#the gender stuff is kind of an undercurrent

[desperatepleasures]

the fic writing is going great lads

#fic tag #today's issue of 'notes doth leaves for doth in doth's doth-only dothcord server' #i feel like what i have is like. only obvious If You Know #and ambiguous enough that the line could be about other aspects of the story (which are admittedly more relevant to the story than gender) #the gender stuff is kind of an undercurrent #so like i feel like the ending i have is okay #but it's tempting to make it blatantly About Gender lol #i think i'll leave it subtle though #if nothing else. I'LL know

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post: Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon has long been one of rock’s female icons, one of a tiny handful of women to get much play in Michael Azzerad’s underground-defining Our Band Could Be Your Life and a mainstay in the noise-rock monolith Sonic Youth. It’s hard to imagine that quintessential dude rock band without Gordon in front, dwarfed by her bass or spitting tranced out, pissed off verses over the storm of feedback.

Yet Gordon’s trajectory has been, if anything, even more fascinating since Sonic Youth’s demise in 2011. A visual artist first — she studied art at the Otis College of Art and Design before joining the band — she continues to paint and sculpt and create. She’s had solo art shows at established galleries in London and New York, most recently at the 303 Gallery in New York City. A veteran of indie films including Gus van Zant’s Last Days and Todd Haynes I’m Not There, she has also continued to act sporadically, appearing in the HBO series Girls and on an episode of Portlandia. Her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out in 2015.

But Gordon has remained surprisingly entrenched in indie music over the last decade. Many critics, including a few at Dusted, consider her Body Head, collaboration with Bill Nace the best of the post-Sonic Youth musical projects. The ensemble has now produced two EPs and three full-lengths. Gordon has also released two solo albums, which push her iconic voice into noisier, more hip hop influenced directions. We’re centering this listening post around The Collective, Gordon’s second and more recent solo effort, which comes out on Matador on March 8th, but we’ll likely also be talking about her other projects as well.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: I missed No Home in 2019, so I was somewhat surprised by The Collective’s abrasive, beat-driven sound though I guess you could make connections to Sonic Youth’s Cypress Hill collaboration?

The more I listen to it, though, the more it makes sense to me. I’ve always liked the way Gordon plays with gender stereotypes, and “I’m a Man” certainly follows that trajectory. What are you guys hearing in The Collective?

Jonathan Shaw: I have only listened through the entire record once, but I am also struck by its intensities. Sort of silly to be surprised by that, given so many of the places she has taken us in the past: noisy, dangerous, dark. But there's an undercurrent of violence to these sounds that couples onto the more confrontational invocations and dramatizations of sex. It's a strong set of gestures. I like the record quite a bit.

Bill Meyer: I'm one of those who hold Body/Head to be the best effort of the post-Sonic Youth projects, but I'll also say that it's very much a band that creates a context for Gordon to do something great, not a solo effort. I was not so taken with No Home, which I played halfway through once upon its release and did not return to until we agreed to have this discussion. I've played both albums through once now, and my first impression is that No Home feels scattered in a classic post-band-breakup project fashion — “let's do a bit of this and that and see what sticks.” The Collective feels much more cohesive sonically, in a purposeful, “I'm going to do THIS” kind of way.

Jonathan Shaw: RE Jennifer's comment about “I'm a Man”: Agreed. The sonics are very noise-adjacent, reminding me of what the Body has been up to lately, or deeper underground acts like 8 Hour Animal or Kontravoid's less dancy stuff. Those acts skew masculine (though the Body has taken pains recently to problematize the semiotics of those photos of them with lots of guns and big dogs...). Gordon's voice and lyrics make things so much more explicit without ever tipping over into the didactic. And somehow her energy is in tune with the abrasive textures of the music, but still activates an ironic distance from it. In the next song, “Trophies,” I love it when she asks, “Will you go bowling with me?” The sexed-up antics that follow are simultaneously compelling and sort of funny. Rarely has bowling felt so eroticized.

Jennifer Kelly: I got interested in the beats and did a YouTube dive on some of the other music that Justin Raisen has been involved with. He's in an interesting place, working for hip hop artists (Lil Yachty, Drake), pop stars (Charli XCX) and punk or at least punk adjacent artists (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Viagra Boys), but nothing I've found is as raw and walloping as these cuts.

“The Candy House” is apparently inspired by Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, which is about a technology that enables people to share memories... Gordon is pretty interested in phones and communications tech and how that's changing art and human interaction.

Andrew Forell: My immediate reaction to the beats was oh, The Bug and JK Flesh, in particular the MachineEPs by the former and Sewer Bait by the latter. Unsurprisingly, as Jonathan says, she sounds right at home within that kind of dirty noise but is never subsumed by it

Jennifer Kelly: I don't have a deep reference pool in electronics, but it reminded me of Shackleton and some of the first wave dub steppers. Also, a certain kind of late 1990s/early aughts underground hip hop like Cannibal Ox and Dalek.

Bryon Hayes: Yeah, I hear some Dalek in there, too. Also, the first Death Grips mixtape, Ex-Military.

It's funny, I saw the track title “I'm a Man,” and my mind immediately went to Bo Diddley for some reason, I should have known that Kim would flip the script, and do it in such a humorous way. I love how she sends up both the macho country-lovin’ bros and the sensitive metrosexual guys. It's brilliant!

This has me thinking about “Kool Thing”, and how Chuck D acts as the ‘hype man’ to Kim Gordon in that song. I'm pretty sure that was unusual for hip hop at the time. Kim's got a long history of messing with gender stereotypes.

Bill Meyer: Gordon did a couple videos for this record, and she starred her daughter Coco in both of them. The one for “I'm A Man” teases out elements of gender fluidity, how that might be expressed through clothing, and different kinds of watching. I found the video for “Bye Bye” more interesting. All the merchandise that's listed in the video turns out to be a survival kit, one that I imagine that Gordon would know that she has to have to get by. The protagonist of the video doesn't know that, and their unspoken moment in a car before Coco runs again was poignant in a way that I don't associate with her work. And of messing with hip hop!

Tim Clarke: “Bye Bye” feels like a companion to The Fall’s “Dr Buck’s Letter.”

Bill Meyer: From The Unutterable? I'll have to a-b them.

Tim Clarke: That’s the one.

Jonathan Shaw: All of these comments make me think of the record’s title, and the repeated line in “The Candy House”: “I want to join the collective.” Which one? The phone on the record’s cover nods toward our various digital collectives — spaces for communication and expression, and spaces for commerce, all of which seem to be harder and harder to tell apart. A candy house, indeed. Why is it pink? Does she have a feminine collective in mind? A feminine collective unconscious? The various voices and lyric modes on the record suggest that's a possibility. For certain women, and for certain men working hard to understand women, Gordon has been a key member of that collective for decades.

Jennifer Kelly: The title is also the title of a painting from her last show in New York.

The holes are cell phone sized.

You can read about the show here, but here's a representative quote: “The iPhone promises freedom, and control over communication,” she says. “It’s an outlet of self-expression, and an escape and a distraction from the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world. It’s also useful for making paintings.”

Gordon is a woman, and a woman over 70 at that — by any measure an underrepresented perspective in popular culture. However, I’d caution against reading The Collective solely as a feminist statement. “I'm a Man,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an incel male, an act of storytelling and empathy not propaganda. My sense is that Gordon is pretty sick of being asked, “What's it like to be a girl in a band?” (per “Sacred Trickster”) and would like, maybe, to be considered as an artist.

It's partly a generational thing. I'm a little younger than she is, but we both grew up in the patriarchy and mostly encountered gender as an external restriction.

As an aside, one of my proudest moments was when Lucas Jensen interviewed me about what it was like to be a freelance music writer, anonymously, and Robert Christgau wrote an elaborate critique of the piece that absolutely assumed I was a guy. If you're not on a date or getting married or booking reproductive care, whose business is it what gender you are?

There, that's a can of worms, isn't it?

Jonathan Shaw: Feminine isn't feminist. I haven't listened nearly closely enough to the record to hazard an opinion about that. More important, it seems to me the masculine must be in the feminine unconsciousness, and the other way around, too. Precisely because femininity has been used as a political weapon, it needs imagining in artistic spaces. Guess I also think those terms more discursively than otherwise: there are male authors who have demonstrated enormous facility with representing femininity. James, Joyce, Kleist, and so on. Gordon has always spoken and sung in ways that transcend a second-wave sort of feminine essence. “Shaking Hell,” “PCH,” the way she sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

Jennifer Kelly: Sure, she has always been shape-shifter artistically.

The lyrics are super interesting, but almost obliterated by noise. I’m seeing a connection to our hyperconnected digital society where everything is said but it’s hard to listen and focus.

Bill Meyer: Concrete guy that I am, I’ve found myself wishing I had a lyric sheet even though her voice is typically the loudest instrument in the mix.

Andrew Forell: Yes, that sense of being subsumed in the white noise of (dis)information and opinion feels like the utopian ideal of democratizing access has become a cause and conduit of alienation in which the notion of authentic voices has been rendered moot. It feels integral to the album as a metaphor

Christian Carey: How much of the blurring of vocals (good lyrics — mind you) might involve Kim’s personal biography, I wonder? From her memoirs, we know how much she wished for a deflection of a number of things, most having to do with Thurston and the disbandment of SY.

Thurston was interviewed recently and said that he felt SY would regroup and be able to be professional about things. He remarked that it better be soon: SY at eighty wouldn’t be a good look!

Andrew Forell: And therein lies something essential about why that could never happen

Ian Mathers: I know I’m far in the minority here (and elsewhere) because I’ve just never found Sonic Youth that compelling, despite several attempts over the years to give them another chance. And for specifically finding Thurston Moore to be an annoying vocal presence (long before I knew anything about his personal life, for what it's worth). So, I’m in no hurry to see them reunite, although I do think it would be both funny and good if everyone except Moore got back together.

