My Illustrative Life

NOTE: I’m basically still offline! But I wrote this, and transfered it to a computer that can get online, so, here it is.. for YOU.

>((Cross your fingers for me to be able to get my BSB colum up the day after tomorrow, huh?))

I used to watch Ocean Girl

Actually, I used to watch Ocean Odyssey, because I am Bri’ish. But the show was Australian, and in Australia it was known as Ocean Girl.

I read it, too; there was a cinemanga-style phoo story adaption thing in Girl Talk, which was my favourite magazine. The radest thing about going to the Big Bash in year six was going to the Girl Talk booth and talking to the editor, getting a goodie bag and my nails done.

Ocean Girl was a pretty good show. It was the kind of sci-fi where the speculative aspect of the genre is just an add-on to our current real life, and Australia and New Zealand (something in the air? Or water?) were apparently really good at those from about 1994-2005. According to wikipedia the show was “an example of deep-ecology science fiction” - it was about two boys (both named, as the captain formally addressed them, “Master Bates” I am not kidding) whose mother’s job as a marine biologist demanded that they move to an under-sea research dome lab run-like-a-ship thing. They have to learn to get along in their new environment, in the cramped quarters with the other kids whose parents are ‘on-board’, with having left their friends, with their dastardly father’s absence, blah blah.. but then they also meet Neri, who is magic.

Course, she isn’t just a wizard did it-style magic. She lives alone on an Island, and can talk to a whale (Charlie) and swim underwater for extended periods and is terribly curious about the boys’ world whilst also fearing outside influence. Pretty straightforward Pocahontas-arc stuff, only eventually it turns out that Neri is actually an actual alien, from space. By the end the elder boy and she fall in love.

When it’s written down like that it sounds like just my kind of thing. Emotional drama on a backdrop of futuristic science fiction, with no gratuitous tit-flashing (because, For Kids), with a basically ridiculous premise played straight. Dark Angel, The Tribe, Dekaranger, Buffy, Kamen Rider Anything, The Girl From Tomorrow, classic X-Men, etc etc. And the costuming was good too - Neri wore a dressthing made out of what looked like natural fibres and fishing net, which was perfectly evocative of ‘ocean’ and ‘girl’ and even ‘alien’, really. The boys (and the other kids on the station, who were the gang in the background for use when needed) wore variations on a basic lab-base uniform which got across the whole “suddenly trapped in a military-style world away from home, grasping for identity and personal connection” thing. But somehow.. somehow it never really became “mine”.

You know what I mean when I say “mine”, right? It’s the difference between being a fan, and just tuning in or picking up. You know what I mean.

It kind of bugged me, what was so-called ‘wrong’ with Ocean Girl. It did. It went off-air in 1998 and I think I stopped watching before it finished, but it stayed at the back of my head somewhere. I was curious! But I watched the first eight or so episodes recently, and I think I figured out what my problem was.

Wikipedia, again, says that the show was set “in the near future”. We all, I think, know how poorly vague that can be. But that wasn’t the point here - the point was that the show never contextualises itself that way. That’s not the whole point, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

In August 1994 I was seven, and as a seven year old it didn’t occur to me that underwater bio-dome laboratory stations didn’t actually exist. I didn’t know - I lived in inland England, and I was seven, and I had heard about Atlantis. I knew that science was pretty amazing, and that people had been to space. Sure, people could live underwater. Why not? With that as the only solid suggestion that the timeline on Ocean Girl and the timeline I was living on were out of sync - because I definitely never noticed any dates referenced the first time around, and I gotta say I never noticed any this second time around either - there was no reason for me to think Oh yes, of course, this is set next Sunday A.D. Of course! Culturally, things may be a little different!

That was a problem, because the hairstyles on the base-bound girls in this show were fipping wacky. I’m serious, I am fairly sure that this was the basic reason why I could never really get into OG’s groove. I can’t quite believe how small-minded that makes me look, either.

But see, at seven one is old enough to know about “normal” and “weird”. Honestly I don’t think this is a parental-fail thing - parents don’t know about which trainers are cool, and my parents raised me to not see “cool trainers” as something I was entitled to, but I still knew which ones were cool and that people valued them based on that. I may not have been completely down with omgtrainers or omgcool, but I still felt the pull of cool trainers. Y’know? Am I sounding totally well excuuuse me princess about being a judgemental asshole (at seven)?

It’s nice to see that the [whatever they call character designers on liveaction shows] were doing their job, being creative, experimenting. It’s good that they tried to do a bit of extra world-building. But the script, alas, completely let them down.

In Dune, things are different to now and nothing is explained; it’s just written as if what’s everyday to the characters in their weird drugged-up space-future is everyday to you, the reader - and that’s cool, it’s good, it makes the story larger and realer and engages you all over the shop. But in Dune, it’s more than just “Paul woke up in his perfectly normal bed, put on his perfectly normal trousers and shirt, went through the perfectly normal automatic door to the bathroom and looked in the mirror at his COMPLETELY BATTY ENORMOUS SQUARE BOUFFANT WHICH LOOKED CRAZY. He mused on how utterly usual everything was, especially his hair, which he never mentioned to anyone ever.”

Do you get my drift Ocean Girl?

I’ll show you pictures, now.

Mark, please - there are three characters here. One of theme is batshit bonkers in the locks department, two are merely real-world unusual and what you might call bold. If I saw them alone, or in real life, I wouldn’t squint at them or wonder what their game was! I’d think, you rock that puff lady, right on. They wouldn’t unsettle or throw me out of a story in just about any other circumstances. It’s just the volume of unusual that’s here, all crammed together, never mentioned, discussed, spotlit or even lampshaded.. there’s a kid with a fringe cut in steps, too, and a boy whose details I have forgotten but who again alone would look interesting and individual, but packed with the rest makes/made me want to shout EXPLAIN! EXPLAIN! TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON because I know that that isn’t what you’d get if you just took a bunch of people!

This is pretty nice hair actually, taken alone

It looks like a Barbie should be chillaxin’ in that fine hair-throne up there. Look, if you want to wear it that was that is FINE, but people have to NOTICE, OKAY?? Please???

Geisha of Frankenstein?

No.. seriously, you guys. Seriously. Red-haired girl’s face paints my thousand words.

It’s a SQUARE, just on her head. Why.

If you are going to evidence cultural shift, even ‘just’ visually, you need to note that your story is not set now or kids like me, who pick up on patterns but are too young to quite articulate or realise the questions forming due to them will just not be all that into your show. And it will bug them to all heck, maybe for twelve years.

Then I guess they’ll write a blog post about it, and maybe someone will read that and think “I remember that show, I loved it. I think I will buy the dvds RIGHT NOW” let me know if that’s YOU, so maybe my tirade is all in vain, and it’s actually a pretty good long-term marketing strategy.. ..?

It’s still really annoying though.

Happy watching, ocean girls and boys.

Yesterday I was a jailbird, today I am the fuzz. American fuzz, anyway. Highway police? Or something? Do they (you?) say “the fuzz” there? Well I am, because then I get to be the “peach fuzz”. Because of the colour of my shirt. My beloved said, before I doctored the picture, that I looked like I had been raised to kill by Jean Reno. But I only loose my bullets if the crims shoot first, man.

