#i feel like a fucking fanfic writer conservative for all i talk about masculinity and jesus

[yellowocaballero]

I love how your Bruce is traditional but it is also like a mix of different types of traditional. Like he comes across as both "Rich white old money type" traditional AND "member of a marginalized minority group who take great pride in their identity to cope with years of ostracization and going "the world wanted me dead for my culture and religion so i might as well die loud and proud instead of conforming to their unachievable ideals" " traditional

Thank you for this ask, I really love it! I have a shitton to say on this topic, including a lot of worldbuilding decisions on Gotham cultures, immigrant spaces, segregation, how it ended up like 1920s-1930s NYC/Chicago mixed with my own city, Jason "Foil" Todd's Inferiority Complex, but that would make this depressingly long. Long time readers would know that I have, like, really complex and discrete religion headcanons for everybody I write. It's important.

Any decent Batman Story (TM) is about Gotham. It has to be a huge presence. It's like writing Dick Tracy without Chicago, or Cheers without Boston. When he's written well, Batman is a reflection of Gotham, and they metaphorically represent each other.

Most Batman writers get this, so there's always a lot of historical worldbuilding and everything. But I'm a community health person, and I grew up in the inner area of my own very large city, and creating a Gotham that feels real and rich is more complicated than the Court of Owls stuff. For me, cities are the intersection of culture, community, history, oppression/SES/war etc, and the modern day to day lives of people. When I want to make a rich city that was relevant and important to the story, I wanted to focus on immigrants and cultural minorities. You know - the people who create the cities lol. I decided on a history that involved the idea that Jewish families were the oldest in Gotham, and that they were one of the people to help create it and influence its culture.

I read a Daniel Handler quote just now that said "there is something naturally Jewish about unending misery". What is more Batman, Bruce, and Gotham than that, lol. The Jewish diaspora experience - the traditional history just as you outlined it in your ask - is baked into Gotham, it's the foundation. Gotham is a city of unending misery, but it's a city that stands tall. It takes a thousand hits and always gets back up again. People within it experience unending poverty and suffering, but they stand together. Just fucking refuse to die, as a whole. What's more Jewish than that! What is more Batman than that! Gotham should always be allegorical for Batman and Bruce, and through Gotham existing in that traditional Jewish experience, I think that's where you got the impression of Bruce as very traditional too.

Tim and the Drakes are the modern reflection of this. I was extremely explicit that Tim is alone in the world because of the Holocaust. I talk a lot in the story about how war and violence destroy children's lives, and that stretches back to the 1940s. About how war and violence creates violent children, which is what Tim became. His acting out was from the trauma of seeing his family slaughtered in front of him, and like a lot of people he used his religion to justify it.

There's a reason why the very first moment when Tim and Bruce actually connect as a family is when they find kinship and understanding through their shared backgrounds and values. They both saw their families slaughtered, they're both alone in the world - but they found each other, and they'll keep living.

OK BELIEVE IT OR NOT THAT'S THE SHORT VERSION. Seriously, though, I'm not. Uh. Actually fucking Jewish. This is like the fourth time I've talked out of my ass about this. I'm actually really interested in reading about the actual Jewish themes in Batman, because from what little I know they HAVE to be there. Any smart people out there who know about it, or who can link something written about it?

[andhumanslovedstories]

what I’ve read 2017 (books 7-10)

Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language from the Insect World, Marlene Zuk

A Time to Dance, Padma Venkatraman

Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, Rebecca Traister

Get it Done When You’re Depressed: 50 Strategies for Keeping Your Life on Track, Julie A. Fast and John D. Preston

or, God made bugs kinky; we explain so many things through interpretative dance, maybe it’s time for interpretative dance to be explained; no not that election the other election;  and this book about depression made me more depressed

Nonfiction: Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language from the Insect World, by Marlene Zuk (1/15)

  Despite the first part of the title, which is the only part I read before I immediately checked this book out, Sex on Six Legs is in fact about much more than just insect sex. The majority of the book focuses on other aspects of insect communities and relationships, as Zuk takes a plethora on nonsex angles to examine the intricate interdependence of these highly sophisticated social structures. You have to read most of the book to get to the sex, which is good because all of the book is interesting and gosh I’d never thought about the complexities of insects this way and boy does it make you question how humans consider ourselves so unique in our complexity when insects are just as complex while also being staggeringly diverse in that complexity, yes, all of this is true, but I’m not here to lie to you. My main takeaway from this book has to be that, yall, bugs fuck so weird. 

