Thoughts on "How to Train Your Dragon" Ancillary Media

I haven't given my love of the film How to Train Your Dragon its due yet. The film is just great—it has a sharp character arc, focusing simply and cleanly on a protagonist that actually earns his lovable companion, and who also has to learn to value his own skills instead of wanting to be someone he is not. It's the most earnest and heartfelt thing I've seen from Dreamworks, and I love it to pieces.

A couple of weeks ago, I drove out to Saskatoon to see Dreamworks How to Train Your Dragon: The Live Experience, the touring stage show that adapts the animated film, using animatronic dragons and much of the same people who produced the Walking with Dinosaurs live show.

It was totally amazing. The dragons weren't perfect illusions, with the ground-based animatronics walking around with mobile platforms attached to their underbellies, but after a while you stopped caring, for these creatures came alive. They tossed their heads, their eyes glowed in the dark, and they padded along like real animals. The dragons in flight were great, travelling on an oval track above the arena. The Red Death, the kaiju-sized dragon enemy, could only be represented as a head and tail with 3D projection taking the place of the rest of the body, but the animatronic parts were just a squat, warty, beautifully hideous design. In fact, all the dragon designs were great translations from cartoony to realistic, both suiting their mediums.

I love Toothless as much as the next girly nerd, and he was the best choice for a lead dragon to capture the audience's heart, but my favourite dragon design is actually the Deadly Nadder, the blue, spiked wyvern-type. Fortunately, there was a lot of Nadder action in this show, and even a plush one to buy from the souvenir stand.

The rest of the special effects were great. They used projected images to create sets that weren't there, 3D imagery swirling around the stage to become the ground and sky. The dragons only "breathed" smoke and flashes of fire, but the on-stage pyrotechnics were flaring through the action scenes, and I could feel their heat washing over my face.

The story of the stage play pretty much followed that of the movie. It was presented with more exposition, was a little bit more comedic, and the emotions were a bit broader, to communicate the story from the stage. The result was not quite as poignant as the film, but it still worked. And they kept the ending where Hiccup loses his leg, so it wasn't actually censored.

Before I left to go to the show, I caught the Canadian premiere of Riders of Berk, the TV sequel to the movie. I've watched some clips before, and my impressions were always the same—the series is annoying in many ways, but I can't stop watching because the dragons are so damn cute.

The series is a little more cartoony, a little lighter in tone, and heavier on the anachronisms than the film was, but the main problem is that, with a few exceptions, Hiccup is the one who knows best, the one who solves whatever problem the episode is about, and everybody else looks like an idiot.


I also realize Hiccup is supposed to be more cerebral than his peers, and a protagonist is the one that will do something special that only they can do, and that is why the story is about them, but it can be taken too far. Hiccup's role in the film was fine, but if you have a TV series, with a broader storyline, lower stakes, and the potential to tell a story from multiple viewpoints, then it becomes annoying when a protagonist is still the only one to solve everyone's problems.

To add to the problem, it also seems like the dumb kids have gotten even dumber, and many of the adult characters also look stupid compared to Hiccup in several scenes. That's no way to make a protagonist look better, if his people are already a step below him. That's why people still discuss Gary Stus, y'know.

Some episodes of the series are off in other ways, too. A particularly bad one was "Portrait of Hiccup as a Buff Man", a plot which depended on Hiccup's father approving an overmuscled portrait of his scrawny son, and them Hiccup feeling he needed to prove himself a man by finding an ancient treasure. Essentially, it was about Hiccup and Stoick re-learning the lesson they had already learned in the film: that Hiccup's "unmanly" nature did not mean he was worthless, and that Stoick loved his son despite sometimes being unable to understand him. This was an empty re-hash.

The antagonist of the series is Mildew, a crotchety old Viking man who hates dragons and always tries to cause trouble for the village…for no apparent reason. He's the kind of villain who does things just to be a dick with nothing else to him, and it's so boring. No other character seems to like him, either, and there's no suggesting Mildew ever has any kind of a point. The moral lines are clearly drawn, and the endings are predictable.

But dragons are so cute. They still have mannerisms like real animals, and their wide variety of distinct designs. The other kids, no matter how dumb or jerkass they are, obviously love their dragons—I particularly like the way Fishlegs babies his Gronckle, Meatlug.

