gryphonsegg

I got accepted in a Ph.D. program! I just got the e-mail this evening! SO EXCITED!!! IT'S CELEBRATION TIME!

I just finished watching (and re-watching) the Japanese trailer for the movie that's being released as Brave in the United States, and I've got to say this trailer looks a lot more interesting than the US trailer to me, both as a fantasy fan (Hey, this movie DOES have supernatural elements after all!) and as feminist. This trailer, which has English subtitles with voice actors and narrator speaking Japanese, doesn't set my internalized misogyny meter beeping nearly as much: It reveals a third significant female character (the movie still looks very man-heavy for what was originally supposed to be a mother-daughter story, but at least it's a little better). It reveals a plot beyond Special Girl Is Special and Defies Oppressively Girly Mother To Prove She's As Good As a Man. Merida's mother is shown talking about other things besides how Merida should be more ladylike, and she's also shown with a very poignant expression of worry; the Japanese trailer paints the mother character as someone who has legitimate worries about her daughter's safety based on knowledge of past events, whereas the US trailer pains her as an unreasonable, unthinking rule-enforcer who wants Merida to Be More Ladylike because that's what she should do according to The Rules for Princesses.

Most interestingly to me, the Japanese trailer attributes Merida's dissatisfaction with the status quo to her feeling too constrained and wanting freedom in a very broad sense, and the suitors who are so prominent in the US trailer just background characters here. The US trailer put a lot of emphasis on the competition to marry Merida and how unimpressed Merida and her father were with her suitors-- so much so that it's unclear whether Merida's displeasure with the situation was because she didn't want to be the prize in a contest or because the men who entered the contest just aren't tough enough/manly enough for her. The Japanese trailer makes me expect Merida's happy ending to be saving the kingdom, whereas the US trailer just made me worry that it might be finding a prince who can outshoot her.

Plus, there are curses and magic and little blue fairy-creatures, and ominous forest spirits and a horse that seems to be really perceptive about human body language! That fits a lot better with Pixar's other movies about strange adventures than the message I was getting from the US trailer, which seemed to be all about how this unusually boyish-and-therefore-special girl was going to get out of having to wear tight dresses and marry a wimp. Now, anybody who's been following my journal for any length of time knows that I am totally against anyone being forced to wear tight clothes, wear dresses, or marry anyone they don't want to. But I'm really, really uncomfortable with that being what The One Story with a Girl Lead boils down to, when stories about boys get so much variety, weirdness, and excitement.

I've made and worn my first attempt at a Mags bracelet. I got the ends tied right this time, and because of the shape and color of some of the shells, I was even able to conceal the knot. I might do another one later because, while I think this one looks pretty nice, I'm not sure it's awesome enough to represent Mags. Anyway, FUCK YEAH, MAGS! Also, stringing seashells together was more challenging than I had expected it to be.

Speaking of fannish things, I am really torn on whether or not I should see The Hunger Games and Brave in theaters. I have way too much emotional investment in the former: if the movie doesn't do justice to the book, I'll walk out raging, and if it does, I'll walk out sobbing. I have a lot of concerns about the latter, both because of behind-the-scenes stuff (specifically, the firing of the woman who was originally in charge of it and who had envisioned it as "a mother-daughter story" and replacing her with a man, combined with rumors this was done over fears that she was making it too female-centric to appeal to a mixed audience) and because the content I'm seeing in trailers has me worried about what was done to make the final product seem less cootieful to that all-important audience of boys. My early adolescence largely revolved around stories about feisty, tomboyish, red-haired daddy's girls who were great at archery and hated formal wear and were SO MUCH BETTER than all the other girls and women, including all those dull, rigid, prissy mothers who were always always cheerleading for patriarchy and conformity. I'm over it. And yet, I know that if these movies are hugely successful, there will be a pretty good chance of getting more movies in which girls do stuff other than get rescued, and if they're not hugely successful, we can pretty much kiss female main characters in action movies and animated movies good-bye for years to come. And they do have to be hugely successful. Remember, The Princess and the Frog was moderately successful, and yet the fact that it wasn't a mega hit on the level The Little Mermaid and The Lion King was used as an excuse for de-centering Rapunzel from her own story and even changing the title to obscure that it was based on a story about a girl.

This is a difficult post for me to write because it digs up a lot of old pain. Let me start by saying that this all got started by yet another round of asexual vs. anti-asexual shenanigans at Feministe (yes, I know, my fault for looking!).

