Meeting my Childhood Princess

When I was a little boy I had a princess in just the same way other young children might have. She was beautiful and wore sumptuous gowns – sometimes – and at one point needed rescuing by a dashing young hero or three. But that wasn’t why she was a princess or at least why she was important to me.

You see my princess could look after herself and had sass. When someone told her they were going to execute her, she gave him lip. She fought her own battles, commanded soldiers and didn’t take crap from anyone. But she did all that without losing one iota of ‘femininity’. There is nothing ‘butch’ about Princess Leia.

So I grew up with a strong female hero figure every bit as cool as her male counterparts. Yesterday I got to meet, ever-so briefly, the real woman who brought that character to life and it was a wonderful experience. My own interaction with Carrie Fisher was very short, she got the photo I wanted signed, said my name as way of greeting/confirming I was the right person and we briefly chatted as she signed. She made an instant connection, made me feel worthy of being there and also moved me on quickly so she could meet the hundreds of people still in line.

As for her panel, she was funny, warm and insightful. She knew how much of a star she was to us but it didn’t go to her head, there was a distinct sense that she considered it all something fortunate that had happened to her, she landed a role she didn’t expect and became a super star she never thought she’d be and yes she had more than a few ‘issues’ – and she was very open about them – but she was no diva. Like her character, she may be called a princess and may earn our admiration but she doesn’t expect special treatment or talk like she’s above any one of us.

One bit of advice she gave in response to a question about creativity and mental ‘issues’ shall we say, was worth remembering – “It’s not about staying sane, it’s about finding our path through what we call ‘sanity’ and dealing with that as best we can.” That may not be verbatim but it’s close.

Possibly more importantly, she advised us all to have fun. She didn’t just say it, she was clearly doing it. Life had presented her with that moment and she grabbed it with both hands and enjoyed it to the full. Most importantly she advised to kill giant slugs at any given opportunity as killing Jabba had given her true happiness.

So I got to meet my childhood princess, and sure she isn’t Leia, but she was still the princess and meeting her was every bit the honour, not because she was in my favourite film franchise, but because of the woman she is. Thank you Carrie.

Keep dreaming – and kill a giant slug for happiness.

I Write Like

I don't know how the site does the analysis but if you insert text you've written into it, it analyses it somehow and tells you what famous writer you write like. So I put the first page of The Scarlet Ring in and was pretty chuffed with the result. Here's hoping I get the success he's had.

I write like
Neil Gaiman

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Keep dreaming!

Random Thesis Musing No 1

In her essay, On Ghosts, Mary Shelley laments the way the world is changing to a more rational, more understood and more linear place. The way the sun is known to be a star filled with gas as opposed to a mysterious orb that might be the chariot of a god, for instance. In this she neatly summarises a general feeling within the Romantic movement and with the Gothics in particular – that the new ways following the various revolutions at the end of the 18th century were potentially robbing us of our sense of wonder; hence the romanticising of the past and the insistence (at times) in the existence of the supernatural.

As progress has not slowed since that time it is little wonder these feelings have lingered and the rebellious medievalist spirit of the Gothics has continued in many forms of storytelling as well. But while mad monks, ghosts, mouldering castles and star-crossed lovers gave escape from the modernising of the world, Shelly went further and commented on the very progress she lamented in her essay.
In Frankenstein she inverts the supernatural threat by having the devils and monsters made by humans overstepping their mortal bounds as opposed to things beyond our mortal ken. In so doing she of course established an archetype and moved us closer to a genre which would become science fiction. Taking the novel with On Ghosts and her other major work, The Last Man, however we see a different tradition arise.

Shelley gives us a world we think we understand but do not. Her works threaten us with destruction because of this assumed knowledge and the failure to understand the greater mystery.

Taking this view, a new tradition can be seen to have risen from Shelley, one of a shrinking, rationalised world left at the mercy of the forgotten things, or inversely, the tragic lingering of the old ways against the rise of the new. The first half of this is best represented in HP Lovecraft’s Cthulu and Dream Quest stories, while the latter is seen in Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. More recently, Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods combine both sides of the tradition.