Queer Coded Villains Aren’t That Awesome

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AKA “Hux and Kylo aren’t the queer coded villains you’re looking for”

I woke up  on MLK Day swearing that I’d dreamt up a tumblr post where someone quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in order to defend Hux, Kylo Ren, and the First Order. When I went through my archives, not only did I find out that the post was real, but I then stumbled back over a post I made in response to one arguing that Star Wars’ Hux was coded as queer and that said queer-coding was a good thing.

And I mean –

A fair amount of people not only read Kylo Ren and Hux as queer-coded within their canon, but:

  1. Queer coded villains are actually kind of shitty and they definitely shouldn’t be something to aspire to or admire, and
  2. I don’t know how they leap to that conclusion of Hux and Kylo as queer coded in the first place.

For one thing, there’s a difference between a character – especially a villain – being coded as queer in their canon (typically via stereotypes about femininity/masculinity, style of dress, speech, interactions with other characters) and a queer fan deciding to read a character as queer because they see themselves in the character.

If they’re actually present in canon, queer coded villains typically come from a place of homophobia – conscious or otherwise. They come from a fear of supposedly non-normative genders and sexualities and from society straight up repurposing queerness (or stereotypes about queerness) as a go-to for “spooky and scary” because well –

Heterocentrism kind of needs to portray queerness as a dangerous avenue to stroll down.Read More »

When will it finally be an acceptable time to talk about gun violence?

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Today, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida (the school I did my student teaching in back in the beginning of 2015), a young man with access to an AR-15 and a ton of ammo shot multiple people.

So far, seventeen people have died.

Children have died.

Children have fucking died.

And yet, it’s still somehow not the right time for the US Government to do something about the gun violence that plagues our country and kills children in the safest of spaces.

And the thing that gets me is that it’s somehow never the right time to talk about this violence or to how we can do something about it.Read More »

The Consort – Chapter Two

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THE CONSORT

Iirin meets the two gods that he is apparently destined to bond with and realizes that he really has no idea how to handle what will come next.

Between the moment when the carriage finally slowed to a stop and when its door opened with a muted snap, Iirin managed to come up with and discard nearly a dozen different scenarios where his introduction to the two Tals could go terribly.

Jolted out of his dark thoughts, Iirin found himself gaping up at the man that opened the door for him.

At the temple-orphanage, Iirin was the tallest inhabitant, and even when he did errands in the marketplace, he rarely saw anyone that approached his height in the bustling crowd. However, the man in front of him looked as if he almost could be several inches taller than Iirin if they stood side by side.

In addition to that stunning height, the man before him was striking, with curly dark green hair, warm brown eyes, and light brown skin several shades lighter than Iirin’s own complexion with an undertone of greenery flickering just underneath the surface.

He was also, Iirin realized when eyes met, not a regular demon.

Or even a demon at all.

Iirin had been expecting a servant to help him out of the carriage and introduce him to his future bonded, not one of the two gods themselves.Read More »

[Guest Post] Finn as everyman? How about no?

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After the release of The Last Jedi, there was a noticeable shift in how members of the general audience discussed Finn – if they talked about him at all. People who resented his inclusion in The Force Awakens – viewing him as a sign of P­C culture run amok or as an extra whose sole purpose was to diversify the cast – had little to say this time around, likely because his marginalization in the series’ latest installment merely served to confirm their negative view of his place in the trilogy.

Instead, it was those viewers who claimed to like Finn whose tune changed.

As it became clearer that Force sensitivity would never be part of his arc, at least not in this segment, there arose a collective sigh of relief from certain quarters: “Good! He doesn’t need to be Force sensitive to be important. Let him just be Finn. Let him just have a blaster and kick ass that way. Let him be the everyman the audience can relate to.”

