The Ghostbusters are Women Now.

If you really don't think these four actors are funny, then
you and I will never see eye to eye on anything, ever.
And I'll always hold this against you. 

In honor of National Woman's Day, I'm going to come right out and say I have no problems whatsoever with four women in the beige jumpsuits. None whatsoever. And if you do, well, I can't speak for you and won't try.

But I will offer this up in reply to your, um, stance: If you say, out loud or in print, that this movie (or any other thing you seem to disagree with) has "ruined your childhood," I'm going to invent white dwarf matter, create a shrinking device, shrink down to the size of an electron, travel through the fiber optic network and pop out of your computer and chop you in the throat. I'm totally not kidding.

Your childhood has been ruined? What kind of idiot are you?

Allow me to elaborate:

1. If the whole of your childhood hinges on whether or not a single movie gets remade or updated, then you are far more fragile than your profile picture would seem to indicate and you need to be in therapy.

Childhoods are ruined by learning there is no Santa Claus at the age of 6 when no presents arrive on Christmas Day because Daddy lost the money at the track. Random beatings. Social Services intervening. Nasty, contentious divorces. Creepy uncles. That stuff ruins childhoods. Movies don't ruin childhoods. And movies you watch as an adult certainly don't ruin personal childhoods, unless you're so developmentally stunted and emotionally retarded that you're still in your childhood at the age of 37.

2. No one has gone back in time and killed Ivan Reitman's parents so that he can never direct the first Ghostbusters movie and it never gets made. That didn't happen. The first Ghostbusters movie still exists out there for you to watch in an endless loop if you so desire. No one is stopping you. All of the venom and bile you keep vomiting up online about it could be better spent watching the first movie. Or, you know, the not-as-good second movie. Or the not-nearly-as-good cartoons. Or trawling ebay for the toys from the cartoon. Or getting out of your man-cave. All in all, 10,000 other things you could be doing instead of mewling to a bunch of strangers that you have no actual perspective by claiming some sort of Ret-Con childhood destruction because of a movie that you haven't even seen yet.

3. No one--and I mean, NO ONE--is making you see this movie. You don't gotta go. And let me tell you something, that alone will be your saving grace. If you're that upset by four funny women in a movie, you just don't have to expose yourself to that experience. Don't pay the ticket price. That'll teach 'em!

I have used this technique for years with great success. I still, to this day, have not seen Highlander 2. Or any of the other Highlander movies. You know why? There can only be one, that's why. And that one movie remains high on my list because I haven't surrounded it with all of the negative baggage of the other movies. It's not a 'franchise' to me; it's just one good movie. I wish I had done that with the first Ghostbusters, but I didn't, and now I have to square Mood Slime and Slimer driving a Midtown bus with the brilliance that was the first movie.

It helps if you stop thinking about this one good movie and
all of the crap that came after it as a "franchise." Also,
it helps to have actual perspective about pop culture. 

But I digress. We were talking about your hang-ups.

4. Was Ghostbusters 2 so good, so brilliant, so much better than the first movie that you want a third one with the same cast? Minus Harold Ramis, on top of everything else? Old, sad, and not as funny? Fat Dan Aykroyd? Come on. You're better than that. Well, you should be better than that.

5. If the movie comes out and it falls flat, let's look at it from that point of view. The script doesn't work? Fine. Ham-Fisted directing? Okay. Wooden acting? Fair point. But let me be very clear about this: if everyone but you likes it, then you're the asshole. Unless your standards for comedy are so Byzantine and esoteric that you don't like anything from any of the people in the movie, and can back that up with reasonable, if subjective, criteria, then saying "The four chicks in the movie ruined it" is not valid criticism and you henceforth suck.

Me, I'm willing to wait for the movie to come out before I throw it under the bus.

In conclusion: Grow up. Get a Life. And Shut Up Your Damn Head About the new movie. Participate, or walk away, but stop with the Nerd-Rage. We're all just sick of it.

Desperately Seeking Someone to Punch #YesAllWomen

I held off for a week from commenting on the Santa Barbara shooting, and with good reason: I was in no place to make any grand, sweeping pronouncements about anything. I’m glad I did, and I’m also humbled and angry, as a result.  It goes without saying that the shooting was senseless and horrific, and absolutely could have been averted, if not avoided. While I applaud that the response time for the ancillary concerned parties has advanced from “We had no idea he was capable of this” to “We knew he was troubled, but we never thought he was violent,” to finally “We were on our way over to stop him when this happened,” it’s still not much comfort. I think the Onion’s recent stance on the issue, while bitingly satiric, is still very relevant. I’ll just leave that right there and move on.

Instead, I want to talk about the fallout from the tragedy. The #YesAllWomen hashtag has been a kind of wake-up call for the rest of the Internet, and while it’s good to finally have a discussion about this, it’s been like bricks on my head for five days as I read about all of my friends who had these horrible experiences, and I never knew about it.

I haven’t seen hardly any of the detractor’s responses, other than noting from other people that there seems to be a line in the sand being drawn in the big Internet Sandbox, and again, I have to ask, who would even want to be on the other side of the line? Mostly, I’ve just been reading, trying to make some sense of it all. Here’s some of what I have been looking at, and I’ll tell you what conclusions I’ve come to afterward.

Chris Roberson’s confessional polemic, while not quite as broad shouldered as John Scalzi’s, was very refreshing to read for its honesty. I don’t disagree with either of these guys; on the contrary, I admit my culpability in the entrenched hegemony, as well. This is something I’ve been looking at for the past couple of years, ever since the controversy over Cosplay participants and “fake fans” reared its head in the Geek Nation. I’ve been very mindful of it and spoken out against “nerd-misogyny” before. But this was...too much.

One of the 1980's best worst people. Look at this guy. Now
go look at the shooter, with his smirking face and his
squinty eyes and his clothes and his hair and if you can't
see the resemblance, I'll be very surprised. Of course,
the shooter would probably admire this Douche-Nozzle
for the way he handles his girlfriend, but that's not the point.

I mean, there was something about this shooter, aside from his disturbing resemblance to Nick from the 1985 cult classic movie Tuff Turf (a character who was also a mentally unstable misogynist, by the way), that felt very “been there, done that,” and by that I mean, I don’t think there’s an eleven to thirteen year old male in America who hasn’t gone through a phase that looks something like, “One day, I’ll be rich/powerful/famous/a porn star/have super powers, and then they’ll all be sorry they laughed at me!” Depending on your peer group and how quickly you discovered Dungeons and Dragons and/or masturbation, this phase can last anywhere from ten minutes to six months. 

And then we grow out of it. Most of us, anyway.

Those few guys that don’t tend to skitter backwards into the darkness wearing their Members Only jackets and then we don’t see them too much after that. I’m not saying they aren’t there (obviously), but they become sort of "out of sight, out of mind" for the rest of us. I think it’s scary, and sad, for grown-up people to have those kinds of resentments and anger and rage. That is the extent of my sympathy with any man who feels mistreated at the hands of others. We all caught a snowball in the face. All of us. Deal with it and move on.

What’s even scarier and sadder to me is this idea of “a Pick-Up Artist” Community forum, wherein all of these guys who want to learn how to “get with” women go to lick their wounds and build themselves back up again, followed immediately by another Community Forum wherein the guys who tried this approach failed, and now they hate the Pick-Up Artists, too! Talk about victim-thinking... Amanda Hess wrote a sobering article about their response to the tragedy  and then she followed it up with why it’s so hard for men to see misogyny. Again, I have no argument for this. But as we all started to try and find a reason for how this became a sub-culture in modern America, there were a couple of false steps. A film critic went so far as to suggest that the comedies of Judd Apatow were to blame for the mass murder, prompting a rebuke from both Apatow and frequent collaborator Seth Rogan.

She’s wrong, of course, but I can see that she was picking at the edge of something. Then I read Your Princess is in Another Castle: Misogyny,Entitlement, and Nerds, by Arthur Chu and the light bulb went on. He’s dancing around the idea, as well, but he’s a lot closer to the hows and the whys.

Here’s what I think: There is a generation of people for whom it is difficult to discern reality from fantasy. I first noticed it years ago, in the mid-90s, when I was watching a show on Cartoon Network and a Barbie commercial came on that showed the doll water-skiing using the magic of Stop-motion animation (probably actually CGI, but let’s not quibble; you know what I mean). Flashed across the screen in the midst of this crass consumerism was the disclaimer, “DOLL DOES NOT ACTUALLY MOVE.” Wow. I thought we’d gone round the bend, but we were just getting started.

This? It was a Male Idyll. A fantasy.
A wishful indulgence. And it was
fake, and we all knew it. It was
never real, and it never will be.

We all grew up surrounded by stories. Myths. Legends. George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and said, “I cannot tell a lie.” Legend. Any American who works hard can pull themselves up by their boot straps and become millionaires. Myth. “They lived happily ever after.” Stories. We are inundated by fantasy at an early age, whether it’s that “all girls are princesses and deserve to marry a prince,” or “Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.” You get it as soon as they start reading stories to you. You get it as soon as they plop you down in front of the television. You get told things, over and over again, repeating endlessly over and over again. And it sticks, or at least, it stays until another story takes its place. And stories that get told over and over stop becoming stories and start to become beliefs. Truths. They become how you see the world, instead of a way to look at the world differently.  And that’s what I think is happening here.

Let’s take a benign example. We were all told that Santa Claus is real; we all got that story. And we believed it, earnestly, diligently, and without question, until we were, what? Six? Seven? Eight? Do you remember how you found out? For most of us, it was the other kids. There was always some kid who figured it out, or whose parents didn’t practice Christmas, and they spilled the beans about Santa. Despite your mother and father’s efforts, when you saw that enough people didn’t believe it, either, you had to come to the conclusion that yeah, Santa wasn’t real.

