While I had always been interested in superheroes and science fiction, it was fairy tales that pushed me to explore other geeky interests. I loved stories based on fairy tales, or featuring those fantasy-style villains. As a pre-teen fairy tales were especially influential – both in the types of books I chose and the television I watched.
Like most adolescents in the 90s, I devoured every Lurlene McDaniel book as soon as it was released, and I eagerly awaited each installment of the Fear Street series. But I also read fair tale retellings, which eventually led to historical fiction. Through historical fiction I read works like There Will Be Wolves, The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle, and The Nine Days Queen, all of which gave me a hunger for more strong yet flawed female heroes.
Science fiction/fantasy was a natural progression. In no time I had read everything my small school library held, and had started to explore more “grown up” works. Here, even in dystopian works, I found the type of character I could relate to – the type of character whose narration I longed to read. I still remember the first time I read The Princess Bride, and saw how badass Princess Buttercup really was. In fact, my enduring and everlasting love for William Goldman’s work is what lead me to enroll in my high school’s science fiction/fantasy course. That course changed my life. It was here that I was exposed to new mediums, new authors, new worlds. It was because of this course that my insightful and fantastic teacher introduced me to the world of Neil Gaiman, through Good Omens (his collaboration with the prolific and legendary Terry Pratchett) and Neverwhere.
While Good Omens was fantastic, it was Neverwhere that stuck with me, and drove me to seek out more works by Gaiman, and eventually the genre in general. The perseverance and resilience of Neverwhere‘s Door stood out as exceptional. She wasn’t the first fictional character from whom I drew strength, but her particular type of resilience will forever stand out in my mind. The way she kept running into obstacles and setbacks but continued to meet them with hope and a drive to just survive was exactly what I needed at the time, and something I can revisit when I need that kind of drive and encouragement. My teacher changed my life by giving me Door – not because I needed her to exist, but because I needed to see that that type of bravery and determination to keep going do. I already knew that dragons existed – that there was darkness and hardship and downright horrible things in the world, but I needed to know that they could be defeated. Door was the character who showed me it was possible; that I could defeat my own dragons without compromising myself.
Door’s strength and resilience led m to demand the same from the other female characters in the media I consumed. She led me to great geek works like Firefly, Batwoman, and Harry Potter. Door helped me find the amazing side of geekdom; she showed me how to draw strength from other characters, how to apply their struggles to my own and to come out on top. Science fiction and fantasy are extensions of fairy tales; they show us the darkness, but they also show us how the darkness can be defeated.