  Yall. 

  Yall. 

  They fuck the weirdest. Bugs fuck like xenophiles aren’t thinking big enough. Bugs read your Mass Effect fanfic and they aren’t impressed by your sex scenes. Gimme them vaginas that store multiple deposits of sperm so that the female can select whichever she wants to fertilize her eggs. Gimme them males who answer the question “what that dick do” with “scoop out my competitor’s sperm, obviously, while ejaculating like someone dropped a mentos in diet coke.” Yall, I find out that ant queens mate once, in a midair orgy as they fly to their new hive, and that’s their store of sperm for the rest of their lives. There’s competitive secret egg fucking. There’s exploding penises. There’s a lot of death. Insect sex (Insex? no. no let’s not go with that) is as diverse and otherworldly as insect social structures are, and a book like this should be mandatory reading for anyone doing science fiction or fantasy world building. The natural world is weirder than your imagination. And Zuk is a good writer to escort you through it, with clear expertise paired with a minimum of jargon, a sense of the best insect anecdotes, and the kind of dry humor you often find in science writing about traditionally esoteric or disgusting subjects—a convivial kind of concession that, yes, this is what I’ve dedicated my life to studying, yes, I can see how that might seem an odd choice, no, I’m not embarrassed in the slightest, now please follow me as we find out what that dick do.

Fiction: A Time to Dance, by Padma Venkatraman (1/16)

  I struggle with books written in verse, largely since I spend the book wondering why it isn’t just written in prose. If I’d noticed A Time to Dance was entirely in verse when I’d picked it up at the library, I might not have brought it home. Having said that, small freeverse chapters do allow you different opportunities for writing style and flow, and Venkatraman takes advantage of both the possibility for increased lyricism and increased fragmentation to convey dance and trauma. The novel centers on Veda, a teenage dancer of Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance. Her career is derailed after an accident after a competition costs Veda her right leg. The book covers Veda’s relationship with her body, her family, and her dance, as the accident forces her to dig deeper into the spirituality behind physicality. It’s dance as dance and dance as prayer, which works well (I grudgingly admit) as verse.

Nonfiction: Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, by Rebecca Traister (1/29)

  I’m going through the books in the order I started them, rather than the order I finished them. Usually they’re the same thing. Sometimes, as is the case here, the book takes a long time to get through. It turns out that this January I was not really feeling reading a book examining the impact of the 2008 election. Especially when the first half was, “Why did Hillary Clinton lose?” Traister opens the book talking about her own conversion from a John Edwards supporter (hey remember when we thought he wasn’t a piece of shit?) who thought Clinton was too compromised a candidate to a Clinton supporter sobbing in public the night Hillary conceded. She talks about the transition of Hillary Rodham to Hillary Clinton and the decades she spent as the lightening rod of feminism in politics, from taking her husband’s name some years after marriage because it was hurting him in the polls, to why Hillary Clinton has always been her most politically popular when she is suffering personal lows. And post 2016, it’s fascinating studying Clinton’s genderless (or probably more accurately, masculine) 2008 campaign, where after a career of focusing on women’s issues, Clinton moved them to the background, to her detriment.

  But it’s not a book about Hillary Clinton. She is the largest figure in it, but Traister analyzes Sarah Palin’s brand of conservative womanhood, the Obama bros and their gender troubles, Michelle Obama (who comes off amazingly in this book, Traister straight up admits that when she was reporting on the campaign she had to call her editor and be like, “I can’t report on this woman any more, I now love her too much”; the analysis of Michelle as reluctant political wife with a complicated relationship to her country is one of the standout sections of the book), media figures like Katie Couric and Rachel Maddow, and one of the parts I found most interesting, Elizabeth Edwards. Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton form an interesting tryptic of the new political wife—women who are as accomplished as their husband, who are routinely credited as the brains of the partnership, and who struggle publically with traditional femininity (which is especially complicated for Michelle Obama as a black woman) and political ambition.

