Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 102

Seven (or More) Queens That The Doctor Met Before Nefertiti…

Forgive the frivolity of this post but it occupied my attention on a long drive on Monday afternoon, knowing that Dinosaurs on a Spaceship awaited me at the end of the journey.

Historical queens! Oddly enough, while the historical was an essential staple of very early 1960′s Who, and continued to be a feature in quite a few later stories even though the ‘true’ historical went the way of the Dodo (written out halfway through never to be seen again) very quickly, it’s only in New Who that the Celebrity Historical episode has become a true tradition.

Classic Who does have a few gratuitous historical figures, it must be said, and even more are name-dropped by the Doctor in his more grandiose moments, but many of its historicals are more about the time period than the famous faces.

But I wanted to write about Queens in particular, because I’m rather fond of them as a species, and it certainly seems from New Who that they have opinions about the Doctor too… though, spoilers, not as many want to snog him as you may think!

[Spoilers for assorted TV stories and Big Finish plays below, but not for the very recent Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, unless you didn't want to know that Queen Nefertiti is in it, in which case... oops? It was in the trailer?]

QUEEN: Liz10, “The Beast Below” (2010) and briefly “The Pandorica Opens,” 2010

OF: The Starship UK, somewhere in the distant future of humanity

QUOTABLE QUOTE: “I’m the bloody queen! Basically, I rule.”

The memory-wiped black Cockney queen of a struggling British colony in space, Liz 10 is half action hero, half politician, a woman smart enough to break her brain conditioning over and over, and yet submitting to the selective amnesia every time she gets to the end of the process and is told the horrible truth about her world, by a far more aristocratic version of herself. She’s a complex character, a sharp shooter, and a really great queen. The future is in safe and stylish hands… even if she can’t stop River Song from stealing her favourite painting.

QUEEN: Elizabeth II, “Silver Nemesis” (1988) & Voyage of the Damned (2007)

OF: Great Britain again, pretty much in 1988 and 2007, though I have heard tell she was Queen in other years too.

QUOTABLE QUOTE: The Seventh Doctor: “Act as if you own the place” as a certain familiar figure came around the corner, corgis at her ankle…

Okay, she didn’t do much in either story. Does anyone know if the same Queen impersonator played her both times? In Silver Nemesis she almost catches the Seventh Doctor in a bit of trespassing in the private section of Windsor Castle, and in Voyage of the Damned she is the only Londoner to stay put (well, her and Wilfred Mott) and thus to be in danger from the crashing Titanic. We see her waving and thanking the Tenth Doctor at the end… and according to Liz 10, the two of them had been known to meet for tea and scones. I like to thank that this was the Second Doctor, at least once.

QUEEN: Thalira, “Monster of Peladon” (1974)

OF: Peladon, a planet peopled mostly with miners, unionists and alien ambassadors

QUOTABLE QUOTE: Thalira: “It would be different if I was a man, but I’m only a girl.”

Sarah: “Now just a minute! There’s nothing ‘only’ about being a girl, Your Majesty. Never mind why they made you a queen, the fact is you are the queen, so… just you jolly well let them know it.”

Okay, Thalira isn’t the best example of feminist icon, being rather wet and swamped in a patriarchy even more oppressive than Earth’s 1970′s, but her general hand-wringing and inferiority complex is the beginning of her journey, not the end, and thanks to some serious encouragement by our own Sarah Jane Smith, she has a much firmer grip on politics and her planet by the time the Third Doctor’s TARDIS dematerialises… and he wasn’t the one who taught her the lesson! Ahh, Sarah Jane, spreading feminist ideas across time and space. There’s a reason we loved you.

Can’t you just see her leaving discreet copies of The Female Eunuch in every spaceport and historical manor? “Can we just pop by the French Revolution, Doctor? I’ve got some Marie Stopes pamphlets that I really want to share with the working class mothers about their contraception options…”

QUEEN: Delta, “Delta and the Bannermen” (1987)

OF: the Chimeron, an alien race which produces stunning blonde women and little green men

QUOTABLE QUOTE: “Billy’s just changing.”

Who survives the destruction of her homeworld by carnivorous Bannermen with the last fertile egg of her race, and decides that the best escape plan is to leap on board a space bus of tourists bound for a romp in Earth’s fabulous 1950′s? DELTA, that’s who! Not only that, but while she is highly stressed, hatching a baby in her handbag and about to become a single mother, she still finds time to put on an adorable polka dotted dress and catch the eye of a sweet-singing Welsh boy in a leather jacket.

Race: saved! Job done, all with a Nifty Fifties musical track playing alongside.

Queen: Victoria, “Tooth and Claw” (2006) and a few other references here and there.

Of: The British Empire, for most of the 19th century

Quotable Quote: Queen Victoria: “The correct form of address is Your Majesty.” [she shoots]

Okay, we get it, Rose. You did not amuse her Majesty! And neither did the werewolf. An exciting adventure across the Scottish highlands with timorous beasties, ninja priests and yes, a stonking great werewolf, inspired her Majesty to knight the Doctor (Rose got to be a Dame of the Powell Estate!) and then banish him from her realm. She founded Torchwood purely because she didn’t trust the Doctor and his sneaky, world saving ways, and managed to infuse such paranoia in them as an organisation that they managed to stay under the radar of UNIT for decades, despite them having a very similar brief. On the other hand, I like to think that she took a personal interest in the hiring of Jack Harkness…

Then of course there was the big reveal at the end of the episode that Queen Vic might possibly have ended up a werewolf herself, no thanks to the Doctor. Oops! There goes the Windsor bloodline…

QUEEN: Elizabeth I, “The Shakespeare Code” (2008) and many other references since.

