And lest we forget:
#Merida
Friend-Wife Feminerdity being amazing. AS USUAL
Wall-E had a crush on Merida, and just kept swooning at her. Everyone around = T_T
Feminerdity
Spider Sam is not going to like this
Strange, I don’t remember Merida competing on Toddlers & Tiaras.
Merida’s bow and quiver props from Disneyland!
I didn’t get to see Merida, but I scoped out her stuff!
Merida and Guest on Flickr.
Merida took the little guest to learn some archery :)
WEE LITTLE LAMB
Because of reasons.
Seems legit.
The Brave, or, “I hear Scotland has a real heroin problem”
Ratatoing, or, “Sound effect when Batman throws something over the villain’s shoulder, making the villain think Batman missed, then he laughs at Batman for about three seconds before the thing ricochets back and hits him in the back of the head BECAUSE THAT WAS THE PLAN THE WHOLE TIME ”
The Little Cars, or, “Probably better than Cars 2”
Tangled Up, or, “The Last Hairbender”
What’s Up: Balloon to the Rescue, or, “Hundred bucks says the balloon can talk in this one”
The Frog Prince, or, “My hair looks like a tiara glued to the abdomen of a spider”
These films, or, “What are you doing with your lives, I can hear your souls dying as you watch the animation career you dreamed of die a horrible death as you create images so clumsy your nickname must be Edward Play-Doh-Hands”
Why does everyone keep going on about how Elinor threw Merida’s bow in the fire?
Elinor burned Merida’s bow after Merida slashed the tapestry. Destruction of property isn’t okay, but Elinor wasn’t the only one at fault in that argument.
Also, it wasn’t as if Elinor threw the bow in as a cold and calculated figure of authority. Tempers were high and the destruction of her tapestry, that she made with her own hands and spent hours upon hours creating, that represented the family she loved with all her heart, made her angry. Her daughter destroyed something that she knew meant a lot to her mother. Elinor didn’t ruin the bow because she thought it was the right thing to do, that it was “for the best” and Merida would get over it. She was as out of control and caught up in the fight as Merida was. She’s as stubborn and proud as Merida, and they’re going head-to-head, tempers blazing. The moment Merida runs away and the rage dissipates, there is a moment of harsh realization that she has made a terrible mistake. She’s Merida’s mother, regardless of whatever her daughter has done. She swore to protect and love her daughter no matter what, and she’s done something in the heat of the moment that she knew would hurt the person who just hurt her by slashing through the fabric, literally and symbolically, of the Queen’s family and kingdom. The agony on Elinor’s face as she realizes what she’s done and tries to pull it out of the fire, the tears in her eyes as she pulls the ruined bow from the fireplace are so raw. Elinor is devastated by what she’s done…Merida comes to the realization of her responsiblities to repair the rift later, but Elinor knows immediately what she’s done.
The fact that these two characters who can fight without either one being “good” or “bad” but merely being two human beings with different viewpoints is such a profound thing to see. There is no virtuous girl being locked in a tower by a mean mother. It’s two people making horrible mistakes and having to find a way to atone for what they’ve done. Their choices don’t make them bad people. A woman lashing out in anger is no less a woman. Too often in popular culture, as well as folklore, “good” girls don’t fight but are persecuted. ”Bad” women don’t fight, they attack, motivated not by emotional provocation, but by personal greed or ambition. The idea that women can fight because they aren’t seeing eye-to-eye and make catastrophic mistakes, but ultimately find a way to repair their differences without losing their life or identity is remarkable.
But again, oh, the look on Elinor’s face when she drops to her knees to pull that bow out of the fireplace with her bare hands. She doesn’t just watch it burn in horror. She gasps and lunges for it with her bare hands. She has devoted her life to being the Queen her kingdom needs and the Mother her children need, but at that moment she is simply a scared woman, someone who doesn’t know what to do. I don’t think Elinor had ever felt that out of control in her whole life. Her whole world crumbled beneath her when she looked at the remains of that bow.
We as the audience saw the woman, not the Mother or Queen. A Disney Queen (Pixar, i know, but comparatively you know what I’m talking about here) who was not a villain or the embodiment of womanly knowledge and wisdom. She was as full of flaws and fears as her daughter.
The tapestry represented Elinor’s worldview every bit as much as the bow represented Merida’s.
