#emmet asher-perrin

[quasi-normalcy]

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is not a tale about a poor boy being secretly tested by a zany nightmare entrepreneur who hopes to find an heir to his money-making empire of very cool candy. That’s the book that Dahl wrote, certainly, and it might be the film that some people think they’re watching, but they’d still be wrong. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a story about what happens when you willingly step into the fairy circle and engage with every single aspect of the territory beyond because you’re a child and none of your guardians were knowledgeable enough to tell you the rules. It’s about modernity coming up against things it no longer remembers or understands. It’s about the dangers of forgetting in a world that is rapidly filling up with distractions and frivolities.

[maybeasunflower]

Socks and knowing vs. understanding

So the interwebs brought me here:

... and the writer hit me over the head with this:

Gender is still all thoughts and rules anyhow: […] The narrative tells us that “Men take over. It is probably because of socks.” Which is a superb way of not saying balls, and also a scathing way to point out that the anatomy isn’t the thing causing the behavior—it’s the idea of the anatomy. Your gender is an idea based on what parts people are assuming you’ve got. It genuinely can’t get more crystalline than that.

(Non-spoilery context for those who haven't read the book: it includes women posing as men, using balled-up socks in the groin to give the 'correct' outward appearance).

Now, while "gender is a social construct" is a notion I have whole-heartedly believed in since I first encountered it, that's big difference between knowing something to be true, and fully understanding it. (I knew the CN Tower was taller than any other building I'd ever seen, but seeing it in-person for the first time still added a whole new level of understanding.) This analysis really added to my understanding.

[cobragardens]

Emmet Asher Perrin says some things in this Good Omens essay that I want to say, but better than I'd be able to say them.

Quotes below the cut are for my own benefit. You should read the whole thing. The ending is what I mean when I say this was my generation's Kirk/Uhura kiss.

I remember the LJ fandom. I never knew it was small, or that it had any contact with Gaiman or Pratchett. I didn't know it was the majority of the fandom who thought Crowley and Aziraphale were deeply in love; I thought it was just that every fandom has its slashers, ever since Kirk/Spock. I was relieved that I wasn't the only one slashy-minded enough to read Good Omens and think "Oh, they're a lovely couple, I wonder if they've noticed yet"

Our wedding bouquets were flowers assembled from the pages of Good Omens, and an astronomer’s atlas.

***

What I didn’t anticipate were changes that rendered a certain relationship between one angel and one demon in a light far more attuned to the writings of my teenage self. The cues were all there, though no one said the word “love”—longing stares, swelling music, ages of pining, a break up at the end of the world. It was done with such clarity, my word, it was, but we don’t really live in a day and age that wants “crystal clear but soft around the edges.” We can’t afford it, can we? Everything must be stated out loud with vehemence, else someone can deny it. And they will, vocally, angrily, and with an eye toward removing a few more of those pesky human rights I mentioned from before.

Good Omens the series, being the first season, showed us that Crowley and Aziraphale loved each other—but it wasn’t enough.

And that sounds mad to me, as I’m saying it, because I’d never been allotted even a sliver of this previously in the things that I loved.

[...]

But none of that changes the fact that most of my formative texts, the ones that molded my brain into the current shape I use day in and out, generally didn’t make room for me. I had to make that room myself, with others who wanted that same room. And contrary to certain very narrow opinions, that place wasn’t pathetic or delusional.

It was glorious. It was endlessly strange and it was mine.

I don’t know what changed in the process of taking Good Omens from novel to television series, from one season to the next, but I have a sneaking suspicion of the factors involved: A fandom that exploded with ever more queer kids and odd ones who felt seen and loved in that same space; the constant legislation against queerness, transness, disability, and healthcare; a global pandemic that isolated us from one another. Those are the big ones, but there are smaller ones at play, too: actors who were more than happy to play those roles and those stories; the increasing homogenization of blockbuster media providing a backdrop to counteract; an ugly surge from groups who tried to insist that one of the book’s authors was against trans rights.