For comparison, please see Nicholas Cage in the beginning of this review. Then watch the rest, because it is funny.

You’re welcome.

(No I didn’t have it tied in a knot when I was at work)

Shirt: GAP, trousers: Liens via second hand sales comm, boots: Dr Martens

Here is the old (”Classic”) version; ‘the bathing suit’:

Here is the new (”boring”) version; ‘the Chick in early 90s gritty cartoon’:

And here is my (”I just drew this in Pixen whilst waiting for my communication technology to work”) version; ‘wrestling is a Greek thing, right?’:

I just want you to know that even though having weighed the fact that I’m not belittling anyone, or insulting anyone, or demanding anything and that hearing someone say that they also have these problems would have meant something to me when I was younger (or now, actually) - and the encouragement to bite the bullet from my honey and some of my fine twitter peeps - posting this makes me feel very very guilty. Because.. the stereotype goes, women are supposed to ‘want’ to be ‘thin’? Because being ‘a thin person’ I have, like, the metaphorical official celebrity/body image media seal of potential approval? Because of fucked up insecurity-sells ingrained societal bullshit, basically. I would never, ever, ever post this unsolicited in size acceptance forums. I’m not including demonstrative pictures because I’m wary of becoming ‘thinspiration’. If I sound like a major jackass? Please, tell me. Right. Here goes.

Let’s talk again about how I hate summer clothes, shall we? Because they don’t fit me? Good. That will be fun.

I am never going to try to convince anybody that people individually and ‘the fashion industry’ at large treat thin people (or genetically average short people) worse than fat people*, or people with bodies that otherwise differ from the so-called norm. That would be ridiculous and cruel. I’m not suggesting that my problems are worse than anyone’s. But since this here is my space, I do get to tell you about how it sucks to be too small to find clothes that fit. You can listen or not, as you please. Please beware of triggers if you’re susceptible; female body image stuff can be volatile.

The gist of it is: it sucks to be too small to be able to find clothes that don’t say to your body “Oi oi, fellas, you’re not quite right here. I think I’ll swamp you and drag you, and make you feel like you’re treading water in your own garments.”

Going on clothes alone - the societal judgement aspects can probably wait for another day, I am way to zoned out to dip my toes in that acidic pool just yet - I’m pretty sure we can all relate to not being able to find an item of clothing that fits. You know, that doesn’t restrict or choke you, doesn’t bunch up in uncomfortable places or blouse out where it would feel and look better to cling, doesn’t need to be tugged down or hitched up, doesn’t get in the way of your other clothes, doesn’t ride up/down/around.. clothes that work for your body and your psyche, not against them.

It’s hard for an industry to predict, of course - people are of all different dimensions. And it’s probably hard for most people a lot of the time- truly, I don’t forget that.

But I’m talking about me, and I know for a fact that it’s hard, for me! Very almost ALL of the time! So quit rolling your eyes and let me vent, OK?

No matter how much I like and enjoy and feel lucky and thankful to be in the body that I have - and believe me, I do - the fact remains that mainstream, highstreet clothes (or.. any clothes I have ever found when I say a thing “fits perfectly” I mean “it doesn’t cause me extreme irritation the minute I put it on” aren’t made for me. It’s worst in summer, because nothing is as stretchy and forgiving as a knitted sweater (FUCK T-SHIRTS and their rigid ways!). And that pisses me off! Not that I feel personally slighted, exactly - I know it’s not done specifically to defy me. Nevertheless, it does defy me, and puts me out, and like any thwarted warlord that makes me shout.

When I was in the first few years of high school, it was just that I was littler than the average range of women and teens, so to find clothes that didn’t make people mistake me for an actual nine year old - I also look young in the face, yay you may think this would be flattering or whatever but when you are twenty two and multiple (multiple!) people TELL YOU they mistook you for twelve, well, get back to me on that, and try not to look sour) - I mostly wore tops designed for kids aged four to six, so that they were tight and my belly showed. “Like a teenager”, 1998 - 2001. That just.. didn’t feel good, you know? When all your friends are talking about their bras and buying things from the shops in J17 spreads and saying “I feel so fat” like it’s a badge of grown-up womanhood’s honour.. “Hey, look at me, I’m a tiny stunted juvenile weirdo”. Only I didn’t HAVE to say look at me, because people were already saying “you’re so small, wowww!” and “she’s so thin, look” and “God, you’re so skinny, it’s not fair”, and “whisper whisper whisper *point*”.

No, it isn’t fair - I can’t do anything about it any more than you can. It’s not my fault and it doesn’t get me anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t hear the adverts saying “you could be slimmer!” or that you don’t have to teach yourself not to think “I look bulgy” or “I should be more streamlined” - because literally every healthy body has some skin or fat on it that can form folds no matter how small, and folds, sez lying traitorous ladymedia, R BAD. You get quotes from Gwyneth Paltrow** or Eva Mendez*** about how “even I feel fat sometimes” and people become so scathing - yeah, I am a little too, because that’s a cack-eyed harmful way to say it when you’re in the public eye (and lauded as being so beautiful). But I understand - the current capitalist world is built to make everyone feel like they aren’t good enough, that every bloat is death fat, that if you fail at meeting these mad stats of perfection for even a second then you fail forever. I remember thinking that way. There’s no haven for thin people in the world of celebrity diet judging; every one of us needs to work honestly at making our own republic of heaven.

The only times I heard about those paragons of thinness, professional models, back then in school, was when people (real people, TV, magazines) talked about what a bad influence they were what with their attractiveness and necessary eating disorders and all - because people can’t naturally be that thin!

Hearing that your natural body essentially enforces the patriarchy and apparently causes your peers to feel inescapably inferior and that you’re unnatural and freakish is, actually, not all that fun. FYI.

Now I am big enough that I can wear clothes designed for average-range adults, by which I mean that they will not actually fall off of me if I put them on (and tall enough that I’m only an inch or so below the upper height requirement for ‘petite’). And that’s pretty nice! But it would be nicer if every shop carried ‘my size’ (they don’t; it’s nice (SARCASM) to know I’m still small enough to be weird), and hey, let’s go crazy - it would be SUPER nice if ‘my size’ fitted my lumpen protrusions in so that I could WEAR ‘my size’ instead of a size up which leaves me swimming and feeling like goblins are grasping my shadow. The back width, the arm circumference, the waist; when these are too wide, the excess fabric gets in the way and grinds. And honestly, to avoid that.. I’d really rather not wear an item that fits in the places I have bones but otherwise makes me look like I’m trying to spill my fleshy privacy all over your desk. Comparatively small stature’d people can have lumps and bumps and shapes of variety too, y’know? Bravissimo’s band sizes go down to twenty-eight, if you get what I’m saying.

Look, I’m not saying that this is the worst problem ever. That there are such things as the concept of “fit” and “clothing sizes” at all tells me I’m not capriciously making a mountain out of a molehill, though - you can feel it when something doesn’t fit you. It irritates all day in little ways.

