"Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves."

So I've become obsessed with Mad Max: Fury Road. If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out.

It's always good to see films or read books that inspire you and Fury Road totally got my brain. It got into my brain for other reasons unrelated to how awesome it is.

As a woman of colour, I felt that I couldn't write anything "problematic" as I've lived a lot of the  experiences I tend to write about. Seeing Fury Road made me realize that just because I had been a victim of sexual assault didn't mean I was above using the horrible tropes associated with sexual assault in fiction. A screenplay I've been writing involved a scene where a character's sister is about to be raped in front of her. I thought that, because the character was female and her sister was saved, that scene would be ok. But then I started thinking about why I was using a rape of one character as a crime against another person. It bothers me when a woman's rape is a crime against a man in her life in various stories, films, whatever so why was it different in this case where the person in the woman's life was another woman?

One of my favourite bits about Fury Road is that the villain is a sex slaver and it has no on-screen rape. The wives' pregnant bellies, the chastity belts they cut off in one scene, and their obvious disgust for the villain implies a lot without the "titillating" shots that a lot of action movies show of sexual violence. You don't need to be shown a horrible act to know it's horrible yet a lot of movies will throw sexual violence into your face. I looked at my own stories and decided I needed to change some stuff.

I'm trying to be aware of how something can effect others. I hate when Native people are portrayed negatively so what gives me the right to not do good for someone else in a marginalized group. I've been struggling with this as I write a superhero story about a group of teenagers who, much like the X-Men, develop superpowers as they grow. One of the characters is Bronwyn: a young trans girl with the power to shape shift. I was just thinking about how it would feel to be a teenager, a horrible situation to be in already, with the power to make yourself over as you see fit. How about if you were trans?

Again though, I'm trying to be aware of the horrible tropes that have invaded my brain through bad movies and books. Media doesn't exist in a vacuum and I'm always trying to remain vigilante of what I do.

GIF Credit to Furioas on Tumblr

.....What are you still doing here? Go see Mad Max!

LLAP

I've mentioned numerous times that I'm a bit of a Trekkie.

 Marooned on some sort of ice planet. I think they call it 'Winnipeg'

I adored The Original Series as a child and felt like a grown-up when I watched The Next Generation. I've also mentioned numerous times that I was a huge weirdo as a child, never quite feeling comfortable in my own skin and annoying everyone with my anger at myself for not fitting in.

It's why I identified with the characters trying to find their humanity. I loved Data as he tried to learn what it was to be a human being. And I loved Spock as he dealt with his nature as a Vulcan and how that was at odds with being a human as well.

Leonard Nimoy died today. For some reason, I always felt like he was above death and would always be here. As I was cabbing it home with my mother from a doctor's appointment, I read on Facebook about Nimoy's death and told her about it. I also started to think about how his character helped me out as a little girl. I posted my thoughts to Twitter:

 

I've always wanted to speak Cree. It was the secret language of my parents and grandparents, used when they talked about money problems (which was a lot) or about the behaviour of my sister or I (which was also a lot). And despite how my grandmother and grandpa give me everything I ever whined for, Cree was never allowed. When my dad would sneak a few words to me to repeat back, my grandma would laugh her ass off at my poor pronunciation and shame me into never wanting to try again.

It makes you feel like an alien in your own family. I'm not sure how my sister feels about it but I imagine it's similar. There was a gap formed between our grandparents and us. Never being able to communicate and being treated differently because we were different. Internalized racism or just wanting to talk secretly without kids listening, it was negative. I always loved listening to my mom speaking to my grandmother in rapid fire Cree and talking to my Dad about Cree words and feelings that didn't have a translation into English. 

Cree was my human side and English was my Vulcan side while never being very comfortable with either. My interest in science fiction is largely because of my background as an Aboriginal person. Since I lacked stories about Native girls, I took what I could from the heroes I found dealing with similar situations to mine. These heroes were often found in sci-fi. I can understand why Trekkies are so hardcore with their love and devotion of the show because a lot of fans are as emotionally tied to the show as I am.

Plus Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home was like the best movie ever. 