(But why is Hookfang male now? In Gift of the Night Fury, that dragon was seen with hatchlings. Maybe it's a retcon because otherwise, the main characters would have three female dragons to two males, and we all know how much children's television hates that. Or maybe Monstrous Nightmares are like seahorses.)

The film was great, and one day I'll write a full review. The stage show is also great, but the TV series not so much. I thought it had the potential to be great, but if they have Hiccup solving everyone's problems, and no effective antagonist, it almost loses me. Except for those adorable dragons, darn it.

(I probably should read the books now, shouldn't I?)

On the Purported Emasculation of Stock Movie Monsters

You've heard it: these days, werewolves and vampires are too wimpy. They've been turned into love objects for teenage girls, made friendly to young children, have been figuratively and even literally defanged.

My gut reaction is to prefer monstrosity in my stock monsters, to prize those examples that are violent, bloody and accursed. Until recently, I've never tried to understand why I do this, but now I think I understand: it's because these types of vampires and werewolves are generally better for telling intense, conflicted stories.

I'm still not interested in pushing my preferences on the media culture at large, in pretending to dictate what monsters should be. If we're going to keep using the same monsters over again, we had better keep them open to all possibilities, to reduce the repetitiveness.

The problem is not that monsters have become lovers. I hate Twilight as much as the next nerd, and I don't like the idea of vampires and werewolves as something to fall in love with rather than maul you. But this phenomenon is just one part of the larger thing, the real reason I'm uncomfortable with the "modern" portrayals of vampires and werewolves: that authors transform being a monster into being a gift rather than a curse, and in the process, remove a source of conflict. Being a "monster" now becomes wish fulfillment, and leaves writers scrambling to come up with new sources of conflict.

New writers are often told that the goal of a popular fiction story is to "hurt the hero". It means that you must put the protagonist under fire because how they respond will show who they really are, and it will drive the story. If there is no conflict, there is no plot, and we never get to see what the hero is made of (even if it turns out to be mush).

This is reflected in the many stories that have wishes and dreams that never turn out to be what they appear to be. There are caveats, deception, and eventually the hero will be forced to sink or swim. If a character gets everything they want right away, then there is no plot.

In the standard formula, the vampire or the werewolf is the source of the conflict. They are the obstacle for the heroes to defeat, or the curse that affects the protagonist. In this, it is made clear that being a vampire or a werewolf is not desirable.

Writers obviously have found new sources of conflict to drive stories where being a vampire or a werewolf isn't destructive, but there's still that bedrock need to have werewolves and vampires who are frightening. The desire for conflict isn't the only reason for this, but it's the most relevant. That's why I don't like it when the vampire is no longer a monster to be defeated, and the werewolf is no longer a ticking time bomb. There's no longer any tension, anything to draw an audience in.

Vampires and werewolves becoming lovers is only the offshoot of this. Once you have it so that vampires and werewolves are more like superheroes, or they are just "good people", you have the potential to make them into unalloyed love-objects.

 If you are going to have a vampire or werewolf love interest, that means dialing back the cursed aspects at least a little (how much varies widely), and that would involve taking them in a direction that was more to do with superpowers. It's not that far from Selene to Edward, really.

This is especially true of vampires. You can argue the tradition goes back to Dracula and so is beyond reproach, but even so, the idea that being a vampire means you get to be beautiful, aristocratic, and immortal, with tiny, pretty fangs seems much more like wish fulfillment than even the most easiest and voluntary of werewolf transformations. You can try to layer angst on top of the facts, but even so, it sounds hollow because of the opulence involved.

Yes, it's true that everybody seems to have a much smaller problem with superhero werewolves and vampires than they do with "romanticized" ones, but I think they're two closely related things.

I doubt everybody is thinking the issue through to this degree, both on the side of fans or creators. Some are simply acting out of a conservative instinct: if monsters have always been this way, then there is no reason to change them, no matter what the quality of the results.  That might also be true for me, too, a little.

