I feel for Rosalie and Leah like I feel for characters in a bad fanfic

(This post has spoilers for the later books in the Twilight series.)

For a long time now I've tried to make my way through the Twilight book series, but it's been hard, mostly because I can't stand them. While I could read 100 pages in one sitting I often feel I do not want to do so. As of this writing I'm a little past the second book in Breaking Dawn, the final novel in the series, and while I've long been planning to write on the series as a phenomenon I figured that while I'm not done I'd like to talk a little bit about two characters whose depictions really bother me, Rosalie Cullen and Leah Clearwater.



Rosalie Cullen. You know she can't be trusted because she's blonde.

Most people who read the Twilight series and don't like them focus on the problematic relationship between Bella and her suitors, and while there's plenty to say about that I find Rosalie and Leah's stories more jarring as a feminist and as an aspiring fiction writer. For those not in the know, Rosalie is one of Edward Cullen's "sisters," a vampire created by their "father" Carlisle to be a companion for Edward, except Edward didn't love her that way and now Rosalie has her own squeeze, Emmett, and Edward is the primary love interest of Twilight heroine Bella. Leah, meanwhile, is a cousin to werewolf Jacob Black, Bella's secondary love interest, and the only female werewolf in a pack of mostly-shirtless men.

Both Rosalie and Leah belong to that class of characters that probably have a cute name on TV Tropes but I'll just call them "dislikable allies." Both characters are coded as bitches by not only the viewpoint characters - Bella doesn't like Rosalie because Rosalie doesn't like her, and when Jacob narrates in Breaking Dawn large portions of the narrative are dedicated to how loathsome the both of them are. None of the characters seem to disagree with them, either. Rosalie has a husband but while he doesn't diss her we never at any point in the narrative see him stick up for her. And Leah is apparently so loathsome that when the wolf pack splits into two and Leah joins up with Jacob's pack of him and Leah's little brother, Seth, Seth is disgusted at having to be in a pack with his own sister again because she's just that much of a pain.

What is it that sets these characters so apart? Well, Rosalie doesn't like Bella so she's cold to her sometimes. Also, Rosalie is bitter that she can't get pregnant. As for Leah, she's bitter because Sam, the head of the wolf pack, doesn't love her anymore. And ... that's about it. In paragraphs upon paragraphs in this book, author Stephenie Meyer urges us to hate these characters, loathe these characters, laugh at their humiliations, feel triumph at their sufferings and sneer at their joys, all because they have the gall not to be totally happy with the hand fate has dealt them.



Leah Clearwater. Because she's from the First Nations a werewolf she's forever damaged.

Reading the passages with Rosalie and Leah in Breaking Dawn gave me the odd sensation of reading fanfiction where the fanfic writer clearly doesn't like one of the cast members who were meant in the original work to be protagonists. In this common phenomenon, characters who had once been friends become enemies, what in the original work were annoyances and bad decisions become in the fanfic become cruelties and abuses, and the writer seems hellbent on telling the reader any goodwill they have for these characters is wrong, wrong, wrong and we are meant to delight in their repudiation. (This is a frequent occurrence among both fanfics with original characters AND slash fanfics, and the disdained characters are usually but by no means exclusively female.) For those who don't like these characters, these fanfics can provide vindication, but usually I come away from them feeling sad and pitying the characters no matter how I felt about them in the original work. When the fanfic writer, in this instance the equivalent of God, hates you so much, you're automatically an underdog.

What makes it worse is that Meyer, remembering that even negative characters need reasons for the things they do, gives both Rosalie and Leah tragic pasts. While Rosalie's origin is written with this infuriating rose-colored (pun not intended) view of the past where things were so great back before the Internet and the civil rights movement because people cursed less and wore dresses or something, her essential story is that Carlisle made her a vampire because Rosalie's former fiancee and his friends gang raped her and beat her until she was near death. Since she was dedicated to having a normal life with a family and children, she's not very happy about being a vampire, either. Sam used to be in love with Leah, but after he became a werewolf, he "imprinted" on her cousin Emily, a weird and creepy phenomenon where werewolves become obsessed with their "soulmate" after they meet them and said soulmate, always a woman in Twilight, has no choice in the matter. After Leah also becomes a werewolf, her mind is linked with Seth's and all the other werewolves. So she not only has to hear how Sam no longer loves her and doesn't want her around anymore, but how the other, all male, werewolves, wish she would shut up and go away. Also, she may be infertile because she's a werewolf and the males wish she would shut up about her periods because that's gross.

