As a writer, I have to get inside the skin of my characters and walk around for a bit.  I find this process transformative in ways I never expected.  Particularly with female characters.

As I have had to explain to numerous people in my life, I am not gay or transgender or in other ways different in regards to the gender I was born into.  But I have learned to accept those things as part of reality and elements of all of them exist inside my goofy old head.  Psychiatrists I have talked to (for many reasons unrelated to me being crazy) have suggested this means I am very empathetic and often feel the feelings of people I am talking with or reading about.  I understand that many writers and teachers are the same.

Valerie Clarke is the main character from Snow Babies and When the Captain Came Calling.

So as I work on stories with major characters who are female, I find female thinking taking over my goofy brain.

I have not experienced PMS or childbirth, but I have learned to see the world as little girls see it.   My Little Pony is a wonderful piece of didactic fantasy that teaches a girl that she can stand up for herself the way Apple Jack and Rainbow Dash do in a male dominated world, or that they can be the smartest person around like Twilight Sparkle even though she’s a girl.  Girls can be tough and smart even though the world tells them that it is not so.

And as I have tried to work with strong, self-reliant female characters who are not only tough and resilient, but empathetic, I have clearly demonstrated to myself that I prefer fuzzy-warm female thinking to the harsher kind of testosterone-fueled rage that one associates with male characters.  Hard and unforgiving, as character traits, lead to immovable objects being bashed by irresistible forces… and good and valuable things get broken.

An Interstellar Episode of the Mickey Mouse Club

So I am willing to state for the record, my mind is both male and female.  And though the other boys in the locker room may make fun of me for saying such a thing, I sometimes think the female part of it is better and more reliable.

When I was a kid in Iowa in the 1960’s Saturday morning television was the singular source of fuel for the imagination.  I loved the various adventure cartoons.  Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Thundarr the Barbarian, and the Herculoids were the source of endless lets-pretend games in Granpa’s grove and in the old barn.

I suppose the characters I envisioned myself being the most often were Zandor and his son Dorno.  These two practically naked people lived on a primitive planet that had to constantly be defended from space-faring invaders and free-booters that had ray-gun technology on their side.  The only weapons that the practically naked barbarians were able to use against the villains were exploding rocks that were shot out of a slingshot by Zandor and Dorno and Tara, or out of the horn-gun on the head of Tundro the living tank-beast with too many legs.  Of course, Igoo the giant rock ape could bop ’em with his big stone fists, or Zok the lightning dragon, could zap them with tail and eye lasers.  And Gloop and Gleep, the living Play-Doh blobs, could also always shape themselves into flyswatters or springs or wet blankets, or… well, you have to see it to really get it.

I learned valuable lessons from watching the Herculoids and then pretending to be them.  First of all, I learned that back-to-nature, practically-naked barbarians were morally superior to those who solve their problems with technology.  I also learned that you can win fights with exploding rocks and yelling, “Zandor!  Look out!” at the right time over computerized flying robots with lasers and disintegration rays. There was also the thing about never knowing when an old Space Ghost villain like Brakk or Moltarr was going to show up, and you needed to be ready to defeat them by doing the same things to them that Space Ghost had done to them in previous episodes.  And for some reason, bad guys come with a psychological need to capture Tara or Dorno or both Tara and Dorno and put them in cages.

I hope there was nothing psycho-sexual embedded in those old episodes.  That would be a terrible thing to do to an impressionable young boy who loved to watch the cartoons.  Explain to me again, Alex Toth and Hanna Barbera,  why are Zandor, Dorno, and Tara practically naked all the time?  Oh, yes, it was a tropical planet.  It must have been hot there.

Anyway, I must end this homage now, before I start analyzing how this somewhat bizarre cartoon actually affected me as a child.  I loved the Herculoids.  I still love them… no matter how goofy and weird they are.