So, why is there a generation that seems to have trouble discerning fact from fantasy? How is it that there’s more people who believe in conspiracy theories than ever? How is it that even with hundreds of thousands of women sharing their stories, there’s people who fervently believe it’s some sort of “feminazi plot?”

I think we can lay the blame right at the Internet’s feet. See, when you were eight years old, your peers taught you that Santa wasn’t real. When you were a teenager, you learned from the people around you that life wasn’t fair, and that we all had the same kinds of problems (Okay, you might have learned that from The Breakfast Club, but still). We used to all watch the same news programs and have something to discuss around the water cooler the next day. Sixty Minutes used to be a going concern. So was 20/20.

We don’t have that, now. Now we have the Internet. And while it’s true that it brought people together and formed new friendships and relationships and has been a major impact on art, commerce, and society, it’s true that it also united every lone freakshow, socially retarded troglodyte, sociopathic misogynist, and backwards-thinking assbug in the country. See the above “Pick Up artist forums” for examples of this. Now, you’re not the only guy in high school with no sex life. You can get online and connect with every other trenchoated loaner in America, where the stories they tell themselves are very different from the stories in the real world. Or even, the real world itself.

Now, anyone with a grievance can simply unplug from society, the real world, and their personal environment and go into whatever nurturing cybercave they choose to visit, where everyone agrees with what they say, because they all think and feel the exact same way. The internet has become the mysterious cave in the story of our lives. Sometimes, there’s treasure, or magic, or knowledge in the cave. But most of the time, there’s also monsters in the cave.

I know a great many of you around my age and older had a childhood had an adolescence similar to mine. I was told that the music I listened to would turn me into a devil-worshipper. That the cartoons I watched would make me a sociopath. That the role-playing games I played would turn me into a paranoid schizophrenic. None of that actually happened. We all had parents who either grounded us in reality, or anchored us in place. We had peers with similar experiences. We were all still somewhat connected to one another, even if it was only through the umbilical cord of shared popular culture. After all, weren’t you a little leery of the kids who didn’t like Star Wars? I sure was.

All of that’s changed. I don’t want to whole-cloth write-off the Special Snowflakes of the world for their helicopter parents and their overly-developed sense of entitlement, but we’re not doing Generation Y any favors, not at all. The Santa Barbara Shooter felt he was owed beautiful women, that he was entitled to them. Says who? What on Earth gave him that idea? Well, a lot of things, apparently. Look, I think any crazy person can get a crazy idea from anyplace, and there’s no telling what they will latch onto—movies, video games, a Pick-Up Artist website’s bullshit, you name it—but I’m just wondering if that idea would have stuck in his head so firmly if there was a group of real people around this little monster who shouted him down every time he tried to bring up the “bitches be tripping” rhetoric? Or parents who took him aside and said, “Yeah, son, you’re being a douche right now.” Something, anything, other than The Internet.

Granted, it sounds like I’m picking on Generation Y, but to be sure, there are members of Generation X that have fallen into this pit trap, as well. Again, I don’t see them very often, because they aren’t engaging with regular people in the real world.  And that’s the problem, isn’t it?  I’ll wager there are very few of us who have studied the actual psychological effects of long-term online communication, and how it’s different from actual live person social interaction. I sure don’t know very much about it. I don’t know anything. But I do know this: talking to people online, even on FaceBook, is very different from talking to someone on the phone, or sitting across from me. Maybe, just maybe, when someone is a borderline narcissistic sociopath, or has tendencies along those kinds of lines where it seems easier to pick up a gun to solve your problems, maybe that person would get more positive results from talking to humans in the real world instead of “ImBobaFettBitches1974” on some message board that’s connected to the thing this person obsesses endlessly about.

I told you all of that, to tell you this: I want to start trying to do something about it. The sexism, I mean. The misogyny. I want to start making a change. I don’t want my friends to be scared anymore. I don’t want to hear about another woman’s stalking incident. Only, instead of going into my little cyber-cave, I want to stand out, in the middle of society, and say, “Okay, let’s do this! Who among you is a shithead? Come forth, and let me smack you!”

Yeah, that approach probably won’t work. I know that. Ever since the cosplay controversy, I’ve kept my eyes open at the various shows and conventions I attended. I paid more attention. I checked in with people more frequently. And you know what I discovered? Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss. Mind you, I was ready to step in, to intervene, to sweep the leg, even, if necessary. But I saw nothing, heard nothing, and experienced nothing that was actionable. I’m not saying nothing happened at all, but I am saying, I was looking for it, and personally saw nothing. Maybe if I had my telepathy helmet on, I could have scanned the whole convention and found the two or three skeeves and pointed an accusing finger at them and scared them off. But I have limits.

I’ll keep looking. And I’ll keep trying. But I want to know: how do we as men start to apply peer pressure to people who need it when they are keeping their mouth shut around us, hanging back, and in general slinking around because they know we’ll call them on it? And worse, how do you keep that lesson from transmogrifying into “the popular kids beat me up and stuffed me in a locker today because I tried to talk to one of their girlfriends” in their brain-damaged heads? Because at night, online, that’s exactly what it’ll turn into.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know where we start. I only have one idea to put forth. It’s probably not going to be well-liked, but that’s that, really. Maybe the Internet shouldn’t be wide open. Maybe anonymity online is a bad thing. Maybe if you want to comment on blogs, message boards, or send private messages, you have to provide your real information, instead of goofy screen names. Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way, and if so, please tell me. I’m willing to be educated.  I’m just thinking in terms of how to curb some of the bad behavior. Anonymity tends to bring out the worst of us, instead of the best of us. Now there's studies that show trolling online is psychologically in the same head space as Narcissistic tendencies and sociopathic behavior. And also, the people who troll more often than others are (surprise surprise) sociopaths. Why give them the platform to disrupt? 

I don’t think registering your real name, I.P. address, or other measures will change the minds of ingrained misogynists, but if more women feel comfortable taking to the Internet, and there’s a mechanic in place that allows anyone who gets threatening messages to shut the other person down with extreme prejudice (and maybe even fines or penalties), then more voices can be inclusively heard (and agreed with) and that is in and of itself a kind of peer pressure.

My stance hasn’t changed. If I see something happening, I’m going to butt in. If you come up to me at a show or anywhere else for that matter and tell me someone was being a creep, I will help you. But these whiny, abusive, self-absorbed creepshow guys are scattering like cockroaches when the kitchen light comes on, and until we can all be in the same room together, it will be difficult for the rest of us to police our own. I'm open to suggestions.

Roll to Hit: D&D turns Forty!

 Dungeons & Dragons is celebrating its 40^th year of existence. Wow.

To commemorate the occasion, I had hoped to do an influence chart similar to the one I created for Raidersof the Lost Ark, but there is no time. And besides, it’s less interesting than just posting the list from Appendix N in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Wait, let me back up.

Okay, we’ll start at the beginning.

My step-father introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons when I was eleven or twelve years old. It was this boxed game, containing two books—an all-in-one rulebook, and the adventure book—The Keep on the Borderlands. The box didn’t even come with dice. I had to make chits. It was pretty crazy.

The first D&D product I owned.

We tried to play it, but kept getting lost in the rules. Nonetheless, I was fascinated and I read the play example over and over again. There was something here—I was sure of it—but I couldn’t quite crack the code.

Then I found out my step-brother was playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons while away on Boy Scout trips. “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons? You mean, it’s more complicated than the single book I couldn’t quite wrap my head around?” And yet, peer pressure is a great motivator, and so, little by little, I started buying the now-legendary hardcover books. I started with the Player’s Handbook, and Joel helped me navigate rolling up a character. He ran me through my first game, and the light bulb went off, you could say.

While my step-brother branched out into the more esoteric books, like the Fiend Folio and the Dieties and Demigods Cyclopedia (and yes, he did get the first edition with the Cthulhu and Melnibone’ myths in it), I settled on the basics: the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the original Monster Manual. By this time, I knew I wanted to run the game, to be the Dungeon Master. I had dice, and a few modules, and I was all raring to go. Now, all I needed was some players...

Chalk it up to playing D&D in a small town. Joel and I knew everyone who played. It wasn’t a big pool to draw from. But that’s not the point. I found out a few things about myself: I was good at running a game; I had a knack for telling stories and making stuff up on the fly; and all of these seemingly useless talents were going to end up shaping my destiny.

I read, re-read, and basically committed to memory much of the original material in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. This included the now-legendary Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading.

Why “legendary?” Because that appendix was probably single-handedly responsible for the current crop of fantasy and sword and sorcery fans, ages 30-50. Think I’m exaggerating? Wait until you see the list. It’s been reprinted a lot, all over the Interwebs, but here’s the meat of the list for you to check out:

Anderson, Poul: THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN
 SWORD
Bellairs, John: THE FACE IN THE FROST
Brackett, Leigh
Brown, Frederic
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: "Pellucidar" series; Mars series; Venus series
Carter, Lin: "World's End" series
de Camp, L. Sprague: LEST DARKNESS FALL; THE FALLIBLE FIEND; et al
de Camp & Pratt: "Harold Shea" series; THE CARNELIAN CUBE
Derleth, August
Dunsany, Lord
Farmer, P. J.: "The World of the Tiers" series; et al
Fox, Gardner: "Kothar" series; "Kyrik" series; et al
Howard, R. E.: "Conan" series
Lanier, Sterling: HIERO'S JOURNEY
Leiber, Fritz: "Fafhrd & Gray Mouser" series; et al
Lovecraft, H. P.
Merritt, A.: CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al
Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; "Hawkmoon" series (esp. the
 first three books)
Norton, Andre
Offutt, Andrew J.: editor of SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III
Pratt, Fletcher: BLUE STAR; et al
Saberhagen, Fred: CHANGELING EARTH; et al
St. Clair, Margaret: THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS
Tolkien, J. R. R.: THE HOBBIT; "Ring trilogy"
Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al
Weinbaum, Stanley
Wellman, Manley Wade
Williamson, Jack
Zelazny, Roger: JACK OF SHADOWS; "Amber" series; et al

Basically, a Who’s Who in Classic Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery. Also sword and planet, horror, and science fiction, as well. Looking back over the list, this is ground zero for anyone wanting to get back to the roots—or check out where it all came from.

