Happy Birthday, My Princess, My General

I'm a grownass woman, yeah, but I love Disney movies, always have, always will. 

As an adult, I've had to separate the content they create from the shenanigans their company gets into, like how they recently got greedy with Spider-Man and caused Sony to yeet out of there. This article does a great job talking about that distinction (and how some fans seem to willfully blind themselves from the dirty truth about Disney as a company), and I loved this line in particular: 

"I can tell you as a Disney fan that being excited about what it's offering while also being aware of the company's great appetite are not mutually exclusive terms."


Even though I loved the movies I was watching as a kid, there was frequently some dissonance between how much I liked the female characters and how much I was supposed to like them. Ariel annoyed me because I knew, even when I was five, that she was being disobedient and reckless and just ended up lucky that things worked out for her. Belle, I related to in the sense that she didn't really have any friends, but I also recognized when I was little that she gave up her dreams of "adventure in the great wide somewhere" for a dude; plus, I was made fun of for being fat and ugly, while she was admired for her beauty by the people being assholes to her. Jasmine was just too underdeveloped for me and didn't really have much to do in her movie except get captured and rescued by dudes (although her owning a goddamned tiger as a pet certainly helped). Cinderella, Snow White, and Aurora were just flat-out boring to me*. I loved Mulan, but she's not a princess (even though the Disney Princes Line™  has been including her as kind of a supporting character since its launch in 2000, and she was also part of the princess ensemble in Ralph Breaks the Internet) and Megara (they started including her in the Princess Line™ later, also more background/tangential, and she was not in Ralph), but she also wasn't a princess, and anyway, she wasn't even the star of her movie.

It isn't that I didn't like the movies, let me reiterate. Even as a little kid, I was already picking the things I enjoyed apart and finding problematic aspects of things such as plot, character development, etc., much like I do now. So yeah, I had Beauty and the Beast stuff all over my room as a kid, since that was my favorite Disney movie (still ranks pretty high, too), even though I knew it was a plothole that Belle never really did anything "adventurous" in her movie. I'd reenact the big "Part of Your World" moment where Ariel rises up and the wave splashes behind her in the bathroom all the time (much to my mom's chagrin), even while bemoaning how she was a "bad girl." I just wasn't big into the whole Princess thing because I hadn't come across a princess that seemed worth really admiring. 

Then George Lucas released that VHS box set of the "special edition" in 1997. You know the one. The one where Han doesn't shoot first, the one everybody had been waiting over a decade for because they thought it was going to include cut scenes and stuff (oh how wrong they were...).

And I met Leia. 

Here was a princess that, even when she was held hostage, didn't take shit from the dude keeping her. She was sassy. She was smart. She kicked ass. She was a great tactician. She was brave. She cared about the people around her. She ended up saving the dude! And, yes, she was absolutely stunning, legit one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen onscreen, and I would still say that about her now.

And did I say that she was sassy?

I loved her, wanted to be her in a way I never had with any of the then-canonical Disney Princesses™.

I don't know if my dad even realized what happened when he got that box set for us (I think for Christmas? That was a rough year for our family, so it's hard to pinpoint; he may have just bought it Because), but I watched those tapes every chance I got when I was home alone so I could spend time with her. And I had to do it alone because those tapes were Dad's, and he usually said no when I asked him if I could watch them when he was around. So yeah, I had to basically sneak my Leia fixes. I would fast-forward to her scenes, watch them in slow-mo, pause the tapes and try to pose like her. I even tried to put my hair in those signature side-buns of hers a few times- failing miserably, of course. I even renamed my favorite Barbie doll "Leia" in her honor.** And I'd do the doll's hair like Leia's (with more success than when I tried on myself, I should add) and pretend she was my Jedi master. And I'd sometimes try to use the Force to knock shit over or make it come to me, knowing in my heart of hearts that Leia was probably a secret Jedi or something. 

I was a kid back then, so I didn't think too much about the actress playing her, and it wouldn't be until I was in late high school/college-ish until I gave M'lady Carrie Fisher any room in my headspace. I don't remember exactly what I was watching- perhaps some documentary about the making of the OG trilogy (because the prequels were out by this point, or at least wrapping up), but she opened up about her anorexia while making the movies, and that... hit.

