#or at least present an anti-romantic hero. someone no woman (or man. or person in general) in their right mind should or *would* want

[harrowscore]

🥳🎉 it's complete!!! 🥳🎉 36k~ words. not bad!!

not me writing 8k words of a watchmen fanfic in a single day hahahaha

[the-chemist-1138]

Disney's Frozen is a testament to how many ideas were wasted. And how little in common it has with the source material.

If you read it's inspiration, "The Snow Queen", by Hans Christian Anderson, you can see just how little in common Disney's Cash Cow has with that fairy tale. The fairy tale had so many elements that for some reason, Disney either removed, or changed so much, it might as well been removed...

A grand adventure, worthy of The Hero's journey, not just through the snow. We Start out with our two protagonists. Two youngsters named Kai and Gerda. A Boy and a Girl.

A grand scope of different visuals. A working class village, a vast and colorful flower garden, a grand castle with moving shadows of dreams, a golden carriage, a decayed Robber fortress, a reindeer ride under a sky lit up by northern lights. An Ice Palace.

You already have two characters of equal importance that Disney could have used to appeal to both girls and boys.

Plus, with Kai loving Roses and not being bothered with being best friends with a girl, something taboo in 1844 when the original fairy tale was written, Disney could have been bold and encouraged boys and girls to be platonically intimate, and they could have told boys that it's okay to have feminine interests, to be softies and that you don't have to see every girl as only a potential romantic partner.

For Gerda, you could show girls that you aren't forced to see boys as only romantic partners, and you could have made Gerda a Tomboyish Disney Princess, given her adventurous spirit, determination, and her willingness to get her hands dirty, while also contrasting previous princesses by having her be working class, and not being the damsel, but instead the rescuer, for someone she knows well and loves platonically already, instead of a prince.

Although if Disney decided to make them a couple in adulthood, you could at least make it a "Childhood Friend Romance", not unlike Simon and Nala.

If Disney wanted to poke fun at the "You can't marry a man you just met." You can counter it by having Gerda and Kai, as mentioned before, be adults that know each other well from being childhood friends, thus knowing each other and having a healthy relationship.

In the original fairy tale, Kai gets kidnapped by The Snow Queen. Gerda is the girl saving the boy in this case. You could show boys that it's okay to need saving, and it's not a weakness to need help. Plus Disney could have made jokes where they point out the gender reversed damsel in distress scenario.

For Gerda, you could also show her receiving help, to show a woman being helped out by OTHER WOMEN, and that it's okay to not be perfect and that you don't need to be a lone wolf.

Disney had a great roster of female characters from various walks of life, all of whom have their own goals and agency. More detail is made on another person's blog here. In short, Frozen ends up ber much LESS feminist friendly than the source material.

Plus, the fairy tale had a lesbian coded robber girl! Whom Disney could have made into their first openly gay female character.

The Snow Queen could have been a mysterious anti villain whose goals are intentionally made unclear. To contrast with previous Disney Villains.

Nobody dies in the original fairy tale, so you don't have to alter it much.

You could still emphasize the importance of platonic love. in this case, between a boy and girl, without them being related.

How did Disney reject all of those ideas? How did it take them since the 1930s to try and adapt this story? It was like they were presented with a bottle of high quality vodka... That they proceeded to water down, until the vodka gave up and turned itself into lukewarm water. Why Disney? Why didn't you use any of these ideas?

[brideylee]

Chateau Quarantine

                 Sophia Coppola smokes a cigarette while she waits for an omelette she has no intention of eating.  It’s a gloomy marine layered morning, you can barely see across Sunset. She’s been in lock down for three weeks and while she normally loves the moody, brooding decadence of the Chateau Marmont, its elite solitude is giving her a bit too much time to reflect. She thinks about the concept of crying as she watches a long torso-ed model skinny dip in the pool from the penthouse. There are no rules anymore, not that there were many in the first place. The hotel was shuttered to the public as of three weeks ago, and those who were already there could stay indefinitely. Sophia lives alone in the tower suite with the three bedrooms and the wrap around porch, known by some as “the Deniro”, but Robert himself couldn’t tell you why. Any legends or gossip about the Chateau were just bread crumbs to keep the public hungry and mystified. The real Chateau for the privileged few who used it, was an unceremonious respite for excessive loneliness, addiction, and often not great sex. The Chateau had a reputation: look but don’t fuck. Everyone’s genitals were rendered useless from anti-depressants.