I know there’s some modern authors who love to say that they were not, in fact, influenced by these old, dead white guys (and sometimes women). They love to kick over the idols and be the punk rock rebels and say, “I never read any of that stuff, and so it didn’t factor into my work.”

Bullshit.

Dungeons and Dragons was a real game-changer, literally and figuratively. It gave the disenfranchised geeks of the world something to do, a reason to clump up on Friday nights, and yeah, it probably saved more than a few geeks, nerds and dweebs from social torture, loneliness, and much worse.  

When I moved from Abilene to Waco in the 8^th grade (is there anything worse?) I was able to make friends—one of my best friends, in fact—through Dungeons & Dragons. That gave me something to do, an audience to perform for, and a reason to be creative and social and not completely disappear up my own tortured asshole. But I digress.

Dungeons & Dragons spawned a cartoon series, toys, games, and nearly propped up every B.Dalton’s and Waldonbooks in every mall across the country with the amount of original (and somewhat less so) lines of fiction paperbacks, all based on the imaginary worlds that we were all tromping through every Friday and Saturday night. It was like belonging to much bigger, cooler club that was still kinda secret. I mean, the cool kids knew what D&D was—they just didn’t get it. Or didn’t want to get it. Either way, it was ours and we embraced it. And my generation grew up to be the creators and the tastemakers and the people who are now producing popular culture.

So, to the new elite hipsterati and your denial of the Canon—through the transitive property of pop culture influences, if you played Dungeons & Dragons and claim that you never read Jack Vance, well, guess what? Your fighter character did it for you. Or your rogue that scaled the ruined tower on the outskirts of the borderland. That stuff is ALL in Dungeons & Dragons and the fingerprints show up everywhere. If you watched any sword and sorcery movie from the 1980s, you have the Canon to thank for that—specifically, if not obliquely, Robert E. Howard. If you read any of the spin-off novels, or any of the fantasy series that blanketed those bookshelves, it’s all because of the canon. And it all fed back into Dungeons & Dragons like the mythical serpent eating its own tail.

Appendix N became a checklist for me, and I started reading and exploring as fast as my allowance could keep up. That appendix made it okay to branch out, and even though many of those books were on my family’s bookshelf, I didn’t get interested in reading them until Dungeons & Dragons said they were going to help me run a better campaign. Funny how that works, huh?  

That was how I interacted with my interests back in the days of Commodore 64. I read, and read voraciously. Dragon Magazine was my lifeline. We were all scrambling to find new things to work into our games. By now, it was just accepted that I was the dungeon master. I ran games, all the time. And by now, I was running more than just Dungeons an Dragons.

Call of Cthulhu, 3rd edition boxed set.
I miss when RPGs came in boxes.

When Joel started reading H.P. Lovecraft, I did too, in order to keep up. But that turned into me buying the Call of Cthulhu game, which is still a favorite to this very day. And when I noticed the ads for a super hero game in Dragon magazine called Villains and Vigilantes, I simply HAD to have that. Super hero role-playing? Forget about it. I was hooked. Other role-playing games followed. Some stuck, and some didn’t, but we always returned to the old reliable D&D. It was our Go-To for killing a boring afternoon.

You may infer, correctly, from the box art above that the earliest of Dungeons & Dragons artwork bears little resemblance to the amazing artwork they now routinely employ. In fact, some of that early artwork was amateur at best. But there were some diamonds in the rough over in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. One of the most recognizable early artists from the 1980s was a very young Bill Willingham. His stuff leapt off of the page—it didn’t look like the scritchy noodlings of some of the other artists. You could spot his work a mile away. It had a decided comic book feel to it. Yeah, I know, it’s funny NOW, but you see, I started following his career though Role-Playing Games. He was involved in Villains and Vigilantes, too, along with game designer and artist Jeff Dee (another guy whose D&D artwork just leapt off of the page). I was fans of these guys before they were Bill Willingham and Jeff Dee.  

When I realized that the Destroyers in the
Elementals comic were the same ones
from this V&V module, I felt like I'd
stumbled into a much bigger universe.

So, when Elementals first came out in the mid-80s as part of the Indie explosion in comics, I had the first issues—BECAUSE it was Bill’s comic, see? I won’t say this lead directly to our meeting, and subsequent friendship, now in its second decade, but I know this: I wouldn’t have first known about him had it not been for Dungeons & Dragons. I’m also not supposed to bring up Bill’s early artwork, as a friend, because he’s improved so very much over the years. While I agree with that, and try not to embarrass him about it, I find that his early game art has a lot of nostalgic charm, and I am not the only one who thinks so.

Now that you know—I have to tell you this very cool story. I was invited to playtest the re-vamp of Villains & Vigilantes some years ago back when Jeff and co-creator Jack Herman (another Very Fine Fellow) were working on it. Bill decided he would run the game. So I played V&V with the three game designers and writers who meant so very much to me at a teen-ager, and it was one of the coolest Nerd-Things I’ve ever done.  When I told my old friend from high school (who played V&V with me obsessively) about that day, his head exploded.

Because of Dungons & Dragons (and the role-playing games that came after it), I met, and befriended, a LOT of people I otherwise wouldn’t have. Some of my oldest friendships, folks I’ve known for twenty or thirty years, were people I used to game with. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have been able to overcome some latent shyness had it not been for gaming. If you were ever in a Call of Cthulhu, a Justice, Inc., a Villains and Vigilantes, a Champions, a GURPS, a Top Secret, a Gamma World, or a Dungeons & Dragons game with me (or any of the other one-offs and experiments tried over the years), well, I just want to say, thanks for playing.  

I stopped actively role-playing in the early 1990s. It came down to the point of either writing stories down and trying to get them published, or playing games every Saturday night and not ever publishing anything. I chose door number one, and I don’t regret it. But I still miss gaming.

I’ve played in some games over intervening years. Every time, I spend weeks talking myself out of starting up a game again. It’s like a siren that calls to me. No, make that a harpy. A 3 hit dice Harpy, armor class 5, that attacks for 1d8 damage—sorry, old habits die hard.

This Christmas, I made a present of Dungeons & Dragons to my niece, a very active and bookish 12 year old geek, and on Christmas Day, I ran a game for her and my brother and his wife. And you know what? I got hooked all over again. Sure, the game has changed, but the imagination, the suspense of rolling dice, the storytelling, the on-the-fly plans of brilliance, the comedic moments of improvised dialogue...that doesn’t change, not at all.

These days, most of the stigma of tabletop gaming is gone, thanks largely to the number of Generation X that is still playing, and now including their kids. It’s become a family activity. Something we never thought we’d all see, back during the 1980s, when it was thought that Dungeons & Dragons was devil-worship and a gateway to black magic. We laughed about it then, but it was pretty serious. But the Conservative Christians were right about one thing—the game was a gateway. It was a gateway to a multitude of fantastic worlds, authors, concepts, and friendships—the exact opposite of what they accused it of being. Forty years later, that gateway is still open—wide open—for the next generation. In my own very small way, as a consumer and a player, I am partially responsible for that, as are the rest of you who played and loved it and then passed it on to others.  That’s definitely magic, in my book. 

Here’s the full text for Appendix N for any of you who’d like to read Gary Gygax’s remarks. I can’t think of a better way to honor the anniversary than to give him the last word. Thanks, Gary, and Dave, and all of the rest of you who worked on this game over the years. Your contribution to the world has made it a better, more magical place.   

There's Nothing "Tricky" About Wonder Woman

I keep seeing the muckety-mucks in DC's upper echelons wringing their hands and trying very hard to use specific words when describing how difficult it would be to make a Wonder Woman movie. I cannot disagree with that assessment emphatically enough.

Would it be technically difficult? Not any moreso than making Superman, or Spider-Man, or any other heavy CGI-effects-driven tentpole movie.

Would it be a "tough sell" for a modern-day audience, most of whom don't read comics? I dunno, why don't you ask Marvel how difficult it was putting a second-tier character like Iron Man over.

In truth, it'd be no more difficult than making the Captain America movie. After all, it took Marvel 75 years to get that one right, but in the end, they did. They did it, like they did for so many of the other characters in the Marvel Universe Movie Franchise, by getting out of the way and letting someone who "gets" the character adapt the material to the movies. Let them pick and choose what to include, so as not to overwhelm "the straights" with forty years of, say, Asgardian infighting, for example.

"But Mark," you say, "DC DID that...remember Green Lantern?" Unfortunately, yes I do. And I have said this publicly and elsewhere that Johns made the rookie mistake of putting all of the eggs into one basket. He frankly didn't know, or didn't consider, that this would be a long-term project--or maybe they told him to do this--but that movie was crowded with everything that someone would need to launch a Green Lantern toy line, and not enough of anything else to make a movie.

But we're not talking about that. We're talking about Wonder Woman. The last of DC's "Big Three, after Superman and Batman." One of the most recognizable characters in DC's line-up. Perennial cosplay favorite. Visible in at least a couple of monthly books. Written by some of the best talent in the industry. Exactly what is the problem, then?