I've never been anorexic, but God, I have never been happy with my body. It didn't help that I was constantly made fun of for it, too, up until I started college. So to hear about her "failed bulimia" just struck a nerve. I was a late teen at this point, but still. How could my Leia, my Leia, be so insecure? If she was made to feel that way, what the fuck do people WANT, anyway? It pissed me off- for her sake, for the sake of other women and girls. 

It's silly, but it made me feel "close" to Carrie, because I could relate. I imagined meeting her and saying, "See? At least I'm a fat-ass! They have NO excuse for being such assholes to you! Who's dicks are we cutting off?" (I get the feeling she would have laughed a bit, then told me to be kinder to myself.)

And when I saw the HBO version of her Broadway one-person show, Wishful Drinking, I felt seen. In the way that only she could do, she had me laugh-crying with her during the whole special. And I felt even closer to her, and while maybe some of it was wishful thinking, I wanted to believe we were kind of similar in a lot of ways, new ones, aside from the body image issues. The penchant for drama to find her (and legit drama, like the waking-up-next-to-a-dead-body kind of drama, not the "I spilled my latte oh NOES!" drama of your everyday Becky or the Mean Cashier drama for the Karens of the world). The mental illness. The heartache. The feeling of being an outsider, even when you're part of the group. 

The gallows humor. I have legit made people UPSET cracking jokes about my situations sometimes. So her making funnies out of her past? Totally my jam, my way of storytelling, to this day.

Carrie was like the cool aunt I never realized I needed. It's ridiculous, but I honestly would sometimes think about how she'd respond to the things I'd say to myself in my head, and I'd stop being so cruel to myself at times. I'd picture her punching my own "Dark Side" in the kisser. I still do it now.

I watched others of her works, and while of course I found her wonderful in all of them, I think it makes sense that Leia is the one I felt the strongest about- I was what they call "impressionable" when I met Leia, after all, and she imprinted on me.

Having endured the prequels in theaters a decade ago, the biggest reason I saw The Force Awakens in theaters was that Carrie was back. I liked it way more than I thought I would, but you bet your boots I fist-pumped and "YESSSS!"-ed when it was announced (onscreen) Leia is now the general of "The Resistance." 

Buttercup was another princess I found EXTREMELY
boring, but I was super stoked when I found out she
was going to be an Amazonian general in Wonder Woman

When she died, my heart broke a little. And it's ridiculous, since I never met the woman, but I missed her- missed her presence online, in the cultural zeitgeist. So I recently listened to her autobiographical works on audiobook to get a fix, I guess- she read them herself. I was laughing and laugh-crying right along with her the whole time, once again. And sometimes, when she talked about her mental illness, I again felt seen, and wanted to hug her, and knew she would want to do so for me if I needed it. 

It's silly, but her strength was something for me to emulate. I don't want to say "admire," since that comes close to supercripping her, but being in a pretty low place and knowing she came out on top, at least in terms of claiming and taking her life back, gave me hope. A new one, if you will. 

I know I'll cry during her scenses in The Rise of Skywalker. I just know it. And that's okay. I'll get to say goodbye one more time.

So, Carrie, my Princess, my General. I hope your birthday was amazeballs. I'm sure you were partying hard with the likes of Freddie Murcury and your own mama. And I know you know this, but we still love you and miss you, and our lives are better because you were a part of this world.

Love,
A Cracked, But Not Broken, Fan

Epilogue:

When Disney bought the Star Wars franchise, I was excited because I knew the brand and knew that, eventually, we'd get what we now have: Star Wars: Galaxie's Edge. An entire park (section) devoted exclusively to the world of Star Wars. And sure, I love the Star Wars franchise, but Leia always has been, and always will be, my favorite part of it. So when and if I go (provided it doesn't close down), I'll have fun, but I'll be most interested in seeing what they do with Leia- how they portray her, what they do with her character, etc. Like they BETTER not make a ride where the goal is to save her. Amirite?

Plus, she's a gorram Disney Princess now. WHERE IS MY LEIA DISNEY PRINCESS™ MERCH, DISNEY, WHERE IS IT, I SAY!??!?!!?!??!?!?!? I want a gorram meet-and-greet with a "Leia" at Disneyland for my fortieth birthday, people. 

