Down But Not Out

1. Child support starts at the same point, including 50% of all medical bills

2. If the mother dies in mandated childbirth OR the child is stillborn, the father and doctor are charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Well, one time, a fellow student of mine was running late to class. As she reached the edge of the building, she saw her professor making it to the front steps (super long rectangular building here). He looks up from walking and he sees her. He then points to his watch, gives her a well-meaning “Look who’s late” face, and walks on inside.

What he didn’t know, though, was that this particular student was like freakishly good at bouldering and related climbing skills, so she was just like “Fuck it” and SCALED THE BUILDING!

She tapped on the window of the 4th floor classroom (the floors had like 20ft ceilings, so, she was quite a ways up there), nearly making one student piss himself. They opened the window, she rolled through, onto the floor, and slid into her seat about five seconds before the professor opened the door to the classroom. 

It started when I was in kindergarten, and I was so proud I did not have to go to Bingo class, unlike my friends, because I could speak good English -

although I had no idea what a yellow dog that could spell had anything to do with Chinese. 

(I figure out now that it was probably called Bilingual class)

I am lucky. I speak the fluent, accentless English of newscasters, the dialect spoken by the children of immigrants, that we learned not from our parents but rather from watching Sesame Street and other things on tv.

Last year, a white facebook friend of mine posted, “In order to celebrate Chinese New Year, me talk rike chinese man arr day.” 

And then told me that she was “sorry I was offended” and “she didn’t mean anything by it” when I (nicely, sweetly) told her that that shit was not okay. She said that she saw it the same as doing an accent, like Irish. Or British. Or Italian. (for bonus points, she even said that she has lots of Asian co-workers and friends, and LOVES Asian people, and so is not a racist.)

And when one of my white friends gets drunk, he thinks his “Asian accent” is hilarious.

And I was told by a coworker about the time my Asian coworker mispronounced “Barroway” as “Bwawwoway” and how hilarious it was.

Here’s the thing - can you guess how many Asian people I know who actually say

me rikey

me from _____

me so solly

(or, if you like, the fetishized versions: me so horny, me love you long time)

if you said ZERO, then ding ding ding! Congratulations, you have working brain cells.

No, my misguided fb friend, the “Asian accent” is not an actual imitation of an accent, comparable to your bad British/Irish/Italian - but rather a mockery of Asian people and their supposed inability to speak English. It is the perpetuation of the image of Asian people as perpetual foreigners in America.

Like that time when my family was at an Italian restaurant, and we were speaking to my father in Cantonese, and a drunken white lady said very loudly, “GOD when you come to this country at least learn the language!”

Or when my father was pulled over for speeding, and although he said “what’s the problem, officer?” the first thing the state trooper said was, “Do you speak English?”

Your fake “Asian accents” are not harmless and silly, because at the root of the joke, it says - you, you are stupid. You cannot speak English. You are Other. You do not belong.

my parents have been in this country for 30 years. They have been American citizens for 30 years.

And they are very self-conscious of their imperfect English, afraid that it makes them look ignorant, knowing that it marks them as immigrants. That, after 30 years, you can still be told (in not so many words) that you do not belong.

The Cultural Revolution started in China when my father was 13. He was pulled out of school and, later, sent to work in the fields. (He escaped to Hong Kong when he was 18, but that is another story for another time.)

When my father came to this country, he had a middle school education and did not speak a lick of English. He worked as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant, the evening shift that ran until 3 or 4 in the morning, and went to school during the day.

It took my father ten years to earn his bachelor’s degree. He is now an engineer.

Is this not your “American Dream?”

When my mother came to this country, she spoke very little English. She got a job as an entry level clerk. Over the years she earned one promotion after another. She is now management at a large federal agency, and manages funds for the whole state.

Is this not your “American Dream?”

And my father didn’t understand why his coworkers said, “flied lice, flied lice!” to him over and over and laughed.

And my father is still afraid to speak in a professional setting, even when he has ideas. 

And my mother still checks and double checks her professional e-mails with me, for fear of mockery from the same people she manages.

And people don’t understand why I can’t take a harmless joke. Why I don’t think that shit is funny.

No, I don’t “rikey.” 