               She thought she would be filming by now. Her cast is stranded too, with little guidance other than “we’ll wait it out.” The film she wanted to make stars Hugh Grant and Ewan McGregor as two estranged brothers coming together for their father’s funeral. Iman was set to the play the mysterious woman who shows up at the funeral who they then realize was their father’s mistress. It was going to be a slow movie about the brothers coming to terms with their father’s death and equally so falling in love with the woman he hid from them. All this would be suggested through intimate long takes, and funny, stylish, improvised montages. Always subtle and romantic without the sap, this was the tight rope Sophia liked to balance on.  At the end of the movie, both brothers are mildly changed, but not entirely. She has a sweet spot for the immovability of people’s psyches, particularly men. 

Sophia watches impartially, as the naked model floats on her back in the calm pool. It is so cold and early to swim, is she on drugs or is everyone at this place even more numb than they think? She wondered if her film was too male, too disembodied from her personally to mean anything.  Tapping into the male gaze, was an ability she was born with. Her father’s point of view was all she interacted with as a kid, and the underside of his specialties became her focus: the lost parts of men when they are too weak to hold up the heavy crown of their egos, who they were when they could let themselves feel outside of their work. But given the state of the world, and the molasses nature of time during lock down, Sophia started to question if what she always found to be her strength was just simply trauma. Was her whole profession a way to resolve some genetic creative stifling that took place in the shadow of her dad? Surely her body of work contains more than that. It’s not all a selfish attempt at repair. Is any art not selfish? "Maybe I should make a different movie, something that everyones gonna like for once.” She thinks to herself.  Thank God, her goat cheese omelette has arrived.

             Later on, the gothic lobby is empty besides the cast of her film and the elegant model behind the reception desk standing like a hollow sculpture, frightened by the chaos that lurks outside. Ewan McGregor, drunk off of five Marmont Mules, is showing Hugh Grant an app that maps the stars and constellations. Ewan has gone on and on about a camping trip he took around Scotland and how amazing the stars were, but when pressed for details about where exactly he was or what he saw or what year he did this, he can’t seem to remember anything at all.But that doesn’t dampen his excitement about the app. “See, that, there is Orion’s belt!” Ewan enthusiastically points out, his cute smirk displaying his bottom row of sweet corn kernel teeth. Ewan just recently learned about the stars. Until the age of 47, Ewan had been referring to them as “night freckles.” Many think this is why he didn’t have a fun time acting in  Star Wars, space simply befuddled him. Hugh and Ewan are dressed exactly the same: navy blue beanie, black jeans, a tight blue thermal, and desert boots- the actor man uniform they give you after you play opposite Nicole Kidman or Renee Zellweger.

“That’s brilliant,” says Hugh Grant completely perplexed by the app and confused at Ewan’s rambling. Hugh sticks a handkerchief up his nostril with his pointer finger and wiggles it around somewhat violently. Iman clocks this with a blink of disgust, her silk, gold blouse  glistens with god-like royalty in the amber glow.  “Can you turn your face away? That’s how the virus is spreading.” Her voice is deep and she rarely uses it because it changes the direction of the wind and messes with the tides.  “Aw, fuck me. That’s right, isn’t it?” Hugh Grant turns away and starting blowing his nose and coughing obnoxiously. Hugh is acting like a resentful brat because he knows he wont be able to have Iman. He decides he’s gonna pick a fight with Sandra Bullock via face time later to blow off steam. Iman is thinking she was right all along, she should never have agreed to this. She was already sick of the “beanie twins”. 