Nonfiction: Get it Done When You’re Depressed: 50 Strategies for Keeping Your Life on Track, by Julie A. Fast and John D. Preston (1/18)

  I picked up this book because I was starting school again, because I was feeling mature and aware of my problems, because I’ll pick up anything even self-help related. (Sidenote: self-help is my number one guilty pleasure. I’ll read self-help books on whatever, problems I have and problems I don’t. I’ve read about raising your child who has ADHD, about dating after divorce, separating your life from narcissist parents, dating multiple men at once, and reentering the workforce after decades of teaching in academia. My ultimate wish fulfilment is anything that promises me a solution in 300 pages or less. ) 

  The book’s chapters, each a different strategy for being productive while depressed, are a few pages long and rigidly formatted: an explanation of a problem caused by depression, a testimony from someone with depression, a testimony from author Julie Fast on her own experiences with depression, an explanation from Dr. John Preston as to why depressed brains do this, and some advice on implementing the advice. Most of the advice made sense—keep a schedule, get sleep, find the place that you work the best—while other made sense but were also a deep affront to my soul—namely if you can’t do something, just ask someone else to do. The visceral horror I felt reading this advice has forced me to confront how I think about my own and other people’s mental illness. (also an affront: maybe drink less caffeine, which I’m gonna pretend I didn’t read because I’ve been trying to drink less caffeine because it makes me jittery and now I can’t stop taking naps which are taking over my days, so I think jitteriness is less of a detriment than the exhaustion, and by the way, this sequence of trial and error body balancing is perfect microcosm for trying to cope with depression.)

  I’ve had a check tire light on in my car for weeks now, a light that, oh boy, I should do something about, but every aspect of checking the tires, from finding the pressure gauge and actually using it, to figuring out the steps to take if there actually is a problem, seems like so much effort that it’s easier to ignore the problem. Which translates to, it’s easier to force my hand by making the situation a crisis than it is to motivate myself to do preventative maintenance. It’s occurred to me that I could ask Dad to do this for me. Or ask him to at least come with me to the garage. Why don’t I? Answer: because I am capable of handling this tire if I function at my best and make it a priority, because Dad might ask how long this has been a problem and I’ll have to admit that it’s been weeks, because a serious car problem would drain what’s left of my savings, because Dad will be so ashamed of his lazy adult daughter that he’ll never respect or love me again (I never said these were all reasonable excuses.) So I don’t ask him to help with this. And I think less of the author for admitting that she would.

  It’s more acceptable to hate yourself for your mental illness than it is to hate other people, because self-hatred at least allows you to be both victim and victimizer. But I judge people for procrastinating on the things they know they should be doing while I strenuously avoid all my tasks, I judge people for their depression while I keep bursting into tears in parking lots because I don’t want to get out of my car, I judge people for their anxiety while I crank up youtube videos of hand massages so I don’t need to focus on my own thoughts, and I excuse my judgment of others by arguing that I’m no harder on them than I am on myself. And if (when) I am, it’s because clearly I am putting in the work to handle my problems while they aren’t. So I disliked Fast for most of this book. I hated her anecdotes and her honesty. When she talked about how her depression had lost her relationships and profession opportunities, I quickly listed all the ways that way my depression was better than that depression. The book took me longer than I expected to read; it’s hard to speedread when what you’re reading makes you feel ugly.

  I had my epiphany around strategy 45: I hated how she talked about depression in the present tense. I hated how she had a book’s worth of strategies for coping with depression, and she was still depressed. I didn’t (and don’t) want to cope with my depression. I want to not be depressed. But she’s still depressed. And I’m still depressed. And maybe I’m going to be depressed forever. In which case, it’s good for me to remember that loving myself and loving other people are one and the same. Empathy for me is not a high-road, moralistic treatise on how we should behave; it’s simply that when I make the strong effort to love people who do and think the same ways I wish I didn’t, I get better at loving myself. Maybe more useful than the entire book’s worth of strategies was the one that I ended with, my strategy number 51: Forgive us our depression, as we forgive those who are depressed.

