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Tagged by Redbrunja on an LJ meme:
http://redbrunja.livejournal.com/735952.html
Favorite Harry Potter novel: Order of the Phoenix is my favorite. It's the most uncomfortable book in the series, but that's part of why I like it. Harry's angst and temper are so understandable but cause him big problems, and they pull through so much of the suffering Umbridge causes them, only for Harry to let his impulses get the best of him at the worse time and end the book on a tragedy.
Luna appears and is prominent in it. This is why she became my favorite character and Harry/Luna my pet ship for HP. I love her calm, her honesty that isn’t cruel, her intelligence and open-mindedness.
There is also Umbridge. I hate Umbridge so much that I have to see that book as awesome. It makes me want to root for her defeat so bad every time.
Top 3 Buffy ships:
1. Buffy/Angel. I enjoyed it right from the start, but that season two, especially Becoming, are what makes it top. They are just lonely and not fitting in even though Buffy has great friends, then finding solace in each other, and I have what is possibly an unhealthy kink for heroines pairing up with dark and broody/cold guys. But this one works for me in particular, despite all the years, because it is so oriented towards Buffy. Their love story, while an important step in Angel's characterization to get him towards the place where he could start off on AtS, is mainly to highlight Buffy and help her grow as a character. I had this post written up about Buffy's arc of responsibility in season two in particular, and how not being able to kill Angel/us in Innocence was crucial not only to that last part of Becoming but to her entire series arc on what she feels is her burden of Slaying and how it makes her so alone. Then my cursor jumped around and hit the back button. I wrote some notes on my class notebook, and hope to rewrite the thing after the semester is properly over.
As for Buffy's other canon ships, I enjoyed Riley and was sad when he left, but wasn't that invested. I started out enjoying Spuffy until the beginning of season six. After that I hated Spike - I know not everything that happened was his responsibility, but I hated him so much for taking advantage of her problems to try and drag her down worse so that she could keep only turning to him. Right now I still don't like it, even though I can see the potential of the pairing and enjoyed much fic with when I first started in fandom. There were some fic recs on an old post I read a month or so ago, and I am planning to return to them (so much backlog on everything right now. So much.) I don't hate Spike all the time, though. Mainly during season six.
2. For fanon pairings, I developed a soft spot for Buffy/Tara, probably due to Dead Things. I read some fics that helped a little, though they were hard to find and now I don't think some were as good as I used to think. Still, I have that place in my heart for the pairing. Also, when looking for fanon pairings in fic I mainly look for Buffy femslash ones, preferably that pairing or with Cordelia or Kendra.
3. A second big Buffy ship for me is Buffy/Giles, preferably after she’s graduated high school. I know they have a mentor/mentee relationship, and it is a bit squicky for me to read them while Buffy’s in high school, though I have enjoyed doing so, but I think their relationship is ambiguous enough that it’s not necessarily incestuous? They obviously care deeply about each other in platonic ways, and in high school it’s definitely too much of a Giles is stuffy and sometimes right/Buffy is childish but cutely defiant and sometimes right dynamic, but it’s not necessarily true for me that the way he cares about her is fatherly. He gets less highlighted in seasons four and five, where Buffy wants him to stay but the dynamic is different. They’re all growing apart and she seems closer to Willow and Xander than Giles. The person closest to him then seems to have been Willow rather than Buffy, at least until Buffy comes back to him for more in-depth Slayer training and they keep secrets from the gang together, and that culminates in their conflict during The Gift. Then again he does mention wanting to play the father in season six. But I really loved this pairing.
The other characters don’t get as much tunnel-focus as Buffy with me, but my heart was in Giles/Jenny. Jenny was wonderful in and of herself, and it bugs me that he never got another important lover. His important relationships were with Jenny, and then the gang, particularly Buffy and Willow, but those relationships were closest – and in Jenny’s case only existent - in the early seasons. When the group bonds fray later, at least Buffy has Spike and Willow has Kennedy, and Xander has Anya until he leaves her, and then at least he and the women are closer than they are to Giles, for me. Basically Giles’ arc in Buffy makes me so sad for him.
Willoz was cute, and I liked it better than Willow/Tara. In fact I mainly like Tara when she’s not being about Willow, because otherwise it seems like she was just there to give Willow a love interest and further her arc. Especially if it’s true that Whedon was planning to kill Oz or whomever Willow was with to further her arc. I didn’t mind this with Buffy/Angel, because Angel was a guy and a broody guy to boot (fanfic with broody guys in a romance tends to make the heroine subordinate to the guy’s problems, so B/A was very palatable for me indeed), but female characters being mostly love interests makes me sad, and Tara in particular just didn’t get enough characterization for me.
Never that fannishly invested in the Xander pairings, though I enjoyed them and felt really sad when they ended.