So I thank Leonard Nimoy for his portrayal as Spock. For helping this once little and always weird Native girl feel that her feet being in two worlds wasn't always going to be a struggle. You could always be two and one at the same time. It's only logical.

Fascinating

Lots of love to you, Mr. Nimoy, as you return to the stars.

 

EDIT: Updated to add this lovely article from Buzzfeed

Mutant and proud

 Mystique of the X-Men universe is a bad ass. I am usually not a villain person but I just love her specifically the Rebecca Romijn version. I identified a lot with her. Leave it to me to identify with a shape shifting murderess

You know, people like you are the reason I was afraid to go to school as a child.

I hated taking the bus as a kid and begged my mom to drive me to school whenever she could. The bus ride was 20 minutes of torture. A bully once put gum in my hair and another punched me but the worst memory I have of that bus was when a group of bullies tried to rip my clothes off. Even now I hate being on school buses. I feel both exposed and unsafe. 

I'm not sure what annoyed bullies so much about me. I have always been a smart mouth and a know it all but no matter how adults can justify the behaviour of kids, having a bunch of douchebag teenage boys treat me like I was subhuman goes beyond cruel. 

Even now I feel a bit weird in my skin sometimes. I'm a pale urban Native and when I used to go home after the first time I moved away, people would criticize me for "acting white". In the city, my Native-ness makes me an object of curiosity and people treat me like I'm the representative of my culture. I feel like I have a mask for the reserve, a mask for work, a mask for who I am with friends, and a mask for when I'm dealing with racism in the city. 

My love of Mystique is because of her shape-shifting. Who wouldn't want to be skinnier, dark skinned, light skinned, blonde, blue-eyed, or whatever society thinks is acceptable. But I feel like I would be pieces of what was acceptable. I'm too pale for a Native, I'm too "foreign-looking" to be white, I'm too tall for a woman, my hair is too short to be pretty. 

Despite her being a villain, I think she was sent down that path for the bullying, the criticism and the hatred she faced. Even though I wouldn't follow the same path, I feel like her and I have a similar belief about being proud of who we are despite the criticism.

Nightcrawler: They say you can imitate anybody, even their voice. 

Mystique: *in Nightcrawler's voice* Even their voice.

Nightcrawler: Then why not stay in disguise all the time? You know, look like everyone else. 

 Mystique: Because we shouldn't have to. 

 I've always wanted to cosplay as Mystique but I wasn't about to put on a body suit to do it. Finally, I decided I was going to go as Mystique turning into me. With my newly bleached hair, I dyed a bit of my hair shocking red and got my face painted blue. I also put a yellow contact into one eye. 

What I wore to today's events at the C4 Con.

I really liked the way it worked out and I was glad to do only a small part of my face. I don't think the real Mystique would appreciate hiding who you really are even if you were pretending to be her.

I think I might be brave enough to do a body suit....one day.

What is old is new again

I went to see the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie a few days ago because I had the Scene points to get a free D-Box ticket and popcorn to boot. I also have a soft spot for TMNT no matter how terrible the subject matter.

Donatello is my favourite. Always a soft spot for an intelligent man.

I headed over to the theatre after work and saw an earlier presentation and there were loads of kids in the audience. I was also surprised to see so many little girls.

The only time I ever felt lonely as a child was when I didn't have friends who were into the same things I was. Being a nerdy Native little girl in the middle of nowhere meant I read a lot, played a lot of video games, and watched a lot of TV. And I fell in love with a lot of things: Power Rangers, TMNT, Super Mario, and Legend of Zelda.

When I moved to the city, I became friends with a lot of nerds and spent a lot of time online meeting more. I was surprised to see how possessive other nerds were about the things they loved. The only thing I ever really felt possessive over was Hawksley Workman and it was only because I wanted him to stay weird and awesome and just for me! I couldn't imagine being possessive of something like Power Rangers or TMNT so it's always strange to see 30-year-old dudes on Twitter complaining about kids being into things they digged when they were kids.

I was talking to my sister's boyfriend about it (As he is a huge Transformers fan) and I asked him what he thought about nerds being possessive of things like Transformers, TMNT, and the like. He said that it tends to be wanting to see your favourite thing grow with you.