Many blame women for this phenomenon, considering it the result of girl cooties getting into the horror genre, whether it's Anne Rice or Stephanie Meyer. Usually this is an unspoken accusation, but sometimes it's out there in the open, such as an article about an upcoming TV series based on Guillermo del Toro's The Strain. It characterizes its horrific, parasitic vampires this way: "Fittingly for male-driven FX, unlike the traditional, romanticized portrayals of vampires as tuxedo-clad studs, The Strain‘s bloodsuckers have no seductive powers […]" The implication is that women don't know what "real" monsters are, and have polluted the genre with their idealized blood-sippers.

That's wilful ignorance at its finest, what with sexualized female vampires being so popular. This is a direct example of the sexism brewing whenever  nerds complain about monsters "no longer being scary", but it's not the only time these sentiments are obvious.

I refer to "emasculation" intentionally, because even if they don't blame women for it, the nerd rage is directed almost entirely at male monsters, often calling them "pussies" or "fags". They're no longer scary because they're like icky women, is the message. I haven't seen anyone complaining that modern female monsters aren't scary enough.

Twilight deserves all the garbage thrown at it, but to act like the worst examples of monster emasculation are the result of some female thing, of tainting monsters with femininity in one way or another, or that seductive female monsters are totally okay, just kills the argument that monsters are no longer scary. If  you blame women for it, you lose.

Besides becoming gifted beings and romantic objects, another way that monsters are supposedly emasculated by modern culture is to make them out-and-out good guys, or even persecuted by humans, the "real" villains. Children's cartoons like Hotel Transylvania or the Monster High franchise are the most recent examples, but of course there are many. Because this stuff is for kids, and far older than Twilight, it seems to have passed off the nerd radar, but I'd like to talk about it briefly.

This stuff bothers me is because it just flips the absolute morality around, so that we're still dealing with simple lines between good and evil, but then the writers can pretend they're being creative. Straight reversals can be effective, but a lot of the time it just leaves a story feeling cheap and simple. And that's a lot worse than monsters no longer being scary.

In short, while I do dislike the idea of vampires and werewolves not being obstacles or threats, it's a phenomenon that's larger than paranormal romance. It's about supernatural powers becoming superpowers, about wish fulfillment over conflicts. Not to say it can't be done well, but it can be hard to create new sources of conflict and rebuild a mythology. And whatever the results, just don't blame women for it.

Untrue As It Can Be

"Eye of the Beholder" is the first Halloween episode of Disney's Gargoyles. True to the spirit of the series, it has a deeper purpose than to be a holiday outing, as the story develops Xanatos' and Fox's characters and lays the foundation for further changes to come.

However, it's still wonderful as a Halloween episode. A particularly cool thing is Elisa dressing as Belle from Beauty and the Beast, choosing the golden ballroom gown and starting a tradition of having Elisa dress as a Disney Princess, since she was Jasmine in the comics. Goliath does not dress in any costume, choosing just to be concealed by the holiday. It's a very sweet moment, as Disney makes a nod to itself, and more importantly, a nod to one of my favourite Disney films, as Goliath serves as the "Beast" to Elisa's Belle.

But....

Okay, okay, I have to do it. I have to state that this meta reference, much as I love it, is not a profound expression of the similarity between the two couples. Some fans make it out to be this, but the central relationship in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and the relationship between Goliath and Elisa, are different except on the most simple visual level.

The major difference is that in Gargoyles, both characters are already the species they want to be. It's common to say that the Beast shouldn't have transformed at the end of the Disney film, but that's ignoring that the Beast hated being what he was, and his entire character arc, the plot of the whole film, was about him learning to become a better person so the curse would be lifted. The Beast becoming human was the only ending that would have made sense, no matter how many fans love the Beast as himself.

In contrast, Goliath and Elisa are already their natural species, and so they don't  need to change their forms, and indeed never will. Because of this, the source of the conflict is different, and so is the story being told. Beauty and the Beast is about a character learning to change so he can be transformed back. Gargoyles is about two characters having to meet the problems that come with being of two different species. The former is a single goal that must be met within the confines of a film's running time, and then it ceases being inter-species. The latter is about a slow burn, as Goliath and Elisa come to terms with their attraction, and the limits they have, because there is no space for a transformation to remove those limits.

Another important difference between Goliath/Elisa and Belle/Beast is that Goliath is not a dick. The personalities of Goliath and Elisa are not the source of their struggle; the source is the taboo and the surprise of their very relationship, while in the Disney film, the Beast's personality is the major obstacle. (That, and the whole imprisonment thing, but the film tries to re-direct viewers away from that unpleasant truth.)

