature, because they are a part of daily life for us all.

            Anyone trying to venture into writing in the horror genre will be familiar with the phrase “nothing is scarier.” What that means is simply that not showing the monster and utilizing the other senses makes for a much more terrifying experience.  One good (overall) film that does this in my opinion is the movie Chernobyl Diaries, at least up until about the last ten seconds of it.  Of course, writing does this as well, such as in H. P. Lovecraft’s The Beast in the Cave. Each individual’s tastes are different, however, so I’ll not spoil the plot to either story, and so you are free to look it up if you choose to do so, but how does this connect to real horrors? Both stories play with the premise of the unknown, and so in robbing the observer of the visual of these monsters, the mind creates something so much more terrifying than anything a special effects team could think up.

            Outside of the unknown, there are other demons we deal with on a daily basis, all stemming from fear. As I just stated in the last paragraph, the mind is capable of dreaming up a number of ghoulish fantasies that could make the bravest among us cower in fear, but this act does not limit itself to the world of fiction. Surely, we’ve all felt it; picturing something going wrong that could embarrass us, drawing a blank for a presentation you’ve been preparing for weeks, even something as basic as playing out an uncomfortable but inevitable situation that’s lurking around the corner. There are those among us who skip to the endings of books to read how it ends before starting the first chapter precisely because not knowing the ending causes them more stress than the roller coaster that the writer might take them on. Many of these reasons tie back into our fear of the unknown, and can be more frightening than anything that you have a clear picture of.

            The last thing of the real world I can think of that could rival some of the worst horror movie monsters out there is something that often looks like the hero; people. The late Steve Irwin had a quote about describing the type of creature he worked with, and to some seem preferable to dealing with people.  “Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.” Perhaps I’ve just been around the wrong type of people, but this is why I prefer animals; they’re more predictable than some humans. Another reason is because what you see isn’t always what you get; sometimes beauty only runs skin deep, and hides a more distorted and twisted face.

            At the end of the day, humankind is filled with creatures more heinous than anything a writer could put into a horror script, and some of our stories scarier. The simple answer is we can’t always discern what means us harm from what comes to us with honest intentions. At the end of the day, the unknown remains our biggest fear because we are free to plug in anything our minds come up with in the void that is there. In my opinion, we lose our fear of the dark only when we start to realize what that void could be filled with.

            Just a quick post for today, I think.  October is the time of year dedicated to all manner of frights, not just ghosts. While Michael Myers and other Slasher movie villains can certainly be used to evoke fear, I’ve always found those types of films to be somewhat dull, perhaps because in my opinion little imagination is used. They tend to rely on basic fears as their method of scaring us, specifically the desire to stay alive.  Even when most people I know gravitate towards an interest in serial killer documentaries, I was always drawn to a more niche type of nonfiction cinematography: the truth behind urban legends.

            Granted, there has always been a few overlaps between these urban legends and serial killers.  One such example I can think of is Pogo the Clown, better known as John Wayne Gacy. Over a decade before author Stephen King introduced Pennywise to the world, Gacy went on a killing spree which claimed the lives of at least thirty-three men and boys, often using the persona of either Pogo or Patches to lure them to him.  Perhaps King drew inspiration from Gacy’s actions in crafting his own monster, though killing and eating the children seems like a better fate than what Gacy intended.

            Last year I was asked to help to design a scavenger hunt based around my local area with the theme of legends and lore. I learned a good deal about my area, and all the shady details of its past. One such story I researched told the story of Hot Shot Charlie, alternatively known as Fingernails Freddie. According to the story, Freddie (or Charlie) was a farmer who was being harassed by some local children to the extent he took action into his own hands. Not wishing any real harm on the children, the farmer loaded a shotgun with rocksalt and fired at the children when they returned, hoping the painful burn from the salt would make them stay away. The children later decided to get him back by burning down his house while the farmer was out in his barn, but did not realize his family was still inside their home. When he saw the smoke and flames he rushed into his house to save his family, only to find he was too late. In his vain attempt to get his family out safely, his face became permanently burned and disfigured.  He stopped going into town and became even more reclusive. It is said that this man blamed all children for what happened, and took to murdering any he found wandering the woods alone.  Was this in fact inspiration for Wes Anderson’s slasher film?

