#Anna Madrigal

[deramin2]

Anna Madrigal (Tales of the City) is the most character. She's trans in the 1970s. She's the kind of landlady that hates most landlords and dotes on her tenants like her children. She grows weed and gives a baggie to every new tenant and smokes with them in her parlor with fancy snacks. She dresses in gorgeous clothes. She's was raised in a brothel. She's a rock for her queer San Francisco community and someone they can always go to for help. She helps snoopy sheltered Ohio straight girls achieve sexual liberation, keeps gay boys out of too much trouble, and falls in reciprocated love with straight men. She makes sure bad people get what's coming to them but fuckups get another chance.

Armistead Maupin really hit it out of the park with her. Still can't believe this story was first printed in the newspaper. And Olympia Dukakis was so great in the role for television. We can look back now and say a trans actor would be better, but in 1993 they were totally shut out of the industry and I'm grateful they didn't cast a man like everyone else did at the time.

[manicpixistonergirl]

can’t stop thinking about my frontal lobe developing & my ennui for everyday existence slowly but surely being replaced by a reverence for the beauty in the mundane

[queerographies]

[Una vera signora][Armistead Maupin]

Il ritorno di Mona Ramsey: nuove avventure a San Francisco e nelle Cotswolds Titolo: Una vera signoraScritto da: Armistead MaupinTitolo originale: Mona of the ManorTradotto da: Andrea BortoloniEdito da: Playground libriAnno: 2024Pagine: 256ISBN: 9788899452629 La trama di Una vera signora di Armistead Maupin Il decimo – e lungamente atteso – romanzo del ciclo de “I racconti di San Francisco”,…

[thequeereview]

Book Review: Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin ★★★★★

A decade after the publication of The Days of Anna Madrigal, Armistead Maupin returns to his beloved Tales of the City with a delectably satisfying new addition—the tenth book in the series—Mona of the Manor. Transporting us to Gloucestershire, England in 1993, we’re reunited with Mona in her late forties, ten years after she became Lady Roughhton as the not-so-blushing mail-order bride of Lord…

[lenbryant]

"There's hope." From 1992. Armistead Maupin and his Tales of the City.

[themattress]

Why are these Disney heroines "adorkable"?

Rapunzel (Tangled): Because she was raised in isolation her entire life. She doesn't have a clue about the outside world or social graces or other people besides her "mother" in general. But she's extremely eager to learn and eager to please, not to mention is a pent-up ball of energy waiting to run wild, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Anna (Frozen): While not as badly as Rapunzel, she was also raised in isolation for much of her life, largely having to rely on the books in her castle library to teach her about the world and things such as proper etiquette, life skills and romance. But real life is not a book, so when she actually has to do these things, she often flounders due to her nervousness, excitement or inexperience, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Moana (Moana): From early in her life, she was raised under a very strict set of rules and instilled with a strong sense of responsibility, which is at odds with her instinctive desire to break these rules and her fears that she isn't up to the challenge her responsibilities pose. All of this pent-up stress she carries within her will often cause her to explode with emotion at the slightest provocation, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Mirabel (Encanto): As a young child, she failed to receive a special gift and room the same way the rest of her family did. Now feeling like the failure of the family, Mirabel's coping mechanism became trying to make herself as extravagant and quirky as possible. She's an incredibly "Try Hard" person, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Asha (Wish): Um.....well, she.....yeah, I got nothing. There is no narrative justification here.

Disney doesn't have an Adorkable Problem. Just an Asha Problem.

[secondary-colorentimy]

idgaf i love the quirky girl apocalypse like god forbid a girl has some fun !!!!

[jonasemanuelhp]

Isabela & Elsa

Follow me

[in-a-castle]

A List of Disney Characters I Will Always Defend

Anna: The way a lot of you come after her and nitpick her behavior pisses me off, especially because so many of you refuse to acknowledge she’s traumatized. Because through the perspective that she was traumatized, a lot of her behavior makes a lot of sense.

The Madrigals: All of them. Every single one. Even Abuela. This isn’t to say I will defend all of their behavior, because they all caused each other trauma- that’s the whole point of the movie. However, acknowledging that it was trauma that caused the pain, and that none of them are actually “villains” is something I wished more people did.

Aladdin: Well, against some criticisms. Not all. Again, I am not going to sit here and defend everything he did. The lying and trying to trick a princess into marrying him is fucked up, but alot of critiques of him are just… classist? “I can’t believe Jasmine married a low-life thief!” He was literally stealing to survive, which was explicitly stated in the film, in the same way Jasmine stole an apple to feed starving children.