Oh, the different versions of the character.

There's probably a bondage component
to this that makes me uncomfortable.

Yeah, see, even before I saw the TV show, I owned a Wonder Woman comic. This comic, in fact. It's Ric Estrada artwork in it, and the story is pretty okay, as far as stuff from that time period goes. Nothing rang false in my six year old brain when I read it. I didn't know until much later that this was actually part of a kind of trope in the Wonder Woman comics wherein she is routinely shrunk down to miniscule size in an effort to diminish her power. Read into that as much as you'd like. You're probably correct.

But what really introduced me to Wonder Woman was this. Go ahead, give it a look. I'll wait: The Wonder Woman TV Show Intro.

God, but Lynda Carter was...still is...a knockout. Brunette, curvy, and very girl-next-door. This set my sexual preferences in stone at a very early age and they haven't really moved since. But enough of that. This was live-action super hero hi-jinks, played out in prime time, at the exact same time that the Batman TV show was in syndication in the afternoons. This was not a coincidence. The Wonder Woman TV shows were about one-third less campy than the Batman TV shows, which made them barely tolerable as opposed to unwatchable. But I was six, what did I know? Not much, I tell you. So I watched them.

What a great costume. Then and now.

The first season had Wonder Woman fighting the Nazis, which I really liked. Hey, I was reading Captain America, too, back then. But the following seasons brought Wonder Woman up into the modern world, where all of her adversaries used crystals for their super powers and wore pants suits. Not cool. Not cool at all. Honestly, the best thing about the show is the theme song. Even when they changed the lyrics for the second season, it was still groovy. And I do like the opening sequence, even though it's as corny as Nebraska.

I tried to re-watch these a few years ago, and they do not hold up. At all. They are the worst kind of terrible. But Good Golly, Lynda Carter in that suit...

I'm okay.

After the show went off the air, I frankly didn't think about Wonder Woman very much for about ten years. She was in the Justice League, and I would occasionally see a Golden Age story reprinted in a book, or read about her creator, William Moulton Marston, who also invented the modern polygraph machine. Interesting stuff. He was pretty progressive. Look him up. Your jaw will hit the floor. The Golden Age Wonder Woman stories are a mixed bag, by the way. In between smacking the Germans around and spouting off about personal liberty, Womder Woman was also very pre-occupied with trying to get Steve Trevor to marry her. Mixed signals, anyone? In the sixties, this trope moved to the forefront, and it wasn't until Wonder Woman joined the Woman's Liberation movement by having her powers stripped from her that the "I must marry Steve" subplot went away. Well, mostly.

Then in the late 1980s, DC relaunched Wonder Woman. They gave the book to George Perez and Len Wein, a veteran team responsible for some of their best comics. Perez went to town on the character and did what a number of creators were doing at the time--the old "returning to their roots" trick. Only in this case, it wasn't a trick. It stuck. Suddenly, Wonder Woman had a much richer and more nuanced back story. Now firmly ensconced within the Greco-Roman pantheon, she had a nemesis, in the form of Ares. It was a complicated relationship, one they explored in several great story arcs.

The wraparound cover to WW #1, drawn by living legend
George Perez with his usual eye for composition, drama
and exquisite detail. Still one of the best artists working.

It was a critical and sales success for DC, but like most creator-driven runs, Perez and Wein ran out of stuff to write and draw, and they turned the book over to other, capable people. Some of them got it. A few didn't. But Most of them tried their hardest, and interestingly, most of them did great work on the book whenever they went back to the mythology well for inspiration.

Since then, many other writers have taken a crack at Wonder Woman in other books, other forms, and other media. Some of the writers have just so happened to be women, for a novel change of pace. Darwin Cooke really highlighted one of the unspoken problems with the character in his critically-acclaimed series New Frontier, when the generals who needed her help defeating the Nazis give her their heartfelt thanks and politely but insistently tell her, "We'll take it from here." Ouch.

Paul Dini and Bruce Timm used her quite well in the Justice League cartoons for several seasons. Likewise, so did Mark Waid in Kingdom Come. There have been a number of excellent examples of how the character can be taken seriously, portrayed as both powerful and compassionate, and function as a cross between Captain America and Thor in the DC universe.

Difficult, they say. "Tricky." Yeah, right.

To me, it comes down to a few core things: Intention. Are you going to re-introduce the Wonder Woman you currently have on your plate to a new audience? Or are you going to try and overthink it, like you did with Superman?

Competency:  There's no reason in the world why you can't have the same kind of franchise Marvel is enjoying at the movies now. You just have to jettison the idea of continuity and write the movies with an eye towards being chapters in a larger work.

Character: Is the Wonder Woman we see on the screen a Wonder Woman we recognize? Does she act, behave, and perform like how we "see" Wonder Woman in our minds? It's okay if there's pieces and parts of certain eras all mashed together. The end result had better be part of the group-think Wonder Woman. This means, no pants.

You also have to respect the Canon, the source material. This is something that I think Warner Brothers is pathologically incapable of doing, and something that DC comics under their current leadership can't articulate in the first place. But let's press on. I wasn't kidding when I said Wonder Woman is a cross between Thor and Captain America. For the purposes of the movie, that's how we proceed.

Here's my pitch for a Wonder Woman movie that would satisfy the core audience, introduce her to newcomers who don't know anything about her aside from the costume. And it sets up sequels and things that percolate for later movies.

Wonder Woman: The Dogs of War
The movie opens with a quick re-telling of the history of the Amazons according to DC Comics, their subjugation, and their eventual home on Paradise Island. We establish they live very long lives. Then at the end of the flashback, we're on modern day Paradise Island. All seems well. Except for the Oracle. She's in her temple, back arched, eyes rolled back, mouth open, locked in a vision of horror.

We go into her vision and we see Ares, weakened, nearly drained of power. In his hand are the ends of four chains, leading to...what? He says, "Go, my minions. Sow the seeds of war that I might come to power again!" He lets go of the chains. We see them zip down the corridors, like they are attached to rockets.

Back on Paradise Island, the Oracle comes running out of her temple, screaming for the queen.

Overhead, arcs of fire shoot out in different directions, like comets. The amazons look up, confused. One of them turns and runs away. We follow her as she kicks open the door to the palace. "Mother! What was that?" It's Diana. Hippolyta and the Oracle and a few advisers are deep in angry discussion. The queen tries to shoo Diana away, but she defiantly remains. The oracle insists that Ares is bent on a re-awakening. No one else believes the oracle. The queen promises to meditate on it and dismisses them.

Later, she and Diana talk and they have their recurring fight about obeying the Queen, if not the Mother. Diana asks the queen what she will do. The queen says, "If Ares is coming back, then who will be next? We have to investigate." There is a montage sequence, including spinning newspaper headlines, showing the build-up to World War II. We see Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, and Roosevelt and of course, armies on the move. All of this through the eyes of the oracle.

Another argument between the council. The queen is convinced, but they are not. Suddenly, the Oracle's face contorts, and suddenly, she looks a lot like Ares. He warns her to cease meddling in his affairs or he will make his castle upon the ruins of Paradise Island. The oracle's neck snaps, and she is dead. A trickle of blood from her nose drops onto the throne room floor. Blood has been spilled.

That's all the council needed. Okay, says the queen. We oppose Ares.

Now we get the whole thing with the Amazons choosing one champion to act as their representative in the world of man. Diana disguises herself, bests Artemis, and reveals herself to her mother. Another act of defiance. But the queen has to send her. They are making their farewells, when--

Cut to: Pilot in Cockpit, flying over the ocean.

It's Steve Trevor! American test pilot, making his maiden flight in the H-1, an experimental craft. After bantering with the control tower, he is told that Operation Houdini is a go. Steve flips a switch, and we can see on the wings a number of mirrors and plates lift up, flip over, and suddenly, the plane is invisible!  But it is a plane, and a prototype, and it's still leaving a trail from the transformation.

Diana looks up, sees the smoke, hears the trail, and shouts, "ARES!" The queen tries to stop her, but she vaults up into the air, smashes through the plane, and is very surprised to see Steve Trevor. The plane crashes, but she saves Steve. There's the brief discussion about a man setting foot on the island, but Diana is again defiant.

They salvage the plane, and Steve fixes it up as best as he can. All the while, he tells the Queen and Diana about what's going on in Man's World. He agrees to take Diana to his base, but he can't promise that they will listen to anything either one of them has to say. "If I tell them about this place, they'll lock me up forever. Even if you do show up like this, looking like that. Maybe especially if you show up looking like that."

The queen heeds his advice, and they craft a Battle Suit for Diana. Using the colors from the American flag, the Eagle as their symbol, and with the usual amount of weapons and accoutrements, she now LOOKS like Wonder Woman. Everything but the name.

They take off in the plane. Steve makes it invisible. The radio is scrap, so they can't call in, and he doesn't want to be shot down. Using the plane, they make their way back to the top secret allied base, where a number of clandestine espionage operations are being prepped and carried out, courtesy of the O.S.S. Once Trevor explains that he's in fact alive, and the plane is damaged but flyable, and oh yeah, here's an Amazon that wants to talk to Churchill, things go very quickly.

They Allied Command holds a meeting in Washington, D.C. They don't know what to do with her. She explains her mission is to help end the war, and root out its causes. No one believes her, of course. Trevor informs her that they are taking her back to Greece, which is where Trevor said he found her. She tells Trevor that she doesn't have to comply with their wishes. He says if she doesn't, then they really won't trust her.