Having not kept up with Gordon much post-SY beyond reading and enjoying her book, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this record. After a couple of listens, I’m almost surprised how much I like it. Even though I’m lukewarm on SY’s music, she’s always been a commanding vocal presence and lyricist and that hasn’t changed here (I can echo all the praise for “I’m a Man,” and also “I was supposed to save you/but you got a job” is so bathetically funny) and I like the noisier, thornier backing she has here. I also think the parts where the record gets a bit more sparse (“Shelf Warmer”) or diffuse (“Psychic Orgasm”) still work. I've enjoyed seeing all the comparisons here, none of which I thought of myself and all of which makes sense to me. But the record that popped into my head as I listened was Dead Rider’s Chills on Glass. Similar beat focus, “thick”/distorted/noisy/smeared production, declamatory vocals. I like that record a lot, so it's not too surprising I'm digging this one.

Jennifer Kelly: I loved Sonic Youth but have zero appetite for the kind of nostalgia trip, just the hits reunion tour that getting back together would entail.

Jonathan Shaw: Yeah, no thanks to that.

RE Christian's comment: Not sure I see deflection so much as the impossibility of integration. We are all many, many selves, always have been. Digital communications interfaces and social media have just lifted it to another level of experience. Gordon sez, “I don't miss my mind.” Not so much a question of missing it in the emotional/longing sense, more so acknowledging that phrases like “my mind” have always been meaningless. Now we partition experience and identity into all of these different places, and we sign those pieces of ourselves over, to Zuck and the algorithms. We know it. We do it anyways, because it's the candy house, full of sweets and pleasures that aren't so good for us, but are really hard to resist. “Come on, sweets, take my hand...”

Bill Meyer: I would not mind hearing all of those SY songs I like again, can’t lie, although I don’t think that I’d spend Love Earth Tour prices to hear them. But given the water that has passed under the bridge personally, and the length of time since anyone in the band has collaborated creatively (as opposed to managing the ongoing business of Sonic Youth, which seems to be going pretty well), a SY reunion could only be a professionally presented piece of entertainment made by people who have agreed to put aside their personal differences and pause their artistic advancement in order to make some coin. There may be good reasons to prioritize finances. Maybe Thurston and/or Kim wants to make sure that they don’t show up on Coco’s front door, demanding to move their record or art collection into her basement, in their dotage. And Lee’s a man in his late 60s with progeny who are of an age to likely have substantial student loan debt. But The Community is just the kind of thing they’d have to pause. It feels like the work of someone who is still curious, questioning, commenting. It's not just trying to do the right commercial thing.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m finding this one to be a sort of statement album. I’d stop short of calling it a concept album, but there seems to be a thematic center. I think a key element of the album is the way that it looks for... if not signal and noise, at least a sense of order and comprehensibility in a chaotic world. Gordon isn’t even passing judgment on the world — phones are bad, phones are good, phones make art, etc. But there’s a sense that our world is increasingly brutal, and we hear that not just in the guitars, but in the beats, and the production. “BYE BYE” really introduces the concept. Gordon’s leaving (and we can imagine this is autobiographical), but she’s organizing everything she needs for a new life. “Cigarettes for Keller” is a heartbreaking line, but she moves on, everything that makes up a life neatly ordered next to each other, iBook and medications in the same line. It reminds me of a Hemingway character locking into the moment to find some semblance of control in the chaos.

Getting back to gender, there’s a funny line at the end: one of the last things she packs is a vibrator. I'm not sure if we're to read this as a joke, a comment on the necessity of sexuality in a life full of transitory moments, as a foreshadowing of the concepts we’ve discussed, or something else. The next item (if it’s something different) is a teaser, which could be a hair care product or something sexual (playing off — or with — the vibrator). Everything's called into question: the seriousness of the track, the gender/sexuality ideas, what really matters in life. Modern gadgets, life-sustaining medicines, and sex toys all get equal rank. That tension really adds force to the song.

Coming out of “BYE BYE,” it's easy to see a disordered world that sounds extremely noisy, but still has elements we can comprehend within the noise. I don’t want to read the album reductively and I don't think it's all about this idea, but it's something that, early on in my listening, I find to be a compelling aspect of it.

#dusted magazine #listeningpost #kim gordon #the collective #jennifer kelly #jonathan shaw #bill meyer #andrew forell #bryon hayes #tim clarke #christian carey #ian mathers #justin cober-lake

[doedipus]

As someone whose first trans community was trans reddit back in the early 2010s, it's interesting how different the vibe has gotten wrt how people talk about transition. Like the main function of pages like /r/asktg was to discuss the mechanics of it all, right, like people would post asking for advice about surgeons and getting hrt, relationship stuff, what to think about when questioning, there was a weekly voice training club, etc. and then as time went on, a handful of orbiting subs cropped up for jokes and memes and whatever, but the focus of that community at that time was very much on documenting how to go about transitioning.

And then on this site, especially over the last 5-6 years, there's a very different attitude, where the emphasis is much more on just sharing a community with other trans people, talking about our interests and political stuff. It's probably an artifact of most of the people I follow being pretty far along with this stuff, but I see very little discussion of the mechanics of things here anymore. I see pushback against the prior emphasis on mechanical stuff more often than I see that kind of advice in the first place

And I think in general that's probably for the best, right, like we all remember dipshit trans-med discourse wars. It ended up being really easy for "this is how you can approach this aspect of transition" to turn into "and if you don't do it exactly this way you're fucking it up for the rest of us."

But sometimes it also feels like things kind of do a toxic positivity underflow from "this task is annoying or confusing or scary" -> "it's fine to not worry about that, it's not for everyone and it doesn't make you a poser or anything if you don't" -> "that task is completely not worth bothering with, and if you do then you're a narc." I wonder whether there's an undercurrent of defeatism in that line of thinking sometimes.

in any case, practical advice about voice training, The Surgery, makeup tricks, hair removal, etc aren't really circulated in the same way, and are seldom discussed positively at all. But like, sure these aren't for everyone, but there's also a lot of gender euphoria and straight-up safety being left on the table there otherwise, y'know?

#this post brought to you by Kimberly remembering that she does have a girl voice on deck and it does feel good to use

[amuseoffyre]

4, 7, and 8! ❤️

4. say something nice about a ship you don't ship (it can be another ship in your fandom, a mutual's OTP, etc)

I love seeing some of the art from Steddyhands artists. I don't read much fic and when I do, it's primarily gentlebeard, but I do appreciate a well done art :D

7. your favorite tropes to read/write/draw

*bangs table with both fists* CLASS ISSUES CLASS ISSUES CLASS ISSUES. You know you're reading something of mine if there are class issues in there :D Not necessarily front and centre, but I love the undercurrent that it can bring to a story. OFMD gave so many layers of it and the layers in between as well, with the different strata and different kinds of working class and the intersection of race with class and the experiences reflected by said characters and how they operate differently within a world dictated by a specific upper-crust white elite.

Like Frenchie's knowledge of interacting within an upper crust environment is 100% different from Olu's, but they are both dealing with the automatic racist prejudice of their very rich and very white guests in the party ship and Frenchie knows how to use it, while Olu very quickly realises that he's gonna have fun on this ride.

Or Izzy and Stede's dynamic because Izzy is the epitome of northern English working class, all grit and tenacity, while Stede - as landed gentry, aka someone who is living off the profits of the labour of others while sitting on his arse and doing nothing - and buying his way into the rank of captain is everything Izzy hates. The gentry came from trade and made their money using people like Izzy, and he Does Not Care For It. (Izzy and Christopher Eccleston would get on like a house on fire)

There's just so much happening. Like the Badmintons - they're upper crust but they're younger sons (firstborns inherited, the spares tended to military service or the church). They get nothing for their inheritance and then there's Stede, heir to a fortune that his trader daddy made. Not even aristocracy but worth more than them. They would hate it.

So. Much. Tasty. Class. Stuff.

Also gender stuff. Om nom nom nom.

8. you hope more people will come to appreciate ___ (a ship, a trope, an episode, etc)

The music. Good grief the music this season has been staggeringly well used. The recurring motifs and themes, the flip of the Gnossienne to the Sad Love theme. The different songs they used in different moments. The choices of instruments on certain themes. The subtle echo of "Be a Lighthouse" in "Return to the Revenge" when the crew work together to escape. IT IS ALL AAAAAAA

#ofmd #ask meme #fandom

[consistentsquash]

HP Fic Recs! Snapecase Sunday!

Check out Snapecase! The fest is still going on. Lots of Snape centric fics/art! I didn't get the time to read everything but I got some recs from my reading. Definitely check out the fest for yourself.

5 fav fics with 5 different vibes.

Candles Lit Against the Dark

Pairing - McGonagall/Grubbly Plank.

Length - 11000 words

Vibe - Feel good with a happy ending. BANTER!!!!

Author's summary - It's been a few months since Minerva's retirement, and she'd promised Wil a dinner out. Before she knows it, friends start turning up on her doorstep and then at the pub, not least among them a certain spy who came in from the cold.

Rec - READ THIS! The longest fic of the fest iirc. But also the best! My favorite fic of 2023 so far!! Don't miss this fic! I love literally everything about it. The prose, the really sharp banter, the characterizations, the dynamics of their relationships. A lot of times we get to see the postwar setting when stuff is really raw or when they sort of got over it. This fic has a really low stakes premise of a retirement party but the undercurrents of their history/war is super present. The writing has this really precise balance where it feels light but it is at the same time dealing with tons and tons of complicated PTSD and messy baggage. ALSO SNARRY! Technically background Snarry but not really. It's right in your face. McGonagall's face I mean! :D :D ALSO THE BANTER! Sorry but not sorry! This is an ALL CAPS SCREAMING fic. Some real Seinfeld moments with the sharp banter.

Vibe quote

Wil wasn't a smirker, but it was a near thing. "Not that our dear old Skunk isn't capable of riding a bucking broom into the nearest cloud all on his own, but I did put the wind up his bristles. The therapeutic effects of working with the herd get raised now and then when we're out on the hillside and Severus is in a receptive mood. Harry being one of our lad's personal Boggarts – not that that's ever been a secret – I thought it worth mentioning his recent distress. Divorce and all. Gave my opinion that somebody ought to nudge the lad into beneficial activity."

Rec note - the fic that made me late for work. No regrets.

Womb

Pairing - gen, Phineas POV

Length - 2900 words.

Vibe - Angst with a happy ending. GENDER!!!

Author's Summary - Phineas revisits the question of legacy.