            Another story I researched for the scavenger hunt was the story of Mercy Brown and her claim to be one of the first recorded vampire hauntings in New England during that time of paranoia. Mercy Brown herself was a victim of what they purported to be the work of vampires before her passing, and as the most recently departed she was suspected of being the cause of her living relative’s illness. It is said that when they exhumed her body to see if she was a vampire, both her hair and fingernails were longer than they had been prior to her passing. Here I shall not regurgitate the myth that both continue to grow after death, but rather share that in my research I found that the skin around both has a tendency to shrivel up after death, giving the appearance that both had grown while the heart stopped its beating.

            I am sure there are other examples of truths behind urban legends that I could discuss, such as the deceased sister getting her revenge with a cursed wedding gown, or that story about the babysitter conversing with the police only to find out the call is coming from inside the house, but perhaps some of my readers don’t want that. I think the reason I prefer to hear the truth behind these stories is to remind myself that’s all they are: stories. One of the most scary things I can think of is the unknown, similar to how I always prefer never to actually see the monster in horror movies, whatever an individual imagines in that void you left is scarier than anything you will show to the audience. The premise is the same. Knowing the origin of legends such as the Jersey Devil or the Scottish Jenny with the Iron Teeth take away from the power those stories have to scare us.

            Well, it’s finally here. The one month of the year devoted to all things that go bump in the night. Also, the season of pumpkin spice, though to be perfectly honest with you, my dear reader, if I made a post on that flavor when I started seeing it around, you would think I was out of my mind for posting it in late August. But I digress. The purpose of this post is to discuss something perhaps equally as scary as the pumpkin spice craze: ghosts.

            Mind you, this won’t be a full post on the history of ghost stories or how the concept of ghosts has influenced aspects of our culture, this would be a seemingly never-ending essay, reaching as far back as Cicero from the days of ancient Rome.  Rather, stories I have heard from those close to me, as well as some of my own accounts.

            One of the stories that stands out to me comes from a man I see only a few times a year when I go up to visit some family friends at their lake-house in New Hampshire. The man in question got into restoring old houses in his younger days, and still enjoys telling the stories he has from years of doing it. This story involves a house rumored to have belonged to the first governor of New Hampshire. The man was having something delivered to and installed in his basement, a washing machine I think, and it was a father/son team who did it. When going down to inspect how to get the washer into the basement, the man saw the son with his eyes fixated on a certain point in the basement. “Thomas is watching us,” he said.  Among the children of the man suspected to have owned that house, there was a Thomas who passed away when he was a child, which only supports the theory of the house’s original owner. Though the man and his son did get the washer into the house, the son refused to stay around any longer, and they left without connecting the washing machine to the water pipes.

            Though I had been fascinated with the paranormal nearly all my life, my first real experience with ghosts didn’t come until late in high school. I was signed up for a dinner with some paranormal investigators I had come to know from a talk one of them had given at my school a few months earlier on local history. As part of the team, the had a psychic medium stationed in one of the rooms of what purported to be the most haunted restaurant in the state.  Almost as soon as I walked into the room, she looked up at me and smiled. “Oh, they like you.” Maybe I should have been a little freaked out, but I had been waiting so long to have a genuine paranormal experience, I was thrilled to hear something like that. The investigators had tools there called divining rods, which some believed could be used to communicate with spirits. While some others had only faint reactions when they tried using the rods, I was given much more definitive answers whenever I asked questions using them, which I thought was such a thrilling experience.

            The other experience I have I can’t say definitively whether or not I did experience something paranormal, but the story I was told after I had lived there for about two weeks did shed some light on some unexplained occurrences. During the second abroad program I went on to Italy I stayed in an apartment with three other guys, one of which I shared a room with…for a while, anyway. Some strange things happened, like doors swinging shut of their own accord when there seemed to be no breeze in the air, or returning from the bathroom to find something not where I left it, but I just found ways to explain it away, such as breezes too calm for me to notice, or just tricks memory plays on us, but that changed after my professor told my roommate and I the story he heard from the people he rented the apartment from.  The story he heard went back to World War II, where the Allies were bombing areas in Italy.  Apparently, the apartment building itself was a library back in the early to mid-1900s, with the specific apartment we happened to be renting being used by the librarian as her main living and working quarters.  According to this professor, the woman snapped after days of Allied bombs dropping across the city, not having the peace and quiet she craved, and she took an axe to as many people in the library as she could, before ultimately hanging herself.  My love of the paranormal manifested itself in my reaction to the story, though my roommate did not share my enthusiasm.  About a week earlier, everyone who resided in that apartment decided to throw a casual dinner party, which was basically ordering a few pizzas and a few bottles of wine. At this dinner party, my roommate and my professor discovered a collection of old books, perfectly preserved.  After hearing this story, he was panicking because he personally had disturbed her books and was so freaked out over it that he slept outside of the room for the rest of the time we stayed in that city.  As for myself, after I heard that story, I found some time to myself when no one else was in the apartment, and I apologized for being there, saying I knew I was just a guest in her home and that I was leaving in a short while; that her spirit would never see me again after that week was up.  It was not until much later that I realized that I had spoken all of it in English, and that the spirit probably didn’t understand a word of what I had said. Nonetheless, I did feel a sort of tension decrease after I had said that, and though I did poke fun at my roommate for his fear, there were times I too was afraid I had overstepped my boundaries, stepping somewhere I ought not have, though I cannot change what was.