The whole traveling circus piles into several cars and makes for the airport. That's when motorcycles swarm the caravan and machine guns open fire on the cars. It's an assassination attempt! She leaps out of the car through the roof and lands on Churchill's car, in the middle of the caravan. She pulls him out of the window as the motorcycles circle around. Bullets. Bracelets. Lots of punching and throwing and smashing. She single-handedly takes out the hit squad, and uses her lasso on the last goon running away. Under her questions, he tells her she can't save them all. And that's when his head assumes the shape of a black hound, and then his neck snaps. She's knocked back by the psychic force.

"Ares," she says. She gets up and walks over to Churchill. "Are you all right?"

"Whatever you need, you just let me know."

Okay, now she's in. Ares has tipped his hand. In her Prayer/Conference to her mother, she tells her what she say. The Queen says, "It's the dogs of war." Now we have the plot: four black hounds that do Ares' bidding, they are extensions of him, and they have the ability to possess mortals and, well, you can guess what's happened. Hitler: Black Hound. The Emperor? Black Hound. Mussolini? Black Hound. But where's the other one? Never mind that. He'll reveal himself. Take those three out and he'll show up.

Now we've got Wonder Woman in World War II, smashing Nazis, blocking bullets, bending tank barrels, and any other famous Golden Age covers we want to do. Plane catching. Bunker busting. You name it. Steve Trevor is the person who flys her in with the invisible plane, drops her over the zone like a bomb, and then lands and waits for her to show up with intel and equipment.

As a kind of ironic counter-point, the newsreel footage of Wonder Woman in action has that cheesy narrator voice-over..."The Allies have a new secret weapon...and she's a knock-out!" Steve walks out of the viewing room, disgusted. "Why are you selling that garbage?" he asks his spy master.

"Would you rather the truth?" the head of cover ops replies.

She captures Mussolini and Hitler and Trevor's spy group plants evidence that tells a different story. The black hounds of Ares burn up the military leaders and leave their bodies. Wonder Woman literally kills the Dogs of War with her Amazonian War Spear.

She's going after the Emperor next. What she doesn't know is that the command has also decided on a little insurance. They are going to drop the bomb anyway. Just to be sure.

Wonder Woman is there when it happens. She sees what man is capable of. She pulls the war dog out of the Emperor before it can kill him as a host, and she takes the dog back to Paradise Island. Trevor comes looking for her. She asks him, "Did you know about this?"

"No, I didn't know."

"Why would they do that?"

"I don't know. We've won the war. Peace has been declared. There was no point, except..."

They get it. The fourth dog of war. It's Truman. Wonder Woman again defies her mother and takes the captured dog of war with them. They fly to DC and confront Truman in the White House. Only it's not Truman. It's not the dog, either. It's Ares. He's weak, but he's back. Wonder Woman tells Ares to leave Truman and he can have the war dog back.

Ares replies by snapping his fingers. Secret Service men rush in, all with glowing red eyes. They literally cover Steve. Ares knows they can't hurt her, but Trever is mortal. She's about to tear them apart when Ares barks a command. "Leave off, or I'll stop his heart!" She backs off, seething. "Let the dog go." The hound leaps out of its magical enclosure and right into Steve. There's a short scuffle, of course. He's fighting it, but it's gaining control. "Now, my pet...kill the Amazon."

Steve looks into Wonder Woman's eyes. She nods. He nods. And he raises the gun and fires. The bullet ricochets off of her bracelet and hits one of his handlers. So does the second shot. She's controlling where the bullets go. He empties the clip. Truman takes a bullet, as does Steve--in his gun arm, dropping the useless weapon.

Wonder Woman is staring at the wounded president. If she lets Truman die, Ares has to leave the host. On the other hand, if she saves Truman, Ares is saved. She's torn. Finally, she asks for help. The Amazons whisk them back to Paradise Island, and make a deal that Ares will remain in Hades until the end of the century. He agrees, a little too quickly, and leaves.

They fix up Truman and re-install him in the White House. Steve wasn't in mortal danger, but they get the dog out of him and kill it, too.

They never find the fourth dog. Wonder Woman's mission has failed. The Queen tells Wonder Woman she was lucky that Ares was so weak, otherwise she'd have never been able to do what she did. Wonder Woman realizes she still has much to learn. She is disgusted with what she has seen of Man's world. Maybe they aren't ready to save, yet. Well, except for Steve. They have a romantic moment on the beach, and then say goodbye. "Will I ever see you again, Diana?"

"You might. If I am needed."

Cut to Steve Trevor getting a medal for distinguished service during the war. He's still got a cast on his arm. They are discussing Wonder Woman, where she is, what she's doing. Steve tells them "I don't know where she is, but I hope we can figure out a way to be better than we are now. I'd like to see her again."

And we pan away from them, to another military type, walking away. A general, but not a real historical figure. He gets into his car, tells the driver to take him home. We see him light a cigar using his finger. It's the fourth dog of war. Completely free to roam the world, building influence for Ares for another fifty years.

The end...for now.

There's your movie, Warner Brothers. It sets up a sequel, or you can go straight into The Justice League movie, depending on how you bounce it. The next Wonder Woman movie is in the modern day, and she's starting over, and it's a whole new set of challenges for her.  But if you put that first movie in World War II, you give a nod to the Canon. You make her competent, and you treat the character with respect. And you intentionally showcase the parts that are endearing and enduring and not stupid and campy.

I know, I know, we can't film it, it's got Nazis, you can't shoot Truman, blah blah blah, whatever. Intention. Competency. Character. Canon. Address those issues and you've got a movie.

My First WorldCon: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It was so hot, the sun cooked the skirt
right off of my dashboard hula dancer. 

 LoneStarCon 3 has come and gone, and boy, are my arms tired. It was my first ever WorldCon, and I had zero idea of what to expect. Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to help out with some of the programming, or agree to curate an exhibit on Robert E. Howard’s legacy, or agree to serve on the ALAMO board of directors, at least not until I knew what I was getting myself into.

The logistics of putting on a WorldCon are not much different from other conventions; there’s just more of them. There’s programming out the wazoo at WorldCon, and multiple dances, and of course, the awards ceremony. It’s a lot like putting on three conventions’ worth of activities in one weekend. This is compounded by the fact that the Floating Temporary Permanent Volunteer WorldCon Committee (hereby acronymed down to F.T.P.V.W.C., or “Fit-Piv-Wic,” with the accent on the second syllable) are attempting to organize the entire thing while literally scattered across the country. This adds a layer of organization, communication, and functionality (not to mention disparate personality types) to an activity that usually isn’t so contentious when people are looking at each other from across the room.

In fact, there’s so much to talk about regarding this first WorldCon from my own limited, biased, and narrow point of view, that I’m going to break it up into areas for those of you who only want to read about my hardships, or maybe you just want to hear my thoughts on the convention in general. Feel free to skim over the topic headings until you see what you like, or just start at the top and slog your way through it all, much like I had to do last week.

My Personal Saga

I’ll spare you the minutiae and cover the high points: on Monday, I had major car trouble that put me six hours behind and over three hundred dollars light. On Tuesday, I found out that the exhibit space I’d designed for was in no way, shape or form related to the exhibit space I got. It was absolute hash. I left it in impartial hands, thankfully, and they were able to make sense of what needed to happen, brilliantly so. But they had to do it all on Wednesday, while I was on a twelve-hour long bus trip to Cross Plains and back. That evening, I ate undercooked bacon at Denny’s and got food poisoning. Thursday and part of Friday was spent in recovery from that—it sapped a lot of my strength, obviously. By Saturday, I was ready to play, but Saturday and Sunday were my busiest days. After panels, and then dinner (and by the way, my system never really recovered completely from the Denny’s meal), I was out of gas completely. Only on Monday did I get any bar time, which was awesome, and all too brief.

Not my best convention, on a personal note. Not by a long shot. However, it was not a total bust.

Name Checking for Fun and Profit

The sheer number of folks I saw and had brief interactions with are legion. Granted, many of them are Texas regulars, but some are not and it was awesome to see them again. My only real complaint was that I didn’t get nearly enough bar time to chill out, have a laugh or two, and be the convivial and charming raconteur that I usually am at these kinds of things. I think we all know who lost here: Texas.

But seeing Jess Nevins, Daryl Gregory, Nancy Hightower, Maurice Broaddus, Paolo Bacigalupi, Caroline and Warren Specter, John Klima, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Peggy Hailey, Joe Lansdale, Kasey Lansdale, Howard Waldrop, Scott Cupp, John Picacio, Sanford Allen, Stina Leicht, Rhonda Eudaly, Martha Wells, Jessica Reissman, Lillian Stewart Carl, Patrice Sarath, Paige E. Ewing, Josh Roundtree,  Lon Prater,Vincent Villafranca, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Ann Vander Meer, David Spurlock, Chris N. Brown, Lawrence Person, Paul Benjamin, Alan Porter, Derek Johnson, Lou Anders, Don Webb and all the rest of the Southwestern Fans and Friends was wonderful, if all too brief. I got to wave at Steven Brust from a crowded elevator, shout at Brad Denton as we were running in opposite directions, bellow at Paul Cornell, blurt at John Scalzi, and otherwise ping-pong around the parties, spreading the love. I also met a lot of new folks, and talk to a ton of enthusiastic fans. More on this, later.

I got to have dinner with Ray Guns Over Texas editor Rick Klaw and his wife, Brandy, the most, along with my old friend and program participant Weldon Adams (also my roommate for this little odyssey). And of course, Team REH: Paul Herman, Rusty Burke, Bill “Indy” Cavalier, Dennis McHaney, Jeff Shanks, Dave Hardy (with serious help from wife Julie and daughter Brigid), Damon Sasser, Rob Roehm, and all the way from France, Patrice Louinet.  This was my home base, and these folks more or less kept me sane, hydrated, and made sure I was wearing pants and not running late to any panels. Thanks a million, folks.