Some fans of Beauty and the Beast interpret the central dynamic as less creepy than others do, so that maybe Goliath not being a dick would be a major difference. Among the supporting evidence: Belle gave herself to the Beast freely, the servants are nice to Belle, Belle stands up to the Beast, the Beast lets Belle go—there are all these things that are supposed to prove the central romance isn't creepy, and it seems like the writers are trying to prove it too, but I can't buy it. No matter how much I love and respect this film, it's still about a creepy romance. And Goliath/Elisa is not creepy at all, because neither starts off in a violent, hateful role towards the other.

 It's not that either type of story is better, just that they are so very different that any similarity between them is on the superficial level, and nothing deeper. I love that the Halloween episode of Gargoyles references Beauty and the Beast, but this doesn't mean the film will turn the crank of Goliath/Elisa fans, because it is a very different story.

Shinji in Rebuild: You Can't Improve on Imperfection

After experiencing nerd-rage for myself, I've figured out the obvious: it's no shame to feel it, just a shame to be obnoxious about it. Having an issue with changes made to media by the creators isn't petty by itself; you just don't have to overreact.

In one case, though, I've let fan reaction amplify what should otherwise be a very low-level issue. Unlike a lot of anime fans, I wasn't that impressed with the first two Rebuild of Evangelion movies, the proposed four-film retelling of the popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. This came from a combination of finding them choppy, and, yes, my attachment to the previous anime. I don't expect a truncated movie adaptation to deliver absolutely everything that made me fall in love with the longer series, but I want to feel at least something of what I did for the original series. No dice.

Of particular interest was the portrayal of the protagonist, Shinji Ikari. Though at one time it seemed that nearly every anime fan hated him, he's become one of my favourite fictional characters ever, with the only thing still bothering me being that one incident in the beginning of End of Evangelion.

However, it was a wee bit disturbing that when the first Rebuild movie, You Are (Not) Alone came out in North America, I found Shinji to be very, very, annoying there, twitching my way through the film. I went back and watched the TV series, and all was right with the world. In this case, I didn't feel the urge to hunt down and kill the film just because it presented a different version of Shinji, especially since I couldn't understand what made him unlikable there. In the case of the second movie, I just found him dull. I could forget it, and move on.

However, a lot of people started saying that You Are (Not) Alone wrote Shinji better than the TV series, using that all-important phrasing, "more realistically". By the time of the second film, You Can (Not) Advance, others had added that Shinji was now a "manly" mecha warrior, because he had made an explicit effort to try to rescue another character. Shinji was taking control of his world, moving beyond his despair to achieve the payoff the audience wanted all along.

This managed to turn my opinion of Rebuild from neutral, to just kind of...having more knee-jerk negative feelings associated with it, because much of what they said was completely the opposite of what I felt.

Saying Rebuild Shinji is "more realistic" was totally baffling, because a great strength of Shinji's original character was his extreme realism, the raw portrayal of emotional breakdown.
The conflict, however, might come from differing views of "realism": In my case, "realism" meant Shinji's characterization showed an aspect of reality in a brutally accurate fashion: the ways that despair and loss can destroy a person inside, so that they don't act the way most believe a hero in popular fiction should.

On the other hand, "realism" can also mean restrained depictions, obedience to the conventional laws of fiction while keeping immersion. If we're going with the second definition, then, I suppose, Shinji in Rebuild is the more realistic version, but that's not what I think realism is. Shinji's portrayal in Rebuild just lacks the teeth.
But even if I wasn't impressed with Rebuild Shinji, calling him "manly", and treating it like he'd become "hot-blooded" is just too much. He's still just a soft-hearted, gangly, tiny teenager, and the simple fact that he fights back isn't that radical a change. Even though some of Shinji's fighting in the TV series was attributed to his mecha/mother's "berserker" mode, Shinji was the one who kept attacking in episode 4,  who opened Rei's pod in episode 6, who came back in episode 19. The original Shinji was indeed capable of fighting back, and it's not so much of a stretch that he would try to rescue Rei if the opportunity arose. That's what he went back to do, after all.