Here’s some trivia: my Primary School nickname was “Titch”. Being small - but not medically small, because that would be a different matter altogether - is an unremovable part of my public identity nowadays; it goes without saying for me. Still not for other people, natch, but for me. It’s drummed in. I’m normal enough that I really can’t reasonably complain (berate me), but I’m too small for people I don’t know not to remark upon it. And for clothes to fit me! That’s what I’m talking about, right, right.

I guess by this point the being used to it works against me - I bring it (some of it) on myself: being a short person I should be buying from the racks marked “Petite”. My shoulder to waist measurement is fifteen inches. According to the internet, that’s shoulder to underboob on your average lady. Normal-people clothes are too long and shape-moulded in the wrong places, I really can’t deny that. But I have never bought anything from the short-person selection.

You see, even when they’re in evidence I have never taken Petite ranges seriously, because I have never passed a Petite rack or section that didn’t make me think “but I am not a forty-two year old physically graceful life-long academic with shoulder length honey brown hair who was born in Italy and is now married to an English (or, possibly, Welsh) policeman!”.

This lady that I see also wears minimal pink lipstick, and those necklaces made of coloured thread with small rock beads tied in various places; multiple-strand. She’s kind but stern, and speaks softy but with force, wears moccasins, and sometimes a headband. She’s middle-class rich and was a “bohemian” in her university years. I like her fine. She is nothing like me.

That is a trouble. I need to look harder if I want the right to rail against injustice knowledgably. I suppose I need to buckle down and do some in-depth research. It looks like Topshop has a short people range.. that’s made up mostly of tops.. which also feature in the normal-sized people ‘cropped’ range. Nice. Are they cheating by using the same garments for both(cropped for normal people, normal-length for short torsos?), or do they have a version that is petite-cropped too? Of course, either way, the size chart lines up crazy, they charge a minimum £18 for t-shirts embellished with old-t-shirt fake wear&tear, and everything I have bought from Topshop has gotten (non-purposeful) holes in quick smart. I wonder how easy it is to find petite stuff second-hand?

Wull, ’til I win the job lottery, guess I’d better get used to chopping the bottoms off of and sewing elastic into the back of my shirts.

That’ll look nice.

Fuckin’ clothes. What are they good for?

**I use the term “fat people” because that’s favoured by a lot of the pluz-sized size acceptance advocates that I read the most.
**This one from years ago I particularly, clearly remember, because I could see something wrong about it but I wasn’t sure what, and I compared my body to hers in the mirror afterwards
***I am actually not 100% sure on this. I like Eva Mendez, she seems a fun person. She was good in Hitch.

I like these colours. I feel like a stretch of countryside.

The badge is from an Eduardo Paolozzi exhibition which I saw in Scotland a few years ago. It was fantastic. It really opened my mind - the validity of collage as an art form; semi-/abstract colourwork as an intellectual pursuit; how impressive and invigorating modern sculpture can be. I saw one of his small sculptures on Cash in the Attic once (or was it DIckinson’s Real Deals?), an elephant in plastic or rubber all made of angles. Oh, and there was a recreated Artist’s Studio as part of the exhibit - he has a Geordi LaForge figure in there. I am pro TNG.

Look at this - this version of Vulcan/Hephaestus was at the showing I saw. You could look at it from three different levels I think. Photo via nationalgalleries.org!

And how good is this?

Changing subjects, this is my annotated copy of the book I’m preparing a (thorough) review for (two thousand words in..):

Each of those turned-over pages stands for something I have a problem with. Kind of impressive I actually still plan to read the last two books in the series, huh?

Don’t frown at me. It’s a mass-produced paperback.

I’m doing it for the LOVE of books! Come on! Paper isn’t always sacred..

Dear Claire,

At Venus we believe that every woman should feel like a goddess inside and out; sexy, vibrant yet powerfully feminine. It’s why we have unveiled our latest offering of ultimate luxury and indulgence

Why thanks, Gillette & Venus! I do. I don’t need your product for it, but thanks for the email!

So, I’m just throwing this picture out here again, a) because I can, and b) because it makes me uncomfortable but I think it shouldn’t.

Now, I’m not implying that all ladies should eschew leg shavin’ or whatever; the email very strongly implied that to feel Goddessy and whatnot that I need their product. And whilst I appreciate capitalism and advertising and all that, I also think that companies don’t have tabula rasa on social political issues.

I wore green today. Partly because I’m thinking about Robin Hood a lot recently (not excited to see the new movie; very interested in thinking my own thoughts about the legends) and partly because where I live there are a SHITLOAD of Conservative “FOR CHANGE” (ugh seriously?) banners on just about every road, and a tiiiiiny Green Party rectangle on one single bridge, which I only saw because I get lifts to work in that direction. GREENS GREENS GREENS! Plus, I have been watching through all of the vlogbrothers videos on the youtube. Which star John and Hank GREEN. Oh, and it’s Earth Day!

Mostly though because I really like this shade of green! It’s punchy!

Today what I did, was I sat in the garden watching Sweet Valley High and writing up blog posts for Waterscape and getting lightly sun-altered. Then, I removed a very young blackbird from my house,

..and let out a full-grown one from the living room. Which was exciting! And then, I watched some more Sweet Valley High and did drawing practice.. with some X-Men fanart. Including the below!

This is the series I want to be reading right now. Well, actually, I maybe want to be reading the new vampire X-Men arc? I do heaaaaaart Marvel vampires, generally. But I am unkeen to touch modern Rogue/Remy interaction, because they won’t let them be happy aughhhhh.

BUT MY POINT. My point is, my favourite type of Wolverine is kid-mentor Wolverine. Growing up with the 90s series — [pause for most excellent intro]

Ahhhhh

– I always subliminally knew that Wolverine was There For Me. Or, you know, would be if he were “real”. Jubilee was a character I resented and disliked at the time (love her now!), but she served her purpose for child-me - Logan was protective of her as a girlchild, and I was one too, so I related to the character of Wolverine as a protector. When I meet or walk past muscular hairy grouchy older dudes, I have in the back of my mind, he’s looking out for me rather than eee he’s maybe scary. That’s good. That makes me a more secure person.

So it makes me sad, and eye-roll-y, that Wolvie’s biological son (I’m not forgetting the adopted daughter, she’s there too, she and Laura are just out getting groceries in the pic above) is not someone with whom he has a loving and healthy relationship. I really want that to be so! I want all of Logan’s kids to be able to look up to him and live in some great hand-built cabin and BE A FAMILY, DARN IT. People are bored as shit with xtreeeeeeeeeeeeme on-every-team Wolverine - lets bring him back to his roots (kind of his roots). Just some guy, struggling with his past, trying to make the world better for the children who depend on him.

Also I just really enjoy Daken’s design (remember how I approve of Mohawks?), feel that bisexual characters need a wider and less evil-creepy representation, and HATE CHARACTERS HAVING “RAPE” AS THEIR SUPERPOWER.

He has pheremones, you know. That he manipulates people with. Sexually. Vom.

I just want my favourite characters to be HAPPY. Is that so much to ask?

???

Sometimes, you notice patterns.