Favorite Disney movie:
Tangled, Tangled, Tangled. The mother/daughter relationship was the highlight of the movie for me. I mean yes, Gothel’s a villain and she’s doing horrible things, and I don’t know if she has even the slightest care for Rapunzel whatsoever, but the way they built it. Gothel locks her up and then builds a prison in Rapunzel’s own head, that she isn’t good enough and wants to do things that will her mother if she wants to get anything different than what she’s offered, with Rapunzel having to be complicit in all of it because she loves and trusts in Gothel and has so little to base her own separate judgments on. I relate to this a lot, though my family isn’t nearly as bad as Gothel and it’s partly thanks to culture and religion that I was raised the way I was, and I certainly have my flaws that make not good at handling the wider world (not being able to get past friendly acquaintances; at least my sister can leave the house if a friend wants to drive her). I just relate so much to feeling inadequate at being outside the home and away from the family, and pretty much forbidden to do so unless with acceptable reasons like school and if I’m not alone/am checked up on, so it’s not as extreme for me. (I didn’t want to be whiny or ungrateful or shove my personal issues at you, so I hope this isn’t.)
Plus, you know. It’s a love story in which they both grow as characters in a complementary way. Rapunzel takes Flynn/Eugene showing up as an opportunity to do what she needed to do, and he tries to use her naiveté and guilt against her, but it ends up bolstering her confidence as she takes control at the bar and impresses him, and then they both get enough trust and confidence with each other for Eugene to tell her he was Eugene, and for Rapunzel to believe that he won’t betray her. Then they save each other at the end, but not before Rapunzel has her confrontation with Gothel just between them that cements how badly their relationship will end.
I also love Beauty and the Beast, and just ordered the Diamond edition after finding my 2002 DVD malfunctioning. Though, I’ve only just realized that the movie is in some ways more about the men in it than about Belle. The main storyline is the character growth, for the better, of the Beast because he needs Belle, with Belle generously accepting that because he saved her life so couldn’t be all bad, until the point where he lets her go to make her happy and because she needs it. Sure she’s important, but her although she does make active decisions all the time, the narrative requires that for the important thing she mostly be passive and wooed by Beast, without changing or growing much herself. Sure the song is about “learning you were wrong,” but Belle wasn’t really wrong to be as upset and defiant as she was, considering how the Beast treated her father and wanted to lock her up forever, even if she volunteered herself to do it. She just changes her opinion of him mostly on him saving her life and making her stay more bearable, while her active decisions like reading to him and very importantly, meeting him halfway in that learning not to be rude thing – drinking directly from the soup bowl when she saw him doing so, but less messily - are covered as small moments within the song.
Her father’s a key plot device in the film, because much of what affects Belle’s feelings and the decisions made in the movie involve how the characters treat Maurice. Gaston makes fun of him and makes barely any effort to hide his opinion, while Beast locks him up, and Belle will actively rescue him and not want to be around anyone who makes fun of him. She decides to be locked up for his sake, and the key moment in which Beast lets Belle go is when she sees him sick, and tells Beast “You do understand.” Then of course Gaston goes from bad to worse in bribing a guy to lock Maurice up and using that prevalent low opinion of Maurice to get a pitchfork and torches crowd supporting him while it happens. So I feel it’s less about Belle and more about her suitors, or at least more about her choosing suitors than it is about herself, except in that who she’s with defines what her future will be like, as is pointed out in Belle and the reprise, which is fitting to the time she lives in of course, and I love her and can relate to not wanting the life others seem satisfied with, but still. Tangled’s adventurous lady gets more character development, even though that’s when Disney decided to say they were going to aim at boys more and nearly made me not watch Tangled because of that. I had to be read about it beforehand to decide.
It’s ironic that I feel this way, when Belle seemingly has no guilt about wanting her adventures and Rapunzel does, but of course it makes sense for both their characters situations. Belle is hoping that Maurice’s inventions will get them back out of the village (I only realized recently that they hadn’t always lived there), and is frustrated that no one understand her wish to not be a housewife, even her father. Rapunzel hoped that her mother would let her out, but felt really bad and insecure about wanting it so that it took her eighteen years and a prime chance to leave without permission.
Bullet-proof storytelling tropes:
For some reason I’m going to start with ships, even though I love non-romance focused things outside of fandom and often don’t read romance stories except in fic. I often go for ships with cold/broody guys and the heroine, regardless of her personality actually, for some reason. This is true even though I often dislike the guys themselves. But I generally want it with the guy being subordinate to the heroine in the narrative, and basically changing himself if he must change, not her changing him. So there is that also for why I love Beauty and the Beast. I also want the guy to be the one opening up and taking emotional care of the heroine, though not in a controlling or him being dominant way. This is definitely weirdly inconsistent of me, since the romantic trope I started my paragraph with does not generally go that way. She's cold and distant, and he brings out the love inside her. Though then again, she wasn't really portrayed as the one with the power in that relationship, or anywhere outside the castle.