Hugh had been rattling on about how the movie needed a sex scene or at least a sexy scene and went on to say that Sophia had some sort of block. Iman felt that both Ewan and Hugh, however innocently, were exploiting their acting roles to gain real life experience, and there was no way in hell, she was going to kiss either of them.  Her kiss would make them immortal and Iman knew their souls needed more lifetimes to grow. Plus, she liked the script the way it was- underwritten and open for interpretation. Her character is symbolic of the side of their dad they didn’t get to meet-  spiritual, graceful, embodied. It was a soulful choice not to show any nudity or sex, one that could lead Americans to try to use whats left of their iPhone stolen imaginations.

                Meanwhile Michael Cain, who was supposed to play the dead father, is staring at the beautiful Victorian tapestry hanging behind her. “It’s like it’s right out of the Cloister’s.” Michael says under his breath. Michael is sweet, Iman thinks as she watches him stare at the tapestry with wonder, his mouth agape, and a lil warm milk spilling out of his left eye. Iman and him have known each other for years and he always reminded her of her husband: his fierce devotion to his craft, his rigorous intellectuality that does a bad job hiding an animalistic sexuality. Both men contained so much and no one can handle a man like that besides a mystical siren like Iman. 

Hugh and Ewan’s chatter dies as their drinks empty. “If I were to be honest with myself…” Hugh begins. “Better later than never…” Michael Cain interrupts without cracking a smile,  a dryness a la Maggie Smith. In fact, fuck, this was Maggie Smith. No one had realized. Hugh winks at Michael/ Maggie and continues. “ I don’t think were going to be filming any time soon, folks. I think we are being held hostage a bit by Miss Coppola.” Ewan stares off with a thinking face like no one has  ever had a deeper thought before. “That is interesting to think about. There is some kind of bratty assumption that all this will fade away soon enough. And we’ll be back on set. But what if it’s not for another year or so?”  Ewan is really getting worked up “What if we live here for the rest of our lives!!” His eyes are big and dazzling, it’s like he’s thinking of the most ideal outcome for the rest of his life.

               Suddenly, Sophia joins them at the table. “There they are, my little hunchbacks!” This is what Sophia affectionately calls her actors, the origin is unknown. Sophia has a strange new confidence around her. Usually, when she walked into places, she would feel like a Nat Sherman cigarette, like only some select tall New Yorkers in the back would still appreciate her. “Hello, love! Someone slept well.” Maggie Smith as Michael Caine chirped. Even when Maggie-Michael said something sweet, it still felt like someone was aggressively tickling your ribcage. 

          “I have news.” Sophia sits down, and smiled large and toothy, a stark contrast to her usual chic, despondent stare,  a look only afforded  to artists born with trust funds. “We’re not making the movie.” Hugh taps the table. “Well, I believe I won that bet.” Ewan’s jaw drops, destroyed. “You mean we cant live here together forever?” He runs his hands through his hair, petrified. Iman is quiet, which can mean many different things and all things at once, she is eternally the glory of God, a forgotten pyramid at the bottom of the ocean that if unearthed would explode us into 5D ascension. 

 “We are making a better movie! A super hero movie!!” Sophia exclaims. Sophia gets up close in the faces of her cast, pitching them on her new idea. “It’ll be a real heroes journey- good guys versus evil! Fun CGI! Sexy starlets and fun on trend jokes!” She turns to Michael Maggie, her mouth inches away from their milky eye, and says- “And much much more!” Sophia climbs up on the table now. “The adults will love it, as well as the little ones!” She does an Irish jig and starts spinning around and then poses with her arms up as though at the end of a musical.  It was not fun to watch.  Iman cuts her off-“I don’t trust what is happening.This is not reality. This is delusion. A karmic spell.” The power of Iman’s words blows the power out of the Chateau, pipes burst, the fire alarm goes off, and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte in room 304 stops jerking off for a second. Sophia is still catching her breath from her presentation, her sweating, arms stretched to the ceiling. She gulps as her eyes meet Iman’s. “Why don’t you just write from my character’s point of view?” Iman says as softly as she can without causing chaos.   Sophia freezes. Her whole body calcifies and turns to ice, then crumbles onto the table. Ewan and Hugh watch in absolute horror as Iman drops some of the ice into her water. She knows she shouldn’t have said yes to this project and looks on lovingly at Michael/ Maggie who has dozed off. 