Marvel’s Lilith

Marvel’s Nekra

Bloody Roar’s Jenny

And even if you don’t mind - or even like - the individual examples..

Bloody Roar’s Jenny (fanart!)

The trend (inclusivity and exclusivity) can really get your goat.

When this happens to me, I foight tha powahhh by setting up the H.M. Armed Forces: Enemy Fighter I gave my sister for christmas and doin’ this.

My beloved made me add the motion lines

All I’m asking for is a little equality, world. I realise I shouldn’t have drawn him white.

—

Doodlebugs! Idle pen-movements whilst watching the StarTV Transformers dub and my X-Men VHS tapes.

For some reason I can only draw moomins if I make them really old and sinister!

“Life drawing” hahaha NOT EASY FROM VIDEO

So what happens if you’re drawing someone whilst gaming..

And then they start to be DEFIED by the controls and endess credits in place of story?

They like you to stop drawing, that’s what. :]

I’m offline! But I wrote this BEFORE I went offline, as a PLAN. Enjoy it now! Whilst I am not here!

“Naughty schoolgirl” is a concept that has been so porned out that it barely exists anymore. “Naughty schoolgirl”, someone will say to you, and your mind will reply “augmented woman in her late twenties wearing a bandeau “skirt”, fake tan, and white shirt tied so tightly I fear she may suffocate (on the shirt OR the cock you’re implicitly permitted to stick in her, come to think)”.

You know what? That sucks. Schoolgirls deserve to own their own sub-genres.

When I was a school-going girl and a Guide, in my early teens, my troupe picked the theme “St Trinians” for the parade we were in. We all wore rolled-up skirts, and tied up shirts, and ties tied around our heads or inappropriately loose. We wore knee-socks and fishnets and carried hockey sticks, and most of us had never heard of St Trinians before. This was the movie-verse St Trinians. Not nu-movies. The 50s-60s-1980 movies. I wore bunches.

It felt powerful and silly and fun, and I didn’t feel like I was giving anyone the right to touch me or fantasize about me or show me their genitals. I didn’t feel fake, I felt permitted to try out ‘loose’, in a socially permissive and/or “so in control of the situation that I don’t have to be in constant overwhelming control of myself” way rather than the hurrhurrvagina way.

Ronald Searle’s original St Trinians cartoons or comic strips, by the way, are really really good. You should read them.

Actually at the end of said parade, at the fair, a grown-up man I sort of knew (I think he was someone’s dad? maybe someone who knew someone I knew?) said to me, “Oh, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on”. I don’t know if he meant “those dress-up clothes” or if he was purposefully implying he had seen me naked, but either way I felt like I wanted to punch him in the fucking face. Because whichever he meant, his words suggested that he might have seen me undressed, and I thought: how dare you do that to me. I did not want to hear about sex, in any way, from any guy. Especially an adult. Especially in such a brusque way. Especially when I was wearing an outfit I knew, vaguely, was sometimes used to mean “slutty!”.

If you don’t get this, or if you feel inclined to say I was asking for it, maybe imagine that you’re wearing an outfit you really like and often air, and then you get a CC’d-to-all-your-friends email showing someone who looks kind of like you, wearing that exact outfit, having something done to them that you’d never want done to you. Or imagine that you move to a new place, where you discover that your name is the same word as the locals use to mean “worthless” or “fucking disgusting” or “fart” or “incest”.

I didn’t punch him, I looked hard at the nearest non-human object very hard and pretended I hadn’t heard. I had no power there.

That was probably about ten years ago, and “naughty schoolgirl” has really gained momentum as a thing since then. What are real school girls going to do, when their forays into rule-breaking and cheekiness and physicality and their own relationship to their own sexuality* are already telegraphed, loud and clear, in town centers and internet side-bar ads and on tv and in magazines (I hate you, Nuts and Cosmo and your ilk) and in the general consciousness, as being a message of “yes, you may fuck”?

*No. Just because someone is exploring themselves and the power or effect they may or may not potentially have (and if they like or are comfortable with it or not), it does not give you permission to be a leering douche. If someone is dressed “sexy”, it does not mean you get to say HAY BABY, I SEE YOU HAVE SEXUAL CAPACITIES!!. Act as normally as you can towards them, and that will tell them what they want to know. Be respectful. Don’t assume that they want anything from you. Especially? Especially if they are or might be underaged. Gee whiz.

I started thinking about this because of this picture in the paper:

It’s Hit-Girl, from the film Kick Ass,which I do not think I would enjoy. I don’t like the comic and I can’t get behind eleven year old murderers played for awsums. I do have a soft spot for Nic Cage though. THEY’RE IN MY EYES!. She’s played by Chloe Moretz, who was born in 1997 (and who’s gonna be in the (actually really positive-sounding) re-make of Let the Right One In. Go Chloe!). So she’s twelve or thirteen in this picture. Do you see the differences, between Hit-Girl here and the average current “naughty schoolgirl”? Yes. Yes, you do.

This picture reminded me of another comicbook (as you wish, Stan Lee!) depiction of a schoolgirl gone wrong. Here’s Jenny, 15, from Grant Morisson’s excellent (excellent!) book The Invisibles. She appears on two pages as far as I can tell (does she return? I haven’t read every volume), and she’s pretty darn enjoyable, as a character.

Okay so I said above that I can’t get behind killer kids, true - but forgive me my over-generalising. Hit-Girl’s essentially a real-world fictional kid, albeit a highly skilled one, and she’s gonna have to live with being a people-chopper for the rest of her real-world fictional life. Jenny’s metafictionally one of the last survivors in a post-apocolyptic Enemies Exist world, born of a psychically well-protected mind being tortured. That changes things up. Am I a hypocrite? Bollocks.

The thing here, is that these are two internally enormous, badass, power-reaching characters who know how to do what they’re doing and who don’t do just what they’re told (or what we as viewers know they’re societally told), who are nevertheless currently encapsulated by the school uniform. They don’t fit, level-one semiotically; it’s still understood that school uniform means “be good”. That’s why school uniform, and the “schoolgirl” part of “naughty schoolgirl” matter: the goodness is there to be subverted. Whether you’re talking sex-play, or violence, or anything else.

>>Other objections aside, it is SO LAZY and missing-of-the-point to turn the school uniform into full-on erotic decoration. If you make it into a straight-up string-stripper outfit, you lose the reason you were interested in the first place! You lose the character, you lose the realness, you lose the honesty. All you’re left with is “isn’t screwing hot?”, which, wow. Fascinating.< <

Jenny and Hit-Girl’s skirts are short, and we can see Jenny’s knickers, and knee-socks have enough cultural-sexual baggage already that they can mean ’saucy’ by themselves - these outfits aren’t completely unsexualised or unsensualised. Like I mentioned, we tied up our school shirts and rolled up our skirts in the Guides parade (we rolled up our skirts in school - that’s a pretty culture-wide experience). I’m not arguing for the sterilisation of teens, image-wise or biologically!

