the adherents of the repeated meme.
Courtesy of temporalranger, it's time to talk about some of my icons.
Namely, these ones.
Fair warning: TL;DR and stuff, because I think I did the meme wrong and I just have a lot of feelings?
Oh, Magikarp. Poor, poor Magikarp. ♥
…I seriously don't know if I have a lot to say about this icon. It's like, my dad grew up playing baseball, and I grew up playing Pokémon because I was too uncoordinated for sports, and Magikarp is a fucking boss, if you ask me? I mean. The poor thing can only use Splash and Tackle (and it only learns Tackle after a long, long time) - but if you get it to level 20? It evolves into Gyarados and KILLS THE EVER-LIVING SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING.
I learned via TV Tropes that Magikarp and Gyarados were inspired by a Japanese myth that, if a fish swims up a waterfall, it'll turn into a dragon. Which I think is pretty cool. And I like my Magikarp icon as an expression of what I intend to do to lots of things that frustrate me: evolve and then kill them.
…Technically speaking, I think I'm more like some other kind of Pokémon than Magikarp or Gyarados. I want to be Mewtwo, but I'm probably not cool enough to be Mewtwo, so let's just take a few steps down to my favorite Eeveelution, Umbreon. Either way, though? I totes admire Magikarp's tenacity. And y'know… there might by shiny Gyaradoses from Gold/Silver forward? But there's nothing quite as awesome and fulfilling as raising a Gyarados yourself.
…I say as someone who really really loves level-grinding with Pokémon because she gets way, way too attached to the 'mons and gets all proud, bragging parent about leveling up her not-children.
Oh, Chuck. ♥
So, first off, I have a big huge rant about why I don't think Chuck is God, but let's just get that out of the way so the next thing I have to say about this icon isn't vaguely blasphemous in the way that makes someone just seem like an asshole. (as opposed to the sexy way, like, "and then Dean, Cas, Meg, soulless!Sam, and demon!Bela had an orgy in a church. It was the best day ever.")
So, I don't think Chuck is God. I do, however, think that Chuck is my biggest GPOY ever. Like, I can recite his little monologue from "The Real Ghostbusters" verbatim. (the, "Do you guys know what I do for a living? …Then could you tell me? 'cause I don't. I'm not a good writer. I have no marketable skills. I'm not some hero who can just hit the road and hunt monsters…" and so on, and so forth one.)
…and although I can say that I've never had Raphael blow Castiel up in my living room or my kitchen, and that I've never found a disembodied molar in my hair, there are still so, so many times when I just want to whine, "This has been a really stressful day," and make Chuck's face here. Hence the icon.
And is this a good time to mention that I hugged Rob Benedict and he liked my, "Chuck's not God, just God's vessel, sort of" theory? Because that happened. :3
TINA COHEN-CHANG IS THE BEST, THE END.
…okay, really, though. uhm. …so, I have this ongoing problem where I really, REALLY hate Glee and everything it chooses to be - but I love the characters and I constantly want better for them. Like, I want them to be on a show that doesn't suck, and where there's a thing called continuity, and where they're not judged by their ability to do what some straight, cis, generally over-privileged white dude decides is right for everybody, because you know those straight, cis, generally over-privileged white dudes just know their shit well enough to make calls for women, people of color, queer people, and so on.
(I wish a better show on everyone… except for Finn Hudson. Finn Hudson is pretty high up on my Shit List with Ryan Murphy himself. I only have two Finn ships I like anymore - Finn/Will Schuester, because they're both assholes and they deserve each other, and Finn/Sam Evans, because Trouty Mouth is like a little black dress: he looks good on everybody - and generally, Finn can't say anything without making me think, "wow, I would so love to punch you in the mouth right now.")
(Cory Monteith is great and allowed to say things. I just hate, hate, HATE Finn Hudson. …like, I still think Artie Abrams is super-gross and needs to go away more than he gets to say things and I generally hate him too, but I'd rather have Artie than Finn. All the time. But anyway.)
One of the characters I wish better for most frequently is Miss Tina Cohen-Chang, who has been awesome since day one… and just. Constantly gets treated like really cute furniture by her writers. The last real stand-out moment she got (that I remember, since I haven't caught up on the end of season three yet) was being supportive of Finn and Rachel's desire to rush off and get married while still in high school, which was so out of character and ridiculous that… fuck everything, I blame Daleks.
Before that… I liked what she got to do in "Born This Way," but I wanted her to have a plot of her own as well, rather than being used as a tool for Rachel's plot. But oh no, we couldn't have that happen… because of reasons or something like that, I guess.
And before that… the only thing that really happened with her was that she broke up with Artie and started dating Mike Chang, and they were happy, but it also wasn't perfect. The plot-line was fucking awesome, though, because it showed a couple who really liked each other having problems and NOT cheating on each other or breaking up. Instead, Mike and Tina worked through their issues together and admitted mutual guilt and generally? They didn't fall into patterns of being totally illogical douchebag assbutts, like most characters on Glee have a tendency to do because RIB think that this is any kind of decent writing and drama.
…but then RIB decided that we couldn't have Mike and Tina plots on their own. Again, because of "reasons."
I didn't really mind them taking a temporary backseat to, say, the plot-line dealing with Dave Karofsky bullying Kurt, and the plot-line dealing with Santana being closeted and coming to terms with herself? Because queer plots and representation are important, too, and… Kurt is one of my favorite precious penguins (or was, until season three broke him so much that he's unrecognizable to me and calls it character development) and Santana is my precious baby angel - but Jesus GOD, Mike and Tina may as well not even exist on Glee, sometimes, because their writers apparently can't be bothered to remember that they're still here.
I guess being a bisexual bb feminist with severe social anxiety, a refusal to get walked on by anybody, dreams of being a performer, and goth fashion sensibilities just isn't as interesting as Finn Hudson And How Nobody Understands Him This Week. (pro-tip, Finn? it's not that we don't understand you. it's that we understand you and judge that you suck.)
…and this icon is of Tina from season one's episode, "The Power of Madonna," and features her yelling at Artie that she won't be putting up with his disrespectful boyfriend shit, kthxbai.
AHAHAHA, THIS ICON. I LOVE THIS ICON. …This icon, first and foremost, is an example of how quotes from things by Joss Whedon tend to be very, very applicable to a wide variety of things.
I don't always agree with Joss, I don't always like him that much, and I think he has this tendency to get high on the myth of himself sometimes (like… oh boy, you're a god among geeks, you wrote Firefly/Serenity and Buffy and Dollhouse, and you're such a feminist for not thinking that your strong female characters need to be Strong Female CharactersTM that you're completely absolved of all the other gross things that your shows have going on… good for you? congratulations for doing a bit better than the bare minimum?) - but he's witty and super-quotable, and I appreciate that.
This quote is from Firefly, and incidentally, it's from my favorite episode, "Jaynestown." …also incidentally? Whedon didn't actually write this episode. Ben Edlund did. which is what makes me think, in retrospect, that I should've seen some things coming (like, for instance, the way that "On The Head Of A Pin" and "My Bloody Valentine" are two of my favorite episodes of SPN, and two of the ones that I like to just put on and roll around in when I've had a bad day) - but I didn't connect the dots until I rewatched the whole run of Firefly after getting into SPN and went, "heeeey… I know a Ben Edlund who writes TV episodes…"
But anyway. So. In its context: this quote is said by one, River Tam (Summer Glau), who is the ongoing mystery of the Firefly 'verse. Had they gotten a second season, the explanations for her backstory and behavior that we got in Serenity would've been explored more in depth, but the Fox Corporation is the worst and Firefly got canceled. Basic run-down: River is a gifted-as-fuck-all genius, and at a young age, her parents sent her to this place called The Academy, purportedly a school for gifted geniuses to get special schooling so they could make the most out of being gifted.