*Although I will say, I at least mildly enjoyed Cinderella because of the mice, and adored Sleeping Beauty because of the fairies and Maleficent, and even Prince Phillip a little. But I never liked the dwarfs (Grumpy was ok, but not enough to carry the whole movie for me) and thought the Evil Queen was a stupid villain ("She's prettier than me so she needs to die!"), and of course the Prince Charming in that one doesn't do anything, and holy crap Snow White's voice is ANNOYING AF AND I WILL DIE ON THAT HILL. So I didn't like Snow White. At all. Go ahead and @ me. But you have to admit, those older Disney movies don't even really try to develop the "heroins" and spent more time and energy characterizing the people surrounding them, be they allies or antagonists. I'm sure Lindsay Ellis talks about this in one of her videos critiquing Disney, but I don't have the time to dig through her entire video history.

**Anybody that has ever owned a toy they "named" would get how this was a BFD. 

This is Halloween

I've talked about holidays I used to love that now are at the very least a little uncomfortable for me before. But one holiday that never got ruined for me is Halloween.

I remember a Halloween from when my little sister had just been born, before our brother was, where Mom was Raggedy Anne and Dad was Frankenstein's monster. It sticks out for me because Dad had a very Frankenstein's monster-esque scar on his forehead from tripping and hitting his head on my little sister's bassinet, and Mom was just so damned cute with the little red dot on her nose and the red wig. I don't even remember what anybody else was, but we all went trick-or-treating and then went home and listened to a record of "scary" stories for kids before bed. It was just a really, really great night.

I don't remember when, but it wasn't long before Halloween became another holiday Dad kind of took charge of, and he had this whole, methodical process to it.

September: Start thinking about costumes. He'd sporadically stop one of us kids and say, "Know what you wanna be for Halloween yet?" as we were doing something mundane like getting a snack or going to the bathroom (I remember one time he did this and I really had to pee). Eventually, Mom and my older sis stopped going, and Dad and I stopped dressing up, so the focus became what the two young-uns were going to do. My little brother was Buzz Lightyear at least twice (I feel like it was more, though), in this exact costume, inflatable wings and all:

First week of October: Buy a bunch of pumpkin carving books and kits, almost always from Pumpkin Masters. Then he would take them to work with him illicitly make a bunch of copies of every pattern. After long enough, we had so many pumpkin saws and those little pokey-things that they filled a whole gallon-sized Ziplock, and so many patterns that they filled a whole filing box. So, y'know, this eventually evolved into "get the box with all of the pumpkin shit out of the garage and start looking through the mountain of patterns." We would also put up our decorations. Nothing too outrageous, but we had a respectable amount of stuff outside to show we were a Halloween Family, if you know what I mean.

Second week of October: Buy the costumes. I only remember one year where we waited until within a week of Halloween; Dad was usually super on top of it, even when I was in high school and most of everything else was starting to crumble. This was also the week we needed to finalize our picks for the pumpkin patterns we wanted to carve, as well. I specifically picked the skull pattern in the background in this shot from Hocus Pocus at least twice simply because it was in that shot and that movie is everything:

Third week of October: Buy candy and pumpkins. The candy and pumpkins were almost always retrieved on the same trip to the grocery store, but what's special (to me) about this is Dad would bring a copy of every pattern being carved that year, and he and I would take turns being the one to hold a potential pumpkin and the person laying a pattern on it to see if it would fit nicely. Once I got older and stronger, he'd hand me a few of the patterns and let me find some by myself while he did likewise, but we always double-checked each other's matches to make sure. If we needed more tea lights, he'd get them at this time, too.

Within a week of Halloween: Carve the pumpkins and bake the seeds. This was always a Big Thing. Dad would spread newspaper on the table and do all of the hollowing out himself; I sometimes helped him wash the seeds clean, but he always seasoned them himself. When I was a teenager, I suggested he make some chili pepper ones for himself and cinnamon-sugar ones for everybody, and that year was particularly great- things were starting to go downhill, but it made him genuinely happy to see how much everyone liked the sweet ones, and it made me really happy to see how much he liked the spicy ones. 

