#nonbinary representation

I feel like this feeds into the whole thing of enben being seen as like "eldritch horrors" or "other worldly." Even though it might be claimed to be only in jest, it still displays how we are implicitly seen as a human impossibility because of the pervasiveness of the gender binary in society. It's taught to us as "natural" and how "humans have always functioned" despite our modern bourgeois, patriarchal, white-supremacist gender binary originating as a tool of colonialism. That was very recent in anthropological history. (Also note how capitalism is intertwined with binary supremacy here.)

Raine Whispers

Raine Whispers is a supporting character from The Owl House! They are canonically queer and non-binary, and use they/them pronouns. They also have a girlfriend named Eda Clawthorne.

If you don’t know? This is the welcome committee Frankie. They’re a doll release of monster highs nonbinary character Frankie stein. This being the first doll that explicitly references the fact they’re an lgbtqia character.

This doll was originally going to release twoish years ago along side the first wave of the “Fearbook” dolls. A line of the characters reimagined as the leader of a school club.

The standard releases of the Fearbook line featured Draculaura as the drama club leader, Toralei as the music club leader and Twyla as the leader of the game club.

With welcome committee frankie slated to be the more slightly more deluxe special release. Them being presented as the leader of the schools welcome committee. Not only being explicitly pride themed because they themselves are lgbtqia+ but also because it’s their job in the club they run to help people feel welcomed, included and safe!

So it’s safe to say… we were excited. Not only is welcome committee frankie just a really pretty doll but they were also a really clever way to incorporate a characters queerness in a loud, unambiguous and bold way that feels completely natural and not tokenised.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. But they seemingly never were released unlike the others.

The retailer had dropped them. Target who was set to have exclusive rights to releasing them and the Fearbook dolls in the US just straight up refused to release them and only them. in what would end up being one of the first instances of target dismantling its Dei and diversity programs.

After this we didn’t know what to expect. Are they releasing? are they not? Are they cancelled? It’s was ups and downs of getting hopeful and losing faith.

At literally any point they could’ve been dropped for good. Hell it probably would’ve been the cheaper option. They had to find someone else to carry the doll and set up for a completely different release than they originally planned, separate from the dolls they were meant to release along side with all the new marketing that would take.

All of which costs extra money. On a doll the designers probably had to fight to make in the first place.

It’d be tough to convince the average doll company to put in that extra time and effort. Especially not Mattel who are infamous for their penny pinching budget cuts. But for some reason they kept pushing to get welcome committee Frankie to release.

Now I’m absolutely not crediting that to Mattel. Nine times out of this kind of stuff only happens because of internal pressure. Usually from a staff member they cannot afford to lose. We don’t know who was pushing for this behind the scenes but they get the credit. Not big corporation.

The fact this doll has released is nothing short of a miracle. Especially in this current political climate. The corporate side of things had every reason under the sun to just quietly brush the doll under rug. And they probably wanted to.

But they’re here. Took them two years but they made it. Adding so much more meaning to their release.