I think that the photo of Hit-Girl is a good one, and I can dig those two pages of Jenny in Invisibles. Not in any way because I want to exploit them sexually, but because I can sympathise and empathise with these pictures. That’s a lot of what fiction is for, I think - more than just entertainment and escape. It’s not quite identification - it’s understanding what characters, as constructs before/as well as people, mean; Hit-Girl here and Jenny are about bursting out of your chrysalis - saying YEAH FUCK THAT, WHATEVER! and going really, really fast at your own discretion. Being aware of the body that you’re in, what it can do and what it means to you. Feeling that anybody who wants to appropriate any of that can go blow away to nowhere. They’re about moments of realisation that you’re god of your own damn universe, and you make the rules for you.

It’s easy to see how those sorts of thoughts can segue (for teens or between consenting adults interacting with this sort of imagery) into “let’s do it”. They don’t have to, but they can, and that’s fine! That’s nice, even! Know yourself, enjoy yourself, use symbols that you like or that speak to you (I’m not assuming I need to give permission here, I’m just hopefully making it clear that I’m not trying to somehow deny you permission to do what you want in private. I don’t want to know about what you do in private (or public, if it’s shaggin’)).

But these feelings, grown organically, are too necessary and vital to have them publicly and almost overwhelmingly equated with misogynistic, performative, no-strings intercourse.

‘Sex’, a lot of people seem to forget to remember, is not about what platonic-I can do for platonic-you. It’s not simply about places to put penises or things in vaginas. First of all, it is about what platonic-I can do for platonic-me, and basically, the rest of the world has no rights to that.

It just thinks it does.

It’s Fanning’s movie: You can taste the ex–child actor’s relish for playing “jailbait.” But can she be ogled in good conscience [since she’s fifteen]? The taste is sweet and sour. — David Edelstein, NYMag.com, on The Runaways

No, Jerkface, she can’t. But you can empathise, or sympathise, or just allow her to enjoy it without trying to make it all about you. EMPATHY AND SYMPATHY. Do you speak them?

Lady Gaga says she’s decided “to be single at this point in my life because I don’t have the time to get to know anybody. And you know what? It’s OK. Even Lady Gaga can be celibate.” — Lady Gaga via Margaret @ jezebel.com, via The Star

I kind of like Lady Gaga, maybe. Her costumes are often sexually coded, and then she outright says to her fans “it’s okay not to have sex if you don’t feel like it, no matter how you feel like dressing”. Anti-rape culture. That kind of stuff needs to be said.

So that’s what I think about “naughty schoolgirls”. That people should leave them alone, for goodness’ sake, and let the real ones be able to think that they (re-)invented the trope. Because you know what? If they did, they did.

“People think that our images were dictated to us by men, and that’s not the case,” she says. “It’s not like [our producer] Kim Fowley sat down and said, ‘Cherie, you’re gonna wear a corset. And Lita, you’re gonna wear shorts onstage.’ We would have laughed! Nobody told us what to wear. People like to think that that’s the case because if teenage girls are being sexual” - her voice drips with sarcasm - “obviously men have something to do with it.” — Joan Jett to the LA Times (via Jezebel! Natch!)

My sister, and my foot again. I’m just unable to colour things without using yellow. Why, I wonder? I barely ever use white for highlights, even when I’ve built up enough pigment to block out the paper or canvas. Or if I do use it, I start to hate it and feel put-upon.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna be posting these every day!

Plus: I’ve been twittering my discontent with Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker’s “official” sequel to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula; Dracula: The Un-Dead. I drew this in the night, after reading a particularly enraging, faith-breaking passage. Please excuse my vendetta.. Dracula is just too darn GOOD.

Warning: Possible rape triggers

I aquired this advert page (got my sister to rip it out of a magazine (she was in the corner, I was in view) in a cafe) last weekend. And not for the reason you may suspect! Compared to my beloved this dude is weaksauce. Not to disparage his objective attractiveness..

I think that the current ad campaign for Gaultier’s Le Male (and whatever the girly version is called) is pretty much super-great. Because it’s a male/female pair, and both versions are almost exactly the same. They’re both soft, but not too soft. Both a little bit fetish-y; the corset for the lady, the sailor outfit for the guy (I love his little hat!). Mimifroufrou.com says

The advertising plays on the ambiguity of a masculine image that is appealing to the gay community for its Querelle de Brest reference but is shown in the TV commercial to be heterosexual.

I don’t know if that’s the intention or the precise direction of the direction (I can certainly believe it) but I do know that I enjoy the heck out of it. This “appealing to the gay community” isn’t just doing that - it’s appealing to the me community.

I don’t want to see ‘traditional’ manly man men man in adverts. They’re boring; I’ve seen them since forever. They don’t interest me because I like balance.. and that applies to all areas.

I like to see trad-masculine balanced with trad-feminine. Why does Hokuto No Ken appeal to my heart so well? Because it’s about uberdudes whose hearts are crying even as they tear off heads. Why do I like to read Being Manly? Because it’s about ‘manliness and masculinities’ (emphasis masculinities) approached in a gender-inclusive, polite way that makes me (a lady!) feel welcomed, and talks about gender relations and gender roles in a positive way. Why do I like to wear Dr Martens and a heavy leather coat on my wide shoulders and army surplus(/inspired) hats? Because I really like to wear pink skirts! Why did I make Laurence Llewellyn Bowen my style icon (and nickname, though I didn’t make that happen, so much) in sixth form?

Seriously you should have seen me

Because I was at an all-girls school and most of my friends were vocally into lipgloss and high heels. Why do I love the Runaways so hard? Because they were girls who wore girl clothes and who were assertive and who weren’t ladylike and sang about screwing and drinking. I did a whole great long poorly formatted post early on in this blog’s life about my enjoyment of Jean Claude Van Damme movies due to the, perhaps, “masculine femininity” or “feminine masculinity” of the majority of them. Why do I stare so hard and long at my beloved’s Disney-princess eyelashes (other than the whole “I love him” thing)?

For the same reason as why I think these two adverts are the bees knees. Because they’re not so flippin’ gender binary as most of what gets thrown in my face in the everyday.

It’s some kind of mad dream to see a “I just had sex with a lady” gent doing anything other than thinking “I am SO AMAZINGLY THE BEST because getting ladies means you WIN”. It is some kind of madder dream to see a post lady-sex guy doing semi-submissiv, emotion-based flexing about in tight pants and trousers, putting on a little hat (for his own enjoyment!). I’ve got no idea what these scents smell like, but I am fully pro-them.

You see? Advertsising CAN make me want to buy things! It just usually does the opposite.

They ain’t perfect. She could have a smirk after smelling the pillow too. But that? Is a pretty small complaint, considering.

Has anyone else noticed that all the Valentines-themed window displays this year are red (with silver or black accoutrements)? Red to hot pink, at least. Where is all the marshmallowy pink, the fluffy powder colours, the teddy bears swearing eternal affection? Everwhere I looked, in town yesterday, there were red satin undergarments with the spindliest of garter belts (they won’t work, don’t you want your sexy to be practical too?), and shiny metallic balloons.

I did consider that it was a display of solidarity with China, any British-Chinese or visiting tourists, Chinese New Year falling today also. Red being an important related colour. But there wasn’t any gold involved, and besides - shop windows don’t tend to be that inclusive.