What River actually got was experimented on by morally fucked up scientists, turned into a human guinea pig, and generally broken. They turned her into a weapon, a la The Manchurian Candidate, she has a trigger phrase that makes her start fucking people up. But, unlike The Manchurian Candidate, she doesn't just silently take out one person; she more… attacks everyone within arm's length and doesn't stop until the reverse-trigger phrase gets said. She's generally a nice enough, sweet enough, intellectually gifted sixteen-year-old girl - but as her super-protective older brother, Dr. Simon Tam, says? She's a mentally traumatized sixteen-year-old girl…
and she just so happens to have psychic powers, empathic powers, and a handful of other things that make her emotionally and psychologically unstable.
The main plot of "Jaynestown" involves the crew trying to go on a pretty simple job, only to find out that their big guy, gun-toting mercenary, Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin), is a Robin Hood-esque folk hero among these people called the Mudders (who are basically the working stiff serfs on a factory planet that… makes mud and clay for use in ceramics and whatnot). The B sub-plot involves Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) taking a job of her own with the guy who owns the planet/moon/thing (because Boss Higgins wants his son's virginity to get taken like, yesterday); and the C sub-plot involves the hijinks got up to while River, the itinerant preacher Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), and the badass first mate Zoë Alleyne Washburne (Gina Torres) hang out together back on the ship.
Said hijinks basically consist of River, Zoë, and the Shepherd all getting to know each other better and bonding. And they start because River borrows Shepherd Book's Bible without asking and starts pawing through it and making little margin notes, like about how the creation myth of Genesis actually includes some evolutionary theory or other, and how Noah's Ark is a problem that we'll have to explain with early quantum-state phenomena because that's the only way Noah could get all of the animals on one boat.
And River says this quote. It's her explanation for why she's trying to put science into the Bible by way of explaining all the THINGS that are going on. The Bible is broken because its explanations for things are either missing or nonsensical, so they have to go through it and put science in it themselves. Cue Shepherd Book explaining, "You don't fix the Bible, River. …you don't fix faith; faith fixes you." and he tries to talk to her about how the Bible's stories need to be understood symbolically, and just…
dkhgkfh, I love that scene so much. HERE GO WATCH IT. …sadly, this isn't the whole scene, it cuts off with about 20-30 seconds left and misses the, "you don't fix faith; it fixes you" quote, but still.
So… first of all? I think it's hilarious that what River does is so shocking and offensive-ish to Shepherd Book when… the whole point of the study of theology in Judaism and Christianity is and has always been finding places in the Bible where things don't make sense and trying to suss out explanations for stuff other than, "A wizard did it," or, "A Time Lord did it." (Or… "God did it," technically, because blah blah yadda thou shalt not suffer a witch to live and junk - "God got involved" is basically just the Biblical way of saying, "A wizard did it.")
…I mean, the Jewish tradition actually has a whole separate kind of extra-Biblical literature and myth - the midrashim (Midrash… I just like using the plural version because it's pretty) - that is basically like Bible fanfiction. Like, you know how in fandom, we write missing scenes and episode tags, and write fic about minor characters or in order to explain little plot-holes or in order to work through things that don't make sense, and rework canon to explore different things that the main stories of whatever it is we like didn't really get into as much as we wanted? …that's what the Midrashim do.
…I had an English professor arch his eyebrow at me pointedly for explaining the Midrashim as Biblical fanfiction once, but I think that's based off a notion that fanfiction is all about porn while the Midrashim are about sussing out the True Meaning of God And These Stories, but… I mean, really.
Sure, a shipping or PWP fanfiction might ostensibly just be about two (or more) characters fucking or being in love or whatever, but I'd argue that the thought processes underlying fanfic and the Midrashim are actually really similar. It's just the focal points that are different. Fanfiction does the same sort of thing - like, for instance? Castiel could get so angry at Dean in Random Canon Instance #13 because of X Or Y Or Z Canonically Stated Reasons… or he could get so angry at Dean because he's in love with Dean, which makes X Or Y Or Z Canonically Stated Reasons that much more meaningful to him.
Fanfiction exists in a realm of exploring and picking at subtext and turning it into something new and different and beautiful - and often (nominally) more inclusive, since we're not burdened by the same editors and networks and other Powers That Be who can go, "no, you can't have a canon gay couple (or trans* character, female lead character, main character of color, etc); Star Trek (or Supernatural, or DC/Marvel/whatever, or Harry Potter, or whoever) isn't that kind of show (book, movie, series, franchise, etc)."
(and okay, yeah, there's also a lot of self-gratification that's not so high-minded… but to be completely fair? the only reason, I think, that there's not a lot of overly derivative, terribly written Midrash and Christian pos-Biblical myth stuff floating around… comes down to how literacy wasn't as widespread back then as it is now. There were probably tons of laypeople making up all kinds of stories about Moses or Elijah or Judith or Jael or Mary Magdalene or Saint Peter or whoever the fuck they wanted, and the points of these stories would've basically been, "well, I want this thing to be canon but it's not, so I'm telling my own story" - or using Bible characters to make up bedtime stories for their kids, or whatever - but we don't have any hard evidence of it because these people couldn't read or write.
And the people who COULD read and write tended to write down stories that only followed a certain track or had Something Important To Say because there was a scarcity of materials, and a hierarchy within different religious orders and/or different religious study groups, and so on. So we're probably never going to find evidence of any stories made up by laypeople because of class discrimination and people thinking it was ever okay to hoard knowledge. but I digress.)
So, fandom and fanfiction reclaim the source texts and rework them according to the desires of the readers, rather than the desires of the original creators. And that's what the Midrashim and a lot of Christian Biblical exegesis and myth-making do for the Bible. …and the stories in the Midrashim are often pretty well-known, just… a lot of people mistakenly think that they're in the Bible itself. Like, a lot of the Lilith myths? Come from the Alphabet of Ben-Sira, a medieval midrash.
Similarly: the whole business of conflating Satan and Lucifer? Well. They're both in the Bible, but… they're both minor characters. Satan's only starring role is in the Book of Job, where he's not the Big Dualistic Devil, Opponent Of God, that we like to think of. He's just some dude in God's employ, who does bad shit to Job because God says, "sure, go ahead." Lucifer is only even mentioned once, in the Book of Isaiah, and most current scholarship suggests that he probably wasn't a rebellious angel or anything so fantastical. He was probably a then-contemporary King of Babylon, and Isaish was basically going, "neener neener neener, YOU SUCK" because, as a Yahwehist prophet, he would've interpreted any misfortune befalling said King as an Act Of God's Vengeance.
…but this one tradition rose out of the post-exilic, pre-Christian Jewish interactions with Zoroastrianism, and in said tradition, Satan became God's opposite, rather than one of God's henchmen and a tool of God's vengeance. You see this working in the New Testament, where Satan's title doesn't mean "adversary in the sense that he does fucked up stuff at God's behest, to test mankind and make humans prove their mettle"; it means, "adversary in the sense that he hates everything good and will eventually be conquered." And it just got worse when people started going, "maybe the Lucifer in Isaiah is how Satan went from God's crony to ultimate evil," until we reached a point when people legitimately think that the events of Paradise Lost (at least, the Satan's fall part) happened in the Bible.
I'm not kidding. People think that. I know people IRL who for reals think that. …also, it's sort of hilarious that aforementioned English prof eyebrow arched at me for the, "Midrashim = Bible Fanfic" stuff… because Bill is a Milton scholar, and Milton totes wrote Bible fanfiction. I mean. Paradise Lost? Paradise Regained? Samson Agonistes? fucking Bible fanfiction, all of them. That doesn't mean that they're not badass fucking poetry or not worth reading. It just means that they're Bible fanfiction and only not regarded as such because of this ridiculous and widespread idea that fanfiction is less good and requires less work than original writing.
Also: a lot of people over the years have accused The Prince Of Egypt of being inaccurate because the Moses backstory we have going on in the movie isn't from the Bible - but the thing is? you cannot make a movie based on the minimalist narrative of Moses's life and deeds that you have going on in the Book of Exodus, if you want to focus on the Hebrews' liberation from Egypt. Seriously, you can't do it. The whole business with the Plagues of Egypt only takes up a small part of the book, because the point of the story that the authors wanted to tell wasn't the liberation from Egypt; it was what happened after, building up to the Hebrews' eventual resettlement in Israel at the end of Deuteronomy (and the Book of Joshua, because there were people living there already and they had issues).