            There are many other stories that I have heard, from one man encountering what he believed to be the ghost of an entire Roman legion marching in his basement to the “Voodoo Queen” of New Orleans appearing in the form of her pet snake by her own gravesite, but those are all things I have heard from strangers. One of these tales I heard from a family friend, the others happened to me personally, so yes, I believe in an existence after death. I can only hope to have many similar experiences before I become one of them.

            Again, I must begin with an apology; last week was rather hectic for me, and in part due to last minute change in plans, I was unable to sit down to write a blog post.  Hopefully this will in part make up for that tardiness.

            As much as the title would indicate this post being about honesty, it really goes into my feelings in regard to a trait closely linked with it; respect. I don’t believe anyone could truly be dishonest with anyone they respected, or perhaps respect is more similar to a multi-story building, as opposed to something that is either there or not there. Perhaps respect and trust both include a number of different “shades,” in reference to the different degrees each holds. As an example, I could respect another’s ability to bluff while at the same time holding no respect for their own character. At least two examples come to mind when thinking on this subject, and both came at a great price.

            The first example that comes to mind relates to one of the worst experiences I had in college. After a falling out with someone I considered to be my closest friend at the time, we had managed to agree not to try to communicate with each other, but still do things such as a Poetry Slam that I was involved in. My interpretation of this was to give us each some time to reflect on what had happened with greater clarity. The agreement was made over text, which I would have had no problem with, had they done what I had thought and discussed it after a time of reflection. However, they clearly did not truly respect me, or else I would have received a different reaction other than a text saying that they were comfortable just “acknowledging each other, but otherwise going about our business” when I reached out to sit down and talk face to face.  I thought this was the end of the story, but years later I found out that they had tried to get me barred from participating in the Poetry Slam. My reaction upon hearing that?  I wanted to laugh.  Not because they had tried and failed to get me banned from something I had enjoyed doing, but rather because of how unnecessary it was. If they had just respected me enough to ask me not to audition for the Poetry Slam, I wouldn’t have gone to the audition. Out of respect for them? Not quite, but I suppose I was thinking with a broken heart rather than my head.

            The other personal example I can think of comes from something a little more recent.  At the time I was in a play and was developing a friendship with someone I had hoped to turn into something more. Not long before opening night, I had decided when I would ask her out, specifically after all performances of the play had concluded, as the show ended with us both onstage with our characters exchanging lines.  Through an event neither of us directly caused, someone else in the cast pointed out evidence they thought implied I had feelings for her.  We met at a restaurant afterwards to discuss how to proceed. She confessed she did have those feelings for me as well, but she was nervous because she didn’t want to “be the first one to break my heart” despite my telling her that ship had sailed long ago. So we agreed to remain friends and see if a relationship blossomed out of it. What does this have to do with honesty?  She failed to tell me that she was at least seven years into a relationship that started when she was in high school. Not telling me a detail such as that still categorized it as a lie, even if it was a lie of omission.

            In all fairness, I might have told a lie in each scenario previously described. For the first, I wanted to surprise the person in question in their viewing of a prior Poetry Slam by composing a poem where I wrote (or more accurately spoke) in a fashion in which I believed only they or I would know who I was talking about. I was a coward for that, I freely admit, and I paid a great price for that sin.  In the second example which I spoke of, perhaps I was a coward, though to a lesser degree.  At an event we were both at, I had asked her if she wanted to get coffee sometime, as most media has convinced me that is a pre-dating ritual that had to happen in adults.  I’ll not go into specifics, but it she went back to confirm that she said “I’d love to” when I asked this. Not wishing to cause her distress, I lied and replied: “that’s what I heard.” I don’t know what would have happened if I had been honest and said I heard no “d” and a word rhyming with “to,” but it really doesn’t matter. We are all the sum of our choices in life, and as painful as it is, I’ve learned living in truth is preferable to pleasant lies.