Halloween: Go trick-or-treating. Like I said before, the lineup kind of changed, but towards the end of my time living at home, when I was in high school and it was me and Dad taking the young-uns around, it felt special. Dad was more his old self on Halloween, and even though he didn't need me there with them, I insisted on going because I was covetous of that temporary change in him- I wasn't about to miss a chance to spend time with the Dad of the Year from my youth, so I went under the auspices of "helping out" with the young-uns. I think he knew that, too, because we'd sometimes walk holding hands and he'd hug me in a way he hadn't since I was younger than the young-uns. It hurts to remember, but in a good way.

There was one time where an older gentleman in the neighborhood, a widower, noticed me standing more at the back of the walkway up to the door and shouted, "One for Mom, too!" and tossed a bag of the little pumpkin-shaped pretzels he was giving out to me. I caught it, mortified, as Dad, who had gone up to the door with the young-uns, laughed and said, "Oh, no, that's Gab, remember? One of the older girls!" But he called me "Mom" the rest of the time we were out that night, and I lost track of how many times I pushed and punched him for it. 

I think that was my junior year of high school.

Then I went to college. As I write this, I realize I've never thought to ask how much of that faded away, and when. I'm sure it did. But since I was never home for any Halloweens after high school, in my own head canon, Halloween never changed. 

So I think that's why it became my favorite holiday as an adult. I've been rather transient because of school and moving around, so I haven't really been able to come up with my own traditions, but in a perfect world, I'd build off of what we did when I was a kid. I would carve a pumpkin, bake the seeds, and have a costume. But I would also decorate the shit out of wherever I live, since I know Dad would have loved that, and the idea of that makes me super happy and excited. I'm talking, like, flashing lights and animatronics and motion-sensors everywhere. The analogy I use is similar to the one about fireworks and Christmas displays. I would have the absolute scariest, coolest mothereffing house on the block- but I would have at least one cutsie thing to try to keep the littler, more easily frightened kids at ease. And if I could afford it, I would rotate through a few different setups/have enough stuff that it wouldn't be the same within two or three years. Props like this, that look kinda cheesy up close, but from farther out would be creepy af:

Or stuff like this; I'm a huge fan of these light effects that look like ghosts and stuff- it's really awesome what people have come up with the past couple years, and I bet my dad would have loved this crap:

Holy cow, and how fun would it be to go from a Nightmare theme for October

I'd be way more elaborate and get, like, creepy trees and stuff
from a Halloween store, but this is the gist

to something like this for December

I would just love to be able to do that. 

I know none of this house decor stuff will ever happen. I want to be a special ed teacher, and I live in Seattleish where COLA is ridiculous; there's no way I'll be able to afford this much stuff, let alone the house I would need to do it. But it's nice to dream, and to think of how proud my dad would be of me if I pulled it off.

More plausibly, when I eventually have kids, I would, of course, take them in my own costume every year, and if their dad was with me, leave candy out with a note about the honor's system and such. And I'd stay in costume once we got home so that I could give candy out to kiddoes, dressed up in whatever. I particularly like the idea of bonding with kids over their costumes, like, "I was that when I was a kid!" or, "Look, we're both superheroes!"

And if I don't have kids, I would at least attend, if not host a party with spooky music and a costume contest and dry ice in the fake cauldron with the punch; if I hosted, for sure there would be spooky board games like Betrayal at the House on the Hill and Elder Sign* and stuff. Hell, maybe we'd watch Hocus Pocus or Nightmare Before Christmas and have a drinking game of it, too. 

What's also made getting anything of my own really going nigh impossible is I've been working retail for so damned long, even while in school, that this is the first Halloween in years that I can remember where I won't be working for at least the start of the evening. I did get to hand out candy to like four kids a few years ago, but they had been stragglers, kids at the end, since I had been working earlier and got home after sunset. But anyway, I've been so busy lately with a thing that had me in the hospital a few times (I'm fine, nothing even remotely life-threatening, just SUPER annoying) and working two jobs and school, I haven't had the time to get any decorations, a pumpkin, not even candy. And it disappoints me. Like this is my one chance in so many years, and I've pretty much blown it.