Rebuild just punches up such scenes with stronger visuals and higher stakes in order to create an effective climax: the idea of Shinji fighting back was not invented whole cloth, and it by itself doesn't change the character as much as others seem to claim.

So, what I'm thinking is that Shinji in Rebuild isn't radically altered like Neo-Exsedol from Macross, but there are still some things missing about him, some loss of quality. I can live with it, but seeing people with the extreme opposite opinion of Shinji, praising this new version as a great improvement, drives down my interest in Rebuild Shinji even more.

I also want to add that it's not bad writing for a character to lack a feel-good payoff for their despair. A story doesn't exist to make readers feel good—it exists to be told, and Shinji Ikari was fascinating enough on his own. His lack of such a payoff isn't a mistake that needs to be corrected, but just the way that Evangelion was.

It might still be possible for the next two Rebuild  movies to take down fanss goodwill and put Shinji back on his original crooked path, but I can't see that making a difference to me. My reasons have already been stated and cemented, the opinions of fans has already given me the blues. It's a little nerdy weakness of mine, but it happened because my interest in Rebuild Shinji wasn't that strong to begin with.

Other Rebuild bullshit:

I was actually really looking forward to the first movie, being completely open to enjoying it as it was, while appreciating the series regardless. Oh well; at least there were new merchandising opportunities, though I can't keep up with all of those.

However subjective it might be, I think Rei and Asuka in You Can (Not) Advance had their flaws toned down and made "cute". These days I'm aware that female characters may be flawed only for the purpose male audience infatuation, but I've always clung to the notion that Rei and Asuka, though sexualized, had genuine faults and deeply disturbing aspects, that it wasn't all there for the fanboys or meant to be endearing. Seeing them acting nicer/being more comical was a little bit disturbing, though without the emotional connection that I have to Shinji. Like the portrayal of Shinji, it means they are defanged, and greater apparent "positivity" doesn't mean the characters are more appealing or better written.

Some of the new Angels did look really cool, and were the things that excited me the most.

Saying that I hate Mari would be too strong. Rather, it's just that I don't like her. I don't see a need for her, and am disappointed that she's not screwed up in the way Evangelion characters usually are. Yeah, being a nut for fighting and sniffing Shinji like a dog might make her a fine candidate for insanity in any other series, but it's different from the emotional instability usually shown in Evangelion, and I can't help but feel the loss. And maybe, her not being a secret emotional powder keg is the point, but being a contrast to the other pilots doesn't make her interesting by herself. This all adds up to Mari not feeling like a "real" character at all, just someone tacked on.

Pixar's "Brave": Questioning the Rebellious Princess

Brave is not about a Rebellious Princess who undergoes an awakening into heroism. Instead, it's about a Rebellious Princess who puts a spell on her mother in order to break out of the role, and must right her wrong. There's also a lot of comic relief, an impending clan war, and an evil monster bear.

There were some good parts to this movie, some parts that didn't work, and an it overally defines the term "mixed bag", and thus leaves a viewer wanting a little bit more, for it to stick to what it established.

Because Merida ends up turning her mother into a bear as a result of the usual "spirit not letter" wish, and then refuses to admit it is her fault, the movie places Merida's mother, Queen Elinor, on the moral high ground. True, Merida and her mother both must reconcile their dislike of each other in order to break the spell before it becomes permanent, but Merida is further in the wrong right from the start.

Merida's objections to stifling protocol and an arranged marriage are played like the carping of a spoiled brat, and her objections never feel as though the narrative takes them seriously. She is also the one who cast that damaging wish, and clan war starts brewing over her defiance of that arranged marriage. When Merida must finally fight a monster, all her crack shooting with arrows becomes completely ineffective. This all makes it clear that Brave wishes to tell a story that questions the value of the cherished fantasy archetype.

In the end, however, Brave becomes hesitant about any of these things. Despite all the dumping on Merdia, the narrative still decides to stick with modern values. Merida declares that people can choose who they love instead of engaging in contests for her. It feels like lip service, since the implication is that the three clan princes are still all she can choose from, and of course because Brave was, up till that point, not celebrating female rebellion.

The best thing to come out of the film is the relationship between Merida and her mother, Elinor. It's rare that a mother/daughter relationship is at the centre of an animated fantasy film, and the reconciliation between the two is honest and heartfelt, but it only begins when Merida tries to make good on her mistake.