OF: England during the 16th & early 17th centuries

QUOTABLE QUOTES: The Dream Lord (Amy’s Choice): “Loves a redhead, our naughty Doctor. Has he told you about Elizabeth I? Well, she thought she was the first…”

The Doctor has ducked in and out of Elizabeth’s court almost as often as he visited the Powell Estate. The Sixth Doctor took his professor companion Evelyn along there (eventually), allowing her to experience her academic specialty first-hand, while the Eighth Doctor went with Samson and Gemma, according to Big Finish play “Terror Firma.” But it turned out he had done more than casual visiting when in The Shakespeare Code an elderly Elizabeth I took one look at the Tenth Doctor and declared him her sworn enemy. “Off with his head!”

The plot thickened when Ten confessed to a random Ood that he might very well have married Good Queen Bess and made her rather less of a Virgin Queen… something confirmed more solidly by his own subconscious in Amy’s Choice, though the Eleventh Doctor claimed later to have left her in a glade waiting for him to make his vows. Our old friend Liz 10 certainly believed there was some saucy truth in the rumours, having read her family files. But what went wrong for the happy couple? Did he drive her up the wall moping about Rose like he did to Martha?

QUEEN: Mary I, “The Marian Conspiracy” (Big Finish 2000)

OF: England too! Shortly before her sister Elizabeth, in the 16th century… though in this story her reign was a wee bit longer than intended.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “This country will be Catholic before my death Doctor and no man will stand in my way. I will wipe the Protestant scourge from every corner of England!”

One of the earliest of the Big Finish plays and still an absolute classic, the Sixth Doctor picks up elderly academic Evelyn Smythe while investigating a time nexus point… and when she learns his next stop is Elizabethan England, her pet subject, she insists on getting to come along. Only, as she realises as she toasts Good Queen Bess in a tavern and it all goes deathly quiet, maybe she doesn’t know as much about this era as she thinks…

Good Queen Mary is on the throne, still, and pregnant. Something is wrong with time. And more to the point, a historical figure who has been vilified in English history and pop culture pretty much since the moment she died, is going to be given a chance to state her case. The Queen Mary of this play is deeply sympathetic and convincing, despite the biases of both the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn, based on what they think they know of her. It’s a lovely example of how history can be twisted in your head simply because you LIKE someone. Also the play is a marvellous introduction to a really good and thoroughly original Doctor Who companion, Evelyn herself.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Boudica, Queen of the Britons in Big Finish play “The Wrath of the Iceni” (2012) who proved herself a worthy hero in Leela’s eyes, but that doesn’t mean that the warrior queen and the savage of the Sevateem would agree on everything…

Galleia, Queen of Atlantis in “The Time Monster” (1972) played by the legendary Ingrid Pitt – Galleia got smoochy with Roger Delgado’s Master in 1500 BCE, and presided over one of the three different depictions of the destruction of Atlantis in Doctor Who.

Erimem (Erimemushinteperem), circa 1400 BCE. When the Fifth Doctor and Peri met her in Big Finish Play “The Eye of the Scorpion,” (2001) Erimem was the not-quite-crowned Pharoah of Egypt, and the Doctor was troubled that he had never heard of her – which rather suggested her life expectancy was slim to none. He found a way around the problem by giving her a lift in the TARDIS. She and Peri had great fun adventuring together, doing each other’s hair, and learning from each other’s very different perspectives on life. Sometimes they let the Doctor even get a word in edgewise. And once she was done with exploring the universe, Erimem found another Queen-related job going begging… on PELADON! I haven’t listened to that one yet, but she’d have to be a better bet than Queen Thalira.

No ‘nothing only about being a girl’ speech needed for our Pharoah, thank you very much!

PS: I thought Nefertiti was awesomesauce too.

Friday Links are Destroying the Joint

If like me you wondered for quite a while what the “destroying the joint” meme was all about online, surprise! It’s about sexist asshattery. Rebecca Fitzgibbon sums up some of the recent appalling public statements made about women lately, and celebrates some women who have destroyed the joint over the course of human history through their general awesomeness.

Where were you when Ustream destroyed the Hugo Ceremony? I have it on good authority that the ceremony actually continued just fine, and it’s only those several hundred of us who were glued to our screens watching from distant climes who shook their fists at the technology we didn’t pay for and wailed at missing the second half of the Neil Gaiman speech.

I’m still cranky about it.

Sarah Rees Brennan makes a convincing argument that Veronica Mars is Smarter than Everyone.

Sara Eileen Hames makes an equally compelling case that Janeway Doesn’t Deserve This Shit.

Helen Razer brings her painful personal experience to her article about Charlotte Dawson, the model and TV presenter who started out trying to raise public awareness of the online abuse she was receiving, and ended up in hospital.

Hoyden About Town talks about the silencing and bullying tactics often used against women with any kind of following online. Which is why that whole ‘don’t feed the trolls’ thing isn’t always the most helpful or constructive advice!

In other horrible harassment news, UnWinona writes a compelling account of the kind of daily harassment she experiences for simply Commuting While Female, and describes a particularly bad incident. It’s the sort of post worth bookmarking and calling attention to later when someone (there’s always someone) starts talking about ‘harmless’ harassment or women need to do more to prevent their own harassment.

Justine Larbalestier has returned to blogging with a vengeance, and it’s great to have her back! She takes on the confronting but undeniable idea that most books are basically going to have some level of racism in them, even if you work really hard to not be racist, and that writing about race is bound to hurt someone, and writers shouldn’t act like they have been punched in the face just because this is pointed out to them. In a different post, she suggests that the best way to avoid being a creeper is to cheerfully Take No For An Answer. With bonus Austen references for illustration!

Sofia Samatar Romances the Chicon. This is my favourite of the many awesome Worldcon reports I have read this week.

Meanwhile, my good friend Marianne De Pierres was reporting from the red carpet at the film premiere of Kath and Kimderella. Did anyone else know this was a thing? I had never heard this movie existed.

Never mind all that, though, let’s talk about Doctor Who!