Maybe I'll just get a couple mini pumpkins and some candy and put the former on the porch so kids know they can come up to our apartment and get the latter from me. Since I'm nowhere near ready to have kids (situationally- I want them, yeah, but I know I can't right now, not for some time), my best bet is to absorb what I can from the ones that would come to my door. But also, being in an apartment, I highly doubt more than one or two kids will show up, anyway. That makes me sad, too.  

So even though Halloween hasn't been ruined for me by family drama, it's certainly been disappointing, and I have no idea when I'll be able to actually make it better. But what I do know is as soon as I can, I will, and it's going to be amazeballs. Even if just for me. And that's worth smiling about.

*Not Arkham Horror. Fuck that game and its ridiculously complex rules and its nigh impossibility of actually winning. 

The Darnkess Before Dawn: "Post-Racism," Hope, and The Obama Presidency

Ok, so I will be the first to say that race relations in the U.S. have a lot of room for improvement before I would remotely say they're "great" or "dandy" or "fanfuckingtastic." As you've probably figured out about me by now, I'm kind of sensitive to issues about racial discrimination and oppression. Treyvon Martin; Michael Brown; Oscar Grant; the shootings of these young black men, and others, led to what the media calls "race riots," which were often actually peaceful protests turned violent by overly-militarized police forces practicing unnecessary roughness and police brutality. Ironically, the events sparking those protests were usually also connected to some sort of police brutality to begin with; all have occurred since President Obama took the oath of office.

Some conservative media (example) report on them in mockery of the President. Pundits (usually white, and even more usually male) disparage his presidency, saying the "post-racial" society he promised was a farce, and that the problems that have developed are his fault, as if he personally incited the rioting, as if he was there throwing molotov cocktails  at the police on the front lines of the standoffs. They say he's divisive and race-baiting, that fighting and killing and guns are all things he wanted.

First off, President Obama never said he was going to foster a "post-racial society" when he ran in 2008. That was something  that the (white) conservative pundits claimed he was claiming. The media machine, which is predominantly white, brought it up. First it was to mock him, with the, "What does he expect, a post-racial society, here?" as he was running, then to question him with, "Now that we have a black president, do we live in a post-racial society?" and now to completely disregard him with the, "So much for the post-racial society he promised you!" I can't begin to count the number of ridiculous "studies" I saw in grad school that had "post-racism" and "Obama" in the title. And this REEEEEALLY  makes my blood boil, when people act like he promised he would fix all race relation problems in our country, and then, GASP! didn't deliver. That was something projected onto him by conservatives that didn't want him elected and  liberals that did- which is part of why it's so hard to get around and forget who actually said it in the beginning. People that hated him said it would never happen, and people that loved him were expressing their deepest hopes as speculation and sometimes even assertion, rather than as what they were, and what he campaigned on: hope. But. He never promised that specific change, though, people. He did not say he was some wizard that was going to leviosa the racism away. He said race relations were on the top of his list of priorities- as damn well they should be, for any commander-in-chief we have had since before I was born, regardless of their ethnicity. 

Second, look at the Congress he's had to deal with. If you Google search "congress least productive" (here, I did it for you), you'll see that, hey, look! Some of the least productive Congresses in our nation's history have been during his presidency. Huh. Funny. Conservatives whine over the number of Executive Orders he's signed in office, but he wouldn't have had to sign them if Congress had enacted any kind of meaningful legislation. In other words, he's doing more in his job because Congress hasn't been doing it's job. And here's the real hum-dinger: HE HAS STILL USED FEWER EXECUTIVE ORDERS THAN THE TWO PRESIDENTS BEFORE HIM AS OF JAN 20TH, LESS THAN A MONTH BEFORE WRITING THIS POST. AND FEWER THAN REAGAN, OR NIXON. Oh my GOD does it show how many conservatives are just drinking the Kool-Aid instead of doing their Goddamned homework! They claim he's power hungry, but that's not it- he's trying to get shit done, while they sit on their asses and adjourn early. Don't blame him. Blame the whiny-ass Republicans that sit with their thumbs in their mouths, screaming that the president is overstepping his power and blah blah, rather than using the power they have so he wouldn't have to, for Pete's sake! There's a reason every single budget has been held hostage for at least a few weeks since he took office. Which leads into my next point, which is the lead into the main argument.

