Fragments

Ranma and Akane Moments

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so, I just finished fmab, again. No words can describe how much i love it! tbh I could but u know... it wouldn't make any sense with words.. BUT ANYWAYS THE END brings me to tears all the TIME.

ngl this drawing was in my 'will never finish, like ever ever ever' folder which isn't empty itself... but look at me now. i made out of the 'sketch' a 'slightly more satisfying' sketch! 🥲👌

If you want to talk animated queer characters, up into the Disney Renaissance and beyond, the only queer-coded characters you ever saw were the villains.  Hell, in the Beauty and the Beast reboot, they gave us “a confirmed gay character” who was apparently LeFou, Gaston’s side-kick. I say apparently, because have you watched the film?

I can only think of one mainstream film I saw from the 80s that had any positive queer representation while studying film at uni and it was tangled up in a savage critique of racism, culturalism and Thatcher’s Britain.

a year and a half later, matthew shepard was beaten, tortured and left to die, because he was gay. his death was also national news - but more importantly, his murder is what led to gay bashing being legally declared a hate crime. i was sixteen years old and had been with my then-girlfriend for almost a year. assaulting, raping, and killing us for being queer wouldn’t have been prosecuted as a hate crime.

i could go on for so, so long but this is already pushing me close to tears.

“you could be watching she-ra” my god. you know, i did watch she-ra when i was a kid.

I was 24. My daughter was an infant. I’d never seen anything like it before. Here I was! There! On screen. I identified with dorky, awkward, very gay Tara so much.

And then you know what happened just over a year after we finally saw Willow and Tara kiss, having been denied for seasons because the network wouldn’t let them?

Whedon fucking killed Tara off in the most ridiculous, pointless way possible, right after Tara and Willow, who had broken up, got back together.

My “good, meaningful, actually changed my fucking life” representation still followed the horrible tropes. That’s how hungry we were. That’s how desperate we were. We still pointed back to Willow & Tara as ‘this is the best we’ve gotten,’ even though she literally got shot through the heart, somehow, randomly, with a stray bullet the morning after she and her girlfriend have make-up sex and get back together.

And one of the boys who led the most vicious attacks on me came out as gay in 2006. He was met with support from a lot of the students who had treated me like a blight on the world because they assumed I was a lesbian. The only LGBT person I’d seen in film was Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. Real great representation. I was afraid to watch Xena because if anyone from my school found out, I’d be beaten to hell in the locker room - like I already was, on accusations of staring at their boobs.

And a few years later, after tireless work by a lot of very exhausted people and cringey PSAs like Hillary Duff’s “when you call something gay, do you realize what you say” campaign, queerphobia began to be seen as the bigotry it always was. A few years ago, my niece came out and started dating a girl at her high school, and I cannot tell you the terror that filled me for her safety. She, blessedly, lives in a very different world than I did when I was her age.

So when people scoff at barely-there representation, or representation that existed entirely within the minds of the people watching the movie, and when people laugh at the idea of now-antiquated slurs like “fruit” and “poofer”, to me that is partly a victory. It is a comfort to know that people younger than me have a more accepting world than it was 15, 20, 30 years ago.

In many cultures, ethnic groups, and nations around the world, hair is considered a source of power and prestige. African people brought these traditions and beliefs to the Americas and passed them down through the generations.

In my mother’s family (Black Americans from rural South Carolina) the women don’t cut their hair off unless absolutely necessary (i.e damage or routine trimming). Long hair is considered a symbol of beauty and power; my mother often told me that our hair holds our strength and power. Though my mother’s family has been American born for several generations, it is fascinating to see the beliefs and traditions of our African ancestors passed down. We are emotionally and spiritually attached to our hair, cutting it only with the knowledge that we are starting completely clean and removing stagnant energy.

Couple this with the forced removal and covering of our hair from the times of slavery and onward, and you can see why so many Black women and men alike take such pride and care in their natural hair and love to adorn our heads with wigs, weaves, braids, twists, accessories, and sharp designs.

Officer Goodman deserves recognition for his amazing bravery and selflessness. Because of him, Congress was evacuated safely and no lawmakers were assassinated on that terrible day. He risked everything to save others, and he is a hero.