Via Sean the Blogonaut & Tehani: this article on the iView success of the screening of Asylum of the Daleks. Hooray for iView!

My favourite review so far of Asylum of the Daleks (because it’s largely positive, obviously! I’m not ready to drop that protective huggy bubble of joy yet) comes from Teresa Jusino at Tor.com who also this week added to her essay series on Moffat’s Women with Liz 10 from “The Beast Below.”

The Mary Sue have published a series of interviews with Karen Gillan, producer Caro Skinner, and Matt Smith. Of particular note is Smith’s enthusiasm for the idea of a female Doctor… though rather less enthusiasm about the concept of anyone else ever being the Doctor anytime soon.

Asylum of the Daleks: Spoilers in the Comments

No spoilers in the post because many Australians haven’t had a chance to see it yet (oh iView, I love you) but all spoilers are free to run wild in the comments, so don’t look that closely if you haven’t seen it yet!

I adored this episode and am now in my happy bubble of Doctor Who love, bouncing at the cleverness not only of the script but of the behind the scenes shenanigans it must have taken to make this episode happen. So clever… and so many questions!

If anyone wants to join me bouncing up and down in the bubble, come chat in the comments! What made you squeeful about the new Doctor Who? What made your bottom lip wobble? What are you most excited about now?

Where the Wonder Women Are: #19 Lady Sif

My favourite thing about the Thor movie was the little gang of Asgard pals who wandered around the movie, being loyal to Thor and having his back. And my favourite thing about *them* was Sif, the glamorous goddess of war (Jaimie Alexander) who didn’t get nearly enough screen time. I would have been a lot happier if she had got to be one of Thor’s platonic mates without having a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it acknowledgement of her squishy feelings for him, but now that I come to look at her history in the comics, I recognise that we got off pretty lightly.

My first introduction to actual Thor comics after seeing the movie was the short ‘Thor the Mighty Avenger’ run by Roger Langridge which managed to take many of the narrative elements of the movie and make them work so much better. Jane Foster was the head of the department of Nordic Antiquities at the Bergen War Memorial Museum in Bergen, Oklahoma (hence the connection to Thor and his hammer) and ends up rescuing a recently-banished Thor and taking him in as her smoochytimes houseguest. As with the movie, the gang of bromantic mates from Asgard turns up to help Thor out, and I enjoyed the portrayal of Sif very much as one of the gang.

But who was she?

Like Thor and most of the regular characters in his book, Sif is based on a real Norse god, in this case the golden-haired wife of Thor. Scholars seems reasonably baffled as to what Sif’s main area of expertise was, suggesting fertility and the corn based almost entirely on the colour of her hair. The most common story told about her is the one where Loki sheared her hair off, and was forced to make amends.

In Marvel comics, Sif is quite firmly a goddess of war and a brunette, though they kept the story of Loki cutting her hair off and it growing back different to explain the latter. By all accounts, Sif’s early appearances in Thor comics were… well, a little one-dimensional. That is to say, her stories revolved almost entirely around her status as his former lover, usually with great emphasis on the fact that she is still hot for him and he (mostly) has moved on with other ladies. Though frankly if her mythological origin is as his wife, it’s hard to blame her for being cranky about him going on the pull.

On the other hand, the Thor-stalking is mitigated (slightly) by her awesomeness as a warrior, her loyalty as a subject and friend, and her general commitment to justice and fairness and all that sort of thing. For all she is often painted as ‘the other woman’ in the continuing love story between Thor and Jane Foster, Sif has been known to team up with Jane or help Thor rescue her, because that’s what you do when your mate is in love with someone else. Likewise, on at least one occasion, Jane has returned the favour…

Sif first lost Thor when he was banished to Earth by his father Odin in the 1960′s. She then had to cope not only with Thor playing superhero (and fake doctor, bizarredly) for years and forgetting all about her, but also with him later returning to Asgard with his new human honey Nurse Jane. But Jane’s brief immortality was retracted by Odin who then set Thor and Sif up on… well, not so much a blind date as a blind monster battle. They fell for each other all over again while killing monsters, and pretty much continued killing monsters together for most of their relationship. Hey, it’s romantic for THEM!

In the mid-70′s, though, Sif discovered that Thor still had his own warm squishy feelings for Jane Foster after the human nurse had been mortally injured, and Sif chose to save Jane by merging bodies with her. Her main motivation here was to figure out what exactly was so hot about mortal ladies who don’t even kill things for fun, but it was still a pretty cool thing for her to do.

In the 80′s… well, a lot of stuff went down, but the main plot points for Sif was that time Thor was enchanted into being a massive dick and hit her (she later forgave him because of the enchantment) and her ongoing flirtation/romance with Beta Ray Bill, a non-Norse-god who nevertheless was worthy of wielding Thor’s mighty hammer. In fact, Sif has a bit of a habit of falling for blokes who know how to handle the hammer, as she also later had a thing going on with Eric Masterson, the Substitute Thor in the early 90′s (what WAS it with the 90′s and replacing all the heroes with new fellers?).

Makes you wonder if it’s really Thor’s luscious locks she fancies at all, but the hammer. Maybe it’s time to let Sif wield Mjolnir, what do we think?

She’s died a couple of times but a) who hasn’t and b) it actually works a lot better in support of her character than when this is usually done to female characters in comics, because of the trend towards death and rebirth implicit in telling stories about gods.

In the mid 2000s, Loki brought about Ragnarok, and Sif lost first her arm and then her life in a mighty battle – after Brunhilde fell it was Sif who led the Valkyries into battle, and the whole of Asgard was destroyed shortly after her own death.

Once the dust had cleared, Thor restored the pantheon one by one, but could not find where Sif had been reborn, though through a whole bunch of wishful thinking he did think for a while that she was in the body of Jane Foster. In fact, she was trapped in the body of an elderly terminal cancer patient, and concealed thanks to the machinations of Loki. It was Jane who finally found Sif, enabling Thor to free her and restore her to her true godly self.

