madimpossibledreamer

Follow-up to Buffy - Death

I thought about Fool for 0.2 seconds.  It’s possible Fool is one of his Secondary, because he is kind of naïve and sometimes easily manipulated, but given his similarities to Yosuke (and Junpei, who’s often the darker, more jealous version of the Magician Best Friend character)…yeah, it’s Magician for Xander.  He pretty much fits all the characteristics in the games.

 

( further musings on game mechanics + story parallels )

 

I really like the oddballs when it comes to superheroes.  I really loved the Captain Comet Mysteries in Space two-part volume (and am kind of bummed I seemed to have misplaced it during college).  I’ll have to rewatch to see if it still holds up, but I also really, really like the Blue Raja and the Bowler, from the Mystery Men, an underrated superhero movie.  Bowler, specifically, is one of my favorite female superheroes.  Again, I’d have to rewatch to make sure it’s not problematic, but from what I remember, she had an actual revenge arc treated with the respect it deserved (not just as a cliché), her power was bowling, which is awesome, she was treated as just another member of the team, rather than as The Female Member of the Team, I liked her sense of humor, and…well, she didn’t come off as cliché.  Like, she was pretty, yes, but that wasn’t a focus.  She was pretty like an actual human being instead of Pretty Like That’s All Women Are.  (There was some risqué humor, but not with her.)  She had a normal costume, not a revealing one.  She wasn’t Raging Feminist, she wasn’t Anti-Fun (just focused on the mission), she had a sense of humor, she took over from her father and did just fine carrying on the superhero name, she went to graduate school.  She was so different from anything I’d seen before (and honestly since) and she’s my definite favorite from Mystery Men.

sneaking this in because recent events
actually, thinking about it, yakuza 5 has some big pro-choice theming which is nice to see right now
( yakuza 5 plot spoilers )

people tend to credit (or blame) whedon for starting this whole quippy dialogue trend, but the fact of the matter is, it was just kinda a 90s show thing?  Babylon 5 and X-Files tended to do the same thing (though you could argue success varied; I think JMS [B5] was better at it than most, i.e. writing dialogue that did 5 different things at once, but that's my opinion)

i think I've figured out why I write genderbends.  like many writers culture tells me 'you have to understand women to write female characters' and makes it out to be this huge hurdle that only a few people can jump, but the main thing is just to write a character that happens to be female.  so by writing genderbends, I'm writing established characters and am slightly shocked by how little changes.  they're still the same person, and you can immediately recognize them.  and yes, stuff changes, of course it does, because you can't erase the effect of systemic oppression, even if it's just a line here or there.  but, like mulder said, not everything they do goes back to that.  also not enough people actually treat the ptsd of characters as an actual important thing (coughbbcsherlockcough).  really, all it takes to write a woman is to understand people + do even a little research into sexism/societal stuff and be willing to listen when somebody tells you you screwed up and fix it in the definitive edition or do better next time. 

I was reading a fic on AO3 and they suddenly started doing the "jealousy to make someone realize their feelings" trope.  I hate that trope.  Sure, I'm oblivious, so that might work as planned with regards to making me realize...but wouldn't make me act on them, because I'm a healthy adult that would think the crush is perfectly capable of making their own romantic decisions and would respect that.  So if they wanted to be with me, they would be.  So it also wouldn't work.

Obviously, no chapter.  A lot of stuff cropped up today, so I'm behind, sorry :(
( thoughts on wizards )

Releasing this into the wild without looking over it too much, because I've already spent too much time on this already.  Just so you know what you're getting into, spoilers abound, and this thing is 3,628 words.  Brief mention of the harassment stuff + sexism + racism because this is Whedon.  If you're good with all that, then buckle up.

          Do I have the time to write this?  No.  Should I be writing Shadowed Suspicion instead?  Yes.  Am I doing it anyway?  Yes.  Here, you can get a taste of my first drafts for a college paper.  (The Xander as a Trickster Figure one would count, too, I guess.)  Sorry if this is well-known in any of the mentioned fandoms.  I definitely haven’t read all the literary analysis on the subject, don’t have access to the journals I had when I was in college (JSTOR, I miss you!), and google is generally not being useful in this endeavor.  I’m going to try to have a few quotes if I can find any quickly, but like I said, first draft.  Quality’s going to be a little bit freewriting.  I’m structuring it as much as I can, but I’m not editing.  Also, there are going to be spoilers for Buffy, the MCU, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible's, Firefly, and Yakuza of varying degrees (mostly the first two, but I do address the rest).  No real spoilers for Babylon 5 but I wanted to tag it because it is mentioned.  Not tagging some of the Whedon stuff as I don't plan to talk about them much in the future and don't want them taking up a tag slot (which probably inevitably means I'll be writing about them in the future but shh leave me to my delusions; they're cozy).  Assume when I’m referring to Marvel without further elaborating, it’s on the MCU.  While I don’t particularly want to be listening to Whedon about anything at this point, Word of Joss has said that the general outline of the movie, at least, is considered canonical, so I’m going to briefly talk about that too.
 

( spoilers + long essay )

 

why the last jedi and a ton of other stuff like miraculous, etc aren't feminist: female characters aren't feminist.  "strong" female characters aren't feminist.  you have to have good representation! with actual characters that feel like people. not caricatures. if you're confused as to why "strong" female characters aren't feminist, think about male characters. do any of them have to be described as "strong" to be interesting in any way?  no way.  write a strong female character, write a genderbend of an existing character you like, and I guarantee you'll find a difference.

edit because the thought just occurred to me: also women have had the pressure to be "perfect" for years and years and it's a problem.  perfect beauty.  perfect mom.  perfect example of femininity.  "strong" female characters like rey never struggle (except for maybe a tearjerker backstory).  they don't have character arcs.  they don't struggle at anything they do.  so women and young girls might look at these "strong" (perfect) female characters and go "well, i can't do everything effortlessly.  everyone who meets me doesn't love me on sight.  there must be something wrong with me."  so in that way, "strong" female characters might actually be doing harm to the people they're trying to represent.  so, in conclusion: write female characters that struggle!  write ones with flaws!  write ones with character arcs (i know hollywood in general doesn't like character arcs in general these days, given that they tend to reset all characters to their defaults movie after movie, but this is a terrible idea and you should not emulate them, write them anyway)!  just like men like their perfect self-inserts, maybe some women do as well, but that need not be every character.  write a variety of character types!  write 'em more interesting and less boring.  write more realistic women all people of all genders, etc might be able to relate to.

/just ran into a Xander-went-as-Gabriel (SPN) YAHF
...wait, huh, that actually makes a lot of sense.  Starting all the way back from that fateful Halloween episode. length warning.  lack of links warning, for those of you who care about such things (I definitely couldn't submit this essay in an academic setting)-either because I couldn't vet the links for accuracy or because some of this stuff I read a little while ago when I was trying to research for fic and can't find where I'd read it. i do have a couple links, but i'd honestly need a lot more.
as this is about tricksters, content warning for the 'breaking of taboo'.  i handled this as briefly and skim-capable as possible, but I'd rather warn.
( essay under the cut )