Rec - a solid premise of Found Family with a twist like A Christmas Carol. Phineas thinks his legacy is over because Sirius is dead. But he starts to accept legacy isn't about blood and "adopts" Snape. I mean. Sort of. Technically he saves Snape. I mean. It's complicated! Read it read it read it!!!! OMG!!!! It's a beautiful and eerie fic with lots of unforgivable magic which you forgive anyway because the motive is love. Also lots of gender. Definitely be careful with this fic if you have some gender dysphoria. It has a lot of detach/remove and some really clever techniques to kind of abstract the harder stuff so it doesn't feel dysphoric but these things can be YMMV. Phineas POV! He is super hard to sympathize with because he's pretty much into the purity thing. But you can definitely see where he is coming from and why/how he changes. ALSO SNARRY PRESLASH??

Rec note - So this fic has some serious Giger vibes. Giger designed the chestburster Alien in the Alien franchise. A strange combo of gender imagery.

Vibe Quote

And out came bursting a stick-shaped, sour-shaped man, bawling as only a newborn could, naked as something sprung from the mother, with pigment smearing him in afterbirth.

Some Semblance of Family

Pairing - gen, Eileen POV

Length - 2200 words.

Vibe - Angst with Glass Onion vibes!

Author's Summary - Eileen returns to Prince House on familial business.

Rec - Hardcore Snape fam angst. Really brilliant/sharp Eileen characterization. Love the character study. Also really loved the world building in the fic! Shortfic but does a lot with the word count! It's going to break your heart.

Vibe quote

Eileen realised that her great uncle was right, that she was wrong, that she had allowed hope, as usual, to poison her, and with a bitter, eldritch shriek, she began unburdening herself of her own searing disappointment.

The Watched Pot

Genfic with Snape POV.

Length - 2100 words.

Vibe - Angst!

Author's Summary -In the aftermath, Severus has no plan other than a potion.

Rec - I don't want to spoil the fic because the suspense is a big part of this fic. It's a brilliant Snape POV fic with super sharp characterization of Eileen and her relationship with her son. Heartbreaking. But ofc it's Snape. That's his thing!

Vibe Quote

"It's an old wives' tale, you know," Eileen says. "What is?" "That a watched pot never boils. Eventually, with enough time and heat, everything boils."

It was Magic

Pairing - Tobias/Eileen

Length - 1100 words

Vibe - SCHEMING!

Author's Summary -Tobias and Eileen's wedding day is the result of a magical connection.

Rec - OMG! This fic! Tobias and Eileen are big little liars!! Lots of intrigue/mystery/complicated motives. But you also feel for them and also feel really scared for their future/Snape's future. Super sharp writing which keeps you guessing nonstop!

Vibe quote

It's a small wedding because neither Tobias nor Eileen have any family, at least, that's what they've told each other.

#snapecase 2023 #snapecase #snapecase recs #recs #hp #snape fandom #pro snape #femslash #slash #gen #hp fic recs #snape fic recs #fic recs #five snapecase 2023 recs #five fics with five vibes #he lives #of course he lives #sometimes #sometimes he dead #but lots and lots of snape

[liskantope]

Over much of last calendar year, I managed to read through the entirety of the celebrated newspaper comic strip For Better or For Worse (prior to Lynn Johnston's proper semi-retirement which led to this weird rehashing of strips from decades earlier in the timeline whose process I don't completely understand and didn't feel like getting into). In other words, I was reading all the way through all of the FBoFW comics on the archives on GoComics from 1979 to 2008. I briefly brought this up back in May actually. Since I finished a little while ago, this isn't as fresh on my mind as it was, and anyway I've been spending too much time off-task lately and have a backlog of other things I want to talk about on this microblog, so although I'm going to try to keep this from getting too long I do want to jot down some of my thoughts as I did when I finished reading through Luann a few years back.

(Warning: this got quite long anyway.)

FBoFW was a part of my life growing up, firstly because I began reading it in the newspaper circa 1996 (although I remember considering it one of the less entertaining, "grown-up" strips at first and don't think I was regularly keeping up with it until sometime in the early 00's), and secondly because it was my mom's favorite comic strip (apart from perhaps Peanuts) and we had several book collections of FBoFW (mostly from the earlier years) around the house. Reading through this archive helped me fill in all the gaps, including many of the comics in the last couple of years of the strip's life when I was living away from my parents in college.

1) The two parents of the main Patterson family, Elly and John, remind me a ton of my parents now, looking back. The reason my mom loved the strip was of course that she related a ton to Elly (both stay-at-home moms of around the same age, although my mom didn't start having children nearly as early). Elly's brother is even similar in ways to my mom's brother, who also plays the trumpet. I was telling my mom this when I recently visited her, and she took it as a compliment as she likes Elly (I like Elly too but she very visibly has flaws especially in the earlier years of the strip's life). I was more taken aback at how strongly John reminds me of my dad, his personality in general I think particularly in his love of "getting away" and enjoying hobbies, making things, and doing repairs on the side of a very stimulating but sometimes taxing job; trains and building train sets aren't really my dad's thing, but my dad's hobbies are of a very similar flavor. (John however is an even more visibly flawed character, even more markedly during the early years.)

2) There is a certain undercurrent of... nastiness?... in the gags of FBoFW in the early years. I didn't really remember having this impression before, maybe because it was normalized to me when I was younger or times have changed or something. Leaving aside John frequently expressing sexist attitudes and cracking hurtful jokes about Elly, there's one particular example of this which sticks in my mind as it's in direct contrast to how my (otherwise quite similar) family operated when I was growing up: Elly's cooking. My mom did all the cooking too, and we all complimented her on how great it was. Elly does all the cooking and all we get is one crack after another about how much everyone dislikes it: the children prefer "the stuff from the can", while John is constantly rude about how low-quality he thinks it is. (Apparently it's bad to make casseroles a lot or something.) And the bemusing thing is that the joke never seems to land completely on the children and John for being so unappreciative: the strip is sympathetic to Elly for trying her best, but it's kind of implied (without being outright clarified) that Elly's cooking is objectively sub-par. In this one regard, FBoFW echoes a more traditional norm in comic strips where the comedy is derived from everyone being bad at every (often gender-based) role they're given (see The Lockhorns for a particularly tiresome example). There is pretty much none of this unpleasant tinge to the comic in later years, and to me this was an improvement.

3) FBoFW follows an arc similar to that of Luann (which I talked about frequently in my Luann post linked to above) where (1) the earlier period of the strip feels more like a dysfunctional family sitcom where each of the characters is dysfunctional in the way expected by their traditional role; (2) the family is an "everyman" family where, for all its issues, each person's flaws and problems are considered the "average" ones to have with nobody having any kind of extraordinary trait (exception: Lizzie sucking her thumb into late childhood and being treated with a contraption to keep in her mouth; later exception: April suffering the trauma of nearly drowning and feeling like it was her fault that the family dog died after rescuing her); (3) eventually we see that all the other families in the strip's universe are more severely dysfunctional in non-average ways; so (4) by the later years, the main family is treated as the model family that everyone outside it wishes they had. In FBoFW's case, we have Lawrence raised by a single mother after his father abandoned them, Gordon's father being an abusive alcoholic, Deanna's mom being extremely controlling, Candace's upbringing being completely dysfunctional (I can't remember exactly why), Becky somehow having a similarly damaging background due to her parents' divorce, Weed's parents being super wealthy, absent, and not seeing him as a person with his own goals... the list goes on and on. The Pattersons, like the deGroots from Luann, have become almost the ideal family by the final 5-10 years or so.

4) Feminism plays a major role in the background culture shown through the dynamics of the characters in the first several years, and only in the first several years. John's colleague and sometimes-friend Ted is shown as the quintessential chauvinist pig, while John himself has a chauvinistic streak that he later grow out of, and this supplies plenty of fodder. Reading the first several years of the comic is worth it just for getting a flavor of the common discourse around feminism and changing gender roles from 1979 to 1982-ish.

5) Similarly, reading the devastating (and at the time extremely controversial) arc about Lawrence coming out as gay in 1993 is also very educational. What floored me on reading this in 2022 was not the hostile way Lawrence's stepfather initially reacted, but how Lawrence's lifelong best friend Michael reacted: in an accepting way but only after kicking things in anger and rage at how Lawrence has a terrible unspeakable condition that Michael never imagined in his worst nightmares anyone he actually knew well could possibly have.

6) The comments on GoComics under each strip are, as I mentioned in the post I linked to at the very top, were generally of very low quality. (I thought it wouldn't be possible to get any lower, actually, until I more recently switched to reading Baby Blues from GoComics and discovered I was mistaken!) Perhaps the most interesting content in them was frequent debates, in the later years of the strip, over the morality of each supporting character. What is quite striking to me is how much persistent hate there was for certain (male, intentionally sympathetic) characters. John got the most hate of all; during the first few years he somewhat deserved it, but later on it just seemed that some people were trying to see the worst in him (one persistent commenter, who is clearly older, very un-PC, and openly anti-woke, repeatedly made it clear that he loathed John with a burning fire and thought he was a terrible husband throughout). What took me aback more was how critical everyone was of Anthony, who the cartoonist clearly wants us to think of as a really sweet, gentle guy perfect for Elizabeth. A lot of people wouldn't let him off the hook for his one really poorly-timed moment of telling Liz to "wait for me [to divorce my wife so we can be together]" within an hour of rescuing her from a violent sexual assault, but at least one commenter concocted arguments for why everything Anthony ever did was terrible. There was one and only one character around whom all commenters could rally in hating, though: Mike's mother-in-law Mira Sobrinski. It was simultaneously gratifying and disturbing to see the set of regular commentators, usually so snipey towards each other, teeing each other off in long comment threads where they virtually "cooperate" in setting up cartoonish ways for Mira to suffer.

7) Very sad events take place in FBoFW, rather controversially for a newspaper comic of the time, I think (I know Charles Schultz was appalled at the writing decision that the family dog was going to get killed off). The characters are pretty much never shown grieving or crying over them (Elly and her brother sort of take their mother's death in stride, nobody actually cries during the dramatic arc of the dog dying, etc.). The strip avoids wallowing in pure sadness. But some of these arcs can be intensely poignantly emotional. The sight of April's pet rabbit drawing its last breaths in her arms touched me more deeply than the more dramatic death of the dog, in fact. But what really gutted me more than anything else wasn't even a death: it was Grandpa Jim's severe decline due to strokes. I remembered it happening at the time the strip was coming out and not being so bothered by it, but as someone slightly older now, the sight of someone becoming a rigid husk on the outside of their former self, with all of their long-term memories and feelings still intact but very difficult to express, just really gets to me. Here is an example of a strip that makes me start to choke up every time.