( Cut for spiritual abuse, extreme misogyny, homophobia, implicit marital rape )

Obviously, I have done all that I could to get out and leave all that behind. It still hurts to this day, which is why it took me a long, long time to compose this post. My mother was angry about the situation years ago, but it doesn't seem to have wrecked her mentally like it wrecked me, probably because she was already an adult by the time the rightward slide started. Or maybe she's just a much tougher person than I am. I am notorious for being an oversensitive crybaby, after all. I don't talk about it with her anymore because it makes her feel bad to hear how deeply wounded I still am by those experiences. So, yeah. Not all asexual teenagers are told they are going to hell for being asexual. But I was.

This keeps happening over and over again on the internet:

Step 1- A straight white man, usually apparently able-bodied, usually from a class-privileged background, behaves badly toward one or more women.

Step 2- One or more women point out that his behavior is/was bad.

Step 3- Someone defends him by saying that he probably has Asperger's syndrome and therefore doesn't understand why the women are so mad at him.

Weirdly (or maybe not), I have yet to see an instance of this in which the man who behaved badly had ever been actually diagnosed with AS by a professional. I have seen instances of it in which the man in question never, to the knowledge of anyone involved, demonstrated any symptom of AS or any other autism spectrum condition. I have seen instances in which the man's past behavior and demeanor have been so very much the opposite of what is typical of people with AS that they might be taken evidence that we should eliminate AS from the list of possible explanations for his actions. Case in point, at least some of the supporters of a certain notoriously charismatic, emotionally manipulative, socially adept faux-feminist whose name rhymes with Yugo and who has been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are now speculating that his problem is really Asperger's syndrome.

I think it is not insignificant that I have NEVER seen anyone use "But she doesn't understand your rules because she has Asperger's!" to defend a woman's behavior, even though women, contrary to what much of the internet seems to think, have been diagnosed with AS. I've known some women in fandom to defend their own wankiness this way, and I've known a few other women in fandom to express reservations about snarking a fellow fangirl for rude or wanky comments because she has AS, but I've never seen anyone use this as an excuse for lying, stalking, or any kind of serious wrongdoing on a woman's part. I've also never seen it used as an excuse on behalf of a man who was not heterosexual and white, although people who are neither of those things have been diagnosed with AS. I don't think I've ever even seen it used in quite the same way to defend a white heterosexual man who was being a jerk to another man-- when he's messing with another man, it occasionally gets pulled out as an explanation for why he can't let some minor offense slide, but when he's messing with a woman, internet-diagnosed Asperger's gets used as a "get out of all criticism free" card.

1. Spend two days writing a worldbuilding-heavy fic and planning out the complicated magic/marriage/kinship system for a secondary world that I started constructing after going meta about annoying trends in fanfic and profic.

2. Plan to write a really long post about those two things, containing some abstract systematizing of fictional superpowers and laughing at myself for reusing my favored character archetypes AGAIN.

3. Come home from work wondering whether to make that post this afternoon or save it for later and post a fanfic snippet today instead.

4. Find out that Jezebel posted an article from Hugo Schwyzer explaining that men love 'barely legal' porn because they're not ready to accept being adults yet.

5. Dissolve into spluttering rage and lose desire to post about anything self-indulgent or funny because AN INTERNET LIKE THIS ONE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. Also lose desire to write or post anything about characters of any age or gender combination having any kind of interaction that might ever lead to sex because one is too skeeved out to go there.

I got to read the eighteenth volume of Claymore today! As I might have deduced from the title of this post, I thought I was really, really good. I wish more writers and publishers were doing stories about women like that. Well, I could do without the extreme goriness, but I want more stories about female characters sticking with each other through life and death situations, fighting evil organizations, learning about and developing their capabilities, battling monsters and/or turning into monsters, and realizing that everything they thought they knew about their limitations was a pack of lies designed to control them and keep them isolated from each other.

One thing I find very interesting about the experience of reading Claymore is that things that would bother me in just about any other manga/comic/GN on grounds of sexist implications are just in this story-- especially in the later volumes, when the storyline gets increasingly female-heavy-- because there are so many distinct female characters. Not only is it impossible to pick out one character as the Designated Representative of All Women, but it's not even easy to pick out a few characters as representatives of "the different types of women." Also, I know this might be my tendency to read through feminist goggles going overboard, but I can't stopping seeing The Organization as The Patriarchy.

I wish I had someone to talk Claymore with, but unfortunately it's too gory for me to recommend to anyone I know IRL except for one person I hardly ever get to see anymore. If I do get to spend more time with her in the future, I think I'll try to sell it as "Final Girls get some consciousness raising going and plot to destroy the Watchers' Council."