But let’s look to the future. The Marvel Now non-reboot is on the horizon, and one of the upcoming titles due for a shakeup is Journey Into Mystery, which has until recently been a title revolving around the character of Loki (also made supremely popular via the art of Marvel Movies). From Issue #646 onwards, the title will revolve around the adventures of Sif, written by Kathryn Immonen and drawn by Valerio Schiti. (Ooh, does that make it THREE female led comics? And that doesn’t count the upcoming FF team comic with 3/4 women. Getting better, Marvel!)

Editor Lauren Sankovich said of this comic: “We talked at length about what this story could be and what her story could be, and it all came down to…one single question: what does she want? I think Sif, above all, wants to be a better warrior.”

I’ll be reading THAT!

Where the Wonder Women Are:

0: Introduction

1: Black Canary

2: Rogue

3: Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman

4: Black Widow

5: Wonder Girl

6: Captain Marvel

7: Vixen

8: Abigail Brand.

9. Jubilee

10. Batwoman

11. Catwoman

12. Huntress

13. Robin

14. Batgirl

15. Jean Grey

16. Ice

17. Emma Frost

18. Fire

WSFA Small Press Award Shortlist!

This was a lovely surprise today!

The WSFA Small Press Award Committee Announces Finalists for 2012 Award for stories published in 2011.

Finalists for the 2012 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction:

“A Militant Peace” by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell, published in Clarkesworld Magazine, edited by Neil Clarke, November 2011.

“Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden” by Joanne Anderton in Hope, edited by Sasha Beattie, published by Kayelle Press, October 2011.

“Lessons from a Clockwork Queen” by Megan Arkenberg, published in Fantasy Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams, September 2011.

“Sauerkraut Station” by Ferrett Steinmetz, published in GigaNotoSaurus, edited by Ann Leckie, November 2011.

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by Lily Yu, published in Clarkesworld Magazine, edited by Neil Clarke, April 2011.

“The Patrician” by Tansy Rayner Roberts in Love and Romanpunk, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, published by Twelfth Planet Press, May 2011.

“What Ho, Automaton!” by Chris Dolley, in Shadow Conspiracy, Volume II., edited by Phyllis Irene Radford and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, published by Book View Cafe, February 2011.

“Yesterday’s Taste” by Lawrence M. Schoen in Transtories, edited by Colin Harvey and published by Aeon Press, October 2011.

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2011). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October

12-14th in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Friday Links is a Bit Proud

Proud of my state and my premier this week, for creating legislation that brings gay marriage a little closer to Australia. Same sex marriage laws have passed the Tasmanian Lower House as of yesterday and now have to face the legislative council. It will be a hard road ahead but it’s about time someone in power took a stand. Check out Lara Giddings’ speech, which goes a long way to addressing so many of the issues concerned with allowing this important civil right to same sex couples.

Also on a smaller but still awesome scale, I am so proud of Galactic Suburbia and of Alisa, Alex, Finchy & myself getting our very first Hugo nominations in the brand new Fancast category. It finally feels real – and Julia Rios emailed us today to let us know she HAS OUR HUGO PINS which made my head explode a little bit. A Hugo pin. Every time I start feeling sorry for myself about maybe not achieving as much as I wanted to this year, I need to stop and kick myself in the ankle and remember that a Hugo nomination is one hell of a step up the career ladder.

I’m especially proud of Alisa this week who got over her stress and anxiety about public speaking to make a speech at the National Council of Jewish Women Australia WA evening for Women’s Achievers, and they gave her an award! Considering how rarely she stops to consider everything she’s achieved over the last few years, I’m always glad when other people point it out to her. Some excerpts of her speech here.

Short and sweet: Elizabeth Bear addresses those fantasy writers who think keeping women socially constrained and away from any of the adventure is historically accurate and therefore justified. Yep, it means you don’t know as much about history as you think you do.

A review of the New 52 Catwoman from someone who likes the comic still can’t avoid those niggling gender/sexism questions. Isn’t it nice when comics don’t do that to you?

Jeff VanderMeer interviews Brit Mandelo about Beyond Binary and also publishes some extra material from the interview. Cheryl Morgan reviews the book as well! It’s so exciting to be part of a book that is capturing so much attention internationally. Next goal will be to do this with a new story…

Sarah Rees Brennan’s Gothic novel parodies are always good value, but this one is especially interesting because it’s a book where the main plot is the way that even the most successful women’s books can be lost to history because of the way critics treat them. Yes, that is the plot of the novel. A BOOK is the Damsel in Distress. I really want to read this one for real now… but in the mean time, this is a fabulous and inspiring post which manages to prove all kinds of Joanna Russ points.

If I Reach Out With My Fingertips, I Can Touch the Holidays.

I can tell it’s nearly the end of Term 2 because we’ve been hit by illness after illness, mostly surrounding the kids, though of course the parents tend to get smacked with versions of the same illnesses, usually just as they are most exhausted from running around after cranky/vomity/coughing children.

For example, I didn’t get the high temperature spikes or achiness of Raeli’s flu, but I did manage to get an inner ear infection that defied antibiotics and happily snapped, crackle and popped in accompaniment to my daily life for more than a month.

It’s the end of the school soccer season too, and much though I like to see my sporty daughter learning teamwork and running around enjoying herself, I have NOTICED how often a snow-chilled wind is laid on especially for the after school practice, and as for getting up for 9am muddy games every Saturday morning… well. I’m glad she enjoys it. I am. But I am ready for it to be done.

Also, school. School holidays have been a source of stress for me in the past – stress and unwork – but in my current lifestyle, with a bouncy three-year-old at home to entertain, having the cheerful and responsible seven-year-old join us for two weeks sounds like bliss. BLISS.