8) Lizzie is intent, upon entering first grade, on getting her ears pierced like all the other first-grade girls. What?! Has this been normal for 6-year-olds since the 80's and was I just not paying attention when I was in first grade a decade later? On a related vein, a few years after this, Lizzie is mortified at having to get glasses because then she'd be "the kid with glasses". There were... quite a few kids with glasses (including me starting in 4th grade) in each of my classes from mid- elementary school on; why is this treated as such an abnormality?

9) With certain exceptions like Lizzie's lingering habit of thumb-sucking, each of the Patterson children's development is supposed to model the normal emotional development of your average Joe Child/Teenager. One thing that struck me as being considered absolute and universal by the cartoonist in teenage culture was the boys' sudden obsession with cars from the age of 15 or so. It was shown with Michael, then with Elizabeth's male peers, then again with April's male peers, that at a certain age boys are really into girls, then suddenly they're so into cars that they forget entirely about girls (in one strip which stretches the usual standard of realisticness), Michael runs into his girlfriend Martha who he's been completely infatuated with for years and is still dating and momentarily forgets her name because he's so preoccupied with checking out cars. This is not at all how I remember male teenagerhood, but maybe I'm just really atypical (it was not considered a given that I'd ever get a car or even a driver's license as a teenager, and in fact I didn't get my license until 20 or my first car until almost 26).

10) There's a point in the late-middle part of the strip's history -- I forgot to note the year, but it's abrupt and maybe around 20001-ish -- when the cartoonist becomes fond of daily comics being exactly five panels long. I remember this being jarring enough that I noticed it back when they were coming out in the paper, as well as reading through the archives 20 years later. It's interesting that this became such a strong preference of Lynn Jonston's: it's very rare for newspaper comics since 1950 (and distinguishes FBoFW stylistically from others) and feels rhythmically awkward and exotic in much the way that 5/4 time signatures in music do.

11) Those noses. Ugh, those noses. I mean, specifically of the Patterson kids. Little ovals right below the eyes that don't resemble the noses of the either parent or of hardly any person of any age I've encountered, and which each grows out of by full adulthood (April, being more of an early bloomer, grows out of this as a preteen). I have always been irrationally annoyed by this artistic quirk and could write a whole post on it, but that would be time none of us could ever get back again so I won't.

#for better or for worse #sexism #homophobia cw #death cw #strokes #peanuts #luann #feminism

[lumoslesbians]

Hi so long story short shipping jesslupe and the way its made me imagine my butch4butch dreams for the first time is making me realize i for sure want to get sober bc ive been numbing out bc i haven’t been being myself and i wanna explore being my #trueself while im actually mentally present for it but addiction is a thing sooooooo im going to rehab later this week

And i decided im gonna become a contributing fandom member fucking finally while im there lol

My resources are limited i will not have internet access for a while

But theres still so much i can do music, writing, art stuffs

So im gonna keep a running list of things i wanna try to work on while im there and im posting it to hold myself accountable

Plus representation fucking matters and my story as a jewish queerio child of queer mamas and person who’s been put away in the psych system and stuff like that is super valid and matters

Idk im rly nervous about going to rehab sorry im being a nerd lol just tryna psych myself up

But some things i would looove to work on are:

-drawings! And paintings! I rly just wanna try to art, i need to find pics probably and print them out for reference bc i wont have internet there lmfao *shows up to rehab with a giant stack of pictures of girls playing baseball nbd*

-a friends to lovers fic idk what genre yet but i just wanna ok

-a song about how jesslupe has awakened this ferocious butch4butch energy in me lmao nobody can stop me

-a fantasy au fic! Idk what yet maybe crossover maybe just witchy vibes but something spoopy and fun :))

-a fic with a song in it that im gonna write that one if them writes about the other in the ficverse NOBODY CAN STOP ME FROM BEING THE EMO BITCH I AM DEEP DOWN🖤

-i kind of want to write a fic about them meeting in a psychiatric setting is that so fucked???😬 like i dont wanna inflict that on u all but i feel like it could be rly healing to write idk if i will publish this one lol

-fic where someone is coaching someone else on how to flirt with girls, with the obvious undercurrent that they are both in fact girls and so maybe theyre actually just flirting with each other? this is inspired by my bff and ex who i was talking with the other day and had this dynamic with and we were laughing about it and i was like lmao im writing a jesslupe fic about this so now i have to so i can show her😊

-pwp idk what yet but if im gonna dive in might as well be on the deep end amiright🤷🏻

-gender stuff of any and all mediums just like all the butch/enby feels are gonna get artified

-a personal essay about aloto and my experience watching it with my mamas and realizing so much about my own queer identity but also still having so many questions

-a jo/maybelle fic that is deeply emotional but also gratuitously porny sorry not sorry😂 (what is this ship called bc i vote joybelle)

#omg why am i getting so personal on main #aka my aloto blog #do people have mains that arent their favorite fandom of the moment? #bc that is always the main thing on my mind so the f would u even post about tbh #anyway read my overly personal garbage or dont lol #but basically be warned that a shitton of aloto jelupe bullshit is about to flood ur dash if u keep following me #once i get out of treatment that is lol dont mind the radio silence for a bit #anywayayyyyyy #about izzy #addiction #cw addiction #aloto #sobriety #recovery #representation matters #jelupe #jobelle #mo #? #whos to say lol #lgbtq #hahaha #joybelle

[teaveetamer]

I hate to say it like this (if this sounds like a bad way to say it, idk if it is but still; I'm also a guy, so I don't wanna sound misogynistic or anything), but it really bugs me how much, both in and out-of-universe, "female" (or "girl" or "woman" or whichever) is used as a trait to give automatic sympathy/leeway/the benefit of the doubt to a character. FE is a pretty bad offender even outside of the Egg, but there's just so much leeway given to Egg because "girl who's got a crush on u uwu" by both the game and her stans, but either way, I just... want some female villains who just get to be taken seriously as villains.

Well anon, if you're worried about sounding misogynistic then you're already doing better than a lot of people, lol.

For reference, a quick guide to discussing the ladyfolk:

Female: For use as an adjective (e.g. "a female character"). NOT for use as a noun (e.g. "the females"). I mean techincally it works as a noun but I usually only ever see incels use it like that, so you definitely have the strong chance of coming off as a misogynist.

May not be inclusive to trans women, since the word "female" is associated to your assigned gender, not your gender identity (e.g. someone who is AFAB, or Assigned Female At Birth, may not necessarily identify as a woman.)

Woman: A safe word to use. Inclusive for cis women and for trans women. If you aren't sure what to use, use "woman" and you will be okay. Some of the construction (e.g. "a woman character") sounds a bit awkward but that's mostly because we're just not used to it.

Girl: For use with children (e.g. "The eight year old girl"). Generally NOT for use with grown women. It can come off as infatalizing. Plus think of how often we refer to grown men as "boys" compared to how often we refer to grown women as "girls".

Dunno what the consensus is on stuff like "gals". I kind of like it because it feels more neutral than "girls" but less formal than "women". But like I said, you can't go wrong with "women".

Anyway, I do think there's an undercurrent of sexism in a lot of the writing of women in media. Too often women aren't taken seriously by the narrative because they're intended to be accessories to the characters you're actually intended to take seriously.

[baya-ni]

SHADOW’s Queer Coding

I first started exploring this idea of Sk8′s implicit queer rep (as in stuff other than explicit same sex intimacy) in this post.

I know we like to joke that Hiromi is the Token Straight of the protag gang, but I argue that he’s as much an example of queer rep as any of our main characters, albeit in a less conventional and fanservicey way.

So that’s what this post is gonna be, an analysis of Hiromi/SHADOW as a queer figure, how his character fits the Jekyll/Hyde archetype as a metaphor for queerness and The Closet, the similarities between SHADOW as a skatesona and early drag, and how his character represents a larger problem of exclusion within queer fandom spaces.

The 1886 Gothic novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is the origin of the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde”. What I’m calling the Jekyll/Hyde archetype, refers to the same thing; it refers to duality, to a character who is “outwardly good but sometimes shockingly evil” (as described from the novella’s wiki page).

And the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic has also long been associated with Queerness. The antagonism between Jekyll and Hyde as two sides of the same person resonates with many people as similar to the experience being in the closet, and many many scholars have written about this queer reading of Jekyll and Hyde. Do a quick google search if you don’t believe me.

Hiromi experiences his own Jekyll/Hyde duality through his SHADOW persona, which seems to entirely contradict with Hiromi’s day to day personality.

Whilst Hiromi is sweet, romantic, and generally very cutesy, SHADOW is mean-spirited, sadistic, described as “the anti-hero of the S community.”  And though these two personalities seem entirely at odds, SHADOW doesn’t exist in a vacuum, he’s very much a part of Hiromi. In the show, this manifests as SHADOW’s sabotage moves being all flower themed, as Hiromi works in a flower shop, and how he’ll “step out” of character when playing babysitter to the kids.

Below is passage from an essay titled, “The Homoerotic Architectures of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” which reminds me a lot of Hiromi’s character, such that I think his character arc can be read as an allegory for coming out and self acceptance.

The closet, here, is a space not only for secrecy and repression, but also for becoming; it is the space in which queer identities build themselves up from “disused pieces” and attempt to discover the strength needed for presentation to the world. The closet is both a space of profound fear and profound courage—of potentiality and actualization. (Prologue)

Unlike the kid/teen characters, the show’s adult characters all lead double lives. When they aren’t skating, they have day jobs. Kaoru is a calligrapher, Kojiro is a restaurant owner, Ainosuke is a politician/businessman (but tbh his job is just being some rich dude), and Hiromi works in a flower shop.

But of the adult protagonists (so not Ainosuke), Hiromi compartmentalizes the most.