***

There’s something precious in seeing what other people might not see. It deserves confirmation, construction, the tenderness of depiction—at least some of the time.

At least once.

I’m not sure I believe it happened, even now. That I watched season two and Crowley managed to say in words that “our side” was far more than a work agreement or a friendly contract. That he kissed Aziraphale right on the mouth, and we all saw it. That it’s real and irrevocable. That a story about a botched Apocalypse is morphing into a tale about how we cannot place our sacred trust in institutions (even celestial ones), only in the people who love us. I’m not sure I believe that it’s happening. But I always knew it, you see.

And this feeling of watching it come to life when it wasn’t remotely plausible even ten years ago… I’m not sure I have words to describe it. I imagine it’s close to one of those eureka moments that scientists are supposed to have. When inspiration coalesces into something infinitely more divine and a couple pieces of the universe puzzle snap together to give us a fragment of what we’re missing.

Stories change in the telling.

But they’ve never changed like this, not for me. And if that’s possible when I was so certain it would never be, then maybe there’s a little more possibility to go around. Everywhere.

Every day…

[25centsoda]

Put Some Respect On C-3PO’s Name

Many thanks to @spell-cleaver​ for sharing this article with me: https://www.tor.com/2023/05/24/a-reminder-that-talking-to-ewoks-is-the-most-important-thing-that-ever-happened-in-star-wars/?utm_source=exacttarget&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_term=tordotcom-tordotcomnewsletter&utm_content=na-readblog-blogpost&utm_campaign=tordotcom&e=e6aac7f658657e693c0121a448ee957f11d961422e3e7c4b1528b7c900c5bddf

The author, Emmet Asher-Perrin, makes some excellent points in here! Threepio gets a lot of flack for being chatty, worried, and having mobility problems, but he shouldn’t! That’s mean! And he’s essential! You don’t win a war just by blowing all your enemies up, you need to communicate with your teammates and your allies, and Threepio helps them do that by translating for Artoo, the ships, and being the translator with the Ewoks.

As a now-graduated anthropologist (bachelor’s degree! *confetti*), COMMUNICATION IS SO SO IMPORTANT, ESPECIALLY WHEN Y’ALL DON’T SHARE A COMMON LANGUAGE. I am SO inarticulate atm but. believe it!

Read the article, and I look forward to more fics where Threepio’s communication skills are valued :)

yes including my own

[readordiebyemilyt]

Seeing this again tonight. :D

[mordicaifeed]

His greatest strength with narrative in this universe comes from understanding Star Wars’s visual strengths better than anyone alive. Many shots from this episode look and feel very similar to the finale of The Clone Wars, which aired this year and was similarly gorgeous, particularly in frames centering on Ahsoka. It’s like candy for people who can see the through line, so much mood infused into each shot, incredible set ups, silence and stillness countered with flurries of action and light. It’s deeply impressive to see Filoni get the chance to overlay his eternally cinematic sensibilities onto a live-action canvas with a story he wrote using characters he conceived years ago.

Emmet Asher-Perrin on Dave Filoni in “The Mandalorian Gets an Unexpected Bounty in Chapter Thirteen, 'The Jedi’” on Tor.com.

[nestofstraightlines]

I’ve just stumbled upon the fact that on Tor.com they’re doing a whole-series chronological read through / book club of the Discworld novels. They’re already up to The Last Continent, so almost exactly halfway through the books but there’s still loads - possibly even the bulk - of stone-cold classics to come, and the existing posts and discussions on previous books are still fun to read through too.

Each book is broken into four to six chunks to read and discuss, depending on book length, and staff writer Emmet Asher-Perrin, who is leading the read-through, synopsises and comments upon each section to kick off further discussion.

Honestly one thing I’ve really enjoyed reading through past posts are simply where both Asher-Perrin and commentors post their favourite Pratchetisms from the section covered. It reminds me just how thick and fast the razor-sharp humour, silliness, invention, wisdom and insight is with Pratchett.

