"I'll Smack You Like A Little Girl!"

Gender politics have been in the news lately, from a little boy dressing as Scooby-Doo's Daphne to a Swedish preschool that refers to their students as hens to little Sasha Laxton to a kid standing up to his own father in a GameStop on his little brother's behalf, there's no shortage of challenges to heteronormative biases that most of us would otherwise have thought went the way of witch burnings and segregation.

As someone who grew up with the knowledge that Samus Aran was a woman (before Other M turned her into Bella Swan in power armor), Lady Jaye could crack wise about being a human sacrifice (and kick a few heads in while strung up), Zelda didn't need Link half as bad as she might have insisted, Marion Ravenwood could drink any man under the table, and Karana could manage island life all on her own despite her people's traditions, I like to think I've a fairly liberal view of gender roles, and frankly find the idea of a little boy dressing up as Daphne as funny as it is cute.

I bring all this up because today I overheard something while eating at my local Steak 'n' Shake with my roommate, before going to see Phantom Menace in 3D. Across from our booth, a little boy of maybe five or six was... well, doing what little kids do in public places, running around yelling like he was on fire and grinning ear to ear as only little kids can do when they're testing their parents' limits. When said limit was finally tested to the point of breaking, the boy's mother (emphasis: MOTHER) looked him dead in the eye and said that if he didn't knock it off:

"I'll smack you like a little girl!"

In light of those aforementioned stories and female archetypes from my childhood, I'd like to say to that mother:

"YOU'RE... NOT... HELPING!"

Special Acknowledgement: Thanks to Desi, a very talented artist, for posting about the Sasha Laxton story, and Vanessa Hahn, one of the strongest women I know, for mentioning the Gamestop story.

The Problem with Proto Sapiens

Okay, hereabouts is where we have some... unforeseen issues with the story. To put the whole thing in perspective, this story was written around 1998, maybe even a little earlier. I kept picking the thing up and putting it down, forgetting it for months at a time before picking it back up again, but around the second or third picking up, well... 

Proto Sapiens are Grace's people. In short, they're humans who were abducted from earth thousands of years ago as a cheap (read: slave) labor force. By way of insurrection against or abandonment by their captors, these humans found themselves stranded on foreign worlds, often with distinctly different environments than earth's, causing them to adapt and develop in different ways. In the case of the Proto Sapiens (which, I'll admit, etymologically speaking, doesn't make that much sense, but it kind of sounds cool, so it remains the name), they're albino due to the cloud cover over venus. Because of the isolation from earth and incredible lengths of time following their departure, they've developed a completely new culture and language. The language is wherein the problem lies. 

It's strangely very difficult to write 'bad english' because at worst it's racist (against whom in this case I have no idea) and at best it sounds silly. Unfortunately, while I dodged the 'race' bullet, the 'silly' bullet was dead-on... and the bullet was a brick hurled at mach one... and the hospital bed I was left to recover upon was a pile of bricks with a moth-eaten sheet draped over it.... 

What happened was Phantom Menace. Specifically, what happened was Gungans. I had effectively and inadvertantly predicted the diction and speech patterns of the most annoying alien race in the history of science fiction. I guess at the time it just sounded better in my head, the way Grace's grandfather spoke, but when Boss Nass of Gunga City opened his donkey-lips, out came the exact voice I'd heard in my head when writing the scenes with Arthur and Callie meeting the Proto Sapiens and when Grace reveals she knows a little more english than previously let on. 

So then, the challenge in continuing where I left off (which is about one or two chapters after part six) is finding a way to pare down or tone back the 'badness' of Proto Sapien english. Worst case scenario, instead of actually writing out the rest of the story, I'll just pull a jerk-move and write a summary of the remaining plot. Hopefully, I won't have to.