Plus, there’s a relevant trope I like reversed,mentioned in this overview of romance novels called Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, whom you might have heard of as the run the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website. It’s in chapter three or Chapter Corset, as they call it, on the romance novel heroine. The subsection “Sex Is Natural, Sex Is Good” (p. 50-54) covers the connection between virginity and inexperience, the substitution of inexperience in some important part of the hero’s world for virginity in contemporary and particularly paranormal romance, and says in particular that “he initiates her into his experience, and includes her in his world” (p.54). This is actually a trope that bothers me, and I want to see it in reverse, but still from the heroine’s pov of course. I want to see him being initiated into her experience and her world, learn to be like her and empathize with her. Again, it sounds weird given that first thing I said, but it amounts to basically wanting those cold/broody guys to be in a position where they will change themselves and want to be part of her world, and the heroine chooses to do so while having other non-romance things to deal with. This is kind of where I see Buffy/Angel was headed in season two, with Angel slowly integrating into her human life, and then the failure of that was why they couldn’t stay together in season three. There’s also an anime that seemed to start out that way, but made some big missteps. I still love RomeoxJuliet and it did do some of that, it had a lot of good, but it could have been much better.
For non-romance tropes, I love Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor: http://nnedi.com/who_fears_death.html. It’d be kind of spoilery to say the first thing that comes to mind, because it has to do with the ending, but let’s just say that throughout the story, while the heroine does learn that she can’t always go with anger, the narrative does not tell her she has to be a self-sacrificing martyr to a cause or a person. Onyesonwu is fierce, and she will assert herself over and over and still have close friends and a lover, and she gets to be in charge of them as well.
Despite that it’s tired out, I love the Chosen One trope when applied to women, especially if they get to be doing awesome things from it, and get prestige. Not that everything should come easy for them, but the challenge should be in the actual quest and not things that get in the way of even trying. I don’t think I’m explaining myself well, but with male Chosen Ones, the expectation is that of course he can do it; people just need to see his potential if they don’t already see it, and he just has to fulfill the quest and probably deal with some parental issues. With female ones, the expectation is that they’d rather not have the adventure because they want to be girly, and that they have to become more humble; their personal growth is spoken of in terms of character flaws that she needed to overcome by submitting to something or someone in some way. This is really hard to put right, and I can’t really provide examples except for Buffy with regards to wanting to be girly. Wanting to be girly made sense for her character, but there was so much emphasis on that, on girliness being the thing that was normal and safe and good, with not enough subversion of it. Plus, she lacked the prestige and respect of her title until season seven, because Slayers didn’t get any respect except to be feared by demons and any respect she earned was supposed to be because she was different and a special Slayer. By season seven she was enforcing that title herself to lead the Potentials, and did it in the wrong way so that most people in the show felt her to be arrogant and many of the fans did too.
Other examples are more general, like how fandom seems to want assertive powerful women to suffer consequences and not win as much as male characters like that do, and doesn’t empathize with female characters who are like that the way they do with male ones. Like with Amanda/Emily from Revenge, for which I hang out in one forum that frequently has posters wanting her to suffer consequences and lose, and be punished for her ruthlessness by having Nolan be manipulating her or Takeda, or Emily/Amanda somehow. Or Siobhan in Ringer (spoilers but I didn’t think you were watching that show), who had posters cheering at her losing to the guy she loved because she’d lied to him too many times, never mind that he was a loser and an asshole that often went along with her lies that hurt others. He became impressive and not morally responsible at all for spitefully stealing all her money that she gave him access to as a sign of trust and a change in her behavior, making her destitute with babies in intensive care. That was all her responsibility and not something he should have had to concern himself with. It’s not an unrealistic turn of events for the story, but it was an unnecessary narrative twist and I have the bad feeling I’m supposed to be seeing it as a good thing and cheer for the guy. Sorry for the fandom rant – not all the posters are like this, and if I knew a place that posted as regularly and had many updates with spoilers and interviews and sneak peeks I would likely go there instead.
Another good Chosen heroine is Maerad from the Books of Pellinor by Alison Croggon: http://www.booksofpellinor.com/characters/index.html. It’s similar to the Tolkien saga but also different enough to be its own world, and a good one, with a different tone and focus on the characters. Maerad is bookish, not easily trusting, and has to go through a very painful path, physical, emotionally, and morally. The faerie element is also in the books, but they’re not much like elves, being more like the nature-embodying far from human morals mythological faerie. She makes tough choices and her problems are tied with both personal growth and the daunting nature of her quest.
