Jack Bauer Is Back! Rooferwriter Excited

Each season, watching Jack Bauer is my crackalicious duty. The over-the-top plots, the crazy characters, the lack of logic--somehow I'm still riveted. Jack Bauer fascinates and amuses me as a character, with his alpha toughness that borders on lunacy (but in a good, protect-the-world way) and his inability to communicate other than with weapons. And of course, there's always the thigh-shooting and the JackSack (TM) that holds all weapons and yet look so innocently empty when he's carrying it. We Jack fans cackle every time a thigh is shot, with much beverage consumed for each mention of "perimeter."

It's great how we get to love certain characters, in books and shows, and stay with them through their journey. We enjoy their ticks and mannerisms; we love them in spite of their faults. How many of us have whole series of books with characters that have become part of our reading family (Eve and Roarke come to mind)? When they do bone-headed things, we yell at them; when they're in danger or in pain, we're totally concerned about their safety and emotional well-being, looking eagerly for the next chapter or book to let us know all is well...for a little while ;-).

That's why I'm enjoying writing my Virtual series. It's an exercise in learning how to write with many eyes. I've discovered that it's like being on an escalator that goes up pass different floors, one that I can choose to stop on the way to the top. Each floor has different "stores," ones that I could explore, if I chose to get off, and the stores give me items that tell yet another layer of my hero's and heroine's stories.

As a writer, knowing that there are readers who are taking an interest in one's characters to commit to a series is humbling, exciting, scary, exhilarating, and so much more. It can also be overwhelming because the challenges can turn into quicksand and cut off one's air.

Like Jack Bauer's plot lines, how much more over-the-top can it get before the fans walk away? For now, I'm still willing to let Jack Bauer save the day. Why? Because the character is iconic: he moves around in a time with the ease of Bionic Man when all of us are mired in a frozen state. He is unbelievable and unbelievably amazing, but then all superheros are supposed to be both.

It's more difficult in a romance with action because the writer has to take care of the romance, have the hero heroic without crossing that gray line of being unredeemable. That Jack Bauer is aware of how far gone he is makes him a challenging romantic hero, if one is inclined to pick up the challenge to give him a romance plot line ;-). I heard that this season, he might meet a heroine dark and damaged enough to actually take him on. Can't wait!

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Post #2: The First Uber Bad Ass Kickass Screen Heroine

John Scalzi wrote an interesting article on the heroine of Aliens, Ellen Ripley, and how her character paved the way for later tough heroines. Read it HERE. He traced how the toughness of the heroine morphed into the heroines we know later: Terminator's Sarah Connor and even perhaps, X-File's Scully.

I totally agree but want to point to another icon that broke through the stereotype of women in action movies. It was Chien Pei Pei's groundbreaking role as wu xia's (okay, we call it kung fu here) first super heroine. I know it's an entirely different genre, but growing up in Malaysia, kung fu was like science fiction/fantasy to me, what with the odd language (mandarin not being my first) and revision of historical facts, as well as all the clan names and their different fight techniques.

Chien Pei Pei kicked ass. I can't stress enough how important she was in breaking through the usual mediocre roles of the damsel-standing-there-in-distress in these movies. I can remember how I suddenly "got" why my little brother loved those stupid ai-yah! movies, as I called them, when I watched the now classic Come Drink With Me, in which a governor sent HIS DAUGHTER off to save her kidnapped brother from some gangsters. I remember thinking, "Wow! He sent his daughter! Not some kungfu mercenary, not some big guards--his daughter!" And she just strolled in and faced bunches of these bad dudes and slayed them all.

In those days, the wu xia movies weren't sped up or full of tricks (oh, like flying for endless seconds and 500 somersaults) so watching Chien Pei Pei with swords was more like watching Chinese opera (very slow, very deliberate, with lots of Chinese clacky dramatic music), but it was still one lone female against the baddest thugs.

One of my favorite scenes in some of her movies is her disguised-as-male stranger moment. She usually sauntered into town in a big hat that had this long veil and the thugs would think the stranger was a male. And she would have these smart-ass lines that rivaled Clint Eastwood's before she destroyed the enemies. You guys don't even know how many hats I messed up trying to stitch on the long wispy veils that she made famous ;-).

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the wu xia movie that finally received attention from the west, paid homage to Cheng Pei Pei by casting her as the bad woman at the end of the movie. I was so delighted at seeing her that I forgave how unforgiveably bad the ending of the movie was. Or how horribly Chow Yun Fatt spoke mandarin. LOL.

Chien Pei Pei's standard lone heroine, like Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Riley, paved the way for the many kickass movie heroines we see on the screen today: in the eastern front we see shades of her characters in Michelle Yeoh's long career in HK cinema before her role as one of the Bond girls and, in the west, in Jennifer Garner's Elektra, Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft, and on the small screen, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy.

Happily (how I love modern tech), there are tons of scenes from Come Drink With Me on Youtube, and I can rewatch some of these at leisure. I did find one short scene of Chien Pei Pei when she was much, much older. Man, the lady can still move at her age. And yeah, still kicked a man's butt all by herself, ha!



Now, if I can find a scene of her in that hat, blowing guys away with her short swords, my day's made ;-).

As you can tell, the seeds of writing lone kickass heroines were planted in me a long, long time ago, way before Miss Alien Wombinator.

Do you have any favorite action heroines from the movies or small screen?

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About Uber Female Spies

I'm going off to meet Linnea Sinclair and Bob Mayer today! Also, I'll be partying down with good friends Kally Jo Surbeck, Pamela Clare and Robin Owens.

So, here is my guest blog entry for ROMANCE READERS AT HEART today. Check out what I have to say about romantic suspense and VHIS's uberspy heroine. What do you think of today's kickass heroines in our favorite genre?

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