The authors of the Midrashim picked up on this problem too - which is why we have Midrashic stories about Moses's childhood and early life in the Egyptian court, from whence come The Prince Of Egypt's narrative of Moses and Ramses as two brothers who loved each other, but wound up on fundamentally opposed sides of a Serious Business issue and hurting each other in ways that they could never fix. (ouch, right in the heart. T.T)
…all of which is a build-up to this: that scene with River and Book amuses me terribly, because River is basically doing what tons of people before her have done… but it's apparently wrong because she's doing it with science instead of with theology? …eventually, she and the Shepherd reach an understanding with each other - and I do agree, sort of, that trying to pathologize the Bible too much (e.g., going, "clearly, St Paul's fall on the road to Damascus was a seizure!" or, "clearly, the Nile didn't turn into blood, but it looked red because of these ickle protist things!") is to entirely miss the point, both of the stories themselves and of critical exegesis-
but… I also really like River's approach of trying to apply science to the Bible, trying to join faith and science. Because if you think about it? Both of them have lacunae and places where they're trying to figure out what's really going on in the universe, but they fail to manage it on their own. …so why not try to explain things with both of them? why not try to fit them together and see if we can't find something that works and balances both means of examining the universe? Why does it have to be either/or? …like the "remains of a spaceship that collided with God" from Futurama.
…and it's a Slytherin House icon because I love Slytherin House. I think they're misunderstood and poorly represented in the HP books; I hate the way that so much of the HP fandom totally fails to question the Gryffindor-favoring bias of the books, and thinks it's totally legit to say things like, "Snape was a Slytherin who died a Gryffindor, sometimes we Sort too soon~" (no, fuck you. Snape was a Slytherin who died a Slytherin because "Slytherin" is not shorthand for "evil, irredeemable douchenozzle" and "Gryffindor" does not make someone perfect or morally unimpeachable); and…
y'know, if we accept the canon of different fandoms as a sort of Bible analogue? …The HP 'verse's Bible is broken. Contradictions, false logistics (like the ones where it's completely acceptable to hold a bunch of eleven-and-twelve-year-olds responsible for EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH THE WIZARDING WORLD FOREVER, things that they might not even know about much less have any impact on, just because they got Sorted into Slytherin, which means that treating them like shit is just okay now?
…and the ones where it's totally cool for Dumbledore to embarrass and shame an entire House, taking away their House Cup victory at the last minute and in front of everyone, because nah, it's cool, he gave the House Cup to Gryffindor, so it's okay? …and the ones where people actually think that, because it's only implied that Andromeda Tonks was a Slytherin, maybe she was in some other House because a Slytherin would never abandon her magical racist family or learn better or marry a Mudblood?
…and the ones where it's only possible to be biased and favoritist regarding a House if you do it for Slytherin? …and the ones where Slytherins have to make apologies for their House and be deemed acceptable to other people (usually Gryffindors) in order to be seen as heroes (see: Snape, Slughorn, Narcissa Malfoy, Regulus Black), while Gryffindors can literally torture and try to kill someone but it's really just a bunch of kids being kids, nothing to write home about, and besides, Sirius Black had a lot to be upset about, it's totally cool that he just got detention for attempted murder with malicious intent of forethought?)
…yeah, no. the HP fandom's Bible is broken. and my black, twisted heart of Slytherin love will continue saying so until I get bored and go do something else.
…Astrid didn't actually ask about this icon, but… I forgot which of my Firefly quote icons she asked about and wrote out a whole rant about this one instead of the other one, and I didn't want to go without sharing it, so. :3
This quote is from Firefly. I want to say it's from the pilot episode, but I'm not entirely certain of that; it definitely comes from one of the early episodes, though. In context: it's said by Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), who is a peripatetic space-preacher, and has recently wandered out of his Christian Not Otherwise Specified monastery* in search of Adventures and opportunities to Do The LORD's Work out in the world. He's just boarded Serenity, the Firefly-class vessel that Our Heroes travel around on, having been recruited/offered passage by the perky, adorable mechanic, Kaylee (Jewel Staite).
Shortly after settling into his quarters onboard, Book meets or gets a visit from Ms. Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), who is a well-educated woman of status, and breeding, and class… and she's a Companion. which Captain Mal "Tight-Pants" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and most of the viewers basically regard as An Outer Space Hooker. …no, really. Mal regularly calls Inara's work little more than "whoring" and acts like it's pretentious and full of itself and wrong because there's a lot of spirituality and ceremony attached to it, rather than just being all, "let's tumble around in the hay and then you pay me and I get the fuck out."
So, Inara comes to visit Shepherd Book, and after saying that she's a Companion, she asks him if he's going to lecture her on the wickedness of her ways, because… the Bible has a fair few things to say about prostitution. …but rather than judging and shaming her for her profession, Shepherd Book is all, "naw, it's cool, it's not my place to judge you and we can be friends instead maybe? :)" - and makes a joke back at her with the quote on the icon. (And as it turns out in the backstory graphic novella that came out for him in 2010, this really did come out of an earnest place, rather than a place of, "I'm judging you, but saying that I won't," because sfkjdkt aaaaah, Shepherd Book's story is so heartbreaking and beautiful and sad and wonderful and he's so awesome I love him so much. T.T)
…and I like to keep this icon around because obviously (as seen above), I have a lot of very catchy lectures about Bible Stuff up my sleeve. They're usually absent the morality portion of things, just because I'm not lecturing from the position of Preacher, I'm lecturing from the position of Big Huge Nerd who thinks these things are REALLY REALLY COOL from an intellectual standpoint. but… still. I have a few very catchy lectures hanging around, if you're interested.
*: which would imply Catholic, but Book and his beliefs never actually strikes me as all that Catholic, and Firefly's set in the distant future, so it's not like different sects of Christianity couldn't have merged.
Bela Talbot is better than everyone and she has pretty hair.
…that's pretty much entirely why I have this icon, really? …Bela is my favorite SPN character of all time, ever. I have a tag over on my tumblr that goes, "Bela Talbot is flawless," and it's mostly a lot of unfairly pretty pictures of Bela being unfairly pretty, with the occasional so-called meta post that tends to just be me crying about how she deserved so, so much better than Show gave her. My poor perfect princess of grey morality and survivalist instincts and dsksehgee GAHHHH BELA, WHY WERE YOU TOO PRECIOUS FOR THIS WORLD, I WANT YOU TO COME BAAAAAACK. D:
…and for the record, since I'm here anyway. When I say, "perfect," I don't mean it as like, "Bela is morally unimpeachable and never did anything shady and never had actions that needed questioning." I mean it as like, "GAHHHH SHE'S SO STRONG AND SAD AND BRAVE, AND BEAUTIFULLY FLAWED, AND I LOVE HER SO MUCH, I JUST WANT TO HOLD HER AND NEVER LET GO." …I love her best when she's being kind of mean, actually. Especially to Dean and Sam because… y'know. I love them and all, but the two of them are far from perfect, and they almost never get called out on their bullshit (not to mention Show's problem with protagonist-centered morality), and… ugh. Gross in my mouth. …please, Bela, by all means: do continue ripping them a cornucopia of new ones, pretty pretty please? :3
…I also choose to exist in an AU where Cas and Bela are BFFs, and Ruby didn't need to die because she was an undercover agent for Team Free Will all the time, and Anna didn't need to die because Cas tried harder to get through to her past the Heavenly torture-brainwashing and Team Free Will didn't let Little Prince Douchecanoe Michael kill her, and Sam/Ruby is still on, and Anna/Bela is happening, and Dean/Cas isn't just subtext and baiting but trufax canon, and demon!Bela is coming back to raise Hell in season eight, and… well.
I acknowledge the existence and validity of realities that don't agree with mine. But I think those realities are very, very boring and kind of sad and I don't choose to live in them.
This is Wonder Woman, as drawn by Kate Beaton, the adorkable genius behind Hark! A Vagrant, which is… the only webcomic I still keep tabs on, because Friendly Hostility owned my heart… but it ended a few years ago and I just wasn't especially interested in its sequel, Other People's Business.