Onyesonwu has already been mentioned, but she is also a Chosen One, having to alter the status quo of violence towards the Okeke people, who will be exterminated by the Nurus. She’s temperamental, intelligent, and powerful from a young age, with an awesomely realistic and nuanced quest journey. It’s so hopeful and painful and sad, empathetic and powerful, with the gritty and scary parts done right.
One trope that can be combined with or found separately from the Chosen One trope, is when she has special skills a person/group/society needs and might even be looking for, but because they don’t value her socially and are too complacent with the hierarchy, they don’t realize it and miss out or the heroine proves them wrong and actively does things that change their position, or both – as long as the heroine ends up okay, though. Sonea from the Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan gets this, because she’s poor but magically powerful.
Then there is woman in charge making hard choices, which is all of the above heroines, plus Anna and the other main character (spoilery to say who, sorry) from the Spellsong Cycle books by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. I haven’t read those last ones in many years, but they are so awesome with their female characters from what I remember. Anna and the main character of the last two books are powerful sorceresses who become leaders of countries while dealing with war and politics and being cynical, sometimes bitterly sad, but with their own strong morals and personal connections to others. Both are also from their thirties to their late forties. It left a vivid imprint on me. Lauren Olamina from Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler has to prepare to leave her walled community in a decaying United States, and leaves in a rush after the town is finally destroyed, to trek across California and find a new home. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin has Yeine juggle politics, plots by the gods, and her parental issues, with an epic ending that was just mindblowing for me.
Magical girls, magical girls, magical girls. I have always loved magical girls and female characters with magical powers in general. Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Rayearth (manga, haven’t finished anime), Pretear, Princess Tutu, Madoka, W.I.T.C.H, undoubtedly more anime and manga I can’t remember now, and all the fantasy novels I’ve just mentioned with many more I’ve forgotten at the moment.
Also fairies and witches and mermaids and other fantastical female creatures, or of either/both sexes, really, even if by now I’m wary of how these tropes are used, especially the being a supernatural creature one.
Fairytales and myth in general, played straight or every which way. Stardust by Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Ann Sexton, Angela Carter, those Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow anthologies, and a truckload of things I can’t take from the top of my head right now.
Manga: The Dreaming by Queenie Chan. It’s from Tokyopop, so sadly it is probably out of print. I did see an omnibus edition with a good followup/spinoff oneshot included in it last year, but didn’t get it because I had the single volumes, was trying to stuff as much as possible for a Borders sale day, and so prioritized other things I didn’t own. Then I didn’t see it again, and I could have got it through Amazon but didn’t.
It is a trilogy about twins who begin attending a boarding school isolated in the Australian bush, where bad things are known to happen if twin sisters show up. The suspense was very well-done, had me very creeped out initially and when I reread it a couple of years ago. I’m feeling ooked from recalling it right now. The costume designs and backgrounds are also delightful, I loved those period dresses. It is also all about girls and women relating to each other and what can happen when things go wrong between them, with sadness permeating the story. There’s some dark Cinderella to it as well, and interesting references to cultural lore. I’d recommend getting it, especially the omnibus, which is cheaper and more likely to be available anyway as well as having the bonus one-shot spinoff with a different take on the supernatural importance of the location and some lovely bonus art.
Season: I really don’t know about favorite season. First instinct is to say winter or summer, because that’s when I get the longest vacations from school/college and I get presents then since I have a summer birthday, but they are also when I can’t leave the house much because I can’t drive, both parents use their own cars anyway, and I live so isolated, in a place with such inefficient public transportation, that I can’t leave anywhere without someone driving me. This means family, which means that I can only go out when they want and the day will be ordered according to what they want even if they take me where I want to go. Plus, overload from living with family and having to spend even more time with them and non-nuclear family members, which is what happens during vacations. Again, I don’t want to be ungrateful or anything, so I hope I’m not going too far.
I will go with summer, even though the weather is the worst then – I hate heat, humid heat in particular – because that is when there is the most opportunity to go to places, thanks to my only having to worry about my parent’s schedule instead of also adding a class schedule. I do enjoy getting to be at the university doing stuff that isn’t homework during the semesters though.
Favorite meal: When the right person makes it, it’s this rice with onions and bacon. I now eat it every week or almost every week, because my grandmother and mother have learned how to make it, but it’s usually not very good when they make it, and the one or two times it’s been great, it was still not as great as when my aunt on my dad’s side makes it, which is only a few times a year. There were also alcapurrias, a fried food that is basically plantain and/or cassava dough filled with meat or fish or chicken or crab, with some other stuff done to it. Lastly is pizza, though I’m tired of pizza because my dad is buying it all the time now, and I’ve had to heat some to eat far too often.
http://redbrunja.livejournal.com/735952.html
Favorite Harry Potter novel: Order of the Phoenix is my favorite. It's the most uncomfortable book in the series, but that's part of why I like it. Harry's angst and temper are so understandable but cause him big problems, and they pull through so much of the suffering Umbridge causes them, only for Harry to let his impulses get the best of him at the worse time and end the book on a tragedy.
