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subbyfoxelf · 2 years ago

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my top ten ficitonal moms, and other thoughts on fictional moms and them being amazing

what up gay nerds! so, this is another post that was originally a patreon-exclusive article back when i had a patreon. if i were writing it today there are a bunch of fictional moms i woulda added to the list that i didn't have on it at the time, but i'm just going to go ahead & post it as-is.

thanks to chosen family (hi, mommy and grammy), this is a topic that is much nearer and dearer to my heart than it would have been in the past.

i know this can be a difficult and complicated topic for many people in similar circumstances to me (queer, estranged from biological family), and i promise i’m not trying to push any of that cishet neurotypical b.s. about biological family being The Most Important Thing, or having to love your biological family No Matter What. but i still think, when it’s a healthy relationship, the bond between mother and child can absolutely be one of the most special things in the world, and that’s often reflected in fiction.

now, the person who requested the topic did say that i didn’t just need to focus on positive depictions of motherhood, so i’m going to go into a few related topics here for a minute, but the bulk of this post is going to be a ranked list of my favorite fictional moms, because it’s (belated) mother’s day dang it! we’re here to celebrate moms and chew bubblegum, and–oh, shoot, hey mommy??? can you buy me some bubblegum? pleeeease?

but before we get into that, i do want to take this opportunity to talk about a really important depiction of a dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship that does relate back to what i was talking about a few paragraphs ago. and that’s audrey and alike in pariah (2011). this is one of the most important depictions of a mother, but it is very, very, very much not one of my favorite fictional mothers.

pariah is the story of alike, a black girl who is discovering and exploring her identity as a butch lesbian. her mother is deeply homophobic, and an abusive asshole. the movie is really alike’s story, not audrey’s, but it does something so important that i really wish more queer movies would do: it doesn’t have alike reconcile with her mother. it has her move past her. it has her try to reconcile with her one last time, has that attempt go horribly wrong, and it sucks… but alike just keeps going. more than that, it’s immediately followed by alike just absolutely flourishing. she’s going to college early, she’s written a heartbreakingly beautiful poem (read to us in voiceover as she begins the next stage of her life). if i had to describe alike at the end of this movie in one word, it would be “triumphant.”

i need more of this. i need more queer media that doesn’t give us the “happy ending” that makes cishet people more comfortable. i need more media that shows us not reconciling with our homophobic/transphobic/etc parents (mothers and/or fathers both).

so many of us don’t ever reconcile with our families. we keep going. we make our own lives. we grow past them. and i want more media that reflects those experiences, and that shows us that it’s okay. that we don’t need them. that we’re enough.

… that was kind of heavy, i know. so instead of awkwardly seguing right into my list, let’s talk about some tropes aimed at fictional moms that i frequently find infuriating.

one that jumps immediately to the forefront of my mind is a trope that i’d refer to as the “sitcom mom” syndrome. where the mother character is portrayed as more emotionally intelligent and mature, and that might sound like a good thing but she’s then tasked with managing the emotions of not just her children but also of her useless man-child of a husband who is (ruefully, comedically) often explicitly referred to as an extra child that she has to deal with as well. laugh track! this was an especially rampant characterization in film and television in the 90s. think jill from home improvement.

another trope that frequently frustrates me is one i’m going to call the “hello, my name is mom” trope. like… you know what bambi’s mom is named? bambi’s mom. i literally wanted to include her on my list because i love all the scenes of her cuddling with her fawn and gently encouraging and teaching him before her tragic death which i’m pretty sure traumatized basically every kid that was raised by disney. the same goes for littlefoot’s mom, though she at least gets the fanon name of mama longneck.

but this trope actually expands beyond characters who are unnamed aside from their relationships with the protagonists for a given story. like, say, most depictions of martha wayne. seriously, quick: tell me one thing you know about martha wayne as a person. like one, actual thing about her. her personality. her career. her hobbies. her hopes and dreams.

thomas wayne does also occasionally also get shortchanged in the character development department, but sometimes we get a whole lot of him like in the flashbacks in batman begins and a few episodes of the animated series. and alfred talks about him all the time in basically every version of batman, and a huge chunk of the plot of the batman (2022) is about his legacy. it’s always about his legacy. and martha barely ever gets a single freaking line.