Most of the time, HAV is a bunch of jokes about history and literature and other nerdy things that I love - and occasionally, Kate Beaton draws superhero stuff because it's fun. For instance: The Adventures Of Sexy Batman (seriously, click the link immediately; Sexy Batman is FANTASTIC). Her version of Wonder Woman has shown up a couple of different times - and I really love her version of Wonder Woman because… I mean, I grew up on different incarnations of the DC mythology, but Wonder Woman is always, like. Inexplicably chill when she really shouldn't be. She can bust out some Amazonian wrath like nobody's business, sure, but… she's so chill and even-tempered, and it's kind of unnerving and frustrating?
Like, Superman's all WEH FUCK MY LIFE I'M THE LAST SON OF KRYPTON AND AN ALIEN AMONG HUMANS AND I HAVE THIS WONDERFUL STRONG WOMAN WHO LOVES ME EVEN THOUGH MY ALTER EGO IS A SCHLUB WITH NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT HIM AND KIND OF OBSESSIVE OVER LOOOOIS BUT MY LIFE IS SO. HARD. YOU. HAVE. NO. IDEA. WAAAAAH.
And Batman's all WEH FUCK MY LIFE MY PARENTS ARE DEAD, AND NEVER MIND THAT GOD AND THE US GOVERNMENT COME TO ME FOR LOANS BECAUSE THAT'S HOW MUCH MONEY I HAVE, AND NEVER MIND THAT AS THE HEIR TO WAYNE INDUSTRIES I COULD TOTALLY TAKE ON THE CORPORATE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT CREATE INJUSTICE AND CRIME IN THE WORLD WITHOUT HAVING TO GET DRESSED UP AS A PSYCHOSEXUAL BAT THING AND RUN AROUND WITH TEENAGERS WHO WEAR BOOTY SHORTS AND/OR SKIN-TIGHT GREEN LEGGINGS (ALSO V PSYCHOSEXUALLY INTERESTING), AND THEN WE'RE GONNA BEAT UP SOME MOB BOSSES AND SOME SUPERVILLAINS (MOST OF WHOM ACTUALLY HAVE REALLY COMPLEX MOTIVATIONS THAT BEAR EXAMINING AND LISTENING TO), I MEAN I COULD DO SOMETHING MORE PRODUCTIVE WITH ALL MY MONEY AND CREATIVITY, BUT NAW, I WANNA DRESS UP LIKE A GIANT BAT AND KICK THE SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE BECAUSE WAAAAH MY PARENTS ARE DEAD.
(true facts are true: I don't really like the Batman continuity for Batman himself. I like it for the other characters and I tolerate Batman (and the Joker… Heath Ledger's version was excellent, and I'll grant that the Joker can be done really well sometimes, but… eh, mostly I just tolerate him). …I'm sort of "eh" on Dick Grayson, just because I like Jason Todd and Tim Drake better, and I like Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain better as Robins, AND BARBARA GORDON, SELINA KYLE, HARLEY QUINN, TALIA AL-GHUL, RENEE MONTOYA, AND PAMELA EISLEY, LIGHTS OF MY EXISTENCE, and Dr. Jonathan Crane is just the BEST - but… yeah. as I was saying. I like the Batman continuity for basically everyone BUT Batman. oops?)
…so the two main dudes in the Justice League trio get to whine and angst and brood about shit… and then Wonder Woman's not really allowed to do the same. On the one hand, it's kind of cool that there's at least one superhero who isn't totally fucked up as some relic of the Gritty Nineties Superhero Deconstruction Era Where Everyone Wanted To Be Watchmen And The Dark Knight Returns (…and totally missed the point of both graphic novels in so doing, except for the run where Azrael filled in for Bruce as Batman because the writers were all, "FINE. you fucking fanboys want a gritty, edgy Batman who will kill people? FINE. HAVE AZRAEL!BATMAN AND THEN GET BACK TO US," and the response was, "hoshit, we want Bruce Wayne back please D:")
On the other hand? …It does take a certain kind of person to go be a superhero instead of just hanging out on your island, being Queen of the Amazons, and there comes a point with Wonder Woman where it really looks like she's so chill and not complaining or angry or brooding about stuff… because she's a woman and god, those female superheroes can't have opinions about shit, they might scare off all the dudes who just love them because they're hot and scantily clad.
And it could just be on the writers, but the fans get in on it, too, and they are super-gross in a way that makes me want to permaban them from the Internet. See: the outrage that followed Wonder Woman's costume getting redesigned to be a corset, pants, sensible ass-kicking boots, and a leather jacket. NEVER MIND THAT THEY WERE SUPER-TIGHT LEATHER PANTS AND SHE WAS STILL IN A DAMNED CORSET… the fanboys were outraged, people whined about ~but her star-spangled swimsuit is ICONIC THO~ and DC eventually felt pressured to change the costume back and the whole thing was all just so. fucking. gross. I. hate. people. so. much. ARGH.
…so, basically? Kate Beaton's Wonder Woman is my freaking favorite because she's the Wonder Woman I want to see in actual DC published material, but probably never will, because DC is the company that is responsible for The Incident That Originated The Term "Women In Refrigerators."
and DC is the company that was SO SHOCKED when they revamped the Rawhide Kid as a gay character… and people were really upset that they made him into one of the most mincing, offensive stereotypes ever.
and DC is the company that went, "huh, a lot of girls like Starfire because of the Teen Titans cartoon, so let's do a revamp of her comics that'll take away all of what made animated!Starfire awesome and a character and strip her down to being a scantily clad sex object, THAT'LL GET GIRLS INTERESTED IN OUR COMICS AND WE'LL GET MORE MONEY," and DC is just… ugh. so much ugh.
I have a really conflicted relationship with the DC vs. Marvel divide, because on the one hand? Marvel is generally sort of better about representing heroes that aren't straight white dudes (or aliens who look like them), and sort of better about handling storylines I care about (see: X-Men and how mutants have, in recent years, gotten super-coded in terms of queer people, with coming out narratives and everything). Marvel is by no means PERFECT, but they're better than DC (not that this is hard).
…but, on the other hand? I don't really have anyone under the Marvel heading that I give a fuck about. I've tried, but… there's no one whose stories really interest me all that much, on a personal, character-oriented basis. I don't entirely want to see more of them (outside of a few characters that it's sort of pointless to root for, like Raven/Mystique and Angel Salvatore in XMFC, because again, Marvel's not perfect so the narrative still kind of shits on them…
even XMFC!Magneto isn't that much better than Raven and Angel, because sure, Erik gets enough screentime, but the narrative still expects me to side with Charles, even though Charles is WRONG about so many things and kind of blatantly talking out his ass about shit that he can never understand because he doesn't just pass as human, he passes as a white, straight, cis, able-bodied until the divorce scene, wealthy, educated, male human with no psychological disorders or impairments to speak of. Of course it's cool for Charles Xavier to just decide that the best thing for mutant liberation is to kowtow to the humans and just try to fit into their system and their world, BECAUSE THEIR SYSTEM BENEFITS HIM IMMENSELY AND HE IS TREATED AS THE DEFAULT IN EVERY WAY BUT BEING A MUTANT, AND LATER BEING IN A WHEELCHAIR - which would be a fine and dandy character choice if it were intentional, BUT IT'S NOT, and ugh, I digress)…
so, anyway, we end up with a situation where I don't really care because I know my favorites are going to get shit on… and DC has a cast of people that I do care about. Especially with basically everyone in the Batman continuity who is not named Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, or whatever the Joker's name is this week.
…soooo. I guess I'm just gonna have to make do with the better versions of DC canon in my head, and with Kate Beaton's Wonder Woman, all full of rage and vitriol and snark and meta-commentary frustration with how people treat and perceive her. FOUR FOR YOU, KATE BEATON'S WONDER WOMAN. YOU GO, KATE BEATON'S WONDER WOMAN.
And, since this is a meme:
1. Leave a comment with the words "You're the opposite of Batman." in it. I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post to your journal with the six icons and this meme, and talk about the icons I picked.