  Someone please come help me check my tire.

[weasley-detectives]

Brave and Merida in a Trumped up world

It's a little surprising to me that the Disney fandom went absolutely apeshit over the "Disneyfication" of Merida in their merchandise - something Brenda Chapman even spoke out against, calling it a cheap ploy to sell merchandise - yet there hasn't been any commentary on other Brave spin-offs.

Merida's a Disney/Pixar heroine who, in Chapman’s own words, was created to be a different kind of Princess. Now, I don’t think it makes me a good feminist to sit here and pit Disney Princess against Disney Princess; I think popular perception of the “Disney Princess” is a different beast altogether when compared with the actual source material, which has both positive and negative aspects. But when it comes to Merida the writers intentionally set out from the start to try something new. She has a fuller, rounded figure, a nuanced relationship with her mother, and romance plays no part in her story. You could argue there’s evidence of a romantic interest, but that’s not the same thing as a romantic subplot, and it’s not overt enough that you can say with any certainty. The writers admit the original idea was to have Merida walk off into the sunset with Young MacGuffin, the suitor who briefly catches her attention early in the film, but that epilogue thankfully only exists in the artbook and deleted scenes.

And let me be clear, there's nothing wrong with Merida having a romantic interest. In fact, I came to love that Merida is subtly shown to be a little interested in Young MacGuffin. 

I was watching Mulan the other night with a @pale-silver-comb​ (who is 100% responsible for my newfound love of Disney- well, that and the fact I need bright happy escapist animation as the rest of my time is spent neck deep in miserable politics). We were cackling over the scene where Mulan ogles a shirtless Shang and later wound up ranting over how rare it is to see women checking out guys in films. When women do make their attraction known, they tend to run the risk of being framed or labelled as shameless, or worse, sluts. On the flipside, how often do we see guys ogling girls in media? Yeah, exactly. It's a shitty myth that women don't own their sexuality in the same ways men do. That's one of the things I love about Mulan and Merida as heroines - they're not "strong female characters" (god I hate that term, can we please kill it?) just because they kick large hairy man arse. They're great characters because they are so relatable. They're funny, they're giant dorks, they stuff their gobs, they check guys out, they can be crass, proud, and make mistakes. These are all things women do, but aren't shown to do nearly as often as men are in mainstream media.

I’m glad the Brave epilogue with Merida and Young MacGuffin didn't make the final cut, because the story wasn't about Merida finding romance - it was about Merida's relationship with her mother, and the two of them confronting their pride, opening their minds to new ways of thinking, and admitting their mistakes. The epilogue had no place in Brave’s narrative. To have included it would have harmed the message of the story by adding romance for the sake of romance, rather than for any narrative purpose. But at the same time I don't want to downplay Merida showing even a subtle interest because yay women owning their own sexuality. One of the things that has driven me crazy since I was a kid myself is the patronising infantilization of girls. A crush is normal, you can pretty much get them at any age, it does not mean you’re not enjoying your childhood to the fullest. Fuck that noise. I had massive crushes from the age of 4 and still managed to climb trees, get into fights and battle Captain Hook and Shredder on my T-Rex with imaginary best friend Gollum at my side (what? fuck you we had a bond). That Merida might have had a bit of a crush on Young MacGuffin reinforces for me the fact she’s a character who doesn't want to get married because she doesn’t bloody want to, not because the suitors are conveniently horrible people she vehemently dislikes. I actually find that even more inspiring. So yes, Brave is a great film with a pretty amazing heroine.

Which is why it pisses me off when spin-off writers take something so progressive and shaft it.