Of course, one could argue that a bad life doesn't necessarily make one a good person. Yet most of the time being unhappy and voicing their unhappiness is these characters' worst sin. I know many have issues with the second part of Breaking Dawn, where Bella becomes pregnant with a half-vampire baby that may possibly kill her but nevertheless wants to keep it, and see those chapters as implying that women should be prepared to sacrifice it all for a baby. Now, I'm pro-choice and think doctors should have a moral imperative to save mothers when pregnancies become dangerous and should always respect the mother's personhood, but in this instance Bella does want her baby, and Rosalie is the only one who completely supports her in that decision. Carlisle helps medically and Edward worries over her, but Rosalie is the one who acts as 24 hour nurse and does favors for her while Alice, who is coded as Edward's good sister and usually plays the role of Bella's best friend, can't stand to be near her because the baby disturbs her psychic powers. Yet because Rosalie is more invested in the baby and Bella, all that work is considered moot if not actively malevolent. Also, Leah should stop whining about being second in someone's heart because only Jacob is allowed to do that. Although if Leah confronts Bella on stringing him along, that's also evil. Granted, she probably shouldn't have done it when Bella was sick from the deathbaby, but I didn't really want to see two powerful men threatening to beat her up for it.

In fact, only men are allowed to be angry and even vengeful against the ones they love. Jacob can want to kill Bella's baby and Edward can disable Bella's truck, but their acts against the heroine don't count. Even among the minor characters, Sam can disfigure Emily and still be the love of her life. Carlisle can turn a woman who tried to kill herself into a vampire but nobody questions his choice and said woman is now his happy wife. We know their theft of a woman's personhood is just temporary and they know best so it's okay, but somehow a woman being bitter can't be tolerated. It's a frustrating, sexist dichotomy, made all the more frustrating because I had to read more than 200 pages of Stephenie-Meyer-as-Jacob whining about how he couldn't have Bella but talking about how Leah was such a bitch for being upset about Seth, capped off with Jacob being gleeful when he got to beat Rosalie up.

Maybe I'm off-base. Maybe everyone else finds these characters as irritating as Meyer intends them to be and I'm the equivalent of those creepy Harry Potter fans who see the Death Eaters as a noble race of aristocrats who have been unfairly maligned by the bullying Gryffindors and not as a rather-obvious metaphor for Nazism. Yet I can't help but look at these characters who've had a harder time than the main characters, and aren't happy about it, and can't help but sympathize as they rage against their clearly unsympathetic creator who set them on that path.

I enjoyed the ladies of Thor

I'm a little late to the party on this film, which came out in the U.S. last week. Yet last week was also the week that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic ended its first season, and I decided I'd rather be timely on something that was over than something that would be in theaters for quite awhile. The perils of forcing/limiting myself to one post a week, I suppose. I wish I could do more. (I finished the first Portal video game this week and would love to talk about that too. Maybe at a later point.)

Anyway, given that I'm surely not the only person to wait to see a film until its second weekend in the theaters, I'll report back saying I genuinely enjoyed the new Marvel Comics movie Thor. Now, I've read quite a few comics with Marvel's version of the character but very, very few comics where he's the star, something I hope to remedy when I feel comfortable buying new books and comic book trades again (I have about 150 books to read and need to pay penance. No, that's not an exaggeration). So I knew the basics of Marvel Thor's powers and comic-book mythology surrounding him but very little about the specifics, and while I consider myself a comic fan I came to it as an outside observer, I suppose. (I also don't know much about the original Norse tales, for the record, but that may be for someone else to analyze.)

What I'm trying to say is, with few preconceived expectations, the movie is really fun. I know some people had trouble with the first thirty minutes, which largely takes place in Asgard. I don't quite understand this. The CGI renderings of Asgard alone are really impressive (I watched the movie in 2-D), and if they don't replicate Jack Kirby's drawings exactly they have enough of the feel. Plus, I like sparkly rainbow bridges, battles with Frost Giants and Anthony Hopkins' acting as the All-Father. Kenneth Branagh's directing makes these scenes shine.

I also like the beginning because it's a setup for Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) transformation from an arrogant man (or is it god?) into one who is genuinely good. I know some people are turned off by Tony Stark's arrogance in the Iron Man movies, which doesn't go away even after his transformation into a superhero. I think those who had an issue with Tony Stark will find Thor a lot more palatable. He comes off as genuinely interested in people and kind, especially when he smiles.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Critics seem to have had better things to say about the rest of the movie, where Thor is banished to earth and spends a lot of time fighting hospital staff and acting like what everyone else in the movie thinks is a "crazy homeless person." There is a lot that's awesome about this part. People can debate over whether or not Natalie Portman makes a convincing astrophysicist, but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised at the movie 1.) creating a scientific team of two women (Portman and Kat Dennings) and one older man (Stellan Skarsgard) and 2.) not having that older man be in charge.