Luna appears and is prominent in it. This is why she became my favorite character and Harry/Luna my pet ship for HP. I love her calm, her honesty that isn’t cruel, her intelligence and open-mindedness.
There is also Umbridge. I hate Umbridge so much that I have to see that book as awesome. It makes me want to root for her defeat so bad every time.
Top 3 Buffy ships:
1. Buffy/Angel. I enjoyed it right from the start, but that season two, especially Becoming, are what makes it top. They are just lonely and not fitting in even though Buffy has great friends, then finding solace in each other, and I have what is possibly an unhealthy kink for heroines pairing up with dark and broody/cold guys. But this one works for me in particular, despite all the years, because it is so oriented towards Buffy. Their love story, while an important step in Angel's characterization to get him towards the place where he could start off on AtS, is mainly to highlight Buffy and help her grow as a character. I had this post written up about Buffy's arc of responsibility in season two in particular, and how not being able to kill Angel/us in Innocence was crucial not only to that last part of Becoming but to her entire series arc on what she feels is her burden of Slaying and how it makes her so alone. Then my cursor jumped around and hit the back button. I wrote some notes on my class notebook, and hope to rewrite the thing after the semester is properly over.
As for Buffy's other canon ships, I enjoyed Riley and was sad when he left, but wasn't that invested. I started out enjoying Spuffy until the beginning of season six. After that I hated Spike - I know not everything that happened was his responsibility, but I hated him so much for taking advantage of her problems to try and drag her down worse so that she could keep only turning to him. Right now I still don't like it, even though I can see the potential of the pairing and enjoyed much fic with when I first started in fandom. There were some fic recs on an old post I read a month or so ago, and I am planning to return to them (so much backlog on everything right now. So much.) I don't hate Spike all the time, though. Mainly during season six.
2. For fanon pairings, I developed a soft spot for Buffy/Tara, probably due to Dead Things. I read some fics that helped a little, though they were hard to find and now I don't think some were as good as I used to think. Still, I have that place in my heart for the pairing. Also, when looking for fanon pairings in fic I mainly look for Buffy femslash ones, preferably that pairing or with Cordelia or Kendra.
3. A second big Buffy ship for me is Buffy/Giles, preferably after she’s graduated high school. I know they have a mentor/mentee relationship, and it is a bit squicky for me to read them while Buffy’s in high school, though I have enjoyed doing so, but I think their relationship is ambiguous enough that it’s not necessarily incestuous? They obviously care deeply about each other in platonic ways, and in high school it’s definitely too much of a Giles is stuffy and sometimes right/Buffy is childish but cutely defiant and sometimes right dynamic, but it’s not necessarily true for me that the way he cares about her is fatherly. He gets less highlighted in seasons four and five, where Buffy wants him to stay but the dynamic is different. They’re all growing apart and she seems closer to Willow and Xander than Giles. The person closest to him then seems to have been Willow rather than Buffy, at least until Buffy comes back to him for more in-depth Slayer training and they keep secrets from the gang together, and that culminates in their conflict during The Gift. Then again he does mention wanting to play the father in season six. But I really loved this pairing.
The other characters don’t get as much tunnel-focus as Buffy with me, but my heart was in Giles/Jenny. Jenny was wonderful in and of herself, and it bugs me that he never got another important lover. His important relationships were with Jenny, and then the gang, particularly Buffy and Willow, but those relationships were closest – and in Jenny’s case only existent - in the early seasons. When the group bonds fray later, at least Buffy has Spike and Willow has Kennedy, and Xander has Anya until he leaves her, and then at least he and the women are closer than they are to Giles, for me. Basically Giles’ arc in Buffy makes me so sad for him.
Willoz was cute, and I liked it better than Willow/Tara. In fact I mainly like Tara when she’s not being about Willow, because otherwise it seems like she was just there to give Willow a love interest and further her arc. Especially if it’s true that Whedon was planning to kill Oz or whomever Willow was with to further her arc. I didn’t mind this with Buffy/Angel, because Angel was a guy and a broody guy to boot (fanfic with broody guys in a romance tends to make the heroine subordinate to the guy’s problems, so B/A was very palatable for me indeed), but female characters being mostly love interests makes me sad, and Tara in particular just didn’t get enough characterization for me.
Never that fannishly invested in the Xander pairings, though I enjoyed them and felt really sad when they ended.