Cinderella: Well all of the classic princesses, but mostly Cinderella, because the amount of victim blaming I have seen towards her is disgusting. She wasn’t “too weak” to defend herself. She was in an abusive situation, had no money to leave or anywhere to go.

Asha: Asha was right, you guys are just too attracted to Magnifico to realize what he was doing was bad. Every ounce of hatred of this character has completely misrepresented the events of the film or have just been extremely nitpicky.

Ariel: For the last time, she never exchanged her voice for a man, she exchanged her voice to explore land- something she always wanted to do.

[quirkydisneyprincesses]

Not saying all Disney Princesses should have the same personality, but I can’t help but have an itching feeling that a lot of the pushback against “quirky” and “adorkable” princesses is rooted in at least some form of misogyny. I mean, what? Girls can’t be socially awkward? Is that what you’re saying?

[synergysilhouette]

Is Disney Animation in it's "Lost Identity" era?

For a few years, Disney has seemed strangely off for the most part with their creative output. I wanted to open the floor for this discussion, opining that after the HUGE success they achieved in the early to mid-2010s, if executive interference and other factors started to encroach upon creative freedom with their storytelling. I was gonna start with "Raya and the Last Dragon," but I opted to start with "Frozen 2" due to the eye-opening documentary on it. This post will include both information about the production of some of Disney's recent films as well as my own theories.

Frozen 2--The sequel to the highest-grossing Disney film ever (not adjusted for inflation), "Frozen 2" was an even bigger phenomenon than it's predecessor. That said, it didn't have as much staying power, with criticism towards the clunky and confusing story. It was revealed during the documentary "Into the Unknown: The Making of Frozen 2" that while wanting to write a more mature, darker story, screenwriter Jennifer Lee was thrown a curve ball when an early screening of the film included families with kids of as young as four years old. She commented that they wouldn't understand what they were seeing, and this proved to be somewhat true, as the kids left feedback for more Olaf. Lee then rewrote the script to be simplified, and included more of Olaf. There was also shown to be a bit of disarray in their studio; other creatives at Disney mentioned the film's confusing nature, and even those in charge of the story were still trying to figure out the kinks. Scrapped concepts (though I'm not sure if they were related to the early screenings) include an alternate prologue with more detail into Agnarr and Iduna's pasts, a scene where Anna and Elsa uncover Iduna's secret room with books and notes on magic, a scene where Iduna and Agnarr discuss telling Anna about Elsa's powers, and a deleted song where Kristoff struggles to propose to Anna (though IDK if this is just for the scene or if it carries on like in the final product). Overall, the desire to come up with something epic as well as Disney's feedback seems to have made this film trip over it's own feet.

Raya and the Last Dragon--First reported in 2018, RATLD is Disney's forray into a fantasy story inspired by Southeast Asian culture. While the diversity was praised, the way it was implemented was not, with East Asians voicing many of the characters, and the film coming off as an amalgam of the region rather than a specific SEA country/countries. While there aren't really notes that suggest too much exec influence, the film did have it's own unique production experience. For one, the film underwent heavy changes seven months before the film was released, including Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins being replaced as directors by Don Hall and Carlos Lopez Estrada, with the former two becoming co-directors, though John Ripa later replaced Wellins as co-director, Qui Nguyen joined Adele Lim as a co-writer, Peter Del Veccho joining Osnat Shurer as co-producer, and Cassie Steele was replaced by with Kelly Marie Tran as Raya (due to changing Raya from a loner to giving her more swagger). That's...a LOT of changes in the crew less than a year before the film is supposed to be released. I do also want to note that their opt to NOT make the film a musical because it took away from the seriousness of the film, yet the film features a good amount of comedy means that there's some kind of dissonance here. It also sounds surprising that Disney wasn't interested in doing another musical given the success their musicals have had throughout their tenure, especially at the time RATLD was set to come out. And the directors even told "Empire" when the film was close to release that there was a cut of the film with broken bones. While they might have been joking (at least the source I saw thought they may have been joking), it wouldn't be surprising if the film came off as too violent to Disney or their test audiences, and they had the story softened. Another thing I find odd is the ending; it's been commented that Namaari's redemption arc isn't really solid, and the message of trusting others ends up being muddled. A personal theory of mine is that the story had better execution of the message originally, or perhaps Namaari was never planned to be redeemed, but Disney wanted a happier ending and either pressed for Namaari to be redeemable or wanted her to be fully forgiven by the end of the film. If that was the case, it may have been a last-minute choice, given that she doesn't really show this in the final product.