This may be the time to say what I've been trying to say for at least five paragraphs: I really liked the female characters in this movie. I won't say it was so great it completely blew me away or anything like that, but in terms of that it was a solid movie. Portman's Jane Foster may not be my favorite superhero girlfriend, but she's up there. She's charming and funny and clearly feels deeply for Thor even though the movie itself is low on angst. She doesn't fight, but she doesn't have to be rescued, either, which is actually really refreshing. Her assistant Darcy, who also doesn't need to be rescued, provides a lot comic moments in the film, too.

And if you want women battling, there's Lady Sif (Jamie Alexander). Sif doesn't have a lot of fighting scenes, but she has just as many as the Warriors Three, Asgardian male warriors. In fact, while I'm not sure if it's this way in the comics, the movie goes out of its way to make Sif an equal to the Warriors Three, both in her fighting and her attitude.

An aside, one of the Warriors Three (Tadanobu Asano as Hogun) is Asian, and Heimdall (Idris Elba) is black. I have no idea why a bunch of jerks got upset about one and not the other. I have a few theories but it doesn't really matter. Someone always takes the opportunity to act like a complete and total jerk in this situation, whether it's Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin, Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman or Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (even if that has a reasoning in the comics), and they should knock it off. I mean, it's just unconscionable, especially because few of the same people who are upset about this were upset about Jubilee being played by a white girl in the Generation X movie (yet they'll always call upon that false equivalency, of course). Asano and Elba are both really good in their small roles and it would be better if the background characters were more diverse, anyway.

I guess if I have any complaint about the movie is that I don't have a whole lot to say about Loki. The plotline of the movie is good, but Tom Hiddleston and the character don't leave a strong impression. That's not to say I hated the character, but he seems rather small scale for a God and pales compared to other Marvel supervillains.

Still, I'd recommend it. Kenneth Branagh did a very good job. The sets are awesome, the main character is likable and the female characters are solid. See it at one point, even if you missed this weekend or the first it will still be just as fun.

Thank the Nerd Dieties for "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic"

When Michael Bay's Transformers film came out in 2007, I was one of the only people I knew at the time who had no interest in seeing it. This was before the franchise and Megan Fox developed their toxic reputations, but I'd heard negative things about the portrayal of Jazz (the "black" Transformer), and that a female Transformer had been cut out of the film, so I stayed away. When my younger brother called me pigheaded for this, I said something along the lines of, "Well, they would never give a girl's show from the 1980s a remake treatment! When are we going to get a 'My Little Pony' movie?"

Even at the time I knew my argument was a little silly. I didn't actually want a live action film of multicolored ponies and, to be honest, never really watched the '80s show as a kid. I liked the toys, and to a certain extent I liked the fandom that had sprung up around it when the "generation three" ponies came out, especially the part of fandom that liked to repaint the toys and make them look like Batman or whatever. Still the direct-to-DVD animations for that were dreadful and I can't imagine anyone who wasn't a child liked them in a non-ironic way.

So it was strange when people began talking about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, especially before I figured out they weren't talking about those aforementioned direct-to-DVD things. Learning that the first episode was a dramatic fantasy battle and the rest of the series was about the ponies having slumber parties and relay races, much like the 80s show that had unimpressed me, left me skeptical. Seeing the new show was different and the animation style had drastically changed didn't rid me of my skepticism. Also, while I'm getting more used to it, I don't like the remade opening theme song. I worked in a children's clothing store between 2009 and 2010 and the aggressive-yet-muzzled guitar work reminded me of a lot of the tunes I had to suffer through on the job.

Still, when I heard Lauren Faust, wife of Craig McCracken, was the creator of this show, I decided to lighten up. And I'm glad I did. I might have not really meant my wish for a remade, better My Little Pony, but I got it, and I couldn't be happier. I've loved watching every episode. I've loved recommending it to my friends. And I've really, really loved recommending it to my younger girl cousins. Especially that moment when they watched the opening song on their iPod and said things like, "We can't wait to get home and watch this!" and "Rainbow Dash is a BEAST!"



What drew me so hard to this show where its predecessors failed is that this show is clever, much in the same vein of McCracken's Powerpuff Girls or Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. There's a lot of Buttercup in Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie is a little bit like Cheese. Also, like both of those shows, you can learn a lot about the characters' personalities from their character designs and their gestures. In former MLPs, the ponies all blended together. Not so much with this one, where changing the color scheme can't erase who they essentially are. Since female characters are often painted with the same brush, this is a cool thing.:


(Found picture on Tumblr. Tell me if this is yours.)