[ghelikblack]

Character Study - Men

From what I’ve seen from social media, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually like men. 

Anyone that knows me, knows I don’t really listen to people, in the sense that I usually “voy a mi bola”, as the Spanish say. I follow my own path and usually don’t care much what other people think either of me or of my way. 

That’s why I usually try and keep out of these highly politically charged discourses. Whenever I participate in them it’s mostly because at that moment I’m bored and in need of a good argument/discussion. I was taught to debate at school and I’ve loved it ever since. I can counter-argue practically anything -be it my opinion or not - and I love to do it. If you say brown bread is better than white bread, I would automatically jump into the discussion and try to argue my way around until I managed to convince my “adversary” of the wonders of white bread. 

The internet and social media -at least in my experience - isn’t much in favor of discussions. I had this one really interesting discussion on Twitter once, about the culture of a fictional group of people in a series. It ended with the other person saying something along the lines “you’re literally stupid” and then probably blocking me. I mean, it was a little hard arguing in favor of a culture of warriors when I am not much in favor of soldiers, to begin with. But it keeps the mind active and forces me to step into someone else’s shoes. 

What has gotten me out of my “shell” so to say it is what follows: every once in a while I would stumble  across some terrible experience some woman (or some gay man, because talking about men nowadays goes hand in hand with sexual representation, for some reason) has experienced at the hands of men. 

It chips away at you if you know what I mean. 

Then there’s the media I consume YA novels and fanfic. (I’ll try not to enter into the realm of movies and such because then this will turn into an essay and no one wants that).

I read mostly urban fantasy/science fiction/dystopian YA novels; usually with hetero protagonists. I haven’t read many LGTB+ YA novels so I couldn’t say if the trend is present there as well. 

But in those stories that I have read, I can tell you this: the heroine is shackled by The Old Ways – usually represented by some Big Bad Man, be it an evil dictator, a controlling father, etc. She breaks free of her shackles, the Male Lead discovers how badass she is, yadda-yadda we all know the gist. 

Don’t get me wrong stories are important and I understand why they exist. What they’re trying to tell. I even understand why most of the authors writing about heroines rejecting the patriarchal society are written by women. 

But whenever I come across yet another YA novel written in the First Person POV with a female lead, and a female writer I find myself rolling my eyes at it and leaving it unread. Which probably says more about me than the work that I am ignoring. I don’t dispute that. 

Why do I leave the book on its stand and walk slowly away? Because it is repetitive and boring. It is boring reading about how evil men are. It is boring to read flat one-dimensional characters that bumble around and look in awe at Awesome Protagonists, who are actually bimbos but think themselves average, who are clumsy and have a great heart and don’t think they’ll get with Romantic Interest because they’re not pretty like the adds. Not to speak about the even flatter and even more predictable villains: old men with ridiculous backward plans that are easily foiled by Special Snowflake. 

And yes, men are also heroes of exactly the same types of stories. Have been for centuries and they are as much Special Snowflakes as the females. So why don’t they make me uncomfortable? 

Because I don’t get reminded every five seconds of the fact that Special Snowflake is a man, a man that thinks himself average, a man that has the necessity of wooing Romantic Interest, and doesn’t know if she will ever look at him. 

Male protagonists are… un-gendered to me. Because there isn’t the need to insert a Romantic Interest in every story. Because when it is inserted it doesn’t necessarily hinge on the fact that “AW he’s so dreamy and I am so normal, watch me weep while I cleanse the world of demons”. Every time more often they form a partnership, or they leave the romance completely out. That is also possible. Sure, apparently people like sex, so sex is inserted in a lot of narratives. But even then, it feels like it’s not the primary goal fo the protagonists - ok the primary is to stop Evil Patriarchal Guy, but the second is to woo the man of their dreams, so... 