Favorite Disney movie:
Tangled, Tangled, Tangled. The mother/daughter relationship was the highlight of the movie for me. I mean yes, Gothel’s a villain and she’s doing horrible things, and I don’t know if she has even the slightest care for Rapunzel whatsoever, but the way they built it. Gothel locks her up and then builds a prison in Rapunzel’s own head, that she isn’t good enough and wants to do things that will her mother if she wants to get anything different than what she’s offered, with Rapunzel having to be complicit in all of it because she loves and trusts in Gothel and has so little to base her own separate judgments on. I relate to this a lot, though my family isn’t nearly as bad as Gothel and it’s partly thanks to culture and religion that I was raised the way I was, and I certainly have my flaws that make not good at handling the wider world (not being able to get past friendly acquaintances; at least my sister can leave the house if a friend wants to drive her). I just relate so much to feeling inadequate at being outside the home and away from the family, and pretty much forbidden to do so unless with acceptable reasons like school and if I’m not alone/am checked up on, so it’s not as extreme for me. (I didn’t want to be whiny or ungrateful or shove my personal issues at you, so I hope this isn’t.)
Plus, you know. It’s a love story in which they both grow as characters in a complementary way. Rapunzel takes Flynn/Eugene showing up as an opportunity to do what she needed to do, and he tries to use her naiveté and guilt against her, but it ends up bolstering her confidence as she takes control at the bar and impresses him, and then they both get enough trust and confidence with each other for Eugene to tell her he was Eugene, and for Rapunzel to believe that he won’t betray her. Then they save each other at the end, but not before Rapunzel has her confrontation with Gothel just between them that cements how badly their relationship will end.
I also love Beauty and the Beast, and just ordered the Diamond edition after finding my 2002 DVD malfunctioning. Though, I’ve only just realized that the movie is in some ways more about the men in it than about Belle. The main storyline is the character growth, for the better, of the Beast because he needs Belle, with Belle generously accepting that because he saved her life so couldn’t be all bad, until the point where he lets her go to make her happy and because she needs it. Sure she’s important, but her although she does make active decisions all the time, the narrative requires that for the important thing she mostly be passive and wooed by Beast, without changing or growing much herself. Sure the song is about “learning you were wrong,” but Belle wasn’t really wrong to be as upset and defiant as she was, considering how the Beast treated her father and wanted to lock her up forever, even if she volunteered herself to do it. She just changes her opinion of him mostly on him saving her life and making her stay more bearable, while her active decisions like reading to him and very importantly, meeting him halfway in that learning not to be rude thing – drinking directly from the soup bowl when she saw him doing so, but less messily - are covered as small moments within the song.
Her father’s a key plot device in the film, because much of what affects Belle’s feelings and the decisions made in the movie involve how the characters treat Maurice. Gaston makes fun of him and makes barely any effort to hide his opinion, while Beast locks him up, and Belle will actively rescue him and not want to be around anyone who makes fun of him. She decides to be locked up for his sake, and the key moment in which Beast lets Belle go is when she sees him sick, and tells Beast “You do understand.” Then of course Gaston goes from bad to worse in bribing a guy to lock Maurice up and using that prevalent low opinion of Maurice to get a pitchfork and torches crowd supporting him while it happens. So I feel it’s less about Belle and more about her suitors, or at least more about her choosing suitors than it is about herself, except in that who she’s with defines what her future will be like, as is pointed out in Belle and the reprise, which is fitting to the time she lives in of course, and I love her and can relate to not wanting the life others seem satisfied with, but still. Tangled’s adventurous lady gets more character development, even though that’s when Disney decided to say they were going to aim at boys more and nearly made me not watch Tangled because of that. I had to be read about it beforehand to decide.
It’s ironic that I feel this way, when Belle seemingly has no guilt about wanting her adventures and Rapunzel does, but of course it makes sense for both their characters situations. Belle is hoping that Maurice’s inventions will get them back out of the village (I only realized recently that they hadn’t always lived there), and is frustrated that no one understand her wish to not be a housewife, even her father. Rapunzel hoped that her mother would let her out, but felt really bad and insecure about wanting it so that it took her eighteen years and a prime chance to leave without permission.
Bullet-proof storytelling tropes:
For some reason I’m going to start with ships, even though I love non-romance focused things outside of fandom and often don’t read romance stories except in fic. I often go for ships with cold/broody guys and the heroine, regardless of her personality actually, for some reason. This is true even though I often dislike the guys themselves. But I generally want it with the guy being subordinate to the heroine in the narrative, and basically changing himself if he must change, not her changing him. So there is that also for why I love Beauty and the Beast. I also want the guy to be the one opening up and taking emotional care of the heroine, though not in a controlling or him being dominant way. This is definitely weirdly inconsistent of me, since the romantic trope I started my paragraph with does not generally go that way. She's cold and distant, and he brings out the love inside her. Though then again, she wasn't really portrayed as the one with the power in that relationship, or anywhere outside the castle.