This isn't a ship shaming post at all - fandom is a ship & let ship space, ship Merida with her bow for all I care, it's all good. This critique is aimed at crappy spin-offs and I’m taking Once Upon a Time as an example. Now, OUAT isn’t all bad. Sometimes it takes Disney canon and transforms it into something really interesting, progressive and original. Or, well, it used to. Recent seasons not so much. The actress who plays Merida is the only good thing about OUAT's Brave arc. The rest is unbearably lazy (HA! pun.) writing. The gravest injustice has to be King Fergus, who looks like he's wearing a wig knitted from a highland cow's pubes.

Don't get me started on his accent. I’m scottish. No Scotsman sounds like that. Not unless they’re squeedging out an enormous post-curry-hangover shit. I love Fergus, but honestly I was relieved OUAT!Fergus was bumped off before my ears could go on strike.

The suitors are also sexist pigs. Dingwall and MacGuffin don't even say anything, they just play the lazy mindless followers/minions to MacIntosh who’s probably the most unlikeable aspect of the arc. Really says something about OUAT when the original animation, aimed at a younger audience, portrays its characters as more nuanced. In Brave, Young MacIntosh is all bluff- he’s a show off, a sore loser and generally a bit of a prick, but there are also glimpses of genuine empathy. He's also the suitor Merida is openly put off by in the film. So yeah, in Brave, Young MacIntosh is a bit of a lanky fucktrumpet, but he's not anywhere close to being the scabby sexist cockwomble he is in OUAT. This would be fine if it had some sort of clever narrative purpose, but who am I kidding, it’s OUAT. OUAT!MacIntosh is a proper dickhead and there’s no reason for Merida to like any of the suitors, because unlike in Brave, they’re all fucking assholes. And yet the OUAT arc still ends with Merida giving him the smitten googley eyes. Because romance or something. cool.

Another Brave novelisation published by Disney Random House ends with Merida confirming to the reader that yes, she did eventually marry. Well thank fuck for that! My frail girlish heart couldn't possibly entertain the idea of Merida never marrying. Thank you book, you've reassured conservative parents everywhere.

In addition to that bollocks is.. probably one of the worst offenders. I recently picked up a couple of the Merida chapter books by Sudipta Bardham-Quallen, again published by Disney Random House. They're for wee kids, but I wanted to see more of @gurihiru​​ 's lovely art which I’m fully smitten with. The writing isn’t great, but the stories involve challenging enough themes for very young readers. To the author's credit there's a bit of an effort made to retain a Scottish feel to them and there’s a nice focus on female friendships as Merida encounters new characters. It’s a bit cutesy-poo BFFs!!, the kind of thing I hated as a kid, but hey, we need more female friendship stories. The new characters are even quite likeable, so thumbs up there.

Then I picked up the second book, The Fire Falls (also written by Sudipta Bardham-Quallen), and cringed. Basically bad Merida and Young MacIntosh fanfic involving some classic tropes like: 'I'm not jealous, I’m just better than all those shameless slags flirting with him' and 'arg he's such an asshole but i'm inexplicably attracted to him though there's nothing to show in the story why I should be!' and my favourite - ‘He’s a bad guy but I can change him!’

Here's my main issue: why is it when a female character shows or says she’s not interested in a guy's advances this all too often becomes a springboard for their romance? Why do these stories have such an obsession with positioning the sexist hyper-masculine asshole as the romantic lead? (I'm sure that couldn’t have any dire implications for the worl-oh fuck). And in Brave's case, when the source material and original epilogue show Merida taking an interest in the big fat guy, why don’t any of the spin-offs build on that? Young MacGuffin also happens to be the only one in the entire film to vocally stand up for Merida’s rights. That’s pretty cool! So why don’t spin-offs celebrate that? The cynic in me says we all know the answer - much like Merida had to be “sexed up” to sell Disney merchandise, the fat suitor had to be swapped out for the skinny. 

Really, in a film that revolves around Merida's frustration that people aren't listening to her, it sort of amazes me that these spin-offs don't realise they AREN'T LISTENING TO HER.

And yeah, obviously I know it seems really silly picking on kids books and OUAT, neither of which are ever going to win awards for great progressive writing, but considering America just elected a vile celebrity as President and populism is on the rise, maybe it’s time we all said screw that academic snobbery and paid more attention to popular media. This stuff is common, these tropes are common, and it’s consumed mostly by young kids who internalise these crappy messages.