Except that – to paraphrase Luke Skywalker, as he faced off against Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi – “Amazing. Every word you just said is wrong.”Read More »

[Book Review] Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

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Title: Let’s Talk About Love
Author: Claire Kann (Twitter)
Genre: Contemporary, Queer Fiction, Queer Romance, Ace/Aro Representation
Rating: Highly Freaking Recommended

Publisher: Swoon Reads/Macmillan

Publishing Date: January 23, 2018

LINKS: AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE

SYNOPSIS

Alice had her whole summer planned. Non-stop all-you-can-eat buffets while marathoning her favorite TV shows (best friends totally included) with the smallest dash of adulting—working at the library to pay her share of the rent. The only thing missing from her plan? Her girlfriend (who ended things when Alice told her she’s asexual). Alice is done with dating—no thank you, do not pass go, stick a fork in her, done.

But then Alice meets Takumi and she can’t stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for (uncertainty, butterflies, and swoons, oh my!).

When her blissful summer takes an unexpected turn and Takumi becomes her knight with a shiny library employee badge (close enough), Alice has to decide if she’s willing to risk their friendship for a love that might not be reciprocated—or understood.

 

REVIEW

Straight up, I wish that I’d had Claire Kann’s Let’s Talk About Love back when I was a teenager trying to figure out who I was and what the heck I was doing. Like me, Alice is the baby of her family. She’s the youngest daughter and a surprise baby to her parents who have to be in their mid to late fifties in Let’s Talk About Love.

This book seriously matches so much of my experience as a queer, Black, lady-oriented person that’s on the ace-spectrum that I kept having to put the book down in order to squish my own face.

(In case you didn’t know, face squishes are the HIGHEST sign of my pleasure when reading.)Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The Smartest Girl in the World Has To Be A Mary Sue

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Fandom Racism - Mary Sue

On the first day of Black History Month, a random writer on Archive of Our Own gave to me… two separate stories that framed Shuri – T’challa’s brilliant baby sister in Black Panther –  as a character that couldn’t possibly be as smart as the MCU claims and as a victim of child abuse by the Wakandan elite who are “taking advantage” of her brilliance.

These stories were written in response to Black people calling out the author’s racism in deeming Shuri a Mary Sue in Black Panther in a tumblr post (that used the Black Panther tag) and subsequently writing off the film.Read More »

The Great Big Anita Blake ReRead – The Lunatic Cafe

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Content/Trigger Warning: References to sexual violence, sex work/er shaming, and well… a snuff film in the text that I describe in medium detail. I still can’t believe it was in the book. I cover the ableist language in the title in the bonus section alongside a bunch of other stuff that I found frustrating about the novel, but that wasn’t related to my angle.

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Lycanthropes are nothing if not practical.

— Anita, woefully understating the circumstances behind a snuff film released into the US Underworld. Lycanthropes aren’t practical. If anything, in the Anitaverse, they’re largely actual monsters.

While the previous Anita Blake novel introduced lycanthropes on the large scale, The Lunatic Cafe is the novel that really introduced some of the messed up facts of life as a shapeshifter in Anita’s world.

The one main question that The Lunatic Cafe appears to ask throughout the narrative is whether or not shapeshifters are truly human (like “we” are). It’s a question asked in almost all of the shapeshifter focused books in the series and one that tends to glean different answers depending on the novel and the characters essentially posing the question.

In this book, the answer is… kinda, sorta, not really.

Read More »

Creche Duty: A Star Wars Fan Fiction

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Creche Duty

Before Before the Awakening, stormtrooper FN-2187 is assigned creche duty. The experience is… illuminating.

Typically, FN-2187’s work assignments never take him through the creche. That section of the ship has their own sanitation workers and FN-2187 is not one of them. The hallways look unfamiliar as he walks through them and several times, he has to be nudged in the right direction by the impatient beeping of a sentry droid.

He hasn’t been back in the creche since he was old enough to handle a blaster properly. The creche is purposefully kept on the other side of the ship from recruits his age and the Stormtroopers that work with the children rarely knowingly interact with the children they once took care of. How could they, when everyone above the age of ten cycles wears a uniform?

However, after the creche on the Supremacy receives a larger than normal group of new recruits from a recent stop at Hays Minor, several of its former inhabitants are repurposed in order to help. It’s supposed to be a temporary assignment, especially for FN-2197. While his shifts in sanitation are on hold until other creche minders can be relocated from smaller, lesser ships in the First Order, his training – on Captain Phasma’s orders, no less – is still ongoing.

FN-2187 can’t allow himself to get used to working in the creche.