Robert E. Howard

Some of you may have noticed that there were, ah, a few panels on Robert E. Howard and his legacy. This was completely intentional. When I was asked to help out with the programming duties, I was told that there were absolutely zero panels on Robert E. Howard at the last Texas WorldCon, in 1997. This is not surprising. The 1990s are something of a Dark Ages for Howard Studies, with no copies of Howard’s own Conan books on the shelves and no real intentions to do so. It wasn’t until around the late 1990s that Wandering Star entered the picture, with their desire to produce authoritative texts of Howard’s work, in deluxe hardcover editions, and with high end illustrations. That was the start of the REH Renaissance, really. So, a lot has happened in the thirteen years between Texas WorldCons. A lot.

That track of programming was a corrective, and it was extremely successful. We had large crowds for most of the panels (the poetry stuff was a bust, frankly, and no one could find the film programming to come see “Barbarian Days”) and lot of participation. But in particular, I slanted the panels to hit the older fans. When I came down for the big meeting in April, I had two people pull me aside—older men, both—and tell me how pleased and excited they were to see that REH was going to be on the panels this year. They were big fans, they told me, and read all of that stuff in the 1970s. I asked them, “Have you been keeping up with what we’ve been doing in the past fifteen years?” Oh, no, they said. They just read the books and really enjoyed them, but they haven’t looked at them since the seventies. Heh. Okay, guys, this panel’s for you.

I intentionally loaded the topics to entice the older fans. We had an obligatory Conan panel, and that room was packed. Even better, it was a smashing success. I opened it up to talk about pop culture Conan, and everyone stayed right on Robert E. Howard’s Conan the whole time. Fantastic. And the more we talked about corrupted texts, bad biographical practices, ulterior motives, and the complicated relationship between the fans and L. Sprague de Camp, I saw more light bulbs going on behind these guys’ eyes. Oh, there were a few of them who wanted to debate the point, citing de Camp’s standing as a gifted and talented author, and blah blah blah. I told one of them what I always say, which is that de Camp was great for Conan, but really lousy for Robert E. Howard. That pretty much ended the discussion.We opened a lot of eyes and changed a lot of minds over the four day weekend.

The Robert E. Howard exhibit got a lot of traffic, as did the Robert E. Howard Foundation Table. Lots of books were sold, memberships handed out, and we all had a ton of great conversations with people who were genuinely interested in REH, his works, and what we were doing there. It was everything that we wanted WFC 2006 to be, and more.

WorldCon

San Antonio, invaded by Martian Walkers. Cool.

My non-REH programming was great. In hindsight, I wish I’d had more of it. But I was on a mission, so, you know... It was a scandal-free WorldCon, for which I am terribly grateful, even though now in the various armchair reports coming out, the very same issues are coming up: more parity, more youth, more inclusiveness, etc. I don’t disagree with any of those comments. This year’s convention attendees looked old. They just did. I say that with grey in my temples, too. It was an old, white, sausage fest. And yet, there were a number of interesting contradictions that reared up during the show.

The kid’s programming was hands down the best kid’s programming I’d ever seen in 20+ years of going to conventions. It was awesome. All of it. Make your own lightsabers? Jet packs? Steampunk nerf guns?  Captain America shields? Intro role-playing lessons? Good Lord, I wanted to do all of that, and more. Our REH Camp Mascot, Brigid, was in and out of the kid’s programming all weekend, constantly showing us the new thing she’d built. They let the kids pour metal figures, for crying out loud. How freaking cool is that?

And yet, there were so few kids and parents there for the duration. Granted, there were a number of one day passes with moms and girls, but that’s not the issue. That programming track was brilliant, and no one knew about it. That should be an up-front feature for WorldCon: “Bringing the Next Generation into Fandom, one Jet Pack at a time!” It needed to be a button on the main page, next to General Info. You want younger kids? Parents? Youth? You’ve got to let them know that stuff like that is already in place.

I know a number of women in Texas fandom, and also creators. My own areas of programming were pretty limited to sausage-y things, but we tried, we really tried, to get women on the panels wherever we could. Granted, I wasn’t working on a Y.A. track, but we did as much as we really could. I asked folks, “what do you want to be on?” and then took those answers straight to programming. And during the con, I asked people what they thought, how the panels went, etc. and by and large the replies were overwhelmingly positive.

Attendance was good. You wouldn’t know it unless you were in a packed panel, because the con was spread way-the-hell-out all over the convention center. I really hate the San Antonio Convention Center (and the Marriot hotels right next to it). Overpriced, overblown, inconvenient, and generally there to fleece the tourists. The last five trips I’ve made to San Antonio have all been to that Marriot and Convention Center. I’ve got good friends in San Antonio, who love the town, but I personally hate the Riverwalk and all that is clustered around it. It’s just so inauthentic, and really lame. A shopping mall, so close to the Alamo, just makes my teeth itch.

This being my first WorldCon, and being on the inside of some things, too, was very eye-opening. Now that I’ve seen one run, and gotten a glimpse at how the sausage is made, I am somewhat mollified. That doesn’t mean that what the other bloggers are saying about how the convention needs to skew younger, be more inclusive, etc, isn’t spot-on, but I’ll do my list anyway, and discuss some of the practical considerations inherent in changing the mission of WorldCon.

Fixing WorldCon for the 75^th Anniversary

Everyone wants it fixed “NOW” and well, that’s just not possible. But there are four years until 2017, the 75^th WorldCon, and that’s a great deadline to have some of these things in place for a newer, shinier convention that will return it to its former glory.

Fix the Hugos. There’s a list of things that people have been complaining about the Hugos for years, and fixing them would be ideal. The best, easiest example: Add a Y.A. category. That they haven’t done this yet is stupid, and smacks of an answer that I heard often during this process “But that’s the way we’ve always done it.” The success, the popularity, and the importance of the surge in the young adult market cannot be overstated. Embrace it. That’s just one example. But you get what I’m talking about. It’s time to stop being so snooty about science fiction. When it started, it was full of pulps and comics. Let’s never forget that.

Add Media, Gaming, and YA to the programming. This doesn’t have to be odious. I know many of the FiTPiVWiCs and SMOFs that I talked to don’t want the show to get any bigger. Well, not the size of DragonCon, anyway. But consider this instead: how about inviting one or two game creators to the show? How about one or two TV series or movie makers? Writers and artists? Not the whole cast and crew of the Avengers, but what about just inviting Joss Whedon? See, you can keep it cerebral, focused on the written word, and interesting to fans without having Robert Downey Jr. in the Iron Man suit onhand. Now, you’ll probably have to pay for these people to show up, but I think the cost of doing business with them will more than pay for itself. As for Young Adult programming—guess what? That’s hotter than Georgia Asphalt right now. It was a packed panel at WorldCon this year. Why was there only one?  It’s because the FiTPiVWiCs and SMOFs don’t read Young Adult books. That’s why. Simple. 

Here’s a freebie, London: Next year is the 30^th anniversary of the film Buckaroo Banzai. Get the director, D.W. Richter and the writer, Earl Mac Rauch, and maybe Peter Weller, to come in and talk about the film. Outside of airfare and hotel rooms, I’m willing to bet you that they are pretty cheap. You’ll get a packed house at the panel, and long lines for the autographing. And who knows? Die-hard BB fans may just come to your show BECAUSE you’re doing it. Granted, it may only be about a couple of hundred Uber-fans of Buckaroo Banzai, but isn’t 200 memberships worth it? But you need to lock it down fast, and then advertise the hell out of it, because otherwise, how will people know? Just listing it won’t get it done. You’ve got to start selling WorldCon from scratch, because there are far more people (like the 60,000 that showed up at DragonCon last week) who don’t know who or what WorldCon is than those that do right now. 

Make an effort to include more Fans. Granted, fixing the programming above will take care of some of this on its own. But other fan groups need some love, too. The costume contest in San Antonio was non-existent. Oh, I mean, there was one, but for a WorldCon, it was pretty anemic. Why? Because the Greybeards, as they were dubbed during the convention, don't dress up anymore. There should have been four days of costume programming, themed to coincide with each day of the show. And there could be. The facilities were there, in spades.There were two hundred people working on WorldCon. Surely a few more volunteers to get the costuming up to a fever pitch wouldn't have added to anyone's work load.

Stop going toe-to-toe with DragonCon. Just stop it, please. And don't you dare say "well, it's ALWAYS been on Labor Day weekend." Don't you even friggin' think it. Conventions move around. Nothing is set in stone. Go back to early August for WorldCon and stop trying to slug it out with the second-largest Pop Culture convention in the country. That ain't your fight, so quit making it your fight.

This doesn’t have to happen all at once. But I think the groups that just won the bids for the upcoming shows would do well to listen to what paying members past and present, many of whom are professional writers and artists, have said about WorldCon. They are the customers. They are telling you what they want to see at future shows. This shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out. And while the convention itself is non-profit (another mistake, in my opinion), there is still an impetus to make money every year.

Final Thoughts

The Riverwalk, under attack. Note the tractor beam. Neat!

Will I go to another WorldCon? Yeah, probably. I wouldn’t travel to one, unless I was nominated for something, and I don’t have the body of work or the fans to make that happen yet. I would consider helping out with another WorldCon in Texas, but only if all of the above points were addressed—and maybe additionally, only if I were involved with the bid so as to address all of the above, right out of the gate. My single biggest frustration to this year’s WorldCon was not being able to advocate for, say, Dallas or Fort Worth instead of San Antonio. It would have been much easier to plan for and do stuff with a convention and a group of fans that I’d worked with before. But that’s all beside the point. The show was good, and can be a major thing again. It needs a little help, from outside forces, and a lot of leadership and direction from within, if it’s going to make those changes and still be a viable convention.