I forgot to mention that I made a guest appearance on Panel2Panel last week, one of my favourite podcasts. It’s like if I was able to spend a whole Galactic Suburbia episode talking about feminist issues and comics without having to worry that Alisa might over-roll her eyes, leading to a knitting injury. Grant sadly could not make it, but Kitty and I talked happily about all kinds of comics issues for more than an hour, including her review of Power Girl and mine of the new Wolverine & the X-Men. We’ve both come so far since the Swancon panel we shared a year and a half ago!

Our special subject was the narrative fallout that came from youthificating (it’s a word!) superheroes, and how the trend of taking experience, powers and years away from comic characters tended to be more marked (and dramatic) when applied to women. Yes, it’s the rant I’ve been building up to since they de-aged and demoted Wonder Woman in the mid-80′s. DC just keep giving me more material. And while we’re at it, where are Sue Storm’s grey temples?

Also this week, Flipside Publishing released the speculative fiction collection How to Traverse Terra Incognita by Filipino author Dean Francis Alfar. I was honoured at being asked to read the booka and provide a blurb for it, and as you can see, I’m in some pretty fine company.

My big experiment this week is signing up to subscribe to BBC iPlayer through the iPad. It’s less than ten dollars a month, but I had been hesitating over whether I wanted to do it. Our recent acquisition of Apple TV (allowing us to play anything on a screen in the house on the TV) made that decision easier, so we’re trying it out.

So far it comes with many region-related disappointments, notably the lack of recent sports coverage (Arrrrsenal…), the lack of EastEnders (OK that one was probably for the best), and biggest of all, the lack of upcoming Doctor Who episodes. In Australia at least, the iPlayer does not give us instant access to current programmes in the way that it does for its British citizens. Which is, while understandable from a rights-sold point of view, a bit pants.

I would have happily paid more for an opportunity to view the new Doctor Who legally as soon as it’s released in the UK, rather than having to wait six days for a Saturday TV release here on the ABC. (Are you listening, Auntie? I’d have paid YOU if you could supply this, too) Apart from anything else, as parents we do rather like to watch the show ahead of our daughters to check whether it’s likely to give them nightmares, and thus to have a large pillowcase available to chuck over their heads at the relevant moment.

[EDIT: the ABC are awesomecakes! Apparently they are doing exactly this, making new Doctor Who available on iView within hours of the UK broadcast. NATIONAL BROADCASTER I LOVE YOU! We've come such a long way since the Christmas specials airing in April...]

On the other hand, iPlayer does give me access to a pretty massive archive of material, for the price of 2 DVD rentals, and I don’t see myself giving up the subscription until I’ve combed the period drama section backwards and forwards, rewatched every episode of This Life, and introduced Raeli to a bunch of old British comedy that I was never going to get around to buying on DVD.

Also if Jem discovers the existence of the entire season of Charlie and Lolas that she’s never seen, I may never be allowed to quit.

Where the Wonder Women Are: #18 Fire

Like Emma Frost, Beatriz DaCosta (AKA Green Fury AKA Green Flame AKA Fire) and her journey as a superhero can be charted largely through her clothing.

Bea’s costumes have often been an openly discussed aspect of her narrative. It probably didn’t hurt in this regard that her most active characterisation was settled in Justice League International, a comic which allowed for humorous poking fun and analysis of all that superhero meta.

The thing about Fire, though is… for once, the costumes are (almost all) justified. Because they don’t break her character – far from it. The costumes express her character beautifully.

I’ve already discussed Green Flame’s origins as the Global Guardian Green Fury, and how she and her best friend Ice Maiden crashed the Justice League International party after the Global Guardians fell apart. Bea, the fast-talking one of the comic BFF duo, was determined to talk financial backer Maxwell Lord into letting them on the super team, largely because it was that or modelling. They needed an income!

Luckily, several Justice League members had just quit, including the ‘only girl,’ Black Canary, and they were allowed in on probation, quickly becoming essential members of the team.

Fire and Ice are very much characters built on opposites – while Tora is kind, subtle, intelligent and restrained, Beatriz is bold, brash, flirtatious and often thoughtless. While she plays up her sexiness, shallowness and confidence, underneath it she does have hidden depths which she only reveals to those she trusts most. She reads Gabriel Garcia Marquez, after all in her native Spanish, and has been known to demonstrate sharp business skills in between being a zany diva and slapstick con artist.

In JLI, little attention was given to Bea’s background apart from the fact that she was Brazilian – even when the rest of the Global Guardians started turning into super villains, only occasional reference was given to Bea and Tora’s connction to them. But back in the old Super Friends cartoon where her character was first launched, Bea actually had a lot more story time than Ice Maiden. In particular, the original Green Fury’s powers (to fly and spit green flame, to project hallucinations and change her clothes at will) came from Brazilian mysticism, and in her daytime job Beatriz DaCosta was the president of the Brazilian branch of Wayne enterprises. In her Secret Origin title (I really feel that I have missed out on not having read these back in the day!) it was revealed that in the post-Crisis reality Beatriz Bonilla da Costa was a model and stage performer who had been recruited by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, and later received her powers through a “protoplasmic explosion,” swapping mysticism for technobabble.

Despite the Wayne connection never being referenced in this new continuity, the business brain of Beatriz DaCosta was often bubbling below the surface, and in the Armageddon storyline that revealed alternate futures of our heroes, she was shown to be a ruthless and successful corporate executive.

Early in the JLI run, Fire was caught in a “gene-bomb” explosion during the Invasion crossover storyline, and was rendered temporarily comatose. As she recovered, her powers went haywire and massively increased. The same gene-bomb was responsible for the changing and creation of other superpowers at the time, notably the mild telepathic mind-control ability acquired by Maxwell Lord, which caused him a whole bunch of nosebleeds.

Fire trained with legendary Apokolips warrior Big Barda to learn control, and took great pleasure in her massively expanded powers which transformed her into a being of pure flame.