I hope you’re having a fine day, whatever you’re celebrating or whatever you aren’t. I do think it’s a shame when people are vitriolic against Saint Valentine’s Day, because being martyred because you refused to disallow soldiers to marry is pretty bloody admirable if you ask me. And technically, by visiting my blog, you did. Ha-HAH! I think it’s a day to celebrate, unless you prefer to make it a day for activism - St. V died for the cause of marriage for a portion of the population who higher-ups felt shouldn’t be allowed it. Who knows what his views on homosexuality would be, but luckily for us (and the whole point of this is that) he’s dead - so he can’t complain if we use his Day to say “Hey, Governments - Let Your People Marry”.

I was unconsciously mirroring the red red world, when I ventured out into it to search out records with my newly-drivers’-liscenced sister. My reds were deeper though, because straight-up primary colours make me look startled. And besides, I like the mystery of a slightly dirty hue.

I couldn’t physically be with my beloved for Valentine’s Day - actually, we’ve never been together on The Day (don’t worry! It’s never mattered, either) - and I’m not near any New Year celebrations as I thought I would be so I’m here typing.. Able to say that if you are feeling blue (and so quite out of place) then all you need to do is put on some dreamin’ gear and use that in-head laptop we call ‘imagination’ to fly you to where and with whom you really want to be. Look, I’ll show you:

Hat: Jaeger (gift), Skirt: Jane Marple dans le salon, Belt: my Gran’s attic, Pouch on rear: Brazilian craftswoman via Deviantart, Pouch on front (blue): Shoon a year or two ago (who always have interesting leather products by their till), Pouch on front (red heart): Shoon last December, Boots: Dr Martens, Scarf: Accessorize (christmas present)

Oh - and I beg your pardon, happy New Year to China, and anyone who celebrates!

Consequences Creed

Consequences Creed has great hair, especially for a professional wrestler. His body has an unusual chunkiness that looks dependable - I’m not worried for his health, or for the crowd of his opponent - and non-monstrous; he’s not scary thin or scary ‘roidy, he’s not super Hollywood-guy ripped but he looks like he is strong (especially in the thighs!). His costume doesn’t have too many elements to it, but it does have enough, and it makes me think of Wonder Woman a little. He doesn’t look nude like the guys who wrestle in pants, and the short shorts are sporty. I dislike watching matches where people are wearing those long spandexy leggings, because I think about them riding low in the crotch and feel sympathy irritation. The colours of his getup complement his skin tones. He springs about and is cheerful. This is a good wrestler image.

Awesome Kong

I am not impressed with the fact that Awesome Kong’s bodice didn’t fit her boobs properly when I was watching TNA semi-regularly. “Get her a tailor, management!” I shouted. But it looks like they did! I dog the Xena look, and I dig that she is FIERCE not a fuckdoll. She pulls great faces and tends to ignore the crowd, I think. She also has cool hair, and I like how she lets it fly about all over. I like her little wrestler boots! Her NAME is AWESOME. And she really, really does make good faces. Good wrestler image.

Sting

Gothy wrestlers (there are more than you’d think, unless you are a big ole wrestling fan) are some of the funniest things, in my opinion. But I like Sting! He is old, for one thing. Kind of. He has a neat gimmick (the lights go out. They come on.. AND THERE IS STING!!!!!!), and he reminds me of the Misfits I like Vampiro by default. I like that he paints his face, all spooooky and that he used to wear pink leggings with bleached hair. I very much enjoy that he had (has?) a major beef (or whatever wrasslin’ calls it, I forget) with Kurt Angle, who I find one of the most boring Entertainment Superstars around. Sting threatens to bite fingers off! He believes in respect, hence troubles with Angle. I dislike his coats, because great big muscular types need careful tailoring and better fabric and better, non-hideous stadium lighting to look purposeful in structured-flowing garments in my opinion. But I respect that he wears it! Good wrestler image!

Samoa Joe

I liked Samoa Joe because.. OK, I liked Samoa Joe because he had a slight rockabilly bent but mainly because his name had “Samoa” in and one of my favourite moments of Dog the Bounty Hunter is Tim yelling “MY WIFE IS SA-MOAN!“. But! Then I didn’t watch TNA (the only wrestling we get on our TV, which is good, because it is my favourite) for a while. When I came back, Joe had a sleeveless Hokuto leather jacket! And (I think?) different facial “tattoos”! And he went around doing peoples’ bidding, like he had been to the future and come back a badass brainwashed cyborg. Duh, obviously I like that. GOOD WRESTLER IMAGE.

Best of all: Booker T

He has a couple of namesakes to choose from. The musician, seen above, and the political leader Booker T (who you should read about). He wears pants, with massive great boots and sometimes T-shirts, which makes him look so nude that I am simply amused rather than squemish. His use of colour in his gear is skillful He also makes great faces, and pretty evidently has a sense of humour that I enjoy. He uses GOLD and CROWN MOTIFS in his ring-wear. He involves his wife! he wears his hair in a ‘princess ponytail’ sometimes, and his boots look like platforms half the time. I just froze the first video here on a frame that shows him jumping reeeally high, which I admire. He also also has massive thighs, which would alarm me in real life but just make me go wow, really?? when watching on teevee. And he just looks like a “nice man”, silly and subjective as that is.

My beloved adds, Booker T is cool about racism because he called Hulk Hogan NIGGA when he got carried away and then laughed and his wife patted his shoulder! She just pats him and stifles her mirth!

 
“HULK HOGAN, WE COMIN’ FOR YOU, NIGGA! *bites lip, turns away*”

 
“A definite challenge there from Harlem Heat~”

Best wrestler image.

Aw, shit, wiki just told me he’s TNA No More. Shucks.

Why do I take this post to get all this opining (is this the correct word?) out? Partly out of frank enjoyment. Partly out of an inclination to let people know about stuff they might not know. And partly because I want to do my part, if possible, in making sure that we never, ever return to the days of..

“Wrestler hair”

That is exactly what “wrestler hair” looks like. Youtube, for example, Royal Rumble 1992. Or I could do it for you! Jake the Snake is a marginal offender, but watch for Sid.

He was NOT ALONE IN THIS.

Bad wrestler image

Picture credits here
here
here
here
here
here

I don’t actually know if there is/is going to be a softcover of this book.

Jennifer’s Body, first-off, was a horror movie out last year. Written by Diablo Cody, starring Megan Fox (jennifer) and Amanda Seyfried (Needy); about a pair of teenaged, highschool friends who give up pretending that they don’t feel like enemies once Megan’s character, titular Jennifer (and no, I’m not taking that pun out - it was accidental and I don’t feel like redacting it to avoid rubbish jokes), becomes some sort of demon. I hated it when I saw the posters, I resented it when I saw Megan Fox being used for sexyface yet again, I rolled my eyes and sneered at it when I heard the “HELL IS A TEENAGE GIRL!” tagline. But when I read the coverage it got on Jezebel - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (’6 reasons to love Jennifer’s Body’)) I started to think it might actually be really fantastic.