Plus, there’s a relevant trope I like reversed,mentioned in this overview of romance novels called Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, whom you might have heard of as the run the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website. It’s in chapter three or Chapter Corset, as they call it, on the romance novel heroine. The subsection “Sex Is Natural, Sex Is Good” (p. 50-54) covers the connection between virginity and inexperience, the substitution of inexperience in some important part of the hero’s world for virginity in contemporary and particularly paranormal romance, and says in particular that “he initiates her into his experience, and includes her in his world” (p.54). This is actually a trope that bothers me, and I want to see it in reverse, but still from the heroine’s pov of course. I want to see him being initiated into her experience and her world, learn to be like her and empathize with her. Again, it sounds weird given that first thing I said, but it amounts to basically wanting those cold/broody guys to be in a position where they will change themselves and want to be part of her world, and the heroine chooses to do so while having other non-romance things to deal with. This is kind of where I see Buffy/Angel was headed in season two, with Angel slowly integrating into her human life, and then the failure of that was why they couldn’t stay together in season three. There’s also an anime that seemed to start out that way, but made some big missteps. I still love RomeoxJuliet and it did do some of that, it had a lot of good, but it could have been much better.
For non-romance tropes, I love Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor: http://nnedi.com/who_fears_death.html. It’d be kind of spoilery to say the first thing that comes to mind, because it has to do with the ending, but let’s just say that throughout the story, while the heroine does learn that she can’t always go with anger, the narrative does not tell her she has to be a self-sacrificing martyr to a cause or a person. Onyesonwu is fierce, and she will assert herself over and over and still have close friends and a lover, and she gets to be in charge of them as well.
Despite that it’s tired out, I love the Chosen One trope when applied to women, especially if they get to be doing awesome things from it, and get prestige. Not that everything should come easy for them, but the challenge should be in the actual quest and not things that get in the way of even trying. I don’t think I’m explaining myself well, but with male Chosen Ones, the expectation is that of course he can do it; people just need to see his potential if they don’t already see it, and he just has to fulfill the quest and probably deal with some parental issues. With female ones, the expectation is that they’d rather not have the adventure because they want to be girly, and that they have to become more humble; their personal growth is spoken of in terms of character flaws that she needed to overcome by submitting to something or someone in some way. This is really hard to put right, and I can’t really provide examples except for Buffy with regards to wanting to be girly. Wanting to be girly made sense for her character, but there was so much emphasis on that, on girliness being the thing that was normal and safe and good, with not enough subversion of it. Plus, she lacked the prestige and respect of her title until season seven, because Slayers didn’t get any respect except to be feared by demons and any respect she earned was supposed to be because she was different and a special Slayer. By season seven she was enforcing that title herself to lead the Potentials, and did it in the wrong way so that most people in the show felt her to be arrogant and many of the fans did too.
Other examples are more general, like how fandom seems to want assertive powerful women to suffer consequences and not win as much as male characters like that do, and doesn’t empathize with female characters who are like that the way they do with male ones. Like with Amanda/Emily from Revenge, for which I hang out in one forum that frequently has posters wanting her to suffer consequences and lose, and be punished for her ruthlessness by having Nolan be manipulating her or Takeda, or Emily/Amanda somehow. Or Siobhan in Ringer (spoilers but I didn’t think you were watching that show), who had posters cheering at her losing to the guy she loved because she’d lied to him too many times, never mind that he was a loser and an asshole that often went along with her lies that hurt others. He became impressive and not morally responsible at all for spitefully stealing all her money that she gave him access to as a sign of trust and a change in her behavior, making her destitute with babies in intensive care. That was all her responsibility and not something he should have had to concern himself with. It’s not an unrealistic turn of events for the story, but it was an unnecessary narrative twist and I have the bad feeling I’m supposed to be seeing it as a good thing and cheer for the guy. Sorry for the fandom rant – not all the posters are like this, and if I knew a place that posted as regularly and had many updates with spoilers and interviews and sneak peeks I would likely go there instead.
Another good Chosen heroine is Maerad from the Books of Pellinor by Alison Croggon: http://www.booksofpellinor.com/characters/index.html. It’s similar to the Tolkien saga but also different enough to be its own world, and a good one, with a different tone and focus on the characters. Maerad is bookish, not easily trusting, and has to go through a very painful path, physical, emotionally, and morally. The faerie element is also in the books, but they’re not much like elves, being more like the nature-embodying far from human morals mythological faerie. She makes tough choices and her problems are tied with both personal growth and the daunting nature of her quest.