No, I won’t “love you long time.”

And no, I’m not sorry.

Just imagine a world full of beautiful stained glass windows which also generate electricity…

I know, it’s a subtle distinction. I’m going to use dolls as an example, because Special Interest Hell. Bear with me for a second. 

A while back, Mattel made a doll line called Ever After High. Ever After High had a gimmick- it was a doll line based on fairy tales, but instead of being based directly on the fairy tale characters themselves, it was based on their children. This meant that they could create iconic and memorable designs for the characters without being accused of ripping off Disney’s designs.  

This is an original “basic” Ever After High doll: 

The dolls are almost fully articulated- they have 360 degree head rotation, articulated shoulders, elbows, wrists, and knees. Their costume designs are complicated, often featuring multiple layers of fabric and lots of accessories. Each doll came with a stand, a hairbrush, and a bookmark that told their “story”. They retailed for $16.99. 

The dolls came in two factions: “Royals” (the children of heroes) and “Rebels” (the children of villains). Each one had a backstory and a motivation, and they had an accompanying webseries that told those stories. 

(I swear there’s a reason I’m going into Excruciating Detail.)

Even though I didn’t like the sculpts… Ever After High was a pretty good doll line, and it was moderately successful. It brought in 53 million dollars- not nearly as much as Barbie, but still a decent profit.

… Disney didn’t sue Mattel for this. Copyright never got involved. But they didn’t need to sue. They did two things that killed Ever After High dead. 

The first was that they took the license for the Disney Princesses away from Mattel and gave it to Hasbro. Since that’s, obviously, a big money-making license, that was a pretty nasty punishment. 

But the other thing Disney did, the thing that I think was what properly killed Ever After High… they massively expanded the merchandising for Disney Descendants. 

…Now, it looks like Disney Descendants was already in the works when Ever After High started coming out. I don’t think Disney got so OMGSCARED of Ever After High that they made a product directly to compete with it. And I can’t say anything bad about the movies because a) I haven’t seen them and b) I think @bpd-dylan-hall will kill me. 

But the two franchises share some notable similarities- they’re about the teenage children of fairy tale characters, who are split into two factions: “hero” and “villain”. They’re very ‘modern’, with colorful hair and flashy, iconic designs.  

This is a basic Disney Descendants doll: 

I own both Ever After High and Descendants dolls, and I gotta say: the Descendants are way lower quality. They’ve got almost no articulation- just wrists, hips, and knees. They don’t come with a stand or many accessories. Their costumes are much simpler, and most of the designs are screen-printed on. They’re not crap dolls, don’t get me wrong, and I like their sculpts more than EAH- but by comparison, they’re not very good. 

But that made one important difference: The Disney Descendants basic doll retailed at $12.99. 

Now, riddle me this: if you’re the parent of an eight-year-old girl who loves dolls, which are you more likely to get: the high-quality expensive doll with a lot of small parts she’s likely to lose, or the cheaper one with a brand name on it that you recognize? 

Disney was able to massively undercut the competition. Mattel couldn’t keep up. They made cheaper versions of the Ever After High dolls -they went for $9.99 or so, they’re absolute garbage, and collectors and kids both hated them. 

Mattel hasn’t officially canceled Ever After High. But the show’s not coming out anymore, the dolls aren’t on shelves anymore, and we haven’t heard anything about either since 2017. Disney won, and they won hard. 

If Disney didn’t have the kind of money they do, if Disney didn’t have the kind of clout they do, this wouldn’t have happened. I mean, sure, all doll lines end eventually, that’s the way of the world, but Disney deliberately undercut the competition. Depending on how much dolls cost to make and ship, they might even have been making them at a loss.

But Disney could afford to do it because they’re Disney.

The only time anyone’s ever really been able to successfully make a fairy tale franchise without getting shot down by Disney was Shrek, and that’s because Disney didn’t want to touch the aeShrektic with a ten-foot pole. They were scared they’d ruin their image. Any other time anyone does anything with fairy tales (or princesses, or talking cars, or talking fish, or pirates, or…)  Disney can make their own version and sell it at a loss, driving their competitors out of business. They have more money than God. They can afford to lose money on one theme park, let alone one toyline or one movie.

BIG