Hyperactive Pinkie Pie and tomboyish Rainbow Dash I fell for at first, but I eventually grew to love almost everybody, even bookish Twilight Sparkle and her dragon Spike, who, by taking a cocky but sweet little brother route, seems to be the best version of this character, which has appeared in all the MLP shows. As you can guess, the show puts the characters into general "types" but mostly ignores negative stereotypes. Apple Jack is a farm pony but that doesn't make her stupid. And while I do think the writers slipped with her a few times, Rarity's love of glamor and fashion doesn't exclude her from having a generous heart. Along the same lines, the writing is very good. It's smart and funny, and while it's not afraid to poke fun at itself, it also doesn't turn into something cynical like the Shrek movies.

Also, this may seem sentimental, but there's one moment in particular that makes me love the show. I grew up a very shy kid with low self-esteem. And when you grow up that way, you tend to get a lot of messages that the responsibility is on you to be different. There's one episode where Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash decide to play pranks on all the ponies. Rainbow Dash sets up a prank to play on Fluttershy, but Pinkie Pie stops her, saying Fluttershy is too sensitive to handle even the mildest prank. What surprised me so much about this is the show 1.) gave what could have a very ditzy character who could potentially run over anyone else the intelligence to recognize another character's boundaries 2.) had a character that could have been a bully step back and say "Hey, you're right." It's a wonderful bit, and something that would have made me feel a lot better as a kid, and I hope it works on the kids out there now.

The show hasn't always been perfect. I'm not sure if Zecora the African Zebra and the Native American buffalo make sense, especially since their episodes deal with racism/colonialism on a metaphorical level and it would be offensive to have racism/colonialism themes centered around a bunch of fantasy characters who nobody has prejudices toward (i.e. James Cameron's Avatar), or are stereotypes that have the unfortunate implication of implying all the regular ponies are coded "white." (Although the fanart of the main character ponies as humans that makes some of them into people of color helps a little bit, I suppose. On a similar note, I have no urge to get into the subject of that gray pony with the silly eyes right now.) And I'm never quite sure if I find the Cutie Mark Crusaders, baby ponies on a quest to get the pictures on their butt which imply they have found their purpose, annoying or endearing. Still, the pleasures of the show are great and often outweigh the occasional discomfort.

Faust has left the show, which leaves me wondering if the second season will be as good as the first. I have high hopes, yet even if it doesn't, the first season has been a wonderful gift on its own. I may not have meant it when I asked for it, but I'm glad I got it anyway.

She Did Not Kill Things but Sanctioned It: A Review of "A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman"

Webcomic artist Kate Beaton has made a career out of riffing on history, but when comics mixes with history it isn't always for jokes. In collecting comics outside the superhero mainstream, I've found a couple of good titles that combine comic books and biography, like the anthology Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists, the Harvey Pekar-headed anthology The Beats: A Graphic History and Action Philosophers by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey. Okay, well, maybe the latter was about jokes as much as education, but I expected something similar to the former titles when I purchased A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman by Sharon Rudahl.

I hadn't known very much about the anarchist leader before reading the comic besides the section in Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation on the killing of William McKinley. In this book about the assassinations of three U.S. Presidents, Vowell describes Goldman's philosophy, and her kind-of-sanctioning-but-kind-of-not of Leon Czolgosz's killing of President William McKinley. Vowell ends up finding Goldman interesting if not likable, and after reading the graphic biography I feel the same way.



The graphic novel, of course, covers far more than just the assassination, following Goldman from her birth to a dysfunctional Jewish family in Russia to her days as an anarchist writer and orator in America to her return and disillusionment in Russia and finally ends with her death in Canada. It gives a great overview of her life and some of her philosophy, often using quotes from her writings. The art can have static expressions, but is also pleasant to look at and serves the stories. Also, there's some sex if you like that sort of thing. Maybe you don't.

But the main point of the book is to highlight the accomplishments and progressive viewpoints Goldman held. They're numerous, and yet ... it's clear Rudhal has a very positive view of Goldman, and maintains that positive and heroic viewpoint throughout. This is a stance that seems incongruous and occasionally even shocking when Ruhal describes Goldman's feelings on Czolgosz or how Goldman plotted with her lover Alexander Berkman to kill American industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Or even when she says first-wave feminists were wasting their time trying to get women the vote.

However, I have to admit that even if the book has a sometimes overly-positive view, it gave me enough of a knowledge base to the point where I came around to the same place as Vowell. It even made me interested in Goldman's autobiography. So if you think you're interested in this book, pick it up. You may like it.