Not that there’s anything for him to get used to, of course.Read More »

Intersectionality Fail: Star Wars The Last Jedi Without Men

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INTERSECTIONALITY FAIL

I think at this point, we’ve all seen (and mocked) the misogynistic re-cut of The Last Jedi that cuts out all of the women. The re-cut film takes out all of the women in The Last Jedi in order to get rid of all the gross cooties that the women of Star Wars apparently has. Significant plot points were changed in order to center male characters with the gist of the projects being to keep men and male characters in charge and blah blah blah.

The end result of the “Defeminized” cut of The Last Jedi is a shoddy mess that’s not even fifty minutes long. It manages to be misogynistic and racist (in cutting out Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico and Veronica Ngo’s Paige Tico) and boring as hell. There aren’t that many men in The Last Jedi to make a cohesive story come out if they’re the only characters present.

But cutting the men out of The Last Jedi in response to misogynistic Men’s Rights Activists is not the answer and winds up being just as problematic for similar reasons.Read More »

Library Haul 1/22

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Library Haul 1-22 (1)

I had to pick up some books for my thesis and I wound up digging deep into my library’s film and literary criticism section despite the fact that I only needed ONE book from that section.

Here are the books I took out today, maybe you’ll find something you like!

  1. J-Horror: The Definitive Guide to The Ring, The Grudge, and Beyond by David Kalat
  2. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film by Harry M. Benshoff
  3. Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan edited by Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker
  4. Supervillains and Philosophy edited by Ben Dyer
  5. Good Girls & Wicked Witches: Women in Disney’s Feature Animation by Amy M. Davis
  6. Vader, Voldemort, and Other Villains: Essays on Evil in Popular Media edited by Jamey Heit
  7. The Thrill of Repulsion: Excursions into Horror Culture by William Burns
  8. Batman Death of the Family by Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder
  9. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley
  10. Batman: Harley Quinn by Paul Dini, Yvel Guichet, Aaron Sowd, Don Kramer, Wayne Faucher, Joe Quinones, and Neil Googe
  11. Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
  12. Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 02 by John Wagner, Pat Mills, and Brian Bolland
  13. The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland

  The Reanimator Down The Street

Stitch

Content Warning: This story deals with the historical death of a child and imagines a supernatural take on the events afterwards.

 

The Reanimator Down The Street

My dearest Thomas, my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—Will you come to my aid now—you are so calm a creature & my Poet is of no use for what I must now do—for now I am no longer a mother but I have heard tale of a man that may be able to provide a solution – I dare not ask my Poet to come where I must go.

When Thomas arrives to be at Mary’s side, the little house that his friend shares with her Sister and her Poet is cold and empty aside for the woman herself who greets him at the door with a wan smile and a brisk handshake before ushering him inside.

“What of –”

Mary shakes her head, cutting him off before he can say her Poet’s name. “He has taken my Sister out for a walk,” she says, the words slipping out around a sneer that twists her mouth. “A walk! They go for a walk to escape this tomblike home while I sit here, consumed by fear over a plan that may not work.”

Thomas startles, gaze flicking around the room as if he expects to see the shrouded body of his friend’s infant somewhere in the main room. He sees nothing out of the ordinary and so, squaring his shoulders before asking, “Where is the infant?”

“In the nursery upstairs,” Mary says, the twist to her mouth taking on a sharper note. “Where else would I leave her?”

Mary turns on her heel, walking towards the stairs without another look back at Thomas. At the foot of the stairs, she pauses before speaking. “I will bring her down in a moment. Please, make yourself comfortable.”

How Thomas is supposed to make himself comfortable while waiting for his friend to return with the cold body of her infant daughter, he does not know. He mumbles something that must sound like acquiescence to Mary’s words and drifts into the crumbling room that must serve as her new family’s sitting room.