it isn’t just martha wayne. martha kent oftentimes fares better, but not always? and we hear about tony stark’s father constantly in the iron man movies, but almost never about his mother. also dr. beverly crusher on star trek: the next generation hardly ever gets any sustained character development, and while that continues to be the case after wesley leaves the show, while he is on the show she just pops up occasionally to talk about “my son, wesley” and how important he is and it makes her lack of other character development glaringly obvious. i’m sure there are plenty of other examples but those are the ones that jump immediately to mind.

stop taking moms for granted, is all i’m saying.

honorable mentions

[hey there! editing-robin again. just wanted to toss honorable mentions to camila noceda from owl house & lisa from ponyo, both of whom would have a good chance of making the list if i had seen that far in owl house and/or seen ponyo when i made this list.]

now that we’ve lightened the mood a bit, let’s move on to our list! in order to keep things manageable i decided to limit the list to ten so there were plenty i had to leave out. also i’m sure there are plenty i didn’t think of because my brain likes to miss exceedingly obvious stuff on occasion.

so, yeah! there’s a sort of category of characters who are amazing characters and unmitigated badasses and happen to be moms, but we never really get to see them being moms, or else being a mom isn’t a big part of their character. think b’ealanna torres from star trek: voyager or letty from the fast saga. for me personally, this trope also fits mara jade skywalker from the star wars novels, even though she did actually get quite a bit of “screentime” as a mom in the later novels, but that was when i had moved on to just skimming them quickly to see what was going on in general because it was hard to get really invested post-njo.

i didn’t have any particular category for her, but i also wanted to shout out evelyn from the mummy returns. (heh: the MUMMY returns.) and she’s kind of adjacent to the above-listed action badass moms, except that her motherhood is actually a pretty big part of her character in the mummy returns, so yeah.

i also want to give a shout-out to evil moms! the one that comes immediately to mind is cersei from game of thrones. i love her way more than i should, she is obviously an unspeakably evil character, but man i would let her domme the heck out of me. same for seska from star trek: voyager.

although i talked about the bambi’s mom problem above, i should say that i do love a lot of cartoon moms, even underdeveloped ones, even underdeveloped disney ones. so we’re talking bambi’s mom and mrs. jumbo from dumbo. and plenty of background animal moms like the cuddling deer in snow white.

but how about some non-underdeveloped cartoon moms! like elastigirl from the incredibles, or mrs. brisby from the secret of nimh. the latter was literally #11 on this list before just missing the cut, and it kind of gave me a brief existential crisis about limiting the list to 10 because she’s such an unmitigated badass.

scifi moms? we also got scifi moms! how about some dr. carol marcus from star trek ii: the wrath of khan, or sarah connor from terminator 2 and the sarah connor chronicles? or ellen ripley from aliens, who became surrogate mother to the orphaned newt and had to fight a protracted battle against the alien queen, herself an avenging mother.

the last special category is the category of this year! because this year has already had two movies with amazing moms as central characters in the form of ming lee from turning red and evelyn quan wang from everything everywhere all at once.

10. mom racer speed racer (2008)

in another movie this character would probably disappear into the scenery. she’s gentle and softspoken, but she is absolutely not about to be pushed out of any conversation. she’s warm and supportive, but she has no problem telling her husband or her son when they’re dead wrong.

speed racer is, unsurprisingly, speed’s movie. but what makes it so sublime is it leans really heavily on all these wonderfully-drawn characters and their incredibly functional relationships. mom racer isn’t given quite as much time or development as many of the other characters, but susan sarandon makes the most out of every frame. and she’s a vital part of this incredibly wholesome family dynamic that contributes to making speed racer one of my favorite movies of all time.

9. jasmine independence day (1996)

towards the middle of the second act of independence day, first lady whitmore and the woman who saved her strike up a conversation and start to get to know each other. the first lady asks jasmine what she does for a living and she tells her she’s an exotic dancer, and mrs. whitmore gets embarrassed and tells her “i’m sorry.” to the movie’s credit, jasmine confidently responds, “don’t be. i’m not. it’s good money. besides, my baby’s worth it.”

when i was like 12 i considered these the “boring” parts of the movie, but today i see them as its heart and soul. the entire city of los angeles has just been bombed out of existence and a lot of people are giving up, but this sex worker and single mother dusts herself off, finds a big ass truck, and starts rounding up other survivors.

sex workers get shit done and moms get shit done. sex workers who are also moms? apocalypse-defying levels of getting shit done.

8. aunt frances owens & aunt jet owens practical magic (1998)

who the fuck wouldn’t want to be raised by witches who teach you to be a witch and let you eat cake for breakfast. that is literally the dream.