3. Profit in the ever-flowing river of icon squee.
Namely, these ones.
Fair warning: TL;DR and stuff, because I think I did the meme wrong and I just have a lot of feelings?
Oh, Magikarp. Poor, poor Magikarp. ♥
…I seriously don't know if I have a lot to say about this icon. It's like, my dad grew up playing baseball, and I grew up playing Pokémon because I was too uncoordinated for sports, and Magikarp is a fucking boss, if you ask me? I mean. The poor thing can only use Splash and Tackle (and it only learns Tackle after a long, long time) - but if you get it to level 20? It evolves into Gyarados and KILLS THE EVER-LIVING SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING.
I learned via TV Tropes that Magikarp and Gyarados were inspired by a Japanese myth that, if a fish swims up a waterfall, it'll turn into a dragon. Which I think is pretty cool. And I like my Magikarp icon as an expression of what I intend to do to lots of things that frustrate me: evolve and then kill them.
…Technically speaking, I think I'm more like some other kind of Pokémon than Magikarp or Gyarados. I want to be Mewtwo, but I'm probably not cool enough to be Mewtwo, so let's just take a few steps down to my favorite Eeveelution, Umbreon. Either way, though? I totes admire Magikarp's tenacity. And y'know… there might by shiny Gyaradoses from Gold/Silver forward? But there's nothing quite as awesome and fulfilling as raising a Gyarados yourself.
…I say as someone who really really loves level-grinding with Pokémon because she gets way, way too attached to the 'mons and gets all proud, bragging parent about leveling up her not-children.
Oh, Chuck. ♥
So, first off, I have a big huge rant about why I don't think Chuck is God, but let's just get that out of the way so the next thing I have to say about this icon isn't vaguely blasphemous in the way that makes someone just seem like an asshole. (as opposed to the sexy way, like, "and then Dean, Cas, Meg, soulless!Sam, and demon!Bela had an orgy in a church. It was the best day ever.")
So, I don't think Chuck is God. I do, however, think that Chuck is my biggest GPOY ever. Like, I can recite his little monologue from "The Real Ghostbusters" verbatim. (the, "Do you guys know what I do for a living? …Then could you tell me? 'cause I don't. I'm not a good writer. I have no marketable skills. I'm not some hero who can just hit the road and hunt monsters…" and so on, and so forth one.)
…and although I can say that I've never had Raphael blow Castiel up in my living room or my kitchen, and that I've never found a disembodied molar in my hair, there are still so, so many times when I just want to whine, "This has been a really stressful day," and make Chuck's face here. Hence the icon.
And is this a good time to mention that I hugged Rob Benedict and he liked my, "Chuck's not God, just God's vessel, sort of" theory? Because that happened. :3
TINA COHEN-CHANG IS THE BEST, THE END.
…okay, really, though. uhm. …so, I have this ongoing problem where I really, REALLY hate Glee and everything it chooses to be - but I love the characters and I constantly want better for them. Like, I want them to be on a show that doesn't suck, and where there's a thing called continuity, and where they're not judged by their ability to do what some straight, cis, generally over-privileged white dude decides is right for everybody, because you know those straight, cis, generally over-privileged white dudes just know their shit well enough to make calls for women, people of color, queer people, and so on.
(I wish a better show on everyone… except for Finn Hudson. Finn Hudson is pretty high up on my Shit List with Ryan Murphy himself. I only have two Finn ships I like anymore - Finn/Will Schuester, because they're both assholes and they deserve each other, and Finn/Sam Evans, because Trouty Mouth is like a little black dress: he looks good on everybody - and generally, Finn can't say anything without making me think, "wow, I would so love to punch you in the mouth right now.")
(Cory Monteith is great and allowed to say things. I just hate, hate, HATE Finn Hudson. …like, I still think Artie Abrams is super-gross and needs to go away more than he gets to say things and I generally hate him too, but I'd rather have Artie than Finn. All the time. But anyway.)
One of the characters I wish better for most frequently is Miss Tina Cohen-Chang, who has been awesome since day one… and just. Constantly gets treated like really cute furniture by her writers. The last real stand-out moment she got (that I remember, since I haven't caught up on the end of season three yet) was being supportive of Finn and Rachel's desire to rush off and get married while still in high school, which was so out of character and ridiculous that… fuck everything, I blame Daleks.
Before that… I liked what she got to do in "Born This Way," but I wanted her to have a plot of her own as well, rather than being used as a tool for Rachel's plot. But oh no, we couldn't have that happen… because of reasons or something like that, I guess.
And before that… the only thing that really happened with her was that she broke up with Artie and started dating Mike Chang, and they were happy, but it also wasn't perfect. The plot-line was fucking awesome, though, because it showed a couple who really liked each other having problems and NOT cheating on each other or breaking up. Instead, Mike and Tina worked through their issues together and admitted mutual guilt and generally? They didn't fall into patterns of being totally illogical douchebag assbutts, like most characters on Glee have a tendency to do because RIB think that this is any kind of decent writing and drama.
…but then RIB decided that we couldn't have Mike and Tina plots on their own. Again, because of "reasons."
I didn't really mind them taking a temporary backseat to, say, the plot-line dealing with Dave Karofsky bullying Kurt, and the plot-line dealing with Santana being closeted and coming to terms with herself? Because queer plots and representation are important, too, and… Kurt is one of my favorite precious penguins (or was, until season three broke him so much that he's unrecognizable to me and calls it character development) and Santana is my precious baby angel - but Jesus GOD, Mike and Tina may as well not even exist on Glee, sometimes, because their writers apparently can't be bothered to remember that they're still here.
I guess being a bisexual bb feminist with severe social anxiety, a refusal to get walked on by anybody, dreams of being a performer, and goth fashion sensibilities just isn't as interesting as Finn Hudson And How Nobody Understands Him This Week. (pro-tip, Finn? it's not that we don't understand you. it's that we understand you and judge that you suck.)
…and this icon is of Tina from season one's episode, "The Power of Madonna," and features her yelling at Artie that she won't be putting up with his disrespectful boyfriend shit, kthxbai.
AHAHAHA, THIS ICON. I LOVE THIS ICON. …This icon, first and foremost, is an example of how quotes from things by Joss Whedon tend to be very, very applicable to a wide variety of things.
I don't always agree with Joss, I don't always like him that much, and I think he has this tendency to get high on the myth of himself sometimes (like… oh boy, you're a god among geeks, you wrote Firefly/Serenity and Buffy and Dollhouse, and you're such a feminist for not thinking that your strong female characters need to be Strong Female CharactersTM that you're completely absolved of all the other gross things that your shows have going on… good for you? congratulations for doing a bit better than the bare minimum?) - but he's witty and super-quotable, and I appreciate that.
This quote is from Firefly, and incidentally, it's from my favorite episode, "Jaynestown." …also incidentally? Whedon didn't actually write this episode. Ben Edlund did. which is what makes me think, in retrospect, that I should've seen some things coming (like, for instance, the way that "On The Head Of A Pin" and "My Bloody Valentine" are two of my favorite episodes of SPN, and two of the ones that I like to just put on and roll around in when I've had a bad day) - but I didn't connect the dots until I rewatched the whole run of Firefly after getting into SPN and went, "heeeey… I know a Ben Edlund who writes TV episodes…"
But anyway. So. In its context: this quote is said by one, River Tam (Summer Glau), who is the ongoing mystery of the Firefly 'verse. Had they gotten a second season, the explanations for her backstory and behavior that we got in Serenity would've been explored more in depth, but the Fox Corporation is the worst and Firefly got canceled. Basic run-down: River is a gifted-as-fuck-all genius, and at a young age, her parents sent her to this place called The Academy, purportedly a school for gifted geniuses to get special schooling so they could make the most out of being gifted.