She also pursued a flirtation/romance with Oberon, the dwarf manager of Mister Miracle, Barda’s husband, who ended up serving as a Justice League administrative assistant even after his charges had left. It was hard to tell if it was a sincere romance on Bea’s side as she did tend to mostly flirt with Oberon in order to unsettle him and then skip off to her next adventure, but at least one vision of the future showed them engaged to be married.

The most important person in Bea’s life, however, was Tora Olafsdotter (Ice). She was greatly protective and defensive of Tora, whether in battle situations or romance.

Other important friendships in the League included Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, and while Bea occasionally flirted with them both, there were no particular romantic ties between them – though the Armageddon future shows her in her new corporate life betraying Beetle so badly that he tries to kill her. For the most part, she is shown in reality to be a deeply loyal friend and comrade, and Booster’s own “betrayal” of the league by moving to another, better-paying super team made Fire angry on behalf of them all. You don’t want to mess with Bea’s friends, or you’re going to end up burned.

The big post-Breakdowns reshuffle brought Superman’s Dan Jurgens into the team, and Bea’s flirtatious personality was taken a few steps further than ever before. In particular, her new superhero outfit of this era starts out as a jumpsuit with flames down the legs and changes swiftly to a loosely-tied swimsuit with nearly everything showing – given that she appears to be a naked green flame while actually fighting crime, I don’t know that this is especially out of character, but it did annoy me that she was also shown wearing no pants in casual situations, when out of “uniform”. Funnily enough, the skimpier her outfit got, the dumber she was written…

Then Doomsday struck. In the violent battle with the monster that eventually killed Superman, Fire gave up all her juice, falling into a stupor once the last of her power had been exercised. Later when they were picking up the pieces of the League, she discovered that she was not recharging, and might in fact be powerless forever. This was one of the most interesting periods of self discovery for Beatriz, despite her lack of pants. With Blue Beetle in a coma, she and Booster (whose super powered costume had also been destroyed) found themselves at a loose end in the Justice League Embassy, wandering around like ghosts while the rest of the team went off fighting monsters with their new recruits. The lack of Ice, who had left the team while grieving the death of Superman, allowed Bea to be explored as a character in her own right, rather than the pushy half of a double act.

Even after Blue Beetle returned from his coma, and started rebuilding a series of flawed-but-potentially-good armour systems for Booster, the best he could do for Fire was to arm her with blasters. One of the more interesting scenes of this era concerned two alien teen criminals on the run, to whom Wonder Woman (currently the leader of the league) was giving refuge.

One of them cornered Bea in a room, trying to chat her up and when she dismissed him with her lack of interest, made a more forceful mood that was obviously intended to lead to rape. She not only fought him off, she smacked him down with a series of tight, practiced moves, while lecturing him about her time in the Brazilian Intelligence Service, and the kind of bare-handed combat she was experience in. This was a revelation to me at the time, as I knew nothing about the pre-Justice League history of the character, and I think it was an important turning point because after this, you didn’t see Bea complaining about her loss of superpower any more.

When Ice called for help, Bea and the others ran to her rescue, regardless of their powers. Which was fine, really, because Tora’s new powers were enough to protect all of them put together. Oh and this marks the point that Bea starts wearing pants into combat too, though the various artists who drew her from now until the end of the series were apparently in a competition as to how skin-tight they could make said pants, and how low they could cut her top. By the end she was basically wearing green paint with a zipper and was not being overly generous with the paint…

Back at the Justice League Embassy, Bea struggled with this new Tora, who seemed so different to the shy friend she was used to protecting. Even the fact that Ice could now fly, while Fire could not, was a reversal of their past friendship. It shook Bea’s sense of identity quite badly, even more so when her worry that there was something terribly wrong with Tora was proved right, and her friend became a villainous minion to the Overmaster.

Ice turned back to her good self, and was promptly killed. Her death had a profound effect on Fire. Her powers came back in one furious burst, allowing her to survive the battle and return to her life as a superhero. The emotional effect of losing Tora, however, was to take far longer to recover from.

The death of Tora Olafsdotter, and the way her friends dealt with it, led to some of the most emotionally honest and raw scenes I have ever seen in comics. And maybe it was partly because I was so invested in these characters after so many years, but it broke my sixteen-year-old heart. In particular, I was devastated at the storyline that broke Bea’s friendship with Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) when he went against their agreed policy about discussing Tora’s death with the news media. While he felt he was doing the right thing, to set the record straight with all the stories flying around about whether she had died a hero or a villain, Bea flew into a rage that later turned cold-blooded, and simply could not forgive him.

When the Justice League teams reformed again, Booster and Beetle went to one team while Fire went to another, and from that point until the final reboot that sent them all into comic character oblivion for many years, there was no reconciliation.

Possibly this is the reason I hold such a grudge against the Grant Morrison JLA.

The final run of Justice League America, which showed the new team including Fire taking over the mysteriously squishy and a bit suspicious former spaceship of the Overmaster as their headquarters, continued to deal with the loss of Ice through Fire’s character. In particular, the introduction of the “original” Ice Maiden, Sigrid Nansen, showed how badly Fire was still hurting from her friend’s loss.

Despite the wishes of others, especially Guy Gardner, Fire became quite obsessed with training with Sigrid as her new partner, and it was very clear that she was trying to replace her friend, so as to damp down her grief. But Sigrid was not Tora, as became very clear when she revealed to Beatriz that a) she was deliberately emulating Tora to get closer to Bea, b) she was bisexual and c) she was in love with her. It was also noted that Bea’s controlling and jealous behaviour around Sigrid was far less appropriate with a new friend than it had been with Tora, who had been an equal in their friendship. (Though frankly it wasn’t ALWAYS that appropriate with Tora)

Not one of DC’s greatest moments in the portrayal of alternative sexualities, considering the creepiness of this plot line, and the added fact that Sigrid was constantly portrayed in sexually revealing and degrading poses. But at least it shocked Bea into realising that her friend was gone, and that she was at least partly complicit in the unhealthy friendship she had formed with Sigrid.