Me? I’m still recovering. The drive alone has rendered me spent and goofy. It’ll be a month until I’m fixed. But I’m sure I’ll have more to talk about later. Hopefully, it won’t involve any “twerking” scandals. Twerking. Pfft. You ever get the feeling that we’re all being punked by Ashton Kutcher?

Policing Our Own in the Geek Nation

Cosplay used to be the exclusive province of the actors
hired by the companies to portray their characters. That
time is long past.

 Okay, enough's enough.

I've got to talk about this, because apparently, it's just not going to fix itself. Between the Science Fiction community and the Comic Book Conventions there has arisen a weird and completely inappropriate response to the steady influx of new blood into the geek nation. One would think, in the year 2013, that the Geek Nation would be grateful for new blood, but apparently, the supposedly enlightened and forward-thinking super nerds of the world have a problem with letting "those kinds" of people into their fun house, never mind playing with their toys.

It's the Cosplayers. It's the Fake Fans. You know, the ones who don't really "get it." The ones who dress up instead of go deep into the underpinnings of a certain character. The ones who weren't persecuted and driven away from the village for their beliefs, you know, like I was, once, long ago. You know who I'm talking about...Girls.

That's right! Girls in our convention! And they are dressing up as Captain America, and having fun, and getting attention, and it's JUST NOT FAIR! Not when I worked SO HARD on my pun-filled filksong about Firefly. And nobody is listening now, because everyone is watching the costume parade, instead. 

Obviously, that's not me, but I imagine that a lot of the nerd-rage in the electronic gaming, Science Fiction and fantasy, and Comic book communities sounds a lot like this in their heads. You have to know, they don't know how it sounds to other people. But the backlash from all of this new attention has brought some old, deep, salt-encrusted wounds to the top again, and those wounds will have to be debrised before they can heal. As an aside, we maybe need to leave those people who are too wounded to join us on the next leg of the journey at the watering hole, where they can be picked off by natural predators.

It's hard to know exactly where to start with this topic. Tony Harris' rant about cosplayers and "fake fans" seems like a good point of entry to the discussion, because it highlights some serious anger that has nothing to do with what's being discussed. Then again, the more recent Science Fiction Writers of America's blow-up happened just a few weeks ago, so that could be more topical. If those stories seem too broad, let's talk about one case in particular that is emblematic of the whole problem: the Black Cat cosplayer's harassment incident.

I think this about says it all. Here's a woman who does regular cosplay, and at her local convention, to boot, and she's chosen to portray the Black Cat, aka Felicia Hardy. For those of you who haven't read comics in thirty years, she's basically Marvel's version of Catwoman, only she's romantically involved with Spider-Man instead of Batman. Here's a cover from one of her comics:

This was the most tame picture of the
Black Cat I could find online. 

Now, the cosplayer in the story above (and there's a picture of her in said costume) bears a striking resemblance to the Black Cat. As a cosplay goes, it's an A+ job, all the way.

Part of the reason why cosplayers do what they do is to get feedback for presenting an authentic recreation of the character. That's unmistakably an aspect of cosplay. So, if I were to walk up to her and say, "That's an amazing costume. You look just like the Black Cat!" then that would be an appropriate thing to say.

I could, also, if I were so inclined, choose to engage this person as if she were really The Black Cat. That's also an aspect of why people cosplay. It's not for everyone, obviously, but by and large, if they are wearing the costumes, they are engaging in recreating that character as an avatar for interaction. So again, if I was to walk up to her and say something like "You know, Felicia, I wish you'd stop pining away for Spider-Man and just move on. You deserve some happiness in your life, and chasing after that web-head isn't going to do it." That would be a weird thing to say, but it would also be an appropriate interaction. It would be less weird if I was in a costume as well, dressed as Batman, or Spider-Man, or whatever, and make some in-character joke, for the benefit of the audience that has by now gathered around, gawking, staring, and leering as is usually the case.

Or, as a last ditch effort, if you lack the social acumen to walk up to a woman in a public gathering and not make an ass of yourself, you can just snap a picture or two and walk on. I think that's kinda creepy, but hey, it's not my choice, either.

You know what's not an appropriate interaction? Anything in this article by Cracked Online, for starters. Or anything like what this one cosplayer had to deal with. At her local show. Where she knows people personally.

But that's cosplay. It doesn't spill over into the world of literary Science Fiction and Fantasy, right? Guess again, Chuckles. Cosplay has been around in the smaller sub-circles of fandom for decades. People were dressing in Star Trek costumes for years before it was fashionable to do anything else. When the stormtrooper costumes, the Boba Fett costumes, and the Jedi Knight costumes first showed up in force in the early to mid 1990s, do you know who was the most pissed about it? The Trek fans in costume! Yeah. How dare someone else do what we were doing first!

But those were teapot tempests, you know. When all of the fans broke open the seals on the gates of Fan Fiction with their Harry Potter stories...well, that was just ridiculous. Until, you know, it wasn't. When all of the teenage girls started showing up at conventions dressed as Sailor Moon, that was just a fad. You know, until it wasn't.

Then a couple of professional actors revealed that they play computer and online games, and well, that was interesting, in the way that you can go to the local fair and see a chicken that plays tic-tac-toe. And through it all, from the early 1990s right up to 2012, when the bantha pooda hit the fan, everyone else chose to ignore it. Fans could see the difference, but not articulate it. Conventions continued to employ out-of-work actresses as "booth weasels," dressing them as either sci-fi sexpots, or as Hooter's waitresses, in the assured hopes that the underwashed, oversexed Geekoid masses would flock to their tables and pick up piles of their Chinese-made tchotchkes branded with whatever shitty movie or television show they were trying to get us to watch. Costume contests exploded, and a bunch of really nice, professional-looking costumes, worn by people straight out of central casting, all looking better than the actors hired to stand outside the DC Comics booth, were everywhere. Suddenly, there's an influx of Steampunk in all aspects of the sub-culture, including a metric ton of books that were never considered to be "real" science fiction. Costumes were everywhere. Families of geeks were attending comic book conventions. It was mad, I tell you, mad!

Then the scandals started. The accusations rose to the top like curds in cream. And like a good curd, they were all loud and squeaky. I'd see one go across my computer screen and think, "Wow, that sucks. Well, at least it'll be dealt with swiftly." But then the scandals just kept coming. More and more, all in different flavors, but all basically revolving around a kind of weird battle of the sexes. And I think it boils down to just one thing: Girls.

I really think that the Secret Masters of Fandom that run these conventions every year, the older, more established professionals in all of these sub-industries, and the fans themselves need to stop and take a good, long look at where we are from where we started out. I can remember a time, not too long ago, when comic book convention were graced with only a few people in costume. There was usually one woman who dressed as a super hero--Dark Phoenix--and she was kinda crazy, so people gave her a wide berth. There were no "booth babes," and the ratio of men to women at these conventions was roughly 90/10.

That was twenty five years ago.

I knew my time had passed back in 2003. I was working as a manager at a bookstore in Austin, Texas, and we had a large number of geeks in our employ. Back in 2004, I thought that meant we had girls who read comics. I'd had a few discussions with them about it, but never anything deep. I just thought it was, you know, interesting, because when I was in high school, if I wanted one of my girlfriends to read a comic book, I would have had to tie them to a chair and pry their eyes open, Clockwork Orange-style. Of course, when I was in high school, saying the word "Batman" conjured up an image of Adam West, doing the Batusi, and nothing else. So, you know, that was my experience.

One evening at the bookstore, I was shelving books when I heard a conversation between two of the women working that night. These were young women, early twenties both. It was a passionate discussion, in the tone regularly heard throughout the store when discussion the merits of Hemingway or the plotlines of Jane Austen. They were arguing over which Green Lantern was the one, true Green Lantern. I am not kidding.

One girl was making the case for Kyle Rayner being "her" Green Lantern, because he is the one who best encompasses her generation. His problems, his personality...all part of what she liked best about him. The other girl was insistent that if it's not Hal Jordan, it's just not Green Lantern. Hal was the classic, she argued, and everything else was a dalliance or a sales gimmick.

I leaped out from around the corner and shouted at them both, "You can NOT have this conversation without including me!" They both scattered like grouse, laughing at the old man, but the truth of that story should be obvious. Fans, and especially the older (40+ years old) fans tend to think that they discovered, well, whatever they first discovered, and were the last people to dig on it.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

It's a new generation of fans now. These are fans who grew up in the age of Harry Potter, when it was okay to read for pleasure in school. These fans grew up with the Star Wars prequels, bless their hearts. They grew up with the Internet, where they met people and developed friendships for years that turned into meet-ups at national conventions that had little to do with interacting with the Guest of Honor and everything to do with interacting with one another. This generation grew up reading (and watching) Japanese pop culture and comics, rather than reruns of Star Trek. They never tried to piece together from their meager comic book collection how many multiple Earths DC had floating around. They google that shit, instead of chasing it down in back issues for years and years.

And most importantly, their fan activity is very different, though no less valid, than our own. They engage the material in ways that I never will. They write fan fiction to address subtext in a story. They make their own costumes by hand, to better identify with these characters. They flip the gender on a super hero in order to take ownership of that character when maybe the other choices available to them don't speak to them directly. There's probably a component of irony in there, too, for the guys who insist on dressing up as Wonder Woman, But that's neither here nor there.

