Old Pulp Gender Role Bending

[bellatrys]

This isn't the Barsoom post I was intending to write (still working on that one) or rather, it's a chunk of it broken out, because it was obviously not all going to fit under one essay-umbrella. In honor of the possibility that Dark Horse has thought better* of gambling a dozen or more thousand simoleons on the dark horse named "Gor", as noted over

Comments

Are you, like, trying to work off your Purgatory in advance

[bellatrys]

by giving *us* the opportunity to experience our Purgatory on earth, eh?

Yes, this is exactly what they'd do, to start with. And you know, the whole Astral Projection thing is the flimsiest bit (and was when ER Eddison did it, too), but a little handwavy preface, a little borrowing from the Old Guard of Occultism who were ERB's contemporaries, and you could have a frame that would make it Plausible, if not Probable - and if you wanted to insert something to make it more likely, you could do the whole Sympathetic Vibrations and Ley Lines and make portentuous noises about how in Ye Olden Dayes, mortals believed that the Wandering Stars influenced the fate of kingdoms and empires on earth, Mars and Venus and Jupiter bringing the will of their respective gods into our lives - now here is a story of the reverse happening! It could be made to work.

--And yes, they would totally turn the Princess of Helium into a voluptuous red-headed "spitfire" aka "spoiled brat" whose "spunkiness" continually endangered herself AND John Carter, who would nevertheless always rescue her ungrateful Highness, sigh...and no, she wouldn't become fast friends with the loyal and goodhearted Sola, and of course they would combine Sola and Phaidor into one Bad Girl character, and...argh. Not even going there.

*grins*

[deiseach]

So, you think I could get a job developing projects for the SciFi Channel?

It's easy: you just think of exactly how you'd hate to see it done, and imagine the complete opposite of everything in the source material, and find the most inappropriate locations and sets, and there you go!