Kojiro leaves his face totally exposed such that he can be recognized both on and off the skate scene. Kaoru at least covers his face, but his trademark pink hair and constant use of Carla doesn’t make it very hard to connect the dots between him and CHERRY. He’s also always with Kojiro in the evenings, so if you don’t recognize him as CHERRY when he’s on his own, you certainly will when you see him interacting with Kojiro/JOE.

Next to these two, Hiromi seems the more adamant at separating his Work from Play.

Even when he’s been clearly found it, he still tries to deny that he and SHADOW are the same person. Miya even uses this to coerce Hiromi into helping him and the boys:

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the separation between Hiromi and SHADOW can be interpreted as a metaphor for being in The Closet. As SHADOW, he leads a secret life, one characterized by an tight-knit underground community with a vibrant night scene, where he behaves in ways typically frowned upon by larger society. He worries about being found out and judged by the people close to him.

But in Ep 4, the walls of his Closet begins to come down, or in this case is literally imposed upon by other members of his community, by its younger members, who don’t feel the same need to hide their passion for skateboarding or lead the same kind of double life.

We then see the line between Hiromi and SHADOW begin to blur.

He becomes less of an antagonist, and instead the audience sees him become a mentor and “mother hen” figure for the younger skaters. Later on in Ep 4, we see him casually interacting with the other protags in full SHADOW mode, not as an “anti-hero” but as a friend.  In Ep 6, he acts as a babysitter for the kids, and we see him totally comfortable appearing both in an out of his SHADOW persona throughout their vacation.

And I think that this gradual convergence of Hiromi and SHADOW will culminate in this tournament arc.

There’s something more personal that’s driving SHADOW to do well in this tournament. It’s not just for bragging rights or his pride as a skater, but the results of this tournament is going to have some kind of greater impact on Hiromi’s personal life. Personally, my theory is that Hiromi is using this tournament to prove to himself that he’s worthy enough to ask his manager out on a date.

Hiromi is no longer compartmentalizing, his two lives are overlapping and influencing each other. Recall the essay quote I cited earlier:

The closet... is the space in which queer identities build themselves up from “disused pieces” and attempt to discover the strength needed for presentation to the world... of potentiality and actualization.

This is exactly the case for Hiromi. Through skating, he is piecing together the disparate parts of him such that he can present himself to the world as a more unified and confident being.

And the show presents the very skating community that Hiromi has been working so hard to keep separated from his personal life- Reki, Langa, Miya, Kaoru, and Kojiro- as the catalyst for that becoming.

That, my dear readers, is queer coding if I ever saw it.

But there’s probably gonna be people claiming something along the lines of “But SHADOW can’t be queer rep because he’s Straight!” And I assume that’s because he shows romantic interest in his female manager.

First of all, Bisexuality. Also Ace/aro-spec people. And second of all, SHADOW is Hiromi’s drag persona.

And before anyone can say anything about how Hiromi can’t do drag because he’s straight (assumption) and cis (also an assumption) uhhhh no, fuck you.

Drag didn’t start with RuPaul’s Drag Race, that’s just how it got mainstream. And it’s also how it got so gentrified and transphobic. You heard me. But anyway.

Drag is, and has always been, first and foremost about exaggerated, and oftentimes satirical, gender presentation and performance. It’s about playing with gender norms through artistic dress and theater, not so much to do with sexuality or gender identity.

Literally, what’s the difference here?

SHADOW is a persona of exaggerated masculinity with a punk aesthetic. Regardless of his sexuality or gender identity, Hiromi’s gender performance as SHADOW is drag- that makes him queer representation, change my fucking mind.

Queerness is more than same-sex romance, and by extension, good queer representation is not limited to canonized gay ships. The very word Queer, in it’s ambiguity, is meant to encompass the richly unique experiences of everyone within the LGBTQ+ community.

In my opinion, Queer =/= Gay. I mean, they’re colloquially the same yes and even I use them interchangeably. But for the purpose of this post, they’re not the same, and that’s to argue that Hiromi/SHADOW’s lack of acknowledgement as queer rep illustrates a larger issue of exclusion within fandom.

I mean, this is something we all kinda been knew, but in the case of Sk8 specifically, there are a two main reasons why I think Hiromi is rarely acknowledged as queer rep.

1. He’s not shippable with another male character

Fandom favors mlm ships when it comes to what’s considered good queer rep. And the ultimate mark of good queer rep is explicit acts of romance or intimacy between two male characters. Unlike with any of the other characters in the show, we can’t point to Hiromi and automatically clock him as gay, especially because he expresses romantic interest in a woman.

So by default, he’s less popular, because “Ew Straight People” amirite /s.

2. He’s not attractive

This is really interesting, because like JOE, Hiromi is a beefcake.

But fans don’t thirst over him the same way they do over JOE. Granted, the show really plays up JOE’s muscles in a very strip-teasey way that literally encourages viewers to find him attractive. By contrast, Hiromi is pretty much covered head to toe and he paints his face in theatrical makeup- the point is to look scary, not attractive.

In essence, even though Hiromi engages in “queer behavior” through his SHADOW persona, his queerness isn’t palatable.

But I also think there’s some pretty insidious undercurrents of fetishization going on here, of both Asian people AND gay men. Which is... a whole other thing I really don’t have the capacity to unpack completely.

But basically, Hiromi doesn’t fit into any of the popular BL archetypes so he’s less likely to recognized as Queer. Relatedly, he’s also less often subjected to a fetishistic gaze as other characters. I mean...

So again, fans just don’t find him as appealing. Attractive characters are always more popular than ugly ones.

And I’m sure there are a lot of people who just don’t care for Hiromi’s personality, that’s fine, he does act like an asshole sometimes. But this post is meant to illustrate that queer rep takes multiple forms, and unfortunately I think a lot of media just tends to fall back on stereotypical portrayals of queer people for the sake of broader appeal. And by consequence, the fandom’s idea of what constitutes queer rep narrows to same-sex romance, usually between two cis gay men.

With the release of Ep 9, I know a lot of people queer people are going to find representation in the Kojiro’s whole “unrequited love” thing. But personally, I feel more represented by Hiromi, his journey of self-acceptance and subversive relationship with gender- that’s what resonates with me as a trans person.

And I think it’s important to see that kind of less palatable type of queer representation more acknowledged in fandom, and in Sk8′s fandom especially, because I know the demographics of this fandom lean heavily queer.

But that’s all for now, lemme know what you guys think :)

#if there are typos forgive me i'm tired #i've been sitting on this take for a number of weeks now #i rlly hope i'm big braining rn #and not just like #yelling into a void #i love hiromi #yall Sleeping on my mans #hav u seen his leather clad ass??? #bodacious #sk8 #sk8 the infinity #sk8 theory #sk8 meta #sk8 spoilers #sk8 shadow

[lunapwrites]

Masterlist of Fics

If you want to see the stuff that I'm even remotely proud of, you can find it here:

Louder Than Love - (Rated E, 105,975 words - WIP.)

Poly!Wolfstar+Tonks, OotP fix-it. If you like music references, nuanced family relationships, and banter (omg so much banter) then you may like this one. I'm honestly pretty proud of how this one is coming out overall, now that I'm getting into a groove. Contains fluff, humor, and angst. (18+, mind the tags.)

Satellites series - (Varying lengths and ratings.)

All the fun little one-shots and drabbles I've posted on here end up under this heading, with some cool moon references added for extra tone. You'll find the Beater!Remus drabble in here, as well as the Peter fics. Fluff and angst mostly (some humor here and there.) The majority is Wolfstar; there is one in there that is Poly!Wolfstar+Tonks. Also some art!

Ouroboros - (Rated T, 12,393 words.)

Remus taking care of his estranged father at the end of Lyall's life, and having to come to terms with his own feelings. Extremely angsty, extremely unreliably narrated. Technically part of the Satellites series; this is a divergence from the LTL plotline (so same background for Remus) and directly references it in parts. Can be read on its own just fine.

A Matter of Interpretation - (Rated M, 2,183 words.)

My interpretation of what actually happened with "the prank." Attempts to address the reality of hot-headed teenagers and their behavior. Literally no one comes out of this clean. It's angsty, but in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

for him. - (Rated T, 6.090 words.)

Remus & Harry bonding time. Realistic "pranks" that have nothing to do with magic and everything to do with Teenagers Doing Dumb Teenager Shit. Simple but candid discussions of sexuality. Also one of my favorite Remus vs Snape scenes I've ever written. Wolfstar, but no prior relationship. Mostly humor with a bit of reasonable angst.

The Great Biscuit Calamity of 1978, and Other Such Disasters - (Rated T, 8,093 words.)

Remus and Sirius making gingerbread men, but also a little bit Remus having no patience for the gender binary. Wolfstar with background Hinny. Humor and fluff with an undercurrent of angst.

three knocks upon the door - (Rated E, 6,998 words.)

A dark casefic that goes wildly off the rails, and my first foray into femslash. A rare Lily/Tonks with low key background Wolfstar! (And another rarepair, if you squint!) Possibly one of my favorite fics I've ever written. 18+, please mind the tags!!

Where the Wild Thyme Grows - (Rated M, 7,000 words.)

My first ever high fantasy fic! Featuring Dad!Sirius and a slightly unhinged Remus (and we love him for it.) Also Arthur and Molly being adorable together. It is a horror fic, though, so be warned! Dark themes and graphic depictions of injuries within.

Applied Theory - (Rated M, 5,428 words - WIP)

My Wolfstar Enemies-to-Lovers Academia AU! Raw posted here and ported straight to AO3. French!Sirius and Welsh!Remus. Includes technical discussions of magical theory (occasionally AP formatted), Shenanigans, and more French dialogue than I had any right using. Great fun though. :)

I've also made a masterlist of all my fic playlists here, if you're interested!

