Celebrating The Awesome Ladies of Star Wars
On Friday, Bleeding Cool kicked off the celebration of Women In Comics by interviewing Corinna Bechko, who is a writer on Dark Horse Comics’ Star Wars: Legacy. This is one of my favorite comics. Bechko talks about writing Ania Solo.
You’ve said in a previous interview that Ania is “not a traditional bad ass female lead”. Could you explain a little whether you think “traditional bad ass” is limiting for female characters or why it’s important that Ania is not?
It can be fun to have those tropes but it can also become a cage that doesn’t allow the character to grow or change. We felt it was important for Ania to be able to have flaws, weaknesses, humor, and warmth. She needed to be able to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, or choose to disregard them. A lot of that isn’t possible when a character needs to constantly be cool and infallible. Plus, it’s more fun to write about someone who seems like an actual person.
She also shares some thoughts on the state of women in the comics industry, which are also relevant to the science fiction and fantasy book industry.
Why do you think there are fewer women working on comics produced by large and mid-sized publishers? How do you think readers can help to promote change and more diversity?
I think a lot of it comes down to the corporate culture of any given business. People tend to hire people they know and trust, and often those people look just like they do. It’s a legacy issue too. “That’s the way it’s always been” has a powerful hold, even if people don’t realize it and don’t actively mean to perpetuate it.
Check out the complete interview at Bleeding Cool.
Over at The Mary Sue, Jennifer Lee shares insights as a pioneer filmmaker from ILM back in its earliest days.
Visual Effects Supervisor Lindy De Quattro works at ILM. I asked her about the current numbers of women working technically in VFX. “There are more than there used to be but not as many as there should be.”
She thought that there were many reasons for this: “Not enough women in STEM fields in school, not enough role models in the industry, not enough mentoring help for women who do enter the field.” She thought that an additional factor was “gender discrimination by others within the industry.”
Tricia Barr’s novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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