7. kobayashi-san miss kobayashi’s dragon maid & miss kobayashi’s dragon maid: kanna’s daily life

kobayashi is the butch ace mom representation we need.

she’s frequently required to work long hours in her office job and that causes no small amount of distress for her adopted daughter, but she also finds a way to make time for the things that are important to her family. and her interactions with kanna when the latter is being cute are just achingly sweet.

6. moriticia addams the addams family (1991) & the addams family values (1993)

while her incredibly healthy gothic egalitarian bdsm relationship with her husband rightly gets a lot of the attention, morticia addams is also a fucking incredible mom? she’s so supportive of her children, and so damn proud of them. and obviously my queer, witchy, halloween-obsessed ass loves this wholesome gothic family.

5. eda the owl house (2020-present)

the absolute gold standard in lesbian wine moms. eda already had plenty of mom energy in her relationship with king–the adorable demon fluffboy she’s been raising for years–and then luz comes along. at first their relationship is more somewhere in between employer/employee (gross) and teacher/student, but it evolves over time and emphasizes the teacher/student thing quite a bit more, while their cohabitation and shared goals start to push things into more of a family kind of place.

a lot of this is down to luz’s sweetness, but for all her standoffishness eda really is a big softie at heart. just, don’t tell anyone.

4. mothra mothra (1961) & various godzilla movies

more like momthra. (sorry, i had to.)

in her first appearance mothra is the mommy of an entire island and when two of her people are kidnapped she destroys half of tokyo and then the fictional “new kirk city” to rescue them. the resolution of the film is literally the human characters worshiping her as a goddess. in her next appearance, mothra vs. godzilla, she beats the shit out of godzilla, but she was already near the end of her life cycle and the fight takes too much out of her to continue. so with her last act she literally shields her hatching egg with her wing before succumbing, and then her daughter precedes to beat the shit out of godzilla.

although she’s only ever called it in the legendary universe, i fully agree: queen of the monsters indeed.

3. captain/emperor philipa georgiou star trek: discovery (2017-ongoing)

i loved the relationship between commander burnham and captain georgiou in the first episode of discovery. georgiou is mentoring burnham, but they’re both clearly learning from each other and growing and amplifying each other’s power. it’s everything i’ve ever wanted out of star trek, and then they just unceremoniously kill off georgiou and send michael to space jail.

then suddenly the show brings back michael’s nurturing mommy domme as a badass mean domme in the form of her mirror universe counterpart who literally asks, “don’t you bow to your emperor?” after swooping in torpedoes blazing. and it turns out that this version of georgiou was literally her universe’s michael’s foster mother, and she frequently interacts with michael’s biological mother and adopted father on those terms. and every time michael is in danger we see rare signs of vulnerability from her as, for once, she is not her own primary concern.

(spoilers)

this relationship was so unexpectedly sweet and it was genuinely sad to see it end a second time, but it was nevertheless amazing to see it acknowledged as the thing it was in the two women’s tearful goodbye. i love them so much. one of my favorite relationships in all of star trek.

2. all of the moms in dragon moms dragon moms by alexis long

if you are even slightly interested in either dragons or moms, dragon moms is essential reading so if you haven’t already read it i’m just going to wait right here while you go and read all of it. go on. i’ll wait.

nope, i’m not joking. go do it.

back? did you do it? well, this isn’t an interactive medium, so i’m just going to have to assume you went and did it. good job! what’d you think? yeah, i know! it’s so good, omg!

what i really love about dragon moms, besides everything, is that all of the three main moms are so drastically different from each other, but there’s something essential about their motherhood that bridges those differences. and don’t get me wrong, they’re also very different from each other in how they express those feelings and relationships, but the core of it is the same and that really does help them understand each other.

dragon moms is an epistolary narrative, told in the form of diary entries. initially these are from the three main moms, though later as some of the other characters grow into mom or mom-adjacent roles themselves we get entries from their perspective as well plus the occasional non-mom entry. the three we hear from exclusively at the beginning, and the most throughout the stories as a whole, are gloria, merry, and baroness.

glory is a down-to-earth, practical, no-nonsense former soldier type who’s now saddled with a desk job. most of her entries (especially early on) start with a factual description of what the entry is going to be about, like “today was [x]” or “today [x happened].” she’s rather strict and protective with her kids, but there’s also an underlying, understated sweetness. she gives them both nicknames–her son, who is all grown up by the time we meet him, is “terror,” her daughter is “treasure.”