What River actually got was experimented on by morally fucked up scientists, turned into a human guinea pig, and generally broken. They turned her into a weapon, a la The Manchurian Candidate, she has a trigger phrase that makes her start fucking people up. But, unlike The Manchurian Candidate, she doesn't just silently take out one person; she more… attacks everyone within arm's length and doesn't stop until the reverse-trigger phrase gets said. She's generally a nice enough, sweet enough, intellectually gifted sixteen-year-old girl - but as her super-protective older brother, Dr. Simon Tam, says? She's a mentally traumatized sixteen-year-old girl…
and she just so happens to have psychic powers, empathic powers, and a handful of other things that make her emotionally and psychologically unstable.
The main plot of "Jaynestown" involves the crew trying to go on a pretty simple job, only to find out that their big guy, gun-toting mercenary, Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin), is a Robin Hood-esque folk hero among these people called the Mudders (who are basically the working stiff serfs on a factory planet that… makes mud and clay for use in ceramics and whatnot). The B sub-plot involves Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) taking a job of her own with the guy who owns the planet/moon/thing (because Boss Higgins wants his son's virginity to get taken like, yesterday); and the C sub-plot involves the hijinks got up to while River, the itinerant preacher Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), and the badass first mate Zoë Alleyne Washburne (Gina Torres) hang out together back on the ship.
Said hijinks basically consist of River, Zoë, and the Shepherd all getting to know each other better and bonding. And they start because River borrows Shepherd Book's Bible without asking and starts pawing through it and making little margin notes, like about how the creation myth of Genesis actually includes some evolutionary theory or other, and how Noah's Ark is a problem that we'll have to explain with early quantum-state phenomena because that's the only way Noah could get all of the animals on one boat.
And River says this quote. It's her explanation for why she's trying to put science into the Bible by way of explaining all the THINGS that are going on. The Bible is broken because its explanations for things are either missing or nonsensical, so they have to go through it and put science in it themselves. Cue Shepherd Book explaining, "You don't fix the Bible, River. …you don't fix faith; faith fixes you." and he tries to talk to her about how the Bible's stories need to be understood symbolically, and just…
dkhgkfh, I love that scene so much. HERE GO WATCH IT. …sadly, this isn't the whole scene, it cuts off with about 20-30 seconds left and misses the, "you don't fix faith; it fixes you" quote, but still.
So… first of all? I think it's hilarious that what River does is so shocking and offensive-ish to Shepherd Book when… the whole point of the study of theology in Judaism and Christianity is and has always been finding places in the Bible where things don't make sense and trying to suss out explanations for stuff other than, "A wizard did it," or, "A Time Lord did it." (Or… "God did it," technically, because blah blah yadda thou shalt not suffer a witch to live and junk - "God got involved" is basically just the Biblical way of saying, "A wizard did it.")
…I mean, the Jewish tradition actually has a whole separate kind of extra-Biblical literature and myth - the midrashim (Midrash… I just like using the plural version because it's pretty) - that is basically like Bible fanfiction. Like, you know how in fandom, we write missing scenes and episode tags, and write fic about minor characters or in order to explain little plot-holes or in order to work through things that don't make sense, and rework canon to explore different things that the main stories of whatever it is we like didn't really get into as much as we wanted? …that's what the Midrashim do.
…I had an English professor arch his eyebrow at me pointedly for explaining the Midrashim as Biblical fanfiction once, but I think that's based off a notion that fanfiction is all about porn while the Midrashim are about sussing out the True Meaning of God And These Stories, but… I mean, really.
Sure, a shipping or PWP fanfiction might ostensibly just be about two (or more) characters fucking or being in love or whatever, but I'd argue that the thought processes underlying fanfic and the Midrashim are actually really similar. It's just the focal points that are different. Fanfiction does the same sort of thing - like, for instance? Castiel could get so angry at Dean in Random Canon Instance #13 because of X Or Y Or Z Canonically Stated Reasons… or he could get so angry at Dean because he's in love with Dean, which makes X Or Y Or Z Canonically Stated Reasons that much more meaningful to him.
Fanfiction exists in a realm of exploring and picking at subtext and turning it into something new and different and beautiful - and often (nominally) more inclusive, since we're not burdened by the same editors and networks and other Powers That Be who can go, "no, you can't have a canon gay couple (or trans* character, female lead character, main character of color, etc); Star Trek (or Supernatural, or DC/Marvel/whatever, or Harry Potter, or whoever) isn't that kind of show (book, movie, series, franchise, etc)."
(and okay, yeah, there's also a lot of self-gratification that's not so high-minded… but to be completely fair? the only reason, I think, that there's not a lot of overly derivative, terribly written Midrash and Christian pos-Biblical myth stuff floating around… comes down to how literacy wasn't as widespread back then as it is now. There were probably tons of laypeople making up all kinds of stories about Moses or Elijah or Judith or Jael or Mary Magdalene or Saint Peter or whoever the fuck they wanted, and the points of these stories would've basically been, "well, I want this thing to be canon but it's not, so I'm telling my own story" - or using Bible characters to make up bedtime stories for their kids, or whatever - but we don't have any hard evidence of it because these people couldn't read or write.
And the people who COULD read and write tended to write down stories that only followed a certain track or had Something Important To Say because there was a scarcity of materials, and a hierarchy within different religious orders and/or different religious study groups, and so on. So we're probably never going to find evidence of any stories made up by laypeople because of class discrimination and people thinking it was ever okay to hoard knowledge. but I digress.)
So, fandom and fanfiction reclaim the source texts and rework them according to the desires of the readers, rather than the desires of the original creators. And that's what the Midrashim and a lot of Christian Biblical exegesis and myth-making do for the Bible. …and the stories in the Midrashim are often pretty well-known, just… a lot of people mistakenly think that they're in the Bible itself. Like, a lot of the Lilith myths? Come from the Alphabet of Ben-Sira, a medieval midrash.
Similarly: the whole business of conflating Satan and Lucifer? Well. They're both in the Bible, but… they're both minor characters. Satan's only starring role is in the Book of Job, where he's not the Big Dualistic Devil, Opponent Of God, that we like to think of. He's just some dude in God's employ, who does bad shit to Job because God says, "sure, go ahead." Lucifer is only even mentioned once, in the Book of Isaiah, and most current scholarship suggests that he probably wasn't a rebellious angel or anything so fantastical. He was probably a then-contemporary King of Babylon, and Isaish was basically going, "neener neener neener, YOU SUCK" because, as a Yahwehist prophet, he would've interpreted any misfortune befalling said King as an Act Of God's Vengeance.
…but this one tradition rose out of the post-exilic, pre-Christian Jewish interactions with Zoroastrianism, and in said tradition, Satan became God's opposite, rather than one of God's henchmen and a tool of God's vengeance. You see this working in the New Testament, where Satan's title doesn't mean "adversary in the sense that he does fucked up stuff at God's behest, to test mankind and make humans prove their mettle"; it means, "adversary in the sense that he hates everything good and will eventually be conquered." And it just got worse when people started going, "maybe the Lucifer in Isaiah is how Satan went from God's crony to ultimate evil," until we reached a point when people legitimately think that the events of Paradise Lost (at least, the Satan's fall part) happened in the Bible.
I'm not kidding. People think that. I know people IRL who for reals think that. …also, it's sort of hilarious that aforementioned English prof eyebrow arched at me for the, "Midrashim = Bible Fanfic" stuff… because Bill is a Milton scholar, and Milton totes wrote Bible fanfiction. I mean. Paradise Lost? Paradise Regained? Samson Agonistes? fucking Bible fanfiction, all of them. That doesn't mean that they're not badass fucking poetry or not worth reading. It just means that they're Bible fanfiction and only not regarded as such because of this ridiculous and widespread idea that fanfiction is less good and requires less work than original writing.
Also: a lot of people over the years have accused The Prince Of Egypt of being inaccurate because the Moses backstory we have going on in the movie isn't from the Bible - but the thing is? you cannot make a movie based on the minimalist narrative of Moses's life and deeds that you have going on in the Book of Exodus, if you want to focus on the Hebrews' liberation from Egypt. Seriously, you can't do it. The whole business with the Plagues of Egypt only takes up a small part of the book, because the point of the story that the authors wanted to tell wasn't the liberation from Egypt; it was what happened after, building up to the Hebrews' eventual resettlement in Israel at the end of Deuteronomy (and the Book of Joshua, because there were people living there already and they had issues).