I make a big deal of it because these coded messages have a profound effect on us as we grow. These messages tell us to ignore a girl's decision and choice: that when she says 'I'm not interested' what we hear is 'I am'; that the most "attractive" and most "masculine" guy will always be the “natural” choice; that being fat or shy or awkward are inherently negative qualities and will always be overlooked by the loud wanker distracting everyone by waving his tiny hands around.

I'm now a published historian and I plan on publishing children's books in the near future; I work part-time in a bookshop, so I talk to kids about the stories they read, the stories they want to read, and their frustrations with the stories they HAVE read, all the time; I studied child psychology as part of my degree in Social Anthropology: this is why it matters to me and why I know all too well how much these coded messages affect us. I know it from my own experiences as a half-Moroccan kid with a dead father, growing up in a classroom of white kids who all came from middle-class households with two parents. This was all brought back to me when I rediscovered some of my old journals and stories I had written for class where I portrayed myself as being blonde/white and talked as if my dad was still alive, because I desperately wanted to be *normal*. I never got to encounter a character like Merida growing up, and I wish to god I had.

Children's authors and publishing houses have an enormous responsibility to make their readers feel included and heard. They also have a responsibility to challenge toxic ideas - not reinforce them. We have to keep pushing boundaries, not limit them.

[vulnerablr]

hey betts, i really appreciate that you run this blog. i like it a lot. i was wondering if you had any comforting/interesting things to say about representation in media. cause like idk if ur in/know of the fandom but i'm pretty devastated about the way a tv show i really liked went. they had the opportunity to do something great (with representation), and they didn't take it. they hinted and refused to rule it out but they didn't go through with it. i'm sad and disappointed and... angry?? idk.

i am in the fandom you’re referring to. at least, i used to be and now i’m kind of on the sidelines. and yeah, i’m just as upset. or at least i would be if i could take anything that happened in that last episode seriously.

so here are some positive/hopeful things about representation:

i teach at a school where a lot of the students are children of prominent alumni, which makes for a pretty conservative school. we even had milo y. come and do a talk (which i protested). so i expected to get a lot of backlash about my liberal teaching style from students who’d been pummeled with conservative rhetoric their whole lives. this was not the case. in a paper where they could argue anything they wanted, i had boys write about toxic masculinity and whitewashing. i had girls write about sexism in academia and impossible beauty standards. i really believe younger people are already more educated than i was when i was their age just a decade ago. it’s fantastic they have all these words and terms without me having to teach them. they already have an arsenal of social progression at their fingertips just by existing in the world we live in. 

i remember in my first women’s studies class talking about how important it is just to make the issues we care about known and discussed and relevant in the public eye. representation is Very Relevant right now, and finding a vocabulary is the first step to revolution. so maybe we’re still in the first steps of adequate representation in television, yk? i like to think about it this way: the Motion Picture Production Code (censorship, namely) only went down in 1960. we are still feeling its effects in the media we consume, but it’s dissipating -- slowly, but it is.

twitter has made the veil that hangs between fan and creator the thinnest it has ever been. only in the last decade have content creators been able to hear the words of the people to whom they’re telling these stories. marketers and researchers (some of whom i’ve spoken with directly, who have been hired by production companies to talk to people in fandom specifically and ask for our interests) have a laser focus on fandom right now that a lot of us can’t even see. what we do and say matters. it might not feel like it, but we’re being watched, and eventually creators will catch up to us.

things are changing. they’re slow and frustrating, and sometimes we lose (supernatural, sherlock, captain america), but sometimes we win too (yuri on ice, check please, korra). 

what we need to do, all of us, is keep yelling about it. keep complaining about it. keep supporting the stories with representation we want to see and criticizing the ones that lack it. we need to get more fanpeople into the sphere of commercial storytelling. we need to keep writing fanfic and reading fanfic and introducing people to fanfic and talking about fanfic and normalizing fanfic, so that people like the ones who fucked us over in that episode last night know that we are educated consumers and better writers than they are. we need to keep making ourselves heard.