I lived in Bellflower, California when the Rodney King riots occurred. It's a little municipality right next to Compton. So I've seen this stuff. Rioting in response to white cops using unnecessary force on a black man? This shit isn't new, people, and didn't just magically start happening after President Obama was elected. Don't forget your goddamned U.S. history- there's a long list of ethnically charged rioting in our country's past. There have been a lot of publicized events since he took office, but they were happening well before that. The reason for the proported upswing, aside from the rise of social media, is this.

Having a Black president has brought to surface the underlying racism a lot of people have been bottling up and hiding inside. The old, angry, white men in Congress are pissed that a Black man got into office, so they do everything they can to oppose what he presents, even if it means backpedalling on previous positions they've had; racist douchebags in the general public are just as bitter, and taking it out on people around them. People with racist opinions are being less quiet about them. It started during the campaign. I can't tell you how many times I actually heard, in person, to my face, let alone read somewhere online, someone say almost word-for-word, "I refuse to vote for a black man."  And all that birther bullshit? Trump was sooooo Goddamned adamant that the President wasn't from the U.S., he said it at every stop he could at one point; but he isn't saying it about Ted Cruz (yes,  his people are, but he's not railing on Cruz for not being a legit American citizen at every venue the way he did President Obama). And I think, more than any presidency I can remember, President Obama gets blamed for shit that has nothing to do with him. Shit that has more to do with Congress and the Supreme Court, or even local governments. 

Sidenote: I saw an elegant plea for voters to vote out representatives during the next mid-term election so that "Bernie's message can happen." It says very correctly that he won't get shit done, or at least won't get nearly as much shit done, if Congress doesn't support him. So it's acknowledging the whole "checks and balances" thing and passively reminding everyone that Congress is the Legislative branch, and that the ideas coming from the Executive depend almost entirely on that. I wish people had been that smart during President Obama's terms. And I don't think it's a coincidence it wasn't being said while the Black man was in office, either. THINK about that, though. If people are so urgent about that before Bernie Sanders even gets nominated, imagine how things could have been under President Obama if they had been like that before his first term was over. It makes me genuinely sad. Like, I'm actually tearing up as I type this part. 

Fortunately, through it all,  he's remained in good humor, so we get stuff like this:

And this, one that I think really shows what a good person he is:

I say they prove he's a good person because, they show he can laugh at himself, despite having people so publicly despise and disparage him. Don't get me wrong, what he's dealt with and the responsibilities of being in office have taken their tole on him. But I think he still believes in what he campaigned on in 2008, Hope, Change, and moving Forward:

And I sincerely believe that it's getting worse now because it's about to get better. Angry white people being more open about their angry whiteness is giving other people the opportunity to be more open about oppression. It's giving people the courage to fight back against it. We're getting more anti-racism movements because the racists aren't hiding as much anymore. It gave rise to young people of color starting global tours against hate, like a young woman I went to college with, Aisha Fukushima and her Raptivism. It helped enable one of the most powerful women of color in our country take over the halftime show of a predominantly white-ruled institution, the Super Bowl, and present Black Power in all its fierceness and beauty and glory.  

I think Barack Obama knew this had to happen, too. Big change doesn't come about without enough social unrest- think about any big movement for equality. It took a war to end slavery, massive, country-wide protests to end segregation, etc. And he's smart enough to have known that going into the job. And I admire him for it. I think, if he could tell us what was on his mind, he would say something like what Harvey Dent said in The Dark Knight:

Because I don't think he's given up on the American people. He's resigned to his fate to be hated and blamed for a lot of shit he didn't do (much like Batman at the end of the same film), but he's taking it for the greater good. I still don't think it's going to happen soon, but I think having a Black president has given the people that are tired of the racism in this country the oomph they needed to start making meaningful headway, and I have hope that before I die, things will improve even more. Will it be a "post-racial society" at that point? I doubt it. I don't know if I believe in humanity enough to assume race won't matter anymore by the time I croak. But I can hope. I believed in Obama, and I believe in him still, and I believe in the dream that he had for this country's future as much now as I did the first time I voted for him. And a lot of change has happened under his presidency, despite people saying he has been "ineffective," and I believe more is yet to come, thanks to the start he gave us.