#fanfics #masterlist #ao3 #fanfiction #hp fanfic #hp #remus lupin #sirius black #nymphadora tonks #james potter #lily potter #peter pettigrew #harry potter #ginny weasley #teddy lupin #drabbles #one shots #wip #completed works #series #angst #banter #humor #fluff #writing #dark #my writing #high fantasy #horror

[morwensteelsheen]

3 4 5 and/or 6 for the writing meme? :^)

woohoo, thank you!!! these ones are the most fun imo lmao

also going to do these out of order so i can drop the scene beneath the cut:

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why)

He thought he saw her smile as she gazed up at the starry sky. Around her, the perfectly manicured garden with its artfully planted flower beds and ancient sculptures seemed the very picture of Gondorrim beauty: mathematically balanced, rich in symbolism, an homage to thousands of years of history. She was nothing like the garden. Her hair, unbound despite the common fashions, frizzed in the humidity. One eyebrow was always slightly more arched than the other, even when she was at peace, the other had a scar through it where hair no longer grew. Another scar, dashing across the perimeter of her mouth, made her lips seem lopsided. She was not perfect, but she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

I think this, from AFTA, represents the first time I feel like I really got it right re: Faramir's thoughts on Éowyn. I really struggled to balance the hyper-critical undercurrent we get in TTT with the starry-eyed romanticism we get in ROTK, because I found it hard to believe that he would swing between those two poles instead of occupying the centre ground. I actually kind of got it when I was reading (and yeah, roast me for being pretentious as fuck lmao) Shelley's To The Moon, and I was like, oh my god, this is it. This is The Take. Like there's the point of the poem, which is Shelley being like 'moon sad bc no bf 🥺👉👈', but there's also the strangeness of him describing something as ethereal and beautiful as the moon as 'weary' and mayhaps looking a little less than perfect. Like, it gets that kind of critical pessimism but also the ultimate hotwife simpery too. Anyways yeah I'm not comparing that paragraph to Shelley by any means but that graf is definitely where everything started clicking for me a bit more, so I quite dig it.

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

Amrothos as I write him is my self-insert because 1) uncomfortable 2) not sure what the fuck is going on. Beyond that, I actually identify more with Faramir than with Éowyn, even though I find him by far and away more difficult to write. Classic. For the SW stuff I write it is unfortunately, sigh, Cassian. Though I haven't written for R1 in a long while.

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I like writing Imrahil the most when he’s not the POV because he walks this line between being a loose cannon and being the most conniving person in the room, which I think is fun to make the other characters negotiate. But I actually like writing Denethor’s POV the best (even though I haven’t published any of that stuff) because he provides a really unique opportunity to make ruthless assessments of the other characters and plot points. Like it's nice to get to duck out of LOTR's standard optimism and into the mindset of a dude who realises how profoundly fucked up so much of it is. And I think it’s really interesting as a writer to look at other characters from the POV of someone who can see their biggest flaws very clearly but still has to find a way to either make them usable or keep them from causing any problems. It’s a fun exercise.

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

lmao this one has been sitting in my phone notes app for ages because i can't decide whether i want to work it into a WIP or just post it as a ficlet. classic. also valuable insight into my slightly deranged brain I think:

The babies were asleep, not in prams in a different room as the healers and midwives had advised, but in each of their parents’ arms — the Prince and Lady of Ithilien had always had a unique relationship to rules and authority.

The lady of the house, her curls hanging limp around her face and her face pale with exhaustion, had never looked more radiant. Beside her, the man who was there neither prince nor steward, but husband and, for the very first time, father, looked at his youngest child with rapt adoration.

It was a difficult birth by all conceivable measures, sixteen hours of labour, with an entire hour between the first and second baby, but it was not the physical act of labour that had been the hardest part of the process.

The women of the war generation had disproportionately borne daughters as their first children. In the White City, the King and Queen of the Reunited Kingdom had welcomed a daughter before the heir to the throne was born, while the King and Queen of the Riddermark had welcomed a bouncing baby girl just months before the Lady of Ithilien had begun her confinement.

She would have loved the child no matter its sex, had loved the two babies that had come and gone before they could know if they would have been sons or daughters. Her love was never in question, but Lady Éowyn was a woman for whom the constraints of her sex had been a sharp punishment, and she could not bear the thought of having to one day explain to her daughter why the laws and customs of their country dictated that she could not inherit the lands and titles that were rightfully hers.

When the first pangs of labour had begun, Éowyn had simply ignored them, continuing on with what duties she could manage (around a distinctly large belly) until even her well-honed skills could no longer hide her pain. Then, it was not until she had fought every healer, midwife, and servant in Emyn Arnen that she would be taken into the room designated her birthing chamber, and even then only after earning the concession that her husband would be allowed to stay in the room.

For sixteen long hours she had fought and struggled to bring her child into the world (then expecting but one), alternating between brutalising screams of pain and unnerving silence. When the stubborn child had finally acquiesced and begun to arrive in earnest, her screams and silence alike stopped, giving way to soft, mournful sobs and choked out prayers.

The boy, born with a shock of golden hair, had cooed before he’d cried, and Éowyn had collapsed in on herself, delirious and overcome with joy and pain and unending devotion to her child, her son, a child who would know no limits to his life, would never be told no.

And then the midwife had announced that there was another child still, and desperate, anguished tears were replaced by the look and sounds of determination, as the Lady of the Shieldarm brought her daughter into the world. Her daughter who would not be deprived of land and titles for her gender, but for being a miraculous hour younger than her brother.

Hours later, after the healers had vacated the room and before eager family members were granted entry, Éowyn cried a final time, warm tears spilling over her dazzling smile as she thanked the stars and the earth and all the Valar that they had been so blessed to have neither an overlooked daughter nor a second son. Their children, she swore, would never know the suffering that had scared their parents’ lives, and that, she knew, was a sign of the happier days she had been promised all those years ago.

#thank you!!!!!!!! #asks

[carrionspiked]

GNC Tarkin...?

(cw: some eugenics mentions)

(obligatory note that I’m intersex myself and that we are all just having fun theorizing today on tumblr dot com)

Other historical figures that inspired his writing of the character included Niccolò Machiavelli, Oliver Cromwell, Adrian Carton de Wiart, James J. Andrews, Julie d'Aubigny, Anne Bonny, and George Armstrong Custer.

^from James Luceno's wookiepedia page, in reference to an interview he gave with Star Wars Insider magazine.

So Tarkin is pretty definitively bi/gay in current canon, but let’s talk about his gender because there's some very interesting, very sad stuff going on there.

First of all, one of the very first glimpses we see of his childhood involves him knowing how to sew. At the age of 10-11 he knows how to alter his clothing, specifically adding pockets to a vest. The fact that he knows how to do this is already pretty coded on it’s own. There’s no reason a wealthy (cis) boy would’ve received sewing lessons in the Tarkin family.

The Tarkin family is patriarchal and eugenicist, and they seem to toss their boys into the wild without any kind of wilderness survival training prep. Tarkin hadn’t even seen the Plateau before Jova and co took him out there. So the sewing? Not a wilderness or first aid thing.

(Additionally there’s this undercurrent through the novel that his family is outright expecting him to die. We don’t particularly see why that is, the flashbacks are from his own perspective but we do know that even Jova isn’t expecting him to return from the Spike.)

(It’s always worth mentioning that Tarkin didn’t just survive the trial at the Spike, he broke it. The Tarkin family straight up can’t use that one anymore. Also the fact that there are others possibly implies they sent him on the most dangerous one to kill him.)

So Anne Bonny probably doesn’t need much introduction. Crossdressing bisexual pirate queen. Julie D’Aubigny? Crossdressing bisexual duelist and opera singer- google her if you’re unfamiliar because WOW those are some stories. Basically: these are women who will hurt you. If Luceno was after wild cishet men to reference there's plenty. But he specifically picked them instead.

Tarkin had a pretty wild young adulthood, some of which was spent physically fighting other students at the Judicial Academy to defend his honor after making a flamboyant entrance and facing derision from being from the Outer Rim. He got into a ton of these brawls. Usually up against multiple opponents. The legendary temperament and swashbuckling duelist nature of D'Aubigny is a definite match.

Okay, moving on from the novel we got some fresh canon to work with:

And it's. A lot.

Tarkin is unmarried in Disney canon. And wants a protege, he proceeds to select three students and eventually sends them to the Carrion Plateau. He’s breaking two big family rules here:

only members of the Tarkin family hunt on the plateau

the hunting rite is a dude’s only event

And he has some stuff to say about their quarry:

In the novel, Tarkin's hunt at the Carrion Spike involves two veermoks, Lord and Shadow. These are pretty obvious parallels to Palpatine, Vader and the collapse of the Empire.

And well, even what the winner of the hunt (Zahra) has to say seems to parallel the albino veermok with Tarkin further:

(and then of course, there is the name of his flagship, the Executrix, quite literally the feminine counterpart to Vader's ship)

#grand moff tarkin #wilhuff tarkin #peter cushing #star wars #my meta and hcs #gray don't look

[renardtrickster]

So then I must ask, what is a legitimate form of objection if the person in question actually does not believe that trans people are what they claim to be? Your assessment, regardless of whether or not it is a valid assumption of how things would go, seems to run an undercurrent implication that the people who object do not truly believe what they are saying and are merely saying it to be hurtful or dismissive or intentionally ignorant. So riddle me this, if they are sincere in those beliefs, how ARE they supposed to voice them? Or is the answer simply be that they should not and that’s the end of it?

I'm gonna be real with you, chief. I don't know who you are, what this is about, or what prompted this, so I barely have an idea of what "my assessment" is. I haven't been on tumblr in months and I don't remember anything related to this subject.

But you're basically asking "if I don't think a trans person is trans, how do I say that politely". The true and honest answer is, basically, "don't". The entire process of even asking "am I trans" is pretty introspective and soul-searchy, and not really something you can take stabs at from an outside perspective. So if someone came to the conclusion of "yeah I am", a lot factors into that decision. A lot that you don't know unless there are literally zero secrets between you and them, and you both think the exact same way. Two bodies, one mind type stuff. So casting doubt and asking "are you really?" is mighty presumptuous.

And leading into my other point, it's also kind of a shitty thing to do. I don't think there’s a lot of trans people out there that came to that decision lightly. It's pretty Major Stuff, finding out that your gender does not match your birth sex, and one has already faced a lot of self-doubt and arguments from oneself trying to figure it out. They're also going to face a lot of doubt and derision from the rest of the world and all of the Highly Pleasant And Likeable People therein, which is yet another factor in the whole "am I or am I not trans" process. So chances are, if someone is out as trans, to you or in general, it's the true, legit deal. And asking or doubting any further than "real shit?" and being prepared to accept whatever answer they give you places you firmly into the "Highly Pleasant And Likeable People please detect the sarcasm" category.