Seriously, for a fun, character-rich comic, the JL-JLI-JLA comic run of 1987-1996 ended on such a depressing note.

Fire wasn’t forgotten, and neither was her grief about Ice. She turned up from time to time in Guy Gardner’s Warrior title, with both of them trying to work through their loss, which led to a smidgen of comfort sex and potential romance.

The character herself returned to her roots in Brazil, in between comics, and later surfaced as an (appropriately dressed!) operative in Checkmate, a military government kick-arse team, in which her old secret agent skills, and the darker side of that life, were strongly emphasised. Beatriz spent several years being manipulated, blackmailed and generally screwed up by the ruthless Amanda Waller, which allowed for a whole lot of backstory and angry-angst plots about her father and her history as an assassin to come out.

When Formerly Known as the Justice League and its sequel appeared, restoring some of the comic joys of the early JLI, Fire was shown as being her old self if a little older and wiser – and her “big sister” friendship with the adorably innocent Mary Marvel was a whole lot less creepy and overbearing than it had been with Sigrid Nansen. Guy and Bea’s equal love for Tora was also expressed quite seriously in the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Justice League story where she was set up as Eurydice to their Orpheus – and it was Bea who cracked, sending Tora (if it really was her) back to the underworld.

When Tora really did return from the dead, her friendship with Bea proved to be far more resilient than her romance with Guy, and it was mostly Bea she went to for home and protection. In the Generation Lost storyline, the new tough and ruthless Checkmate Bea still worked well in contrast to Tora’s new vulnerability, though once again the tables were turned when Tora’s ice turned her into a beserker-style warrior. I like very much that Bea’s storyline in this series played up her loyalties to the old JLI vs. the current Checkmate team and that her reputation as a Checkmate operative was completely trashed to the point of them believing her to be mentally unstable. But her friends stuck with her, and she stuck with them, and oh boy did they all save the day from weirdly evil Max Lord (I can’t get used to that part).

Generation Lost also provided Bea with a new clueless boy (her favourite kind) to play with: Gavril the new Rocket Red, who seemed very much to enjoy playing straight man to her comic vixen routine.

Though I do have to address the scenes in which the new Justice League International team disguise themselves in Rocket Red armour to break into a Checkmate base. It is established that Rocket Reds are all male. It is established that Bea and Tora are the first women to wear Rocket Red suits AND YET the artists thought it appropriate to draw them wildly different shaped sexy female Rocket Red armour, with waists and boobs, instead of just having them running around in the pre-existing masculine suits.

You realise what this means, inside character. That means that instead of borrowing a bunch of suits, they DELIBERATELY took time out of their seriously dangerous pursuit of a maniacal all-powerful megalomaniac to forge new sexualised feminine robot suits for the female members of the team, despite the fact that this would be instantly suspicious to anyone who knows anything about Rocket Reds. Because God Forbid that the women on the team be seen as less than sexy on every single panel.

I really needed to get that complaint off my chest.

While I’m complaining, HELLO THERE NEW 52 JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL. Dan Jurgens, who previously produced some really intriguing material for Fire to work with (though when I look back, he also made her sound like, like a California girl the second she, like, put that stringed swimsuit on) managed to write a comic super team with four women on it, that only provides actual story material and regular dialogue to one of them: Fire’s former Global Guardian’s colleague Godiva.

It’s obvious why he should do so. Godiva was the closest Jurgens had to a blank slate and so he went to town on developing her character, while ignoring the women with pre-existing personalities. The personality he chose to develop for Godiva was that of a brassy, sassy flirtatious vamp.

DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?

Oh, yes. He gave her Fire’s personality, while failing to capture anything like authentic voices for the (sparse) dialogue he allowed to Fire, Ice and Vixen. He later blew up a building in which only Godiva, the magic hair lady, survived unscathed, while the superhero WHO CAN TURN INTO A LIVING FLAME was left in a coma along with her friends.

Jurgens didn’t like Gavril either, killing him off in the same assault.

The only good news in all this was, frankly, the cancellation of JLI, and I never thought that I would say that because it was the comic I was most excited about them bringing back in the New 52. All the lovely Fire-Ice-Guy-Booster-Rocket Red emotional and plot baggage, lost. Ignored. Dumped. So that Booster Gold would have someone cute and new to flirt at him.

Dan Jurgens, you make me sad.

This is the final New 52 Justice League International rant on behalf of Where the Wonder Women Are. In case you were wondering.

But there is a tiny spark of delight and hope. Because Fire and Ice (who only appeared briefly in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon) have both become semi-regular characters in later seasons of Batman: the Brave and the Bold. I have those episodes to look forward to.

Until someone respectful takes up my favourites in a new title, it will have to do.

Where the Wonder Women Are:

0: Introduction

1: Black Canary

2: Rogue

3: Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman

4: Black Widow

5: Wonder Girl

6: Captain Marvel

7: Vixen

8: Abigail Brand.

9. Jubilee

10. Batwoman

11. Catwoman

12. Huntress

13. Robin

14. Batgirl

15. Jean Grey

16. Ice

17. Emma Frost

Friday Links Is A Prestige-Free Zone

At Salon-com, Laura Miller takes on the question of why young adult literature is “dominated” by women and particularly examines the issue of how commerciality (or perceived commerciality) affects the prestige of women writers differently to men.

Tor.com looks at some of the ramifications of Wonder Woman and Superman hooking up. I’m sorry, I know there are many people particularly WW and Lois fans who are outraged but this, but I fail to find it anything but hilarious. It feels like that Brady Bunch movie where Greg and Marcia started getting romantic.