            Maybe it’s due to the fact that last Monday I spent time with my sister-in-law’s family, but I felt inclined to make that very thing the subject of today’s post; family, or more accurately, what specifically constitutes that construct.  Over the course of my life, I’ve interacted with a variety of people who had different family structures, in addition to consuming different media both with a wide array of that same concept. While I first heard the line that inspired the title, it was set in a fictious world, however that does not diminish from the truth behind that quote.

            For the curious amongst the readers that quote is from the television series Supernatural, which lasted far longer than the stars themselves originally thought. The show follows two brothers but weaved around the theme of family, with plot points involving their father on some occasions, their mother on others, but the show itself built up a theme of chosen family; those not related to them, but who stood by them through thick and thin. One such member of this chosen family uttered the first half of the title.  As the writers explored more dynamics, they introduced a relative who shared the same goal as the brothers but went about it in the wrong way, viewing those around him, including his biological relatives, as pawns rather than as equals. This is just one example of the silver screen using the trope of family, but in my opinion, one of the best, because it wasn’t the basic “blood is thicker than water” cliché, rather it explored several different viewpoints on the subject of family.

            There is a term in Jewish communities called Machatunium, which refers to one’s parents as well of the parents of one’s spouse.  I looked up this term specifically for this post, as at a cookout held at the house of an uncle of my brother’s spouse, his mother-in-law referred to me using this term, and explained through that, we were family, to which I have two disagreements, number one being that as those of you who have read my previous post on church can attest to, I am not Jewish. The second of these two being that my brother is fond of pointing out that Judaism is “the religion of lawyers,” meaning that there are so many technicalities to be argued that it seems like the perfect religion for someone of that profession. How does this relate to the point that I do not fit the definition of Machatunium? Quite simply because I have yet to meet a lawyer yet who has been able to successfully argue that I am the parent of either my brother or his spouse, though in all fairness I have consulted no rabbi before reaching this conclusion.

            In truth, I think Supernatural hit the nail on the head when the show went into chosen family. Personally, my chosen family resides in my friends both from college and from organizations I have volunteered with. Shared experiences can also contribute to one’s criteria of chosen family. The accident I mentioned in my last post placed me in a program for others with remarkable stories of how they beat the odds and recovered from seemingly impossible circumstances. Though most of us haven’t seen each other in years, I still consider them family. I have even found family in visiting friends, meaning that I became close enough with their family that in a sense I was adopted into it. So look around you. You might just have more family around you than you think.

            And apologies about missing the post last week, ironically enough I was traveling to visit some of my own family and didn’t want to take away from the weekend by stepping out to write a blog post.

Forgive me, for I shall be using at least two examples from a fictional universe mentioned in the very last post on this website.  For this week’s post, I had been thinking a lot about my own…limitations, and how similar medical conditions are portrayed in media. Going further than that, how entertainment is evolving to give those afflicted with these medical conditions a greater voice within the industry.

The thought to have this topic came to me as I was watching a movie this past weekend, one of the newer Star Wars movies, perhaps in anticipation for the release of a series based off a character from that one film. It occurred to me when I saw the entrance of a blind character that the entire franchise never really included a disabled character, although in a universe with technology that advised it could be considered difficult not to propose solving the issue in that way. From a story-telling perspective, this character was playing into the ‘blind monk’ trope, yet what bothered me was how cliché it seemed that the physical blindness was compensated with a heightened sense of hearing. While it was comforting to see Hollywood showing someone with this sort of condition, it was still a recycled version of a stereotype, even if it was the first time the series was using it.

The other example from the Star Wars universe I felt needed referencing comes not from the storyline of any series, rather one of the actors used in a series. Actor Troy Kotsur was cast in the series The Mandalorian as one of several cloaked beings known as Tuskens who spoke mainly in grunts and screams, and up until then had never attempted to be communicated with. Kotsur, who is deaf himself, helped develop a sign language within the universe that communicated with other beings. This is why it matters for those with disabilities to be part of the conversation, not just be admired by those leading it. Additionally, Kotsur won an Oscar for his performance in CODA, becoming the first deaf male actor to win such an award.

Perhaps my personal favorite on this list is the impact actress Millicent Simmonds had working on the movie A Quiet Place. Director John Krazinski fought for a deaf actress to be cast in the role that Simmonds ultimately played, specifically because the role itself was playing a deaf child. Moreover, Krazinski required the whole cast to learn American Sign Language so that they knew what signs to make when they had to use ASL for their part, but more importantly so that they could communicate with their castmate in a way that she could easily understand. He even took the input of both Simmonds and her family when filming the movie. Again, that is what society needs; not just bobbing heads when those less than able-bodied say what they need, but rather be given a say in the actual process; building a system they fit into rather than have a support system made by those who could never understand what it’s like living with those types of conditions.