Note, the above is written with the assumption that you know the person you are doubting. If you do not know the person, you are absolutely in the wrong place and should currently be questioning every decision that led to you wondering if you should doubt this random person's identity.

Note also that the above is written with the assumption that you are asking about one trans person in particular, and not that you're doubting the identity of every trans person, which I am beginning to suspect is what you actually meant. If you are doubting if every trans person is not what they claim to be, then your ignorance may not be intentional, but it is undoubtedly there. This stuff isn’t new. Studies has been done. Trans people are provably happier when they’re not chained to their AGAB and are allowed to live as they want to. A trans man’s brain is closer to that of a cis man than a cis female, and vice-versa for trans women. “I think trans people are not what they claim to be” at this point is as goofy and stupid as saying “I think gay people are just confused”, and there’s no acceptable way to express that arctic cold take. The only acceptable things to do are either follow the old maxim, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt", or better yet, get with the program and stop thinking such foolish thoughts ASAP.

#i am going to go against my better judgement and assume this was done in good faith #don't blow it #infoxicated #renardie taking questions

[fandomlurker]

A Ponderous Rewatch: Prologue

You know, I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t go into bingeing the 2020 renewal of Animaniacs with the thought “I’m going to watch this and then go and watch the original Pinky and the Brain shorts and spin-off show and do a rewatch and loose analysis on the whole franchise with special attention on queer subtext and themes”. What I initially set out to do was simply watch the renewal and see if it lived up to the show I watched pretty regularly as a kid in the 90s…or at least what I remembered of it through the haze of decades worth of time.

Pinky and the Brain was my favorite set-up on Animaniacs back in the day. Back then I probably wouldn’t even have been able to tell you why beyond “I think it’s funny and the characters are fun to watch as they screw up trying to take over the world”. Other segments were funny to me back in the day, too. Slappy the squirrel was great in that she was basically just like the classic, near-timeless Looney Toons a la Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, but as an old lady toon who’s seen it all and tries to relate to the changing world while proving that the ol’ slapstick ways still work. The Goodfeathers were entertaining despite the fact that I was a literal child and didn’t even know that it was a big ol’ spoof of Goodfellas. Hell, I’ve still never seen Goodfellas, but three pigeons trying to carry themselves like macho tough guy mafia folks while being goddamn pigeons is still funny with or without that context. And as for the Warner siblings themselves? Their skits were pretty consistently great as well. Lots of that Bugs Bunny-like energy of putting terrible folks in their place when they annoy you while coupling it with the dynamic of three child siblings who are very, very active and much too clever for the average person. It was fun!

But as I watched the 2020 reboot with its stripped-down cast now largely consisting of just the Warner siblings and Pinky and the Brain segments for the season (And I’ll be honest, some of the segments from the 90s like Katie Kaboom, Buttons and Mindy, and the Hip-Hippos are ones I’ll be happy to never have return because they were godawful even back then), it brought into focus the strength of those segments compared to most of the others from the old 90s line-up: The strong dynamic and chemistry of the relationships between the main characters of those skits. The Warner siblings are a trio of kids who, despite being truly cut from the same wacky cloth as the most beloved of Looney Toon characters, also very much tap into a very realistic depiction of sibling relationships. Sure, they get on each other’s nerves sometimes. Sure, sometimes they have disagreements on how they view a certain situation. At the end of the day, however, they care about each other more than anything else and work in such perfect sync despite differences in who they are individually.  Sure, Yakko is a talkative theater kid jackass who sasses back at the drop of a dime. Sure, Wakko is kinda quiet and spaced-out and he has the appetite of a garbage disposal. Sure, Dot is adorable and witty and loudly and proudly feminist with an oddly feral streak. But if any one of them is inconvenienced or picked on or threatened in any way by someone, even if that someone is a powerful celebrity of some sort? You bet your ass the other two will immediately back their sibling up and make their tormentor’s life a living hell for the next however long the skit lasts. They’re little gremlin children who love one another, and have a surprisingly tragic backstory that actually speaks to a lot of fans on several levels.

But, okay, the bond between the Warner siblings is great and fun. What about Pinky and the Brain? What makes their dynamic stand out?

Folks, that’s where things get a little more…interesting. To me, at least.

So, watching the beginning of the 2020 reboot got me to slowly remember the parts I loved about the Pinky and the Brain skits from Animaniacs…were actually from their spin-off show. And the things I remembered most clearly from the spin-off were the more heartwarming moments that showed how much they cared about and loved one another, despite Brain being exhausted by Pinky’s dimwitted antics at times. And for a supposedly continuity-light cartoon show, there was a surprising amount of consistency to the main duo and their motivations. There was even a handful of reoccurring side characters the audience was expected to recognize from past episodes, as well, which is a bit strange to have for a show that initially seemed to aim to be strictly episodic. I remembered the odd amount of depth there was to the series. Nothing groundbreaking, mind you, but definitely something more than the average comedy cartoon.

So after watching the first few episodes of the reboot, I took to Tumblr to see if anyone remembered the old 90s show and to see how they were reacting to the new one. In doing so, I came across this post:

“i love that ppl make jokes abt a pinky and the brain version of the destiel confession because that. already happened....... the only difference is that brain pulls pinky out of superhell instead of dying on a barn nail”

Now, look, I’ve never watched Supernatural and only know it through Tumblr cultural osmosis, and at the time we were all riding off the high of the madness that was the finale of that show and the fallout from it. But ANYWAY…

This piqued my interest because 1. I didn’t remember watching an episode of Pinky and the Brain where anything like that happened, and 2. I was already picking up strong gay vibes from the reboot only a few episodes in. So, basically, I just had to hunt down this episode to sate my curiosity and see for myself if there was subtext in this 90s cartoon that I hadn’t quite picked up on as a kid.

I found the episode and started watching it. “Wow,” I said to myself, “this is a lot gayer than I remember…” And after finishing the episode, memories came flooding back to me:

That time the Brain fell for a girl mouse that was looked and acted lot like Pinky.

All those moments where Pinky would wear drag to disguise himself as Brain’s significant other in one way or another to further their plans for that episode, and how I could never remember it being ridiculed.

That one time they accidentally had a child together via a science mishap.

The ending of the Christmas special!...

And as I sat there, dumbstruck and searching Tumblr’s tags to see how far this particular rabbit hole (mouse hole?) went, everything finally clicked in my little bisexual mind.

This was one of the big reasons as to why I loved the Pinky and the Brain skits so much above all the others on Animaniacs all those years ago when I was a kid. It was the same sort of thing that subconsciously drew me to many of the cartoons and anime and media in general I loved as a child, back before I had the proper knowledge and self-awareness to know or express it.

Looking back on my life, I’d always gravitated to and resonated the most with stories and media with queer content in text or subtext. And sure, this cartoon was/is no Sailor Moon or Revolutionary Girl Utena with explorations of gender roles and queerness. It’s no Steven Universe or She-Ra with out and proud queer characters. It’s no The Little Mermaid or The Happy Prince where the stories were made by queer authors and subtextually about queer experience.

However…

However…!

I was surprised to find how deep the gay subtext went with Pinky and the Brain. Hell, I still am. This little Warner Brothers, Looney Toons-pedigree, continuity-light show about two lab mice trying to take over the world in bizarre, hilarious ways has such a weirdly continuous, heartfelt, touching, engaging, and sometimes outrageously raunchy queer undercurrent to it. All done in the 90s! It’s kind of baffling.

This is not to say that the creators and writers of the shows deliberately set out to do this. I don’t believe that anyone involved sat down and said to themselves “I’m going to make this so fucking gay!”. Sure, the voice actors of both Pinky and the Brain have said that they played the dynamic with “the energy of an old gay couple” and they’ve said plenty of suggestive or outright not safe for work things in the character’s voices in interviews and at convention panels. I firmly believe that they’re just having fun as the characters, just as much as I believe the writers were probably just having fun and putting in the gay subtext and suggestive lines as a kind of long running joke and seeing how far they could take it.

(By the time of the Pinky and the Brain comics, however, I’m not so sure. Some of the stuff they got away with in those issues is…amazing, to say the least.)

Regardless of actual intent, I think the writers of Pinky and the Brain (both old and new), have accidentally created a sort of subtextual, yet pretty powerful love story. And you know what? I want to rewatch this story for myself and write down my thoughts as I go along. I tried something similar quite a while back with Droids, and while I kind of ran out of steam as my life got busier and never finished, I have time now for something like this.

I should also say that I’m not out here to, like, convert anyone into shipping cartoon mice together. I imagine most people see Pinky and the Brain as nothing other than very close friends, and that’s a completely valid viewpoint to have. I doubt there will ever be some sort of canonization of a gay relationship between the two, as I imagine most of the writers on the new show (and hell, on the old one) are heterosexual themselves and would view such an idea as “ruining the comedy and the dynamic of the characters” or something similar. I’ve been in the fandom game long enough to know better than to hope and expect any media to sincerely tackle queer relationships in stories that only have the subtext there, especially in comedies.

I guess I’m doing this more to explore something I loved as a child and to see if I can find just as much if not more enjoyment from it as an adult, albeit maybe for different reasons. Hell, it’s also an opportunity to peek into a kind of time capsule from the 90s regarding how far queer subtext could be pushed back then, even when heavily couched in comedy. This is just a little project I wanna do for fun in my spare time. And hey, maybe a few of you out there will have some fun reading it too, who knows?

Either way, see you sometime soon in the new year.

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #A ''little project'' I say as I look at the 65 episode list of the spin-off series... #What have I gotten myself into?

[swaps55]

for the oc asks: sam shepard and muriel aslany pls

Sam Shepard can be found here! Also asked by @painterofhorizons. Thank you for indulging my beloved Myeongnyang OCs!!!

Full Name: Muriel Aslany (no middle name)

Gender and Sexuality: Female, bisexual/biromantic 

Pronouns: She, her 

Ethnicity/Species: Iranian, human 

Birthplace and Birthdate: August 29, 2157 

Guilty Pleasures: She keeps a small, stuffed koala that has seen some serious wear and tear in her footlocker. She’s too self-conscious to sleep with it, but it goes wherever she goes. When she has a nightmare, Pendergrass fishes it out and stuffs it in her arms. 