Encanto--Given that this film was a critical and commercially successful film (at least for COVID) with staying power, there isn't much for me to note/theorize on the film, since it doesn't seem to suffer from the same issues the prior two films do. After Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Lin-Manuel Miranda discussed having extended families, they opted to focus on a musical surrounding one. Disney resisted the idea of focusing on 12 characters at first (and Miranda wasn't surprised since they removed Moana's 8 brothers, reasoning that she had other priorities to focus on), and like many films, went through variations. Co-director and Co-writer Jared Bush mentioned that it was difficult to contend with, and seeing how condensed Luisa, Isabela, and Dolores' storylines were in the film, I do wonder if Disney continued to pressure them to remove characters and/or shorten the storylines. Given that the Madrigal family was originally much larger and there was a deleted fistfight between Isabela and Mirabel, I wouldn't be surprised.

Strange World--Okay, for this one, I REALLY don't have much to say. The film comes off as very generic, and the concept art and deleted scenes (that I've seen, anyway) don't seem to suggest why Disney greenlit this film, though the generational themes does seem right up their alley, and the environmentalism message is timely. I'd blame it on the massive change done with Raya, as Hall and Nguyen were brought onto that team, and then once that was done, only had about a year left to work on "Strange World," which...well, as "Moana 2" will tell you, having only a year to do things--even with a cool idea--is not going to amount to much success.

Wish--It's all been said before, and there's no defense for why this shouldn't have been spectacular besides exec influence for whatever reason. Deleted concepts here include Amaya as the sole villain, an Amaya/Magnifico villain couple, a removed member of The Teens, Star having a human form and being Asha's soulmate (though what that means is anyone's guess; we were all hoping it was romantic), and Star actually having a model, meaning him being removed was probably a last-minute thing. Add on to the fact that character designs changed, personalities were simplified, and Julia Michaels said that she and Benjamin Rice were only given a storyboard to go off of each time they did the songs, despite meeting with execs every Tuesday. Seeing how bland "Wish" was, exec interference shouldn't be ruled out. Such a shame that Disney did this for their anniversary film.

Moana 2--Originally planned as a TV show announced in 2020, it was revealed on February of this year that it was planned to be reworked into a film, with the crew behind the show only being alerted of this in January. They literally had ten months to refit the series into a film, and I'm sure they still had to deal with pushback. The only reason they were able to do this is because animation usually happens roughly a year before the film is released. As such, they had to deal with technically being behind schedule with their animation, leaving little--if anything--to rewrite and fix.

Overall, it seemed the past half-decade has been turmoil for Disney struggling to give their creatives time and room to breath when storytelling, more concerned with their brand than long-lasting success. Really hope "Zootopia 2," "Frozen 3," and their 2026 original film don't suffer from these issues. Kinda hopeful since Z2 test screenings went well and F3 was pushed from 2026 to 2027.

(Oh, and some shameless promotion for my account: check out how I'd rewrite the revival era, as well as individual posts that go into the specifics on my guide page: https://www.tumblr.com/synergysilhouette/741045631364235264/my-alternate-takes-on-disney-films?source=share)

[capturingdisney]

[where-our-stories-start]

[jacarandaaaas]

so I watched this video and whilst it does bring up some valid points I have to heavily disagree with how mirabel was mentioned

she’s only mentioned maybe twice and referred to by Jared’s description of “imperfect weird and quirky” leaving out the obvious “deeply emotional and empathetic” that often follows that in the official description.

whilst she explains a lot about how moana, Anna and rapunzel act mirabel just seemed like a “let’s add her in because it says quirky” what everyone forgets is mirabel as a character is insecure. like extremely insecure to the point she values a candle over her own life. her “adorkableness” is a facade, a front, something she uses to try seem interesting to ppl and to hide her true feelings of inadequacy and failure that she’s had for a decade.

also worth mentioning whilst I agree with some of the heroines not taking dangerous or stressful situations seriously, mirabel definetly does. Even something as minor as the failed proposal dinner you see her not cracking jokes but desperate to explain that it’s not her fault. You see several times she risks her own life not because she was told to “save the miracle” but because she herself chooses to. You also see mirabel push away her own feelings to comfort other people and she takes it seriously!

she’s a smart girl! she’s clumsy because her dads clumsy not because it makes her “cute”. In fact I would also argue whilst for a lot of these characters they are likable to people around them for this reason mirabel is not. The townspeople keep rubbing her biggest insecurity in her face and she’s told to stay out of the way constantly. Like half of this movie was mirabel being scrutinized for just being herself!

I do agree with some points in the video but like if you’re going to have miss madrigal in the thumbnail I would assume she would have been a big talking point like asha and rapunzel were

[nerdasaurus1200]

It warms my heart how much the Disney princesses look like their moms