I still haven’t watched it, though. I’m a rubbish cinema-goer (I still haven’t seen Where the Wild Things Are, for goodness’ sake!).

I was and am super-keen on the idea of a horror movie about teenage friendships full of resentment and stangancy (not a real word?), about how objectification and patriarchy turn people against themselves and each other, and a deeper examination of high school/teenage problems than “my parents don’t understand or listen to me” or gender-divided court hierarchy. Not that those things aren’t interesting and true and painful, but that isn’t all that sucks so hard about growing up. I was-am also super-keen on examination (& debunking) of sexism within horror movies. And how that comes from, reflects and focusses sexism and gender-based assumptions in ‘real life’.

But like I said, I haven’t seen the movie yet! So I should shut up about it, and talk about the comic which I HAVE read!

They were still shooting when I was writing so I haven’t seen the film but I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. - Rick Spears, author of the compilation, to Atomic Comics

I mentioned that I bought my copy in a regular book shop rather than a specialist comic shop - this meant that I got the Cho-drawn cover:

Now, I twitter’d this before, but the fact that this comic came wrapped in cellophane makes me go HAH and then EWW.

When I started writing this today I decided I should check good ole wikipedia to see if it had any interesting facts I had missed. it didn’t, but it did provide me with this paragraph synopsis of the book:

The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her “going in for the kill” several times. It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.

I’ll just day that “conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered” is not what I did when I was reading. Why? Oh! That’s right! Teenage boys DON’T deserve to be murdered! You nutter, anonymous wiki editor.

I don’t actually think that that was what the author intended me to do either though - I got much more of an impression that this was a book written out of a funny sort of sensitivity. Boys don’t deserve to be murdered, but horror movies need victims.. but victims mean nothing if they weren’t people first. I leave the room when Luke’s rebel friends are being burst like fireworks as they’re all assaulting the Deathstar, because it’s sad. Phelous often mention that the films he reviews miss the mark because the characters who get skewered (or whatever) are so irritating or vapid that the viewer doesn’t care or is glad when they pop their clogs - the more a victim matters, the more of a reaction will be gleaned from their demise. Or from any trouble they meet, really.

Just like in Nation X there are four stories, and just like in Nation X the first one is the best.

Chapter One: JONAS follows a jock who vaguely wants to bone Jennifer despite his girlfriend’s presence, and who’s feeling the strain of staying the sports hero he’s always naturally been whilst living the life of sofa-riding and snack-scoffing that he’s also inclined towards. It’s drawn by Jim Mahfood, who is great.

Second-page in and Jonas is getting a Strickland-esque dressing down from the headteacher - Jonas is never going to go anywhere, his life’s peaked already, he’ll end up hating his whole life and his whole life caving in on him. Jonas shrugs it off, but he can’t.. quite.. ignore it..

He gives it a good try though.

Spears keeps adding little extra bits of pending doom onto Jonas - ones that are unrelated to Jennifer.

Then he figures out his girl isn’t quite all his, then classmates are lost to a mysterious fire, then Jonas can’t keep it all in any more when the school’s grief councillor schedules a visit.. Jonas knows his life’s not what he wants. He knows his story is supposed to be better than this. And then, beautiful powerful popular Jennifer appears, and Jonas knows she can make the right things happen.

Jennifer’s not so into making out or hooking up any more though, so she whacks his head off.

Jonas’s story is over, and Jennifer was really only the end of it.

Chapter two: COLIN is about a kid who wears a shirt with an anarchy symbol on it, who has been “in love” with Jennifer since childhood, and who cannot bring himself to buy music from a mainstream record shop in a mall.

He can’t even speak in front of Jennifer, even after they become lab partners (is this really such a romantic appointment as the movies suggest?). Until..

So he can talk to her, but when he decides to overcome the dismissals of his sub-culture peers and ask Jennifer out, DISASTER STRIKES.

Don’t worry! Jennifer isn’t going to let him get away so easily. Romance may blossom after all! In an building site. Nice, Jennifer. But Colin’s not so impressed.

Jennifer looks like she’s hoping for some naked time, and Colin’s thinking of backing out because he’s a kid with emotions, you know? I’m not making fun Colin, I think that’s nice.

Sorry, Colin. Jennifer wants your body.

Chapter three: Ahmet from India made me ask “What the fuck is this?”. Is this dialogue straight-up racist, or is it just me?

What’s up with the sentence construction?

Also, is circumcision that common? Really? Uncommon enough that a team of baseball players will taunt their new expert bowler off the team based upon his present foreskin?

Really??

I don’t know if there was a Bollywood scene in the movie, but either way its inclusion here makes me feel uncomfortable. Ahmet is at the club everyone goes to, a band plays, the music is SUPER AWESOME and Ahmet gets Bollywood vision, rainbows and bare-chest-waistcoat and all. Dance routine time.

???

I liked the character that came through from Ahmet. He seemed like a decent kid. It’s interesting to get a view of a character whose international schooling year goes terribly, what culture shock feels like, and it’s true that food from ‘back home’ can be immensely comforting to someone in a place that feels hostile. For example, I started eating courgettes having hated them previously because I was glum in my uni town, and our crop at home had just ripened. It’s good to be reminded how extremely unkindness can effect people - you really never know how much other stuff someone’s dealing with as well. I am just completely baffled by the way that this section is written. The art’s pretty good - it’s just not used entirely for good, I think!

I considered that the odd dialogue might have been an author’s technique to bring home how culturally out of place Ahmet is or seems to the other kids at school. But if it is it is SO badly applied.

This last couple of panels was smart though, I think; Ahmet starts his story by talking about grasping his own American Dream, and ends (doubly) by quoting an American film classic.. about his ‘foreign’ home.

The last story is Chip’s. Chip is the boyfriend in the movie, Needy’s boyfriend. He wants to have sex with her, a lot, she’s intimidated by her body (Chip’s words) and doesn’t want to do it much. He fantasises about Needy, and sometimes about Jennifer too. Eventually Jennifer kills him and it is sad. I thought this was the most straightforward of all the shorts, which is why I didn’t include any pictures.

The four short stories are bookended by Jennifer, at (I assume) the beginning of her rampage and at the end of the film. The caption boxes show her inner monologue.

Start:

End:

And they say it all, really - there’s zero insight into Jennifer in this book. No more than I got from the trailers, anyway, or the exchange between her and Needy:

Needy: You’re killing people!

Jennifer: No, I’m killing boys.

She knows boys want her, and partly because of that she disdains boys. She knows she’s hot, and partly because of that she disdains her body. This book was about the boys, and it causes me slight to middling pause that they went ahead and called it “Jennifer’s Body” on the cover.

Jennifer’s body wasn’t what killed them, and the stories show that. What killed them was Jennifer’s actions. What led up to Jennifer’s actions were the pressures upon her, and upon the boys. and their reactions to these pressures. Oh, and of course, what caused Jennifer to start “killing boys” was the demonic entity which possessed her, after she was murdered in a misogynist ’sacrifice to Satan”. Thanks wikipedia.