"Is the big ugly one shooting laser beams into the crib!?

In some ways I think that's true. I like when my favourite properties grow and create newer and stronger stories. I love how the Super Mario games went from the simple "Your princess is in another castle" to the absolutely heartbreaking story that made up most of Super Mario Galaxy.  I like how Majora's Mask makes more sense to me now as an adult than it did when I first played it at the age of 12. I also like how the Batman films have grown with me. Batman 89 being the film of my childhood and Dark Knight being the film of my adulthood.

But I like when properties create new stories but have shout outs to the old fans. I liked how the first Transformers brought back the majority of the voices for characters that 80s kids grew up with. I loved the cute little shout outs to the original games when I played Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.

Bowser was so precious in this

I still don't understand hating new fans though. It usually seems related to media that is usually targeted to young men and boys. "Girls aren't into that sort of thing", etc. However, I think it's cool as hell to see little girls getting into something that was the domain of men. Yeah, love Barbies but don't feel like you can't like something because you're a girl.  I am not completely innocent though as I don't like to share. I once saw a guy I disliked dressed as the Terrance Stamp version of General Zod and I wanted to beat him up and take his lunch money.

But I could never hate on a kid being into something I love. My friend Devon's son was asking me how to play Luigi's Mansion when we both got the game for Christmas last year. I was happy to help him figure out how to use that vacuum. I got into a fun argument with a kid during the midnight showing of the first Hobbit when we were saying who had waited the longest for the movie. (Him: WELL YOU'RE OLDER THAN ME). I also loved seeing so many little girls checking out the new Turtles movie.

Little kids being into the things I love means they're always going to be around. I'll be 80 taking a grandchild to see another reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They'll always be teens to me. 

Don't call me 'Junior'!

 

-I can remember the last time we had a drink together. I had a milkshake. but, we didn't talk, we've never talked. Only if you were a regular dad just like the other boy's dad, this would be different. 

-I was a wonderful father. Did I ever tell you to eat up, go to bed, wash your ears, do your homework? No, I respected your privacy and I taught you self reliance. 

After going through my past blog posts, I noticed that I talked a lot about my dad and my sister but not so much about my mom. My mom and I are quite similar: we're both determined, we're both intelligent, and we're both the incredibly spoiled first born children of our parents. So we would yell at each other a lot as you always dislike personality traits of yourself when you see them in others. Because she yelled at me a lot more than she did my sister, I assumed she didn't like me. As a child, I assumed that she and I weren't close at all as we didn't have the sort of relationship I had with my Dad. 

Though my dad was free and loose with his affection towards me and always being supportive, my mother was very reserved with her affection. 

I apparently look scarily a lot like her.

My mom believes in me but she wanted me to be able to go it alone if I had to. She was the safe point from which I could explore the world. When I had to present a poem I wrote to a huge audience at my school's assembly, my mom sat in the front row. As I motored through that 10 line poem, I finished and ran into the arms of my mom who just smiled and held me, knowing how nervous I was. When she was affectionate, it mattered to me. And she never doubted me. When I was worried that I'd never get into law school and later found out I got into 3 of the 5 I applied to, she laughed and said, "Was there ever any doubt?" 

However, my mom, not my dad, was the planter of the seeds for my love of films. All of my childhood favourites were put into our VCR by her. While my dad wanted me to watch movies like  A Little Mermaid, my mom would let me watch Batman, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and all the Indiana Jones movies. The latter being the reason I got so interested in traveling (though I never really went anywhere until I was 16 and even then that was only to Vancouver).

My mother is also the only parent I have that understands my depression because she has gone through it too. As a teen, she went through the same difficult time I did. She told me recently that thoughts like that never really go away. It's always been a fear of mine that I will never get better. Robin Williams' death just unsettled me because he was 60 and couldn't beat it his shadows. I'm almost 30 and feel so tired thinking of another 50 or so years fighting mine.