Read More »

[Stitch Elsewhere] “Bright” Review @ Strange Horizons

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Bright’s entire premise is weak and so’s its reliance on an allegory for racism that fuels its major plot points. In Los Angeles, Orcs are at the bottom of the metaphorical food chain, with many members of the species ostracized and subjugated by humans and elves alike. (While there are other supernatural beings around in one-off scenes, they largely don’t figure into Bright’s black and white worldbuilding.) Orcs in LA, who are largely coded as analogous to Black people via clothing, imagery, and behavior, are collectively being punished for choosing the wrong side in a war two thousand years before the film began. Other characters—such as Ike Barinholtz’s Pollard—use the fact that their ancestors slaughtered and were slaughtered by Orcs in Europe during that war as an excuse for their anger.

At no point does Bright actually combat the racism inherent in the assumption that a race deserves to be oppressed for the “crimes” of its past members. In Los Angeles at least, as mentioned above (we only know about the treatment of Orcs there and in Miami, apparently the only places writer Max Landis has ever heard of), Orcs are second-class citizens who live in poor neighborhoods away from humans. Relationships—of any kind—between humans and Orcs are viewed as offensive, and Will Smith’s Daryl Ward is harassed by (white) police officers whom he worked with over having an Orc as his partner (even though Ward has never asked for a partner and other humans refused to work with Ward for reasons that aren’t explained).

Look, I’m not saying that I’m an urban fantasy expert or anything like that, but I know quality work in the genre when I see them. And Bright isn’t one. Bright takes some of the worst tropes in the buddy cop and urban fantasy genres, adds a stinking heap of a racism allegory, and then serves it up as an attempt at being subversive and cool. (Also, Max Landis is a mediocre writer at best and Bright is not his best. Also also: I hate him.)

If you like my Urban Fantasy 101 article series, check out my review of Bright: a film that basically doesn’t do many things (anything?) right at all. Urban fantasy is one of my favorite genres because of the sheer potential present in the genre. You can do anything within it. So why did Bright choose to regurgitate tired tropes and muddle the message of its own worldbuilding?

You can check out my review of Bright @ Strange Horizons!

Let Black People Feel Things in Fandom 2018

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LET BLACK PEOPLE FEEL THINGS IN FANDOM 2018

In 2016, I made a list of things that I wanted to see fandom leave behind as we moved into the next year.

Fandom left absolutely NONE of those things behind in 2017.

I’m not going to talk about the stalking, the increase in harassment, the doubling down on the claim that Armitage-fucking-Hux being a more interesting character than Finn or Poe Dameron are in the Star Wars fandom. No, I’ll save those hot takes for another day when I don’t feel quite so much like doing a salt-and-burn on several fandom spaces which have crossed boundaries I didn’t know existed.

For now, I’m going to talk about how fandom is incapable of letting Black people – real Black people and the Black characters we love – feel things without rushing to delegitimize those feelings.

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To a significant chunk of the Star Wars fandom, Finn is a traitor and a coward for turning against the fascist organization that stole him from his family and brainwashed him.

The Flash’s Iris West is supposedly spoiled because she made a private comment about her frustration at having her friends disrupt their wedding celebration and ignore their wishes/needs.Read More »

Small Stitch Reviews – Bingo Love

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Bingo Love Cover

Title: Bingo Love
Creators: Tee Franklin (writer), Jenn St-Onge and Joy San (Art), Genevieve FT (Cover)
Genre: Slice of Life, Queer Romance
Rating: Highly Recommended

Publisher: Image Comics
Publishing Date: February 14, 2018

Preorder on AMAZON!

I can’t settle on just one adjective to describe Tee Franklin’s Bingo Love.

Beautiful.

Sweet.

Heart-breaking.

So many different words apply because in many ways, Bingo Love is the queer comic of my dreams! I signed up to support Tee on Kickstarter the moment that the comic project was announced and I finally got the chance to sit down and read my copy today.

Bingo Love is so good. It’s incredibly powerful to see a story of Black queer love told across decades and you can see just how much work Tee, Jenn, and Joy put into this book. This slice of life graphic novel holds nothing back as it focuses on Mari and Hazel’s relationship with one another across their lives (including both internalized and external societal homophobia). It made me tear up MULTIPLE times because it just hit all of the right emotional notes and that ending — oh!

Seriously, if you haven’t pre-ordered Bingo Love yet, you need get on that right now! Because Bingo Love is one of the best comics I’ve ever read and we should all be excited to see where Tee goes from here!