These new fans don't codify, organize, memorize, and catalogue the details and minutiae of their favorite show or character. They are much more interested in the bigger picture.  For them, fandom is not a closed, private club that you have to know the secret knock and the password to get into. For them, it's wide-open, social, and interactive. This is the new fan dynamic. And it's here to stay.

Well, maybe not. Right now, I'm going to estimate that the male to female ratio at, say, ComicCon International is roughly 60/40. There are other shows with a national bent that may be closer to 55/45 or even 50/50. I'll just bet you that there are more female than male geeks at, say, A-Kon, which is all about Anime. But I think it's safe to say that with more women than ever involved in both the creative/professional side of these sub-cultures as well as the fandom side of these sub-cultures, it's time to move our mental picture of "what fandom is" forward into the 21st century. We're supposed to be the visionaries of modern culture. It's time we acted like it, dammit.

Now, if you're not playing along, I can assume there's one or more of three reasons why this is so.

1. You are bitter, old, and cranky. You remember a time when you were pushed into a locker for daring to wear a Star Trek t-shirt to school. You were lonely, an outcast, and sad. Then you found fandom, and suddenly, all of the other kids who were bullied and tormented were here, in the room with you, and you felt as if you truly belonged somewhere.

Now these NEW kids...they don't get that. They were never bullied. Some of the girls are very pretty, and remind you of a time when you couldn't talk to them. So, naturally, you resent these new fans coming into your backyard (not really yours) and playing with YOUR toys (not really yours) and all without having to pay any "dues," which never existed anyway.

Your problem is your Jealousy. Get over it, and be a goodwill ambassador and a gracious host.

A convention moment caught in time. They are looking at me, slightly
miffed because I'm taking a picture before they could pose for me, and
Captain Kirk is looking at...well, he's not looking at their booth swag. And
yes, that is a wrestling belt slung over his shoulder.

2. Maybe you just don't know what to do. I mean, for years, in the SCA, it was okay to compliment the serving wenches on their ample bosoms at the Feast in Honor of Sir Clovis, of the Realm of Spitcup. Now here's this hot--I mean, smoking hot--woman over there, dressed in the same sort of bodice, and even though she's calling herself "The White Queen," she's not responding to any of my Ren Faire jokes. I don't understand. Everyone laughs when I do that bit from Monty Python about the huge tracts of land.

Besides, I wouldn't hurt a fly. Everyone knows that about me, right? I've been going to this convention since it was called GrokCon, and I've told that story about drinking at the bar with Nichelle and De Forrest to everyone who will listen, for years, you know, just you realize that I'm in the inner circle.

Your problem is your Social Ineptitude. Also, your peer group. They need to teach you, or ban you.


3. Or maybe you can't understand what the problem is. I mean, after all, anyone wearing that costume clearly is just asking for it, right? Right? And if you're putting that vibe out, it would be wrong to not say something about it. I mean, you know how these cons are. Everyone hooks up. Everyone gets laid. Those bitches handing out the Expendables II keychains over there? Just look at how they are dressed. They're begging for it, man!

So what if the hand should slip while Catwoman is posing with me for a picture? That's what she's there for, right? It's all good clean fun. Why dress like a sex object if I'm not allowed to objectify you? Right, fellas? Can I get a high five?

Your problem is your Misogyny. And you need to leave and never come back.

T.C.B., Baby. T.C.B.

I think the solution to all three negative reactions above comes down to one thing: we need to police our own. The days of cons being our own little private gatherings are over. Unless, you know, you want to throw your own little private gathering for whatever kink or sub-human throwback activity you're into. I'm assuming that most of the people running conventions wants greater participation, new blood in the hobby, and a positive, if not friendly, face for the outside world. Greater participation from women is one big step in that direction, and with it should come a general cleaning of house.

Policing our own is, I think, the best way to quickly get a handle on this problem. John Scalzi recently posted his new rules for appearing at conventions and I think it's a brilliant first step. What the Secret Masters of Fandom and the other Convention Planners and Fan Groups need to take from that is this: get in front of the problem. You probably have it, and don't even know about it, because there's no way to address it. Worse, some of you know exactly who in your community has been guilty of this kind of behavior before and you haven't done anything about it because "Well, that's just his way," or "You don't know him the way some of us do." Yeah, that's not going to cut it anymore.

I don't think you have to be mean about it. Just firm, and polite. I understand that in the SFnal communities, we tend to play fast and loose with what constitutes socially acceptable behavior. After all, we ALL know what's it's like to be picked on, bullied, and ostracized, right? And so as a matter of tacit acceptance, we don't want to be perceived as doing that to someone in return. Not one of our own, I mean.

Well, it doesn't have to be mean. You just have to decide that you're going to do it. Pull the fan in question aside, and say, "I know you probably aren't doing this on purpose, but X and Y need to stop right now. It's not cool. It's actually very sexist, and it's not appreciated."

If that fan gets upset about it, that's his decision to do so. He can either bitch and moan, or thank the person for pointing it out to him and rejoin the party. If he continues being an offensive clown, pull him aside again, and say, "This is your second warning. Get ahold of yourself, or you will be removed from this convention."

The third time, he's out. And done for the weekend. And if he's shown that he can't, in fact, keep from saying certain things, or acting a certain way, he can't come back to the convention again. Period.

I would go so far as to say, before the convention starts, "Hey, WarBear, you know, in the past, you've done some things that have made people uncomfortable. Well, here's the new policy for this convention, and we want to make sure you saw it so that you can decide to either follow it to the letter, or not participate in any of the parties or extra-curricular activities during the con." Then you don't even need to give him three chances. He gets one.

Here's why Policing Our Own is a good thing:

1. It'll actually help some folks--the folks who never ever learned how to speak to women in the first place--by breaking those bad habits and that "convention behavior" that no one ever liked, but merely tolerated, because, well, he was one of us. Those folks need the help, and pulling them off to one side to let them know they are still welcome, but now they have to act like grown-ups, is a good thing. Not everyone will be this way, of course. But some will change, because they value the social interaction.

2. It will quickly bring the neanderthals to the fore, because it'll force a confrontation with them. Unless you're at a Gor convention, you'll want to know who thinks the new policies are "bullshit" and quickly, too. These are the people holding us back. We have enough crosses to bear as fans of this stuff, already. We don't need people like this weighing us down. They've been hiding in this sub-culture for years, and it's high time we de-creeped the Geek Nation once and for all.

3. It will make conventions way less actionable should something go wrong. If the fans are actively self-policing, and there is a clearly stated sexual harassment policy in place, then congratulations, we have joined the human race. Incidents get dealt with, people banned, and we move on. Being a safe place for fan activity encourages more fans to come join us, and that keeps all of this healthy and active and still remains our "sacred space," where we go to unwind, to be who we are, and to temporarily escape the real world. If you think this is largely unnecessary, may I refer you to the current DragonCon controversy? I'm not saying that every instance will blossom into this, but I'm frankly surprised that more civil suits haven't been filed regarding sexual harassment. It's sheer dumb luck, I tell you, that E3 or ComicCon International hasn't had any legal problems.

 
Now, on the other side of things is this: I think we are all going to have to take stock of our behavior at conventions and grow-the-hell-up.

In a world where flirting can potentially turn into romance, it's going to be hard to get people in fandom--many of whom are actually proud of the fact that they have personality traits that show up on the Autism Spectrum--to recognize when "No" means "No." So, we're going to have to be very firm, insistent, and deliberate with the socially awkward geeks in our midst. We may have to invent a society where there is no subtext. This will be nigh-impossible, because fans lives for subtext in everything they ingest.

I'm talking about people behaving like professionals. I'm talking about behaving as if we're out in public (which we all are) instead of in our friend from Junior High's basement. The sexual innuendo, the double entendres, the wordplay and puns...all that has to stop. Okay, maybe not the puns. But there is a time and a place for punning, and if you don't know when and where that is, then you shouldn't pun. Ever. At all. For any reason.

It's going to be difficult. After all, most pros are also fans. And many pros and fans have a more convivial relationship, out of necessity. If you are a working professional and you are not George R.R. Martin, you need to network with the people that like your stuff. And should you ever break out, the way that George R.R. Martin did, you tend to take your fans with you. It's a victory lap that everyone can share, provided that your fans don't descend on the people who are cosplaying characters from A Game of Thrones and "doing it wrong" because they are dressing as the HBO versions instead of the book versions of the characters. But you get my meaning, I think.

I don't think it's unfair to ask people to behave in the same way they would if they were at, say, a work party. Or a social gathering at a non-geek's friends' house. And when it comes to the pick-up line, or misreading signals, well, those rules have been in place for far longer than all of us. No DOES mean no, after all. And if you misread a situation, then that's your lack of sophistication on display. Apologize and move on. Don't hang around, hoping to salvage something. Be a gentleman. Take the high road and never look back. Oh, hell, I hate having to spell this out for people. It's socially retarded. But hey, you know, there are some grown-ass men (and women) out there who don't know how to behave in public, much less inside the closed doors of fandom. Maybe a few etiquette and manners courses are in order. We'll call them "panels" and schedule them opposite the costume contest. 

This new group of people, these young girls and young women, are here, now, among us, and they want to be here. We need to be the goodwill ambassadors for The Geek Nation and welcome them with open arms. They need to be made to feel welcome, and safe, and we need to let them do their own thing. That's real acceptance, in a Star Trek, everyone is special, kind of way. It's not a boy's club anymore. It's a club for people. And we can be a part of this New Geek-World Order, or we can be slowly, painfully, drubbed out of the world we helped build. Because that's what happens to dinosaurs. They either become birds, or they end up in the tar pits.