Phobias: She’s not a big fan of being touched. Not quite a phobia, per se, but if you initiate contact of any kind without being invited it’s gonna hurt. It’s more of an unconscious reaction than a deliberate retaliation. 

On a deeper level, she is terrified of being left behind. There’s some childhood trauma there I am still sorting out. 

What They Would Be Famous For: Arm Wrestling Queen. She made a marine who had about 45 kilos on her fucking cry. Did I mention she’s about 5′5″/168cm? 

What They Would Get Arrested For: Assault. She punches her problems, even if her problems are people. 

OC You Ship Them With: I sort of ship her with Kara Pendergrass. But I’m not going on record committing to it. Regardless of their romantic status, she would walk through fire for Kara Pendergrass, and bring down the wrath of god on anyone who hurt her. Or tried to hurt her. Or scowled at her in a way Aslany doesn’t like. 

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Most everyone is too scared of her to try, but she and a Navy crewman who works the CIC have an ongoing feud that is disguised as playful, but has that undercurrent of not playful at all. Sam steps in to diffuse it at some point.   

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: She likes documentaries and non-fiction. She’s particularly obsessed with deep sea creatures. The weirder and more fucked up, the better. She’s also a bit of a history buff. She knows everything there is to know about Shanxi, and is 100% the one in the room who says, “well, actually,” when it comes up.   

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: She hates the damsel in distress with a flaming passion.   

Talents and/or Powers: She’s a hell of a marksman and takes it very seriously. As a kid she took ballet. She’s ‘put your leg behind your head’ levels of flexible. 

Why Someone Might Love Them: You always know where you stand with Aslany. You may not like where you stand, but there’s no bullshit with this woman. She’s eager, and despite being temperamental she takes direction surprisingly well and wants to learn. Once you earn her friendship you nearly have to kill her to lose it. 

Why Someone Might Hate Them: Aslany is not what you would call a people person. She’s judgmental, blunt, her default expression is “scowl” and she doesn’t say much. She will tell you exactly what she thinks of you in the fewest amount of words necessary. She is also indifferent to your hatred, which generally makes people hate her more. 

How They Change: When she first comes aboard the ‘Yang, Aslany is reluctant to depend on anyone and would rather lash out than listen. But when you’re surrounded by cinnamon rolls like Alenko, Pendergrass, and Beaudoin, you can’t help but soften up a little bit. While on the ‘Yang she learns that not everyone is going to let her down. 

Why You Love Them: Aslany’s entire personality started from the line, “As Kaidan approaches [the table], Aslany pushes a chair out for him with her foot in what he’s learning is her customary welcome.” She was the first ‘Yang marine that showed up on the page. I love her porcupine spines, but also love that she always wants to do better. I’m also really fond of the fact that mentoring her helps Sam figure out his own shit, because he has similar issues with opening up to his team after Torfan. He realizes he’s telling her to “do as I say, not as I do,” and tries to set a better example.

#ziegenkind094 #muriel aslany #swaps replies #mememe #meme replies #myeongnyang ocs

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Remember Charlie’s Angels? Touted as a female empowerment action film, it failed in both departments; it doesn’t really function well as empowerment when all the Angels are functionally identical with little to distinguish them as characters and fighting against one-dimensional sexist male villains, and it doesn’t function as an action film when the stakes are not set up, the action scenes are bland, and the twist villain is pointless since the way the narrative is structured (all male characters with few exceptions are bad, all females are good) gives it away far ahead of time. It’s a real shame, because female-led action movies can be seriously cool and empowering, but every time one does poorly Hollywood seems to blame the gender rather than the fact the movie sucks. There’s really only one thing that can be done to salvage a situation like this:

Send in the clowns.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is what I think Charlie’s Angels wanted to be. It’s fun, it’s empowering, the characters are distinct, and the action is great. Now there are problems which I’m going to get into, but before all that, let me tell you the secret behind this film’s success: first and foremost, it wants you to have fun.

You see, this film does a lot of stuff Charlie’s Angels does, but since it wants to entertain you first and empower you second, the message goes down a lot easier. For instance, almost all males in this film are villainous (although not all are sexist), but it’s not done in a bland, tasteless way. One element in particular was the workplace sexism Renee Montoya faced; her male coworkers constantly stole her credit, which ends up inspiring her to fight back harder against Roman Sionis, the antagonistic gangster of the film. Not only does it have an empowering undercurrent and is a believable depiction of a woman being undermined in the workplace, it’s a pretty relatable feeling in a broad way; I’m sure a lot of us have felt as though credit was stolen from us by a coworker. This makes this plot element both focused while also being broadly applicable, opening it to a wider demographic that can access the themes. 

And then we have the major misogynistic villain, which has been done so poorly in films like Ghostbusters and Charlie’s Angels. Thankfully, in the grand tradition of films like Beauty and the Beast and Megamind, this film’s villain’s misogyny is just a small part of what makes them a horrible person. Roman Sionis (AKA Black Mask), played by Ewan McGregor, is just relentlessly unpleasant. He decides not to spare a torture victim’s life because he’s grossed out by a snot bubble from her sobbing, he’s demeaning to everyone around him, and he wants to slice open a little girl who swallowed his diamond. This guy has issues that go far beyond “hating women.” And in the same vein as Gaston, Roman is just relentlessly entertaining whenever he’s onscreen, cussing up a storm and just being delightfully hateable. 

Now that we’ve established this film handles elements like misogyny and sexist villains better than Charlie’s Angels, it’s time to talk about how it better empowers women than that film. And what better way to empower someone than by having them kick major ass? The action in this movie is so fun and energetic, but what else can be expected when John Wick’s Chad Stahelski supervised some of the action scenes? In particular, Harley is just a blast to watch because, being the flamboyant clown that she is, she is incapable of going a single action sequence without going delightfully over the top. Her assault on the police station is a perfect highlight, as she knocks out the entire GCPD with a glitter shotgun. It’s such cool and colorful chaos, it’s sure to put a smile on your face.

And of course, the big thing that helps is all of the leading ladies are distinct. Huntress, Dinah, and Renee all have their own personalities and goals, with each of them getting flashbacks dedicated to fleshing them out. And of course Harley herself is a big, glittering disco ball of uniqueness, which I feel doesn’t even need to be said at this point. But I think now is the time to point out my gripes with the film, and my first one does tie into the characters: despite all of them being distinct, everyone who isn’t Harley is a bit out of focus. Yes, we get a bit of development and a solid base for a sequel or spin-off, but it does suck when a character as cool as Huntress is relegated to a very minor role until the third act.

Speaking of, the first couple of acts are a bit scattershot. This is mostly due to Harley constantly rewinding time to deliver the backstory of one of her costars, which can hurt the pacing a bit. It’s weird too because the plot is pretty straightforward otherwise, but I guess this is what you gotta expect from a screwball like Harley. The humor is in the same boat; the jokes aren’t always funny, but the physical comedy and extravagant situations usually elicit a chuckle. It’s just not a total gut-buster is all, and despite at least somewhat drawing inspiration from fellow R-rated superhero film Deadpool, it just doesn’t do what that did quite as well.

[SPOILER WARNING]

I think my biggest issue with this film is the amount of wasted potential. It doesn’t hamper my enjoyment, but you can’t help but wonder how much more interesting it would have been for Zsasz and Roman to live. Zsasz dies a bit anticlimactically and despite being extremely close to Roman, his death never factors into Roman’s revenge on the girls, which is quite the missed opportunity. Roman himself is wasted to a lesser extent, as while his death is well-deserved and hilarious, with how much fun McGregor is clearly having and what a blast Roman is to watch it would have been cool to see him return at some point. He kind of reminded me of Justin Hammer, but I mean that in a good way; he’s the sort of villain Hammer could have been in a better movie. 

The biggest waste of all, though, is Cassandra Cain. Let me preface this by saying I don’t think the character in the film is bad. She’s ok, easily the weakest character and more of a living plot device than anything, but she’s fine. The issue is more that in using the name “Cassandra Cain” they rob the DCEU of having a more true-to-the-text version of Cass, who had a pretty interesting and specific backstory. I’m unsure why they went this route with the character when they could have easily given her a unique name and establish her as an original character instead of tossing away a lot of interesting potential. 

The last bit of wasted potential comes from the unfortunate but expected absence of Barbara Gordon, AKA Oracle. As one of the founding members of the Birds of Prey, you’d kind of be forgiven for assuming she’d be in a film called Birds of Prey. But likely because the suits at WB don’t want Batgirl to say the F-word, she’s not in the film. It doesn’t really help that the titular team doesn’t even form until the movie’s epilogue, which leads me to wonder why the movie even bothered to put Birds of Prey in the title. The movie is pretty much Harley’s, with the Birds being interesting side characters; why not just drop the Birds of Prey, go with calling this The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, establish the Birds here, and then save Birds of Prey for the inevitable sequel? The film’s title is honestly such a weird and baffling decision that likely impacted its box office along with the R rating. 

[END SPOILERS]

Despite these gripes, I would not hesitate to call this a good, even a great, movie. What it all boils down to is the fact that this movie is fun. I had a lot of fun watching it, and since I greatly value having fun with movies, I definitely think this movie is worth your time. I recommend this to anyone who loves Harley Quinn, anyone who loves badass female action movies, and anyone who was disappointed by the hamfisted failure that was Charlie’s Angels (which is everyone who watched it).

If I could compare this to anything, I’d probably compare it to the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Commando. Sure, both of these movies are goofy, campy action movies with straightforward plots, cheesy humor, and simple characters. But sometimes the world needs movies like that, and when you throw in some kickass action and a clear aesthetic that only serves to enhance the experience, it’s hard to really complain. Just because you aren’t high art doesn’t mean you aren’t GREAT art. 

And hey, I’m fine living in a world where Margot Robbie is the female Arnold. Who wouldn’t be?

#Michael in the Mainstream #Review #Movie review #Birds of Prey #birds of prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn) #harley quinn #Margot Robbie #Black Mask #Ewan McGregor #DC #DCEU #superhero movie #action #action movie