It’s true that each of the boys in these stories are sexually attracted to Jennifer and her body, but in no story does the kid in question simply want to fuck her. They think she’s ‘hot’, but they also want what she (with personality, standing, artifice) represents. Jonas wants the comfort and potential of a partnership with her. Colin wants to spend time with her doing things he likes that it turns out she might enjoy too. Ahmet wants someone to be his friend - a bond, maybe even someone he can share love with. Chip is the only one interested in Jennifer’s body, and even he rejects her because he doesn’t want her body. He just responds with boners to the sexual interaction that she flaunts as a possibility. Maybe all this is why they kept the title, I don’t know.

It’s all over pretty fast, anyway. I was left with that feeling oh “oh.. huh” that I also got from the Buffy season six/seven tie-in comics I read years ago. It does feel like a tie-in, I think is the problem, and I think the psychology of the various attractions to Jennifer (and her reactions to them) are set out a bit simplistically. Or maybe I mean straightforwardly? In Colin’s story, particularly, I felt like I was reading the bad sort of soap opera webcomic, where relationship dramas are settled by enormous speech bubbles of self-help book join-the-dots. This was a really bad comparison to draw, because I can;t link to a comic that I think does this sort of thing because that would be terribly rude. I think what I’m saying is that I felt that some of this book were too neatly drawn. And when I say ‘drawn’, I mean ‘written’.

Apart from the baffling aspects of Ahmet’s chapter, I think I recommend this book. It is, at the very least, an interesting artifact: the “but what about us?” response to a feminist slam of internalised misogyny’s effect on teenage sexuality. What about you, boys? You matter too, of course! And that’s why you should be on our side.

Oh, pee ess, the reason that I actually did turn out to write a review with no mention of the character design or wardrobe choices? Because it was apparently no-one’s priority here at all, and I barely noticed what anyone was wearing ever. Bah.

Sorry this got so long.

Ugh ugh ugh, sorry for the multiple edits! >_<

OKIE DOKIE! ‘Review’ numbuh one: NATION X, issue 2.

Nation X is an anthology miniseries, far as I can see. All sorts of things are going down in X-Men proper; Mutants now have an island home and Magneto’s joined them, apparently. I don’t read any X-books regularly anymore (except X-Men Noir. Which is alternate reality stuff, so does not count) so I am in the ignorance boat, and I really don’t feel like doing much deep searching of info right now. The X-Men’s various threads tire me, currently. The whole freakin’ sliding time-scale, mash-up, retcon, blahblahblah MESS of it tires me!

But like I mentioned, for Jubilee (and No-Girl, and Quentin), I’ll take a peek. Here is my peek.

The book has four stories - one for each of the cover characters. Jubilee goes first, and it’s the winner of the collection: She’s writing a letter (to who? Who else?), she’s sort-of mentoring mutant teens, she’s dealing with her loss of mutancy (Dear M-Day, I hate you), she’s finding her head and the balance of the dear past with the painful past with the possibilities of the future with the dearth of direction currently. And all within eight pages. Nice work, CB Cebulski, Jim McCann, Mike Choi and Sonia Oback.

I like the letter ‘voice over’ concept and I like the repeated editing of what she just wrote. I like that she’s a hero to (most of) the current teen X-members. I like that she’s still in touch with Wolverine because Logan is best when he’s profound-emotional, and since he is so unlucky in love I feel he really, truly shines when he’s got a kid on one arm and the mentor-stick in his hand. Jubes + Wolvie 4eva, no??

What I am also honestly impressed with is the character design. Junilee’s wardrobe. That must be Mike Choi, I think? I’m assuming Sonia Oback’s on colours since I know Choi does pencil and the penciller usually comes first in credits. Whoever it is though, it’s great.

You see, Jubilee used to look like this. Well, she’s looked a few different ways, variously enjoyed and meaningful, but the “classic” Jubilee outfit - to me.. I don’t think I’m alone? The choices I’m talking about suggest I’m not - looks (as wikipedia shows us) like this:

By Stuart Immonen

She looked like this for the 90s cartoon (<3) and it bled into the comics. She looked like this because she was a mallrat and it was the early 90s. In this comic, she looks like this:

That’s a pretty fantastic blending of classic look with current trends.

One of my never-ending rants about comics from the Big Two is that a LOT of their illustrators seem to care bugger all about civilian dress modes. Seeing comics published in the last three, four, seven years which feature teenage girls wearing exclusively belly tops and boot-cut jeans makes me go “argh”, only louder and more intensely than “argh” looks”. Seriously, SERIOUSLY GUYS, it is not that hard. Look out the window. Copy what someone’s wearing. It is not 199X, or even 2001.

But Jubilee! Big yellow coat? Check! May I say, by the way, nice purple lining. And what luck that yellow coats are showing up everywhere just now. Google Yellow coat 2010 (I did it for you!) and you’ll get it-girl names and online shops just waiting to offload daffodil cheerfulness into your late-winter-spring. Some pretty stylish bloggers are having a ball with them, too. Coincidence or design? Who knows, but it’s a plus. In celebration, here’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who also happens to be wearing a yellow coat.

The pink shades are updated, the pink shirt is made an underlayer (and the cardigan’s a nice call; I have always been anti-cardi but the sheer number of varied designs made me waver, a little, last month purple Chanel-inspired Laura Ashley example, I am looking at you), the blue shorts become jeans. And, even, low-slung jeans that aren’t there to display a thong to the public! High five, Mr Choi

Pee Ess: one panel of this story made me feel a bit like I might want a cry.

Do you need to hear about the rest of this issue? Quick summary:

The Quentin vs Martha story was fun; I liked the Morrisonny pomp, Quentin was still in his “I’ve got a mad-on at the world” outfit, I liked that he seemed to just be having a bit of a fun go of villainy to pass the time, I liked that Martha got a moment in the sun.

It’s Dennis the Menace (UK version)! It’s 70s punk! It’s teenaged rebellion! It’s vaguely militaristic! It mixes red with purple! It shows yet another character who gains a mohawk out of inner pain! Hurray!

Nothstar’s story was CUTE. I am pro-Kyle. More stories, please!

Gambit’s story made.. not much sense to me, to be honest, and I was saddened by his apparent character backslide. I also think that he looked too young and not quite.. mean enough? Self assured enough? Gambit, you see, was my ideal man from when I started watching the X-Men cartoon at maybe age six until when I met my beloved. I frown at stories which do not involve - I’ll be honest, naturally - he and Rogue being happy, being boisterous, being deep, and then going home and having loads of really excellent sex.

What? I ship that and they deserve it. Marvel fed us the “oh no, ALL PHYSICAL INTIMACY demands skin-to-skin contact!” for years (Rogue’s power meant, until recently, that skin-skin touch = lifetheft) and I did not buy it for a second– in maybe year.. eight or nine we had a sex education seminar where we were taught the possibility of condom-blowjobs, for goodness sake.

I liked this page though, because it reminded me of But I’m A Cheerleader!, and that movie is adorable.

No-Girl and Gambit pages from the official previews. Other pages ’scanned’ by myself. All characters copyright Marvel blah blah?

No outfit photos today, because I’m decked out in my Dad’s old boarding school sleepwear. It’s Sunday! I can laze if I want to!