The authors of the Midrashim picked up on this problem too - which is why we have Midrashic stories about Moses's childhood and early life in the Egyptian court, from whence come The Prince Of Egypt's narrative of Moses and Ramses as two brothers who loved each other, but wound up on fundamentally opposed sides of a Serious Business issue and hurting each other in ways that they could never fix. (ouch, right in the heart. T.T)
…all of which is a build-up to this: that scene with River and Book amuses me terribly, because River is basically doing what tons of people before her have done… but it's apparently wrong because she's doing it with science instead of with theology? …eventually, she and the Shepherd reach an understanding with each other - and I do agree, sort of, that trying to pathologize the Bible too much (e.g., going, "clearly, St Paul's fall on the road to Damascus was a seizure!" or, "clearly, the Nile didn't turn into blood, but it looked red because of these ickle protist things!") is to entirely miss the point, both of the stories themselves and of critical exegesis-
but… I also really like River's approach of trying to apply science to the Bible, trying to join faith and science. Because if you think about it? Both of them have lacunae and places where they're trying to figure out what's really going on in the universe, but they fail to manage it on their own. …so why not try to explain things with both of them? why not try to fit them together and see if we can't find something that works and balances both means of examining the universe? Why does it have to be either/or? …like the "remains of a spaceship that collided with God" from Futurama.
…and it's a Slytherin House icon because I love Slytherin House. I think they're misunderstood and poorly represented in the HP books; I hate the way that so much of the HP fandom totally fails to question the Gryffindor-favoring bias of the books, and thinks it's totally legit to say things like, "Snape was a Slytherin who died a Gryffindor, sometimes we Sort too soon~" (no, fuck you. Snape was a Slytherin who died a Slytherin because "Slytherin" is not shorthand for "evil, irredeemable douchenozzle" and "Gryffindor" does not make someone perfect or morally unimpeachable); and…
y'know, if we accept the canon of different fandoms as a sort of Bible analogue? …The HP 'verse's Bible is broken. Contradictions, false logistics (like the ones where it's completely acceptable to hold a bunch of eleven-and-twelve-year-olds responsible for EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH THE WIZARDING WORLD FOREVER, things that they might not even know about much less have any impact on, just because they got Sorted into Slytherin, which means that treating them like shit is just okay now?
…and the ones where it's totally cool for Dumbledore to embarrass and shame an entire House, taking away their House Cup victory at the last minute and in front of everyone, because nah, it's cool, he gave the House Cup to Gryffindor, so it's okay? …and the ones where people actually think that, because it's only implied that Andromeda Tonks was a Slytherin, maybe she was in some other House because a Slytherin would never abandon her magical racist family or learn better or marry a Mudblood?
…and the ones where it's only possible to be biased and favoritist regarding a House if you do it for Slytherin? …and the ones where Slytherins have to make apologies for their House and be deemed acceptable to other people (usually Gryffindors) in order to be seen as heroes (see: Snape, Slughorn, Narcissa Malfoy, Regulus Black), while Gryffindors can literally torture and try to kill someone but it's really just a bunch of kids being kids, nothing to write home about, and besides, Sirius Black had a lot to be upset about, it's totally cool that he just got detention for attempted murder with malicious intent of forethought?)
…yeah, no. the HP fandom's Bible is broken. and my black, twisted heart of Slytherin love will continue saying so until I get bored and go do something else.
…Astrid didn't actually ask about this icon, but… I forgot which of my Firefly quote icons she asked about and wrote out a whole rant about this one instead of the other one, and I didn't want to go without sharing it, so. :3
This quote is from Firefly. I want to say it's from the pilot episode, but I'm not entirely certain of that; it definitely comes from one of the early episodes, though. In context: it's said by Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), who is a peripatetic space-preacher, and has recently wandered out of his Christian Not Otherwise Specified monastery* in search of Adventures and opportunities to Do The LORD's Work out in the world. He's just boarded Serenity, the Firefly-class vessel that Our Heroes travel around on, having been recruited/offered passage by the perky, adorable mechanic, Kaylee (Jewel Staite).
Shortly after settling into his quarters onboard, Book meets or gets a visit from Ms. Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), who is a well-educated woman of status, and breeding, and class… and she's a Companion. which Captain Mal "Tight-Pants" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and most of the viewers basically regard as An Outer Space Hooker. …no, really. Mal regularly calls Inara's work little more than "whoring" and acts like it's pretentious and full of itself and wrong because there's a lot of spirituality and ceremony attached to it, rather than just being all, "let's tumble around in the hay and then you pay me and I get the fuck out."
So, Inara comes to visit Shepherd Book, and after saying that she's a Companion, she asks him if he's going to lecture her on the wickedness of her ways, because… the Bible has a fair few things to say about prostitution. …but rather than judging and shaming her for her profession, Shepherd Book is all, "naw, it's cool, it's not my place to judge you and we can be friends instead maybe? :)" - and makes a joke back at her with the quote on the icon. (And as it turns out in the backstory graphic novella that came out for him in 2010, this really did come out of an earnest place, rather than a place of, "I'm judging you, but saying that I won't," because sfkjdkt aaaaah, Shepherd Book's story is so heartbreaking and beautiful and sad and wonderful and he's so awesome I love him so much. T.T)
…and I like to keep this icon around because obviously (as seen above), I have a lot of very catchy lectures about Bible Stuff up my sleeve. They're usually absent the morality portion of things, just because I'm not lecturing from the position of Preacher, I'm lecturing from the position of Big Huge Nerd who thinks these things are REALLY REALLY COOL from an intellectual standpoint. but… still. I have a few very catchy lectures hanging around, if you're interested.
*: which would imply Catholic, but Book and his beliefs never actually strikes me as all that Catholic, and Firefly's set in the distant future, so it's not like different sects of Christianity couldn't have merged.
Bela Talbot is better than everyone and she has pretty hair.
…that's pretty much entirely why I have this icon, really? …Bela is my favorite SPN character of all time, ever. I have a tag over on my tumblr that goes, "Bela Talbot is flawless," and it's mostly a lot of unfairly pretty pictures of Bela being unfairly pretty, with the occasional so-called meta post that tends to just be me crying about how she deserved so, so much better than Show gave her. My poor perfect princess of grey morality and survivalist instincts and dsksehgee GAHHHH BELA, WHY WERE YOU TOO PRECIOUS FOR THIS WORLD, I WANT YOU TO COME BAAAAAACK. D:
…and for the record, since I'm here anyway. When I say, "perfect," I don't mean it as like, "Bela is morally unimpeachable and never did anything shady and never had actions that needed questioning." I mean it as like, "GAHHHH SHE'S SO STRONG AND SAD AND BRAVE, AND BEAUTIFULLY FLAWED, AND I LOVE HER SO MUCH, I JUST WANT TO HOLD HER AND NEVER LET GO." …I love her best when she's being kind of mean, actually. Especially to Dean and Sam because… y'know. I love them and all, but the two of them are far from perfect, and they almost never get called out on their bullshit (not to mention Show's problem with protagonist-centered morality), and… ugh. Gross in my mouth. …please, Bela, by all means: do continue ripping them a cornucopia of new ones, pretty pretty please? :3
…I also choose to exist in an AU where Cas and Bela are BFFs, and Ruby didn't need to die because she was an undercover agent for Team Free Will all the time, and Anna didn't need to die because Cas tried harder to get through to her past the Heavenly torture-brainwashing and Team Free Will didn't let Little Prince Douchecanoe Michael kill her, and Sam/Ruby is still on, and Anna/Bela is happening, and Dean/Cas isn't just subtext and baiting but trufax canon, and demon!Bela is coming back to raise Hell in season eight, and… well.
I acknowledge the existence and validity of realities that don't agree with mine. But I think those realities are very, very boring and kind of sad and I don't choose to live in them.
This is Wonder Woman, as drawn by Kate Beaton, the adorkable genius behind Hark! A Vagrant, which is… the only webcomic I still keep tabs on, because Friendly Hostility owned my heart… but it ended a few years ago and I just wasn't especially interested in its sequel, Other People's Business.