 Elinor is also not a strawman, since her desires are instead connected to current practical need as stemming from tradition. However, developed characters does not mean a movie is neutral, and it is exactly because Elinor's concerns are justified that Brave appears to challenge the Rebellious Princess myth.

Another false impression that Brave gives from the trailers was that it would be a more dramatic and earnest film than it was. As it happens, there is a lot of comic relief, which isn't grating if a viewer expected it, but it's disappointing when it seemed Brave was to be going in a more straightforward direction.

Most of this comic relief comes from the entire male cast. Merida's father King Fergus is a ferocious warrior and loving father, but he's also there to be "the fun parent" and "the goofy dad". Queen Elinor is clearly the one who wears the "pants" in the castle and the only one concerned with making sure it's running smoothly. As a result, Fergus is just comic relief, and stacked up against his wife's emotional growth, is a weak character. When Pixar movies are usually so good, to see such a lazy dynamic between the parents is disappointing.

The other clan heads and their sons are even sillier, which makes the threat of impending war harder to take seriously. Because they are such silly characters, one could think that this is a concession to the championing of western values, a knock on arranged marriage, but it's difficult to shake the impression given by the main storyline. There is still potential war going on, however comical it looks.

Add to this Merida's little brothers, who are only named once and no lines at all, it seems like the movie built up its central female dynamic and just decided to call it a day, instead of creating a fully fleshed-out cast of both genders.

However, there's also a lot of slapstick coming from the female characters. The transformed Elinor refuses to get rid of her crown or dainty behaviour, and communicates through pantomime and anthropomorphic expressions. The forest witch also sells bear carvings, with an entire hut full of quirky wooden automatons, and also puts on a welding mask to use her cauldron, which also functions as a voicemail. There's a maid who always screams and is tormented by the princes. It's all just a little too goofy.

Another problem is the antagonist Mor'du, the monstrous bear of legend. Mor'du was once a man, fighting his brothers for control of a kingdom. He wished "for the strength of ten men" and became a giant bear instead. There are reasons for him to be in the film: he appears in the cold open and took Fergus's leg, his legend is what Elinor uses to try to teach Merida a lesson, and the forest witch implies she was responsible for him, too. His fate reinforces the notion that you must Be Careful What You Wish For, and reminds viewers that Elinor's transformation could become permanent. However, Mor'du only appears at the beginning and the middle of the film.  He is connected to the story, but it's a weak link, because when Mor'du is not there, his presence is not missed.

In fact, because the film already has the mother/daughter conflict, the need to break the spell, and the need to reconcile the hostile clans, Mor'du feels like a fifth wheel, maybe added only because of the false expectation an animated family film must have a villain.

In the middle of this muddle, viewers might ask why the film is called Brave when it's not about a heroic rite of passage. The most likely explanation is Merida is "Brave" for admitting her mother could be right, and that the spell was her fault and not the witch's. In addition, Elinor and Merida are both "brave" for reconciling themselves to each other's worldview. If this was the intention, however, the theme does not hang strongly enough. As mentioned above, it obvious that Merida needs to change far more than Elinor does, and the film still waffles, unable to commit to the criticisms it makes.

Many have compared the film to How to Train Your Dragon, but the similarities are only surface, coming from their visual motifs. There is a fundamental difference between the two movies, which is that Hiccup learns he can be himself instead of being the Viking boy his father wants him to be, while Merida learns that being the princess girl her mother wants her to be isn't that bad. How to Train Your Dragon also sticks absolutely to its theme and makes it clear, while Brave backs off.

The overlaid comic relief, the fifth-wheel antagonist, are also problems. As a final cap, the movie also feels derivative and predictable. Much of Merida and Elinor's arguments have a familiar ring, as does the fact of wishes that backfire, and the sitcom dynamic between husband and wife. Many events are easy to call before they happen.

These facts are as disappointing as they are aggravating. Brave represented a change for Pixar, its first attempt at heroic fantasy and its first film with a female protagonist, and it could have been much better than it was. This doesn't represent a permanent step down for Pixar, but it is a sad thing.

