purplerabbit

Since the characters I am writing about have been with me for over 30 years, they really do tell a lot about me.

Particularly strange to me is the lead character, Allaahtba. She is one of several alien female characters written during my early adolescents. Several of them share the striking characteristic of not being able to cry. Yep, several of them have no tear ducts and facial muscles that have a reduced range of expression. These are not unemotional characters like Spok. They are characters with intense feelings but the inability to communicate them with those around them.

I had been taught very early by bullies at school and well intentioned adults, not to show vulnerability. Adults trying to help me with bullies always advised not to let them see me cry, not to show them it upset me. My ex-Marine (2 tours of Nam) dad called me a pansy when I cried. My mother, feminist-radical-in-the-making taught me that girls cry too much. Fight back, get angry was their advise.

Yet, I was a committted pacificst. (Still am, but with diffierent ideas of what that means.)

So I created these powerful female aliens with the inability to cry or show feeling but who also didn't believe in violence. Except that extreme violence is always done to them in these stories. Done to them until they fight back.