Most of the time, HAV is a bunch of jokes about history and literature and other nerdy things that I love - and occasionally, Kate Beaton draws superhero stuff because it's fun. For instance: The Adventures Of Sexy Batman (seriously, click the link immediately; Sexy Batman is FANTASTIC). Her version of Wonder Woman has shown up a couple of different times - and I really love her version of Wonder Woman because… I mean, I grew up on different incarnations of the DC mythology, but Wonder Woman is always, like. Inexplicably chill when she really shouldn't be. She can bust out some Amazonian wrath like nobody's business, sure, but… she's so chill and even-tempered, and it's kind of unnerving and frustrating?
Like, Superman's all WEH FUCK MY LIFE I'M THE LAST SON OF KRYPTON AND AN ALIEN AMONG HUMANS AND I HAVE THIS WONDERFUL STRONG WOMAN WHO LOVES ME EVEN THOUGH MY ALTER EGO IS A SCHLUB WITH NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT HIM AND KIND OF OBSESSIVE OVER LOOOOIS BUT MY LIFE IS SO. HARD. YOU. HAVE. NO. IDEA. WAAAAAH.
And Batman's all WEH FUCK MY LIFE MY PARENTS ARE DEAD, AND NEVER MIND THAT GOD AND THE US GOVERNMENT COME TO ME FOR LOANS BECAUSE THAT'S HOW MUCH MONEY I HAVE, AND NEVER MIND THAT AS THE HEIR TO WAYNE INDUSTRIES I COULD TOTALLY TAKE ON THE CORPORATE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT CREATE INJUSTICE AND CRIME IN THE WORLD WITHOUT HAVING TO GET DRESSED UP AS A PSYCHOSEXUAL BAT THING AND RUN AROUND WITH TEENAGERS WHO WEAR BOOTY SHORTS AND/OR SKIN-TIGHT GREEN LEGGINGS (ALSO V PSYCHOSEXUALLY INTERESTING), AND THEN WE'RE GONNA BEAT UP SOME MOB BOSSES AND SOME SUPERVILLAINS (MOST OF WHOM ACTUALLY HAVE REALLY COMPLEX MOTIVATIONS THAT BEAR EXAMINING AND LISTENING TO), I MEAN I COULD DO SOMETHING MORE PRODUCTIVE WITH ALL MY MONEY AND CREATIVITY, BUT NAW, I WANNA DRESS UP LIKE A GIANT BAT AND KICK THE SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE BECAUSE WAAAAH MY PARENTS ARE DEAD.
(true facts are true: I don't really like the Batman continuity for Batman himself. I like it for the other characters and I tolerate Batman (and the Joker… Heath Ledger's version was excellent, and I'll grant that the Joker can be done really well sometimes, but… eh, mostly I just tolerate him). …I'm sort of "eh" on Dick Grayson, just because I like Jason Todd and Tim Drake better, and I like Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain better as Robins, AND BARBARA GORDON, SELINA KYLE, HARLEY QUINN, TALIA AL-GHUL, RENEE MONTOYA, AND PAMELA EISLEY, LIGHTS OF MY EXISTENCE, and Dr. Jonathan Crane is just the BEST - but… yeah. as I was saying. I like the Batman continuity for basically everyone BUT Batman. oops?)
…so the two main dudes in the Justice League trio get to whine and angst and brood about shit… and then Wonder Woman's not really allowed to do the same. On the one hand, it's kind of cool that there's at least one superhero who isn't totally fucked up as some relic of the Gritty Nineties Superhero Deconstruction Era Where Everyone Wanted To Be Watchmen And The Dark Knight Returns (…and totally missed the point of both graphic novels in so doing, except for the run where Azrael filled in for Bruce as Batman because the writers were all, "FINE. you fucking fanboys want a gritty, edgy Batman who will kill people? FINE. HAVE AZRAEL!BATMAN AND THEN GET BACK TO US," and the response was, "hoshit, we want Bruce Wayne back please D:")
On the other hand? …It does take a certain kind of person to go be a superhero instead of just hanging out on your island, being Queen of the Amazons, and there comes a point with Wonder Woman where it really looks like she's so chill and not complaining or angry or brooding about stuff… because she's a woman and god, those female superheroes can't have opinions about shit, they might scare off all the dudes who just love them because they're hot and scantily clad.
And it could just be on the writers, but the fans get in on it, too, and they are super-gross in a way that makes me want to permaban them from the Internet. See: the outrage that followed Wonder Woman's costume getting redesigned to be a corset, pants, sensible ass-kicking boots, and a leather jacket. NEVER MIND THAT THEY WERE SUPER-TIGHT LEATHER PANTS AND SHE WAS STILL IN A DAMNED CORSET… the fanboys were outraged, people whined about ~but her star-spangled swimsuit is ICONIC THO~ and DC eventually felt pressured to change the costume back and the whole thing was all just so. fucking. gross. I. hate. people. so. much. ARGH.
…so, basically? Kate Beaton's Wonder Woman is my freaking favorite because she's the Wonder Woman I want to see in actual DC published material, but probably never will, because DC is the company that is responsible for The Incident That Originated The Term "Women In Refrigerators."
and DC is the company that was SO SHOCKED when they revamped the Rawhide Kid as a gay character… and people were really upset that they made him into one of the most mincing, offensive stereotypes ever.
and DC is the company that went, "huh, a lot of girls like Starfire because of the Teen Titans cartoon, so let's do a revamp of her comics that'll take away all of what made animated!Starfire awesome and a character and strip her down to being a scantily clad sex object, THAT'LL GET GIRLS INTERESTED IN OUR COMICS AND WE'LL GET MORE MONEY," and DC is just… ugh. so much ugh.
I have a really conflicted relationship with the DC vs. Marvel divide, because on the one hand? Marvel is generally sort of better about representing heroes that aren't straight white dudes (or aliens who look like them), and sort of better about handling storylines I care about (see: X-Men and how mutants have, in recent years, gotten super-coded in terms of queer people, with coming out narratives and everything). Marvel is by no means PERFECT, but they're better than DC (not that this is hard).
…but, on the other hand? I don't really have anyone under the Marvel heading that I give a fuck about. I've tried, but… there's no one whose stories really interest me all that much, on a personal, character-oriented basis. I don't entirely want to see more of them (outside of a few characters that it's sort of pointless to root for, like Raven/Mystique and Angel Salvatore in XMFC, because again, Marvel's not perfect so the narrative still kind of shits on them…
even XMFC!Magneto isn't that much better than Raven and Angel, because sure, Erik gets enough screentime, but the narrative still expects me to side with Charles, even though Charles is WRONG about so many things and kind of blatantly talking out his ass about shit that he can never understand because he doesn't just pass as human, he passes as a white, straight, cis, able-bodied until the divorce scene, wealthy, educated, male human with no psychological disorders or impairments to speak of. Of course it's cool for Charles Xavier to just decide that the best thing for mutant liberation is to kowtow to the humans and just try to fit into their system and their world, BECAUSE THEIR SYSTEM BENEFITS HIM IMMENSELY AND HE IS TREATED AS THE DEFAULT IN EVERY WAY BUT BEING A MUTANT, AND LATER BEING IN A WHEELCHAIR - which would be a fine and dandy character choice if it were intentional, BUT IT'S NOT, and ugh, I digress)…
so, anyway, we end up with a situation where I don't really care because I know my favorites are going to get shit on… and DC has a cast of people that I do care about. Especially with basically everyone in the Batman continuity who is not named Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, or whatever the Joker's name is this week.
…soooo. I guess I'm just gonna have to make do with the better versions of DC canon in my head, and with Kate Beaton's Wonder Woman, all full of rage and vitriol and snark and meta-commentary frustration with how people treat and perceive her. FOUR FOR YOU, KATE BEATON'S WONDER WOMAN. YOU GO, KATE BEATON'S WONDER WOMAN.
And, since this is a meme:
1. Leave a comment with the words "You're the opposite of Batman." in it. I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post to your journal with the six icons and this meme, and talk about the icons I picked.
3. Profit in the ever-flowing river of icon squee.