I look at my mother though and see the strength she needs to deal with her trips to dialysis. Her strength to deal with an affliction that makes walking difficult. The strength to be tired all the time but still do what she needs to do. My mom has survived on nothing but her own determination and I look to her to see the kind of person I want to be. I want to be as strong as her.

-----

You left, just as you were becoming interesting. 

-----

I think my moving away from home was what brought my mother and I closer together. With the distance, we annoy each other less and enjoy each other's company more. Our relationship is never going to be the stereotypical mother and daughter thing but I like the way we are. We're like Drs Henry Jones Sr and Jr with me as the Indiana. Our relationship is better as a heartfelt action adventure than a sappy drama.

-They're trying to kill us!
-I KNOW, DAD

The Girlhood Dream

Ms. Vida seems to think that I don't have a dream. Well, honey, I'm not Martin Luther King. I don't need a dream. I have a plan.

Noxemma Jackson, To Wong Foo

I met my friend Tyler in acting class. At first, I didn't like him because I thought he was a bit of a ham. One day, I wore my CM Punk shirt to class. I only wear really nondescript wrestling shirts as the really obvious ones are ugly (and rarely come in a ladies' size anyway) so I was really surprised when Tyler complimented me on my shirt and we started our friendship over our love for wrestling.

If finding an awesome ladies size wrestling shirt is hard, finding a friend who likes pro wrestling as an art is even harder. Our conversations on Wade Barrett and Damien Sandow also included conversations about Nigel McGuinness and Colt Cabana and we could talk about the fun and the technical sides. 

When Tyler asked me if I thought he could be a wrestler, I told him the truth. It's hard. I wanted to be a wrestler but it's such a long way to get to the point where you "succeed". For me, I didn't look like a stereotypical female fit model slash actress slash wrestler. For Tyler, he didn't look like the steroid freak mastodons that the Vince McMahons of the world love.

But he didn't let that stop him. He went to Storm Academy in Calgary and trained and I supported him as much as I could. He was doing something I always wanted to do but felt so beaten before I even began.

Tonight I went to check out a local wrestling event as I really, really wanted to hit on Colt Cabana (shut up) and I was really surprised to see Tyler come out during the battle royale match. I cheered like an idiot and cheered even harder when he executed a freakin' beautiful hurricarana. During the intermission, I went to hug him and was just so proud to see him wrestling FOR REAL. 

Dreams are easy to have but actually going for them isn't. There are a lot of hurdles. Most of my hurdles were things that made me tired before I even started. The scornful looks I got when I amateur wrestled as a kid and the realization that there are barely any female main events in the WWE. I am sad I didn't say "fuck it" and go anyway. But I don't regret where my path has led me towards another dream. I just wish I had been as strong as Tyler to at least try. 

When Tyler had his second match, he and I had an epic high five as he circled the ring to slap the hands of the crowd that reached out. Seeing Tyler in the ring, even if it wasn't WWE, inspired me to dream big and just go for it. I aim to be as big as Tarantino, to make art, to do everything and anything I can. My fear may have ended one dream but the inspiration from Tyler made me realize I didn't want it to end another.

This is awesome! *Clap, clap, clap, clap*

I want you to know that you don't need me anymore

 This song is about letting go of someone you don't want to let go of.

Grief is so bittersweet to me. It's so amazing to me that you can love somebody so much that their loss leaves a mark on you forever.

It's been 10 years since my grandmother's death but I can still feel a hole in my soul that echoes inside every so often. Though I got so annoyed that her constant attempts to control my life, you don't forget someone like her. My grandma with her wrinkled hands covered in flour, her black and white hair, and her laugh. I see a lot of her in my sister and every time my sister does something that reminds me of our grandmother, it's like she's still here.

One of my friends is currently dealing with her own grandmother's illness and I told her that there's never enough time and even when you're expecting it, the end is always too soon. I was reminded of one of my favourite quotes from The Lord of the Rings:

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

Fear is not going to stop our loved ones from leaving us. However deciding to just enjoy the time we do have helps make things easier in the end. I have so many good memories of my grandmother and it's what I hold in my heart. I'm glad for every moment I had with her and for her love that still affects me.

kisâkihitin nôhkom (even though you'd totally hate me for speaking Cree)