[the-gneech]

Everything I Wanted: A Spoileriffic Discussion of She-Ra

Yeah. So. Spoilers. The title warned you.

The show that asked, “What if Star Wars was incredibly gay?�� and then answers, “IT WOULD BE AWESOME AS FUCK!”

There’s so much for me to say about She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, I don’t even know where to begin. I already knew, when I was defending Catra as A Cinnamon Roll Who Wants to Kill You that this was a show I was going to be very heavily invested in. Catra literally feels to me like Noelle Stevenson plucked her right out of my brain and put her on the screen—to the point that I wrote to Ms. Stevenson directly and leveraged all of my comics/animation contacts into trying to find a way to get onto the writing team… without success, alas.

Catra would look at Leona Lioness or Tanya Regellan and say “Oh, you too?” She is also directly the inspiration for Shade-Of-the-Candle, whose own transition from snarling murdercat to laughing bandit has parallels to the arc Catra actually follows. As Emmet Asher-Perrin so aptly put it, “Catra was an instant favorite on the show among its fans. But there was something about it that nagged at me, something more specifically related to her type, and what that type said about me, and what it meant that I kept returning to it.”

And I’m not gonna lie, I was scared for Catra. With every season ending with her in a worse place than the last one, and knowing in very personal detail exactly the self-destructive cycles she was going through, I was terrified she was going to go down with the ship. Redemptive Suicide is such a terrible trope, but such a common one in fantasy and SF, that I was at least 65% convinced that was going to be her fate.

(Mere words cannot express how happy I am to read that Shadow Weaver’s final fate was intentionally written as an “Up yours!” at that specific trope.)

I stopped watching the show halfway through season four, because Double Trouble pushed too many of my buttons—I didn’t have it in me to watch these characters I was so fond of just unravel and tear each other apart, and after the end of season three I couldn’t bring myself to watch Catra do any more horrible things without some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. So I suspended my Netflix account and waited. There was no way I wouldn’t watch season five when it came out—but I couldn’t finish until I could actually finish, if that makes any sense.

So… where do I stand, now that the show’s over? Like the title says, it gave me everything I wanted. Catra to have a true redemption. A true, explicit and undeniable romantic relationship between Catra and Adora. Adventure, excitement, and really wild things. Strong characters, deep and compelling villains, beautiful animation. The first ever canonically and explicitly queer protagonist in mainstream western animation. On some level, I must face that I resent that I couldn’t be part of it. When I knew it wasn’t going to happen, I created The Reclamation Project to redirect that energy, so good has still came of it, but for me She-Ra will never not be “one that got away.” It’s a historic, once-in-a-lifetime event, a revolution that I was only able to watch and not participate in. And there’s nothing I can do about that except get over it.

On the other hand, the sheer joy that S5 has filled me with blots out those dark thoughts. Scorpia going from doormat to utter badass. Entrapta—who I’ve historically been very down on—not just coming to grips with the difference between “people” and “things,” but also giving Catra one of the most understatedly but purely kind moments in Problem Cat’s whole life.

Wrong Hordak. Just freakin’ Wrong Hordak. He’s another character who feels like he was ripped out of my brain.

Catra’s sheer desperation for Adora in the final two episodes—and that Catra’s (requited!) love for Adora literally saved the universe.

I could do this all day. I’ll stop. If you’ve seen the show you know all these things.

What does it mean to me? I don’t know. I know that Suburban Jungle has touched lives—but not on the scale or sheer power that this show has. Is there still something useful for me to do? If so, what? And how do I do it? What can I bring to the table in a world that already has this in it?

I’ll find something.

[petolouda]

Right Hand Man, Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda // Hamlet 3.1.65-68 // The Harry Potter Reread: The Deathly Hallows, Chapters 35 and 36 by Emmet Asher Perrin // Tyler Joseph on Ride by Twenty One Pilots // The Parting Glass (Irish drinking song and funeral poem)