Yep, not a fan of YA female leads, which is my own personal opinion. Writing is difficult and if that’s the way you want to swing your story, go for it.  

Fanfic is the second Great Source of reading material for me. (Thanks to it I won’t be finishing my Goodreads book challenge this year either, so thanks, AO3) Anyway, Fanfic has always been transformative and innovator and cool and I love them and are incredibly grateful to all writers young and old. But they too have become a place where hetero men don’t seem to be welcome. An “anti-hetero”/ “anti-male” playground where characters that are male and non-LGTB+ are villainized, probably rapists and most definitely just a tool to the submission of women. 

But much like those random posts, I’ve mentioned earlier, and like YA novels, this chips at me. Makes me feel uncomfortable for starting to think this is more a trend than an actual critique.

 I mean: yeah men can be awful. But so can women, so can gays and lesbians, and bi, and ace and white and black and Asian and anyone. There are 7 billion people out there. I’m sure many can be nasty, nasty people. I am of the not-so-nice opinion that people as a whole suck.

This - I’m going to call it a trend from now on - trend reminds me of the short stories I wrote as a somewhat feminazi-14-year-old. Because now that I am older and I understand the world a bit better, my 14-year-old was an angry pessimist that didn’t write all that flattering portraits of men. 

I come from what you’d call a traditional middle-class 90’s family in which the father is an older authoritative figure. As a teen, I was rebelling against it. That is not to say that men had done anything to me, particularly. My father may be the authority in the household but he’s a good father and a good man that has always looked out for us and has given everything for his family.  – Love you, dad. 

At 14 I was just an angry rebellious girl with some very black-and-white worldviews and a flair for over-dramatization. Also, I love torturing fictional characters. So there’s that. 

I didn’t have many girlfriends – as in friends that are girls – growing up. I still don’t. I’ve always been more comfortable with boys. Most of my friends are cis, white, hetero. They’re also men. 

And of course I’ve had big explosive arguments and I’ve spent time not talking to some of them. But whenever I had a problem I could rely on them. Not to sound overdramatic, but no male friend of mine has ever “betrayed” me, or hurt me. Female friends have. Which doesn’t make all women evil and males suddenly saints. I’ve said it: humans suck. 

 But I hope you can see a bit where I’m coming from. 

And maybe I am alone in this. Maybe this is just my inability to completely grasp women psyche. Jus my own shortcomings. But whenever I hear a man saying “women are complicated” or “I don’t understand women” I totally get you! Because I don’t either and I am one of them! 

As it must be evident by now, I am not the most socially attuned person in any room - not even in this one and I am alone but for a beautiful moth flying around somewhere. 

That is the reason why this is only my opinion, and I accept that you might have a huge grudge against all men. 

Then again, I have a very limited memory and don’t really understand social cues. I am sure someone has leered at me at some point in my life, I am sure I haven’t noticed many of the times it happened. Maybe I am able to brush misogynistic comments away because not every man around me is a total douchebag. I don’t know. 

What I do know is that I like men. I enjoy spending time with them and it bothers me that social media insists on portraying them all as some faulty discriminating mass. Because that is not true and by doing so… Aren’t we stepping right into the “oppressors shoes and turning the tables to make them “pay”? Do we want to become the oppressors, make them feel bad for being what they are just as some sort of revenge for the centuries of oppression women and LGTB+ people have endured? Or is this really about feminism and equality and turning the page and making women and men of all colors and orientations equal? 

If what we want is the latter… Then we’re doing it wrong. We can’t use a hate-discourse. We can’t use the same weapons they’ve used against “us” and then just turn them on “them”. We need to find another way, a way to have no one be ashamed of the way they’re born. 

That is the hardest thing because it requires education. It requires understanding. It requires forgiveness for “Universal Sins”. And it requires a willingness to listen and stepping into other people’s shoes. Which, from what I’ve seen from my limited attempts at online debates, is severely lacking.