Onyesonwu has already been mentioned, but she is also a Chosen One, having to alter the status quo of violence towards the Okeke people, who will be exterminated by the Nurus. She’s temperamental, intelligent, and powerful from a young age, with an awesomely realistic and nuanced quest journey. It’s so hopeful and painful and sad, empathetic and powerful, with the gritty and scary parts done right.
One trope that can be combined with or found separately from the Chosen One trope, is when she has special skills a person/group/society needs and might even be looking for, but because they don’t value her socially and are too complacent with the hierarchy, they don’t realize it and miss out or the heroine proves them wrong and actively does things that change their position, or both – as long as the heroine ends up okay, though. Sonea from the Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan gets this, because she’s poor but magically powerful.
Then there is woman in charge making hard choices, which is all of the above heroines, plus Anna and the other main character (spoilery to say who, sorry) from the Spellsong Cycle books by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. I haven’t read those last ones in many years, but they are so awesome with their female characters from what I remember. Anna and the main character of the last two books are powerful sorceresses who become leaders of countries while dealing with war and politics and being cynical, sometimes bitterly sad, but with their own strong morals and personal connections to others. Both are also from their thirties to their late forties. It left a vivid imprint on me. Lauren Olamina from Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler has to prepare to leave her walled community in a decaying United States, and leaves in a rush after the town is finally destroyed, to trek across California and find a new home. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin has Yeine juggle politics, plots by the gods, and her parental issues, with an epic ending that was just mindblowing for me.
Magical girls, magical girls, magical girls. I have always loved magical girls and female characters with magical powers in general. Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Rayearth (manga, haven’t finished anime), Pretear, Princess Tutu, Madoka, W.I.T.C.H, undoubtedly more anime and manga I can’t remember now, and all the fantasy novels I’ve just mentioned with many more I’ve forgotten at the moment.
Also fairies and witches and mermaids and other fantastical female creatures, or of either/both sexes, really, even if by now I’m wary of how these tropes are used, especially the being a supernatural creature one.
Fairytales and myth in general, played straight or every which way. Stardust by Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Ann Sexton, Angela Carter, those Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow anthologies, and a truckload of things I can’t take from the top of my head right now.
Manga: The Dreaming by Queenie Chan. It’s from Tokyopop, so sadly it is probably out of print. I did see an omnibus edition with a good followup/spinoff oneshot included in it last year, but didn’t get it because I had the single volumes, was trying to stuff as much as possible for a Borders sale day, and so prioritized other things I didn’t own. Then I didn’t see it again, and I could have got it through Amazon but didn’t.
It is a trilogy about twins who begin attending a boarding school isolated in the Australian bush, where bad things are known to happen if twin sisters show up. The suspense was very well-done, had me very creeped out initially and when I reread it a couple of years ago. I’m feeling ooked from recalling it right now. The costume designs and backgrounds are also delightful, I loved those period dresses. It is also all about girls and women relating to each other and what can happen when things go wrong between them, with sadness permeating the story. There’s some dark Cinderella to it as well, and interesting references to cultural lore. I’d recommend getting it, especially the omnibus, which is cheaper and more likely to be available anyway as well as having the bonus one-shot spinoff with a different take on the supernatural importance of the location and some lovely bonus art.
Season: I really don’t know about favorite season. First instinct is to say winter or summer, because that’s when I get the longest vacations from school/college and I get presents then since I have a summer birthday, but they are also when I can’t leave the house much because I can’t drive, both parents use their own cars anyway, and I live so isolated, in a place with such inefficient public transportation, that I can’t leave anywhere without someone driving me. This means family, which means that I can only go out when they want and the day will be ordered according to what they want even if they take me where I want to go. Plus, overload from living with family and having to spend even more time with them and non-nuclear family members, which is what happens during vacations. Again, I don’t want to be ungrateful or anything, so I hope I’m not going too far.
I will go with summer, even though the weather is the worst then – I hate heat, humid heat in particular – because that is when there is the most opportunity to go to places, thanks to my only having to worry about my parent’s schedule instead of also adding a class schedule. I do enjoy getting to be at the university doing stuff that isn’t homework during the semesters though.
Favorite meal: When the right person makes it, it’s this rice with onions and bacon. I now eat it every week or almost every week, because my grandmother and mother have learned how to make it, but it’s usually not very good when they make it, and the one or two times it’s been great, it was still not as great as when my aunt on my dad’s side makes it, which is only a few times a year. There were also alcapurrias, a fried food that is basically plantain and/or cassava dough filled with meat or fish or chicken or crab, with some other stuff done to it. Lastly is pizza, though I’m tired of pizza because my dad is buying it all the time now, and I’ve had to heat some to eat far too often.