Diagnosing Loki Fangirls

Well, I've been away from blogging for a while, and there's no excuse but that I somehow lost the mojo, which is easy to do since this is a hobby and not the job I intend to have. It's why I can be so lazy to begin with. So, let's get to it.

I saw Thor a while ago, and it was a fun movie--to me, it read like a better version of The Lion King, with a more compelling arc for the lead, a consistently threatening villain, and a more palatable take on all that fantasy racism. I also saw The Avengers before that, feeling I knew enough of the continuity to get by, and I was right. Both films have the kind of spirit I hope my work to have someday: ultimately gimmicky fun, yet also capable of some heartfelt emotion and never losing a sense of humour.

Something I want to talk about, though, is how many fangirls Loki has, and the fan boy "theorizing" as to why it happened.

I want, and try, to make room in my worldview for multiple interpretations of fictional characters, but at a certain point the notion that a character who commits evil deeds isn't a villain becomes something I can't get on board with. Regardless of the reasons these characters have for turning to evil, no amount of sympathetic backstory or understandable motivation can wipe their records clean. Writers should still try to give their villains these two things in order to create a richer world, but usually the roles of hero and villain are usually still clear enough.

The weird thing is not that female viewers have a crush on Loki, but that some of them insist he's not a villain. All of this has been attributed to some kind of hardwired female masochism. Women are inclined to throw themselves at dangerous guys in reality or fiction, trying to change them, trying to interpret them as Not Such a Bad Guy. This is the nasty gender stereotype explanation most often floated for villain fangirls, and it's not supposed to end with fiction.

It suggests women suffer from a fundamental lack of perception as to what a character is "really" like, i.e. a bad person, and that they always desire to "change" a man, an enterprise that would be useless and ultimately hurtful were the character real, but dammit, those silly little women would just keep trying. It's all implied to mirror a drama carried out in real life, a dramatic role that has nothing to do with societal expectations of women, but just the way women are. Women like to hurt themselves by being attached to assholes, whether in reality and fiction.

It's pretty disgusting to see over and over again, and because of this it's tempting to view the stereotypical "villain fangirl" as a straw(wo)man, designed to prop up these myths of female masochism. Yet evidence for this type of nerd exists all around us, so to a point it's real, but the explanations may not be.

Twi-night Double-Header

In which we indulge in some immaturity and hyperbole

I guess it's finally time. Finally time to talk about…Twilight. No, I haven't read the books. I tried; I couldn't. I tried to read through Satireknight's text MST3Kings of the books, but even that defeated me.

Honestly, I couldn't get past Bella's stupid whining about her stupid little life. I know this is what a lot of teenagers do, but…it's not fun for me to read. It's cliché to say it, but seeing characters angst about nothing related to the plot or to do with actual pain seems vulgar, like being forced to witness someone's private life. I didn't even want to slog through this for the nastier stuff.

I witnessed the first merry-go-round of Twilight snark. At that time, I avoided saying anything because I wanted to be a good little girl and actually have read something before I talked about it, but now I guess I'll say a few things since everyone else is.

Then and now, I went with the flow as far as opinion of Twilight was concerned. I thought the stories sounded vacant or unintentionally creepy, as well as padded to all hell. Breaking Dawn sounded simply insane.

I also prefer my vampires savage, with Kouta Hirano's Hellsing manga being my favourite vampiric story of them all. Werewolves I have less of an explicit desire in mind, though I usually hate stuff with "alphas" "packs", and bullshit social Darwinism. Meyer's vampires and werewolves simply sound boring. It's not about vampires/werewolves being emasculated because they aren't out eating people, but that her versions have little apparent weaknesses or drawbacks to their status.

Weaknesses are good things. Sure, you can have your werewolves retain their minds, and your vampires be sexy if you want, but their lives can't be perfect. This is because, in a story that's aiming for conflict or drama, even if its roots are in wish-fulfilment or fighting over a teenage girl, imperfection means that things will actually happen. It means there can be danger and suspense, and, god willing, ambiguity. And if there are these things, it means the heroes can be tested, show their true characters.

There's supposed to be fighting in Twilight, right? Some attempt to tie the love triangle to the wider world of vampires fighting werewolves? So I can call it out on that level. Furthermore, it goes back to that voyeuristic aspect--if I'm forced to bear witness to a person's private fantasies, at least jazz it up with external and internal conflict so that it's easier to bear. Twilight apparently doesn't, and maybe it's the perfection in its monsters that's part of the problem.