The final actress that deserves to be discussed within this post is Jamie Brewer, most notable for her work in the American Horror Stories series. In 2015, the actress became the first person with Down Syndrome to walk the runway in New York Fashion Week. Three years later, she also became the first person living with that condition to win the Drama Desk award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. They did not create a separate category for her, put rather put her in the same category as every neurotypical actress in the academy. Again, that is all that can be asked; to be treated as an equal to every other person with the same profession.

Forgive me if parts of this post seemed arrogant, I just can’t stand when I feel like others are trying to place me on some kind of pedestal just for living my life with ‘fun’ leftovers of a car accident and a traumatic brain injury. There are those in the world who have built themselves as voices of others living with the same medical or mental conditions as them, however, simply having that condition does not mean they need to become a model for that specific condition. We are just playing the hand that life dealt to us, nothing more, and we have as much right to privacy as anyone else. So what’s the end message to all this? How does the public know who to look up to as a role model and who to allow to blend into the background? Listen to the wishes of that person, and then follow those wishes. Yes, it’s that simple.

            A while ago I read an article on how the princesses I grew up watching (specifically from Star Wars and The Princess Bride) are taking on roles that feature them as generals.  In the case of Carrie Fisher, she portrays the same character from the original Star Wars films now carrying the title of “General Organa” as opposed to the title of “Princess Leia” she carried in the original movies.  And what of the other?  I admit, I had to look up the character she played because I was unfamiliar with the source material, but Robin Wright portrays the character of Antiope in the recent DC live action movies, where she acts as sister to the queen and general of the Amazons.

            Mind, I do not think screenwriters completely try to pretend that these characters were always viewed as the military leaders they appear as in these recent movies, at least not in the case of Star Wars. My interpretation of a small piece of dialogue during the opening scene of The Force Awakens was that it served as a nod to the original viewers of Star Wars when it came out in 1977. Essentially one character comments on how his general will appreciate the service another is doing, to which the other, an older man, says that he always knew her as ‘Princess’ when he first met her.  The transition from constantly being referred to as ‘Princess’ to becoming ‘General’ might have given the character more agency, at least to the screen writers, but even in the second film, shot practically forty years prior, the character seemed to command more authority than a typical princess, at least from a military point of view.

            Now onto Robin Wright’s characters. Unlike the previous example, Wright did not portray the same character transitioning from princess to general, but rather in a different role.  That does not diminish from the achievement she had obtained. When I first saw her on screen, she was built up to be a princess, and seeing the same woman years later acting as a general is not just entertainment; I believe it is a symbol of the different phases of life. When we are young, we grow up with stories of princesses and monsters, and in classic stories the princesses are often helpless, just as young children are. But what happens when those monsters return to meet a princess who grew up to be a military power? Suddenly the dynamic has shifted, and I see it as a fitting metaphor for the young women of today.

            By now, I imagine most reading this blog are wondering why the word “mostly” was included in the title. If not, I am happy to remind you of that. Again, I fear I must jump back to the world of Star Wars, though not to any of the movies this time.  Rather, a character introduced in one of the newer Disney + series, later going on to appear in another. Fennec Shand was built up to be a sort of anti-hero within that universe. A strong character to look up to as a force to be reckoned with. How then does she qualify as a princess of my childhood? The same actress, Ming-Na Wen lent her voice many years ago in the movie Mulan as the star, and so became a Disney princess, personally my favorite of them all.

            There is an author I follow on YouTube because of videos that she puts out on a weekly basis. One such video is about giving female characters more agency in stories, and one of the pieces of advice she has is not to make the character a princess, but rather a queen. While queens are traditionally viewed as more matriarchal and supporting characters, that is not always the case. Mary Queen of Scots took up the title of queen when she was little more than an infant.  Over the years, there have been a number of role models for young women to look up to, though perhaps only recently have the role models been in positions with the same type of agency.  While I am glad to see that modern projects such as Reign and Mary Queen of Scots have started to bring to the public’s notice strong women from the pages of history, I am frustrated by how many lesser-known women have yet to get their moment to shine. Give me a drama about Boudica, a Celtic queen who led an uprising against the Romans. Give me an adventure movie on Grace O’Malley, the pirate-queen of Ireland who negotiated with Elizabeth I face to face. Let Hollywood start portraying historical figures with the same regard they give to these fictious universes.