merry, despite being close friends with glory, could not possibly be much different from her. she is a super energetic, straightforwardly affectionate, endearingly naive baker who loves to cook, desperately wants to be a mom, and her sweetness is much more upfront than glory’s. most of her entries (especially early on) start with “today was a good day!” she ends up adopting a human runaway who becomes a “dragon-in-training,” and just absolutely showers her with affection in a way that’s so fulfilling for both of them. there are a lot of moments in these books that make me feel all the feelings, but the moments when merry and philly establish that their mother/daughter relationship is real to both of them are pretty high on that list.

the last of the main three moms is baroness, a lich who basically looks like a dragon skeleton that is surrounded by flames. most of her entries, especially early ones, start with “conquest continues.” her touch can kill, so she has to be incredibly careful. there’s a surprising amount of vulnerability to her character that she isn’t upfront about, and seeing her reconnect with her feelings and her need to meaningfully connect to other people is so rewarding. she grows so much over the course of the story, but she never really loses her threatening aura and that just makes every moment of gentleness and sweetness from her so much more rewarding.

all three of these moms, and the other characters who either become moms (or mom-adjacent) or were secretly already moms shhh it’s a secret shhhh have their own way of expressing their profound feelings for their children, and they all also have their own stuff going on that isn’t about being moms, but they carry their mom-ness with them always. even when they’re dealing with like fate of the kingdom type stuff. oh, and most of them are super gay, so that’s pretty cool too.

honestly, if i had read dragon moms before i played undertale there’s a decent chance this would be #1 on my list. it still very nearly is. it was easily the hardest decision i had to make when putting together these rankings, and again if you’re even slightly interested in 1) dragons, 2) moms, 3) amazing writing, i cannot recommend it highly enough.

i know this list isn’t supposed to be about recommendations, it’s supposed to be about my opinions, but in my opinion you should read dragon moms, so there.

1. toriel undertale (2015) & deltarune (2018-ongoing)

let’s be real for a second: there was absolutely no way anyone else was going to be at the top of this list.

toriel is the mommiest mommy that has ever mommied. toriel made an entire generation of queers realize that we wanted our mommy. she’s one of the most fully-realized video game characters i’ve ever encountered. all of the characters in undertale are so vibrant and vital and achingly real, but even among them she’s on another level.

the game also seems to realize this, having her be the first friendly character the player encounters. she leads you through the ruins, and at one point quite literally holds your hand to get you past a dangerous obstacle. she’s so sweet and so nurturing, she’s just the most wholesome character ever who could totally destroy everyone with fire magic (but mostly uses it to bake pies).

although it would be tragic because of all the people you wouldn’t meet, lives you wouldn’t touch, and big problems you wouldn’t solve for the monsters of the underground, when toriel talks about reading to you and taking you bug catching, it really does sound like a beautiful life, and i do kind of wish there were dlc or something where you could just live happily ever after with toriel from the start.

(spoilers ahead.)

what really impresses me is that the game actually understands how much the player is going to grow attached to toriel. the option to call her phone never disappears from the menu even though once you leave her house you’re never going to be able to reach her again. at the end of the neutral ending (which is a prerequisite to the pacifist ending), you get a phone message from most of the major characters but toriel doesn’t come to the phone, and that’s pretty clearly the hook that’s meant to draw you back into the game to get the true pacifist ending. speaking of which, there’s a moment in the true pacifist ending when she shows up to save the player from flowey and she’s just such an unmitigated badass and it’s such a relief to see her that i literally threw my arms up and shrieked with joy when it happened.

and finally, at the end of the game’s true pacifist ending, the player’s last choice is whether to strike out on their own or to–one more time–take toriel’s hand and stay with her.

although i genuinely do wish you could just stay with her at the beginning of the game, i will admit that this is just so much better. by the end of the game you’ve grown so much and accomplished so many heroic deeds, and she’s so, so proud of you. it’s just… it’s just perfect, guys.

undertale is a heartbreakingly beautiful game, and toriel is the beating heart of it all. in the opinion of this humble writer she is, and probably always will be, the most incredible fictional mom of all time.

#moms #undertale #toriel #dragon moms #philippa georgiou #star trek discovery #mothra #eda #the owl house #morticia addams #the addams family #miss kobayashi's dragon maid #practical magic #id4 #speed racer 2008

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