I think Twilight is sexist. Hardly a new opinion, but I also don't think of Twilight as a source of moral corruption. That is, it won't make girls think someone like Edward is okay, or being a twit like Bella will get them places and make them loved. However, the popularity serves as a mighty good demonstration of some fucked-up things about our culture. Even though it's inspired by Mormonism, there's got to be something in Twilight that taps into that wider female culture, or it wouldn't be this popular, especially with adult women.

Mass culture doesn't express the deepest and unchanging truths of the human psyche--and thank god for that. We simply live in a culture that makes Twilight an appealing narrative for a lot of women. Society has changed over the years, but there are still many places that believe that women should "wait" (to be chosen, to be bedded), that women love "bad boys" and must forgive flaws in their mates, that women can never imagine themselves as the powerful monster, and so on. All of this, and more, is embodied in Twilight. And what is considered normal is often felt as desirable, so the audience is captivated.

There's blurred lines between individual desire and social conformity, between "guilty pleasures" and desires that come to dictate one's life. For this, I won't judge anyone for liking Twilight unless they're insane about it, not knowing from where their interest springs, and it may be impossible to know. I judge Twilight itself, partially for what it says about female culture.

Bottom line: Twilight only taps into that culture as it is now, not as it will forever be, and where it creates the worst obsession, Twilight works on something in its fans that was unfortunately there before. To say otherwise, that entertainment can corrupt the innocent, is the path to censorship and self-regulation. And I don't want that to happen because of fucking Twilight.

Some claim that hating Twilight means putting down female desire, female fandom, and female values. Look, I won't deny that fandom has a problem with women, and female-targeted entertainment is looked down upon, and that men are allowed to voice their displeasure and bewilderment at what women find attractive in popular culture, in a way that can get annoying and insulting. But you know, Edward sounds like such a vapid and creepy character, and Bella's love presented as consuming and all-controlling (such as the part where she's without Edward, and the book literally goes blank) that I continue to feel comfortable in hating what Twilight represents as love.

Twilight isn't the answer to marginalizing female viewers. The franchise just exposes those same ugly attitudes about women that already exist, instead of offering something new and challenging. There is no culture of entertainment so desperate for female consumer recognition that Twilight would be hailed simply for existing, especially since plenty of women also don't like Twilight.

About "female values" well, there's been a backlash in some nerd circles, one that considers it highly important for a female character to be able to prove she doesn't have to "act like a man" to be strong. I still find it hard to take a passionate stance for a mainstream value (and women acting "like women" is still very much that), and maintain that positive traits do not need to be divided by gender. Being driven by love and family is an admirable thing for both male and female characters, when applied with complexity and intelligence--if that's what you're into.

Yet from what I've seen and heard, Bella's anything but a positive example of "female" values, as her choices would be horribly foolish if she didn't have Plot Armour. That goes double for Bella and her demon baby. Maybe that can be read as the part where Bella finally sticks up for herself, says that despite the thing killing her from the inside (death by bad world-building, imagine that) and everyone telling her to abort it, she'll carry it to term.

However, when women's power has been said to lie in our self-sacrifice since time immemorial, and when the rest of the series has been that bad, I don't count it as any kind of sudden agency for Bella, nor even a proud expression of the right to choose, since putting the baby first is always what fictional women choose.

Secondly, I hear her baby, once born, bypasses a lot of the messiness that comes with raising a child by being super-intelligent and fast-growing. It's more of that wish fulfillment, that removal of flaws and conflict so any chance for the characters to face challenges are removed

Also, fuck, Jacob falling in love with the baby, who will speedily grow up into an acceptable mate, after being babysat by her future beau. Ew ew ew ew. Thanks, for finding a way to make predestined love even creepier.

So much of criticism depends on individual taste, what pushes our buttons and what doesn't. The best of us try to hide this, couching our objections in some kind of wider ideal, a platonic image of the Good Story. But since I've already thrown- any pretence to legitimacy or neutrality, let it be put out there: I find Twilight distasteful through only hearing about it. I don't care that it's written to satisfy the id, or that a lot of fictional romances can have creepy subtexts if you think about it--I just don't like this.