Also, why is no one getting upset that Clark broke the sacred rule of dibs? Green Lantern called DIBS, Clark!

i09 have published a list of the 25 must-reads of the season – autumn for them, spring for us. Frankly the idea of there being 25 “must-read” books is pretty horrifying, but of course you’re more likely to get diversity with a big list. And indeed there were about five on there I found exciting personally and am likely to read. The two I put on my wishlist straight away were The Diviners by Libba Bray, her paranormal 1920′s series that I have been looking forward to since I first heard about it, and Jacqueline Carey’s new book Dark Currents. I wasn’t hugely excited by the idea of a new Carey series as the last one she did was Vikingish and didn’t appeal but all I had to hear was “enforcer for the Norse goddess Hel” and I was SO THERE.

Lovely to see Australians Margo Lanagan and Karen Miller make the list, too!

Speaking of Australian fantasy authors, Sean the Blogonaut reviews Rowena Cory Daniells’s Besieged, her new dark fantasy with plenty of genderqueer themes in amongst the politics, magic and backstabbing. Never mind George RR Martin, read Daniells!

Cough, and to be momentarily self-indulgent (hang on, it’s my blog, aren’t I always self-indulgent?) check out this great review of Love and Romanpunk over at SF Signal.

i09 talks about why it’s ridiculous to think that women don’t love superheroes (damn straight).

The Mary Sue shows some brilliant pictures of sisters recreating their childhood photos – touching and adorable. I love these! I will totally try to get Raeli & Jem to do it when they’re older.

Speaking of touching and adorable, Ellen Kushner talks about marrying Delia Sherman, what legal marriage means to them as a same sex couple, and how their marriage has a different status in different parts of America (but more and more all the time!)

Book Week: Tuppeny, Feefo and The Blue Umbrella

What kind of childhood half-remembered book is it all but impossible to recapture despite the wide and marvellous tool that is Google?

a) the one with the name you are remembering incorrectly

b) the one with the name so common that it appears on many, many different book listings

One of the first things I tried to use the internet to help me reclaim was a beloved Enid Blyton book about three goblins who basically came up with the concept of The Goodies 20 years earlier – any job, anywhere, anytime. Of course they get into dreadful trouble, but all is well at the end.

I craved this book, and searched and searched for it, but this was before Google came along (I know, right? Dark days of the internet) and the fact that I had misremembered the order of the goblins names, and thus was searching for Feefo, Tuppeny and Jinks (which I maintain is the better title).

Then the book fell into my lap one day, courtesy of a second hand bookshop (ohh, second hand bookshops, remember them?) and I realised to my horror and surprise that TUPPENY’s name went first.

[and the final shock revelation: while looking for pics to illustrate this post I found at least one cover design that did put Feefo's name first. VINDICATED!]

I still love this book. The descriptions of magic and how it goes horribly wrong are told cleverly here, and I enjoy the fact that the characters are not actually children, so there’s less of a moralistic tone than many of the Blyton books, in retrospect, turn out to have.

Another favourite Blyton book I sold when I was ten and recovered as an adult thanks to second hand shops and not the internet was The House on the Corner, which I remembered fondly because of the character Elizabeth, a teenage girl who sells fiction to newspapers and earns Real Money, thus becoming a Professional Writer (wonder why that concept was so appealing) but on rereading it I discovered it was actually a wretched morality tale about thoughtless children who have to step up when their father becomes ill – in particular Pam, the pretty popular girl, who has to give up the idea of a career in order to become an angel of the house, and to be grateful about what she’s got.

Bleh. Cheers for that, suck fairy.

Then there’s the one that got away. Even Google hasn’t been able to help me find my “The Blue Umbrella” book that I read and loved as a child. There are as it turns out, many novels out there with that title, including quite famous and beloved ones, and none of them are mine.

The Blue Umbrella that I remember was a book about a girl who was trying to raise money to buy herself a beautiful blue umbrella, and does so by various ingenious methods, particularly running her own shops and small businesses out of the home. I recall being fascinated by this, and particularly by the process of pricing and selling items.

In retrospect I wonder if this was responsible for my manic delight at the garage sale season that my mother and I went through before leaving the country… which meant of course that I got rid of so many childhood books that I later regretted not keeping.

Ahh, price tags. You are addictive.

I don’t know when The Blue Umbrella was published, or the author name. I’m pretty sure it’s a US book because I think it’s also the one that introduced me to the concept of a pretzel as something larger than a fifty cent coin, which took a long time for me to wrap my head around. I’d love to read it again, but sadly I have so much less to go on than I did with Tuppeny, Feefo and Jinks.

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This is my last Book Week post, though I will collate all the links I received by the end of the weekend, so keep sending them to me! I’ve loved reading so many people talking about their childhood reading. We should do this again next year! So many books I meant to talk about, and didn’t…

Raeli’s Book Parade parade went very well, with her as the White Rabbit and her little sister Jem as Alice, though Alice got quite cranky and shy in the middle of the whole production, and thus I have a lot of pictures of her rubbing her face angrily and hiding from the camera. I love watching the kids costumes, and seeing how they change from year to year, with the older grades becoming progressively more emo and self-conscious (though the team of grade six Smurfs this year were greatly entertaining).

HOORAY FOR BOOK WEEK!

Ju shared her memories of The White Brumby by Elyne Mitchell.

Terri talked about the physicality of reading as a child, specifically reading under the covers. Get that kid a torch! (I used to lie near my open door to read by the hall light)

Random Alex wrote about her introduction to detective stories through the ever-awesome Trixie Belden (I had such a crush on Jim too!) and Alfred Hitchcock, upon whom neither of us had a crush. I hope… Alex also writes about reading Ruth Park’s My Sister Sif – this is the second time I’ve heard this book mentioned during Book Week, though I had never heard of it before!

Storyspinner Liz writes about the migrant experience of discovering Australian kids books through her son’s childhood, and combining these new favourites with sharing her own childhood favourites with him.