Why is it that whenever I like a popular pairing, I soon discover that the reasons I like it are completely different from-- and sometimes directly opposed to!-- the reasons the rest of the fandom likes it? This happens to me over and over again. If I like a het pairing because it blurs or subverts traditional gender roles, other people like it because they see it as much more traditional and less potentially subversive than I do or because they see one or both of the characters as needing to "mature" or "improve themselves" by becoming more conformed to traditional roles. If I like a pairing in spite of a potentially problematic age gap because the characters' personalities just seem to click, other people like it because of the age difference and write fic where the difference between the characters' ages is constantly emphasized and their canonical way of interacting has been dropped to make room for a generic older person/significantly younger person dynamic. If I like a pairing because the character who is physically smaller/weaker has a strong personality and a lot of power in the relationship, other people like it because they want to see the smaller person get completely dominated.

This is partly a frustrated near-rant because, seriously, I am almost at the point of wishing the pairings I prefer DON'T catch on so I don't get my hopes up only to end up feeling discouraged by the mountain of fic that portrays something I love as something I hate. It's also partly a legitimate question: Why am I so profoundly fannish on the big picture level and yet so weirdly out of synch with others like me in the details of what I want from fandom? I'm sure it happens to everyone occasionally, but it happens to me so often I'm starting to feel freakish. And I'm used to feeling freakish in a lot of contexts, but I'm not so used to feeling freakish within fandom.

Okay, I need some fannish fun to take my mind off stressful things. A while back, I did this meme:

Favorite Character:
Least Favorite Character:
Prettiest Character:
Character I Wanna Marry:
Character I Wanna Be Best Friends With:
Favorite Pairing:
Favorite Episode/issue/etc:
Unpopular Opinion:

Now that the joyous Smissmas Season has passed, I need to change a couple of my answers for TF2. Back before I learned the true meaning of Australian Christmas, my answers were as follows:


Favorite Character: Pyro
Least Favorite Character: Soldier
Prettiest Character: Scout's mom
Character I Wanna Marry: I don't want to marry any of them, but I'd trade dozens of hats for an invitation to the Heavy/Medic wedding.
Character I Wanna Be Best Friends With: Miss Pauling-- I like skating!
Favorite Pairing: Heavy/Medic
Favorite Episode/issue/etc: Mostly, I like the hats.
Unpopular Opinion: Nothing about this canon is meant to be taken seriously.

Luckily, I learned a very valuable lesson along with my dear Pyro. So here's the update:

( cut for excessive explanation and squeefulness )

Days after posting about it, I am still absolutely furious about the ongoing controversy (HOW IS THIS A CONTROVERSY?) over Hugo Schwyzer in feminist blogging circles and the hypocrisy of the feminists who are defending him (which include the usual suspects at Jezebel, Feministe, Pandagon, and now Feministing too . . . because the Feministing people couldn't watch Amanda Marcotte and part of the Feministe crew jump off a cliff and not jump too). I've followed horrendous messes in Blogland before. This one is hitting me in more places that hurt than most others could manage. Many important discussions are spinning off from it, and articulating exactly where I stand on the issues and why would require me to write about several very personal things that I usually prefer not to be too specific about-- including my religious beliefs and my mood disorder. I've been worrying over these things for hours on end . . . but then I take a step back and realize OH YEAH, THIS STARTED WITH AN ADMISSION OF ATTEMPTED MURDER!

Sorry, I just had to put that in all caps because I am still having trouble wrapping my brain around the concept of so many self-proclaimed champions of feminism giving a man a pass on trying to MURDER HIS GIRLFRIEND-- and not merely a pass to be considered an okay guy who gets the equivalent of invitations to all the right parties but a pass to continue presenting himself as a leader within the feminist movement and someone qualified to give advice on sex, relationships, and feminism. There are some conversations going on about whether men can or should be feminist leaders and spokespersons, and those are very interesting, but I would like to think that even the people taking the most extreme "Sure, men can do whatever they want too!" position should acknowledge that this particular man's actions disqualify him. I've done a lot of thinking (and a lot of having All the Feelings) about the religious angle and the addiction/recovery angle, and . . . and I almost typed a 100-word sentence and followed it up with "ARRRRRGH!" At this point, it's sufficient to say that much of the discussion around those issues serves Hugo well by drawing the people who find basically everything about him objectionable into arguing about the merits of specific addiction and recovery models, arguing about whether alcoholics and narcissists are targets of ablism, and either bashing his religion or debating theological points. I could write fifteen posts on those related issues, but you know what? I keep coming back to thinking how incredibly wrong it is that this whole thing ever got started in the first place. Seriously, how are we even having this conversation?