Dear Cosplay Peeps,
I am loving pictures of Katniss and Merida costumes all over my Tumblr…but as an archer, I humbly wish to remind you lovely people to please please please be careful if you’re using real bows as part of your costume. If you have shot a bow before, then you know. If you’ve never shot before and you’re going to be posing or taking pictures with a real bow, I cannot urge you strongly enough to take an archery class, or at least go into an archery store or your local range and ask someone to demonstrate how to draw your bow. If you’re just yanking back on that string without the right form you can do all sorts of painful things to yourself. I don’t want anyone pulling something or dry-firing while taking awesome pictures or on the convention floor. Trust me, no fun.
Pleeeeease remember that bows, real bows, are the real deal and use muscles. You wouldn’t go into a gym and just start hauling away on weights and resistance machines, and a bow is no different.
Be safe and cosplay on, my friends.
“Hm okay so I’m seeing controversy over Brave?
I haven’t seen the movie yet. I’ve heard that it’s surprisingly good with its feminist stuff. I’ve also heard that there isn’t a single PoC in the entire movie.
Let’s get something straight here. It’s okay to like problematic things. Hell, it’s cool to even love problematic things. But we have to acknowledge these issues.
PoC are not something new. They’ve been around ages, no one can ever hide that they’re not white (okay, unless you get into the mixed race thing, but that is honestly a different story)
Why is it, that the last movie Disney/Pixar had starring a PoC was The Princess and the Frog, and while it was cute, it was more or less underwhelming?
And why did Tangled and Brave have so much more effort put into them?
The answer is easy. They’re white girl stories.
It says a lot of about what people value, when Tiana’s story didn’t receive half this kind of hype or attention.
I’m sure Brave is a good movie. I’m going to see it and I’ll probably really enjoy it. It’s not racist to love Brave, but it is racist to defend the total lack of people of color in this entire movie.
Brave is not a historically accurate movie, and even if it was, there were plenty of PoC around that time. Europe hasn’t been 100% white people at all times throughout history. There’s really no excuse to not have any sort of representation here, and it’s worrying that people are so eager to completely erase non white people in theses fantasy movies.”
Lady, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about right now.
Let’s delve into this, shall we? You claim it’s not racist to love Brave, but it IS racist to defend the total lack of people of color in this entire movie. You’re right. It is totally fuckingly awfully ass-reamingly racist to defend the absence of a black character in a movie set in a country that did not have a black population in the tenth century. Just like it is totally insensitive and kitten-murderingly racist not to have an army of samurai warriors fighting the War of the Roses.
1. Does anyone remember Princess and the Frog being swept under the rug? I don’t. I saw tons of ads and billboards. I saw Tiana in parades and merchandise all over Disneyland. I saw as many blonde, blue-eyed little girls in Tiana dresses as I did any other skin color. Let’s reach a little further back for you and remind you that Mulan was not a “white girl story”. As well as Tangled was received, it was not a box-office smash. Both Princess and the Frog and Tangled are doing amazingly well on DVD and remain a part of the proud Disney Tradition. Promotion had nothing to do with a slow box-office season when Princess opened, and the fact that it ran smack into the monolith that was Avatar did not help at all. Which celebrated the native people of another planet who happened to be fucking BLUE. Blue people stories? Where do you stand on blue people stories?
2. Yes, Disney has in the past been guilty of some horrific racism. You could have named some actual examples of prejudice in days gone by. Song of the South, jive-talking crows in Dumbo, the reason indians are red in Peter Pan, or my favorite, Sunflower from Disney’s Fantasia. Don’t remember Sunflower? That’s because Disney really really really doesn’t want you to remember THIS. Those were not the storytellers writing something as wonderful and beautiful as Princess and the Frog or Mulan or Pocahontas. Look at what Disney considered an appropriate black or Native American character then, and look now. Look at the stories being told. You not enjoying the plot of Princess and the Frog has nothing to do with the quality of writing or animation. Maybe you just didn’t particularly care for a movie that happens to have a black character in the lead role. That doesn’t make anyone a racist.
3. You sure as hell have never been to Scotland. Or seen postcards from Scotland. Or read a history book about Scotland. Europe as we know it didn’t exist for centuries after Brave, if we are accepting the premise that this takes place in the history of Scotland as we know it.
Let me repeat: While the continent of what would become known as Europe in later centuries and form into the countries we know now obviously counted as residents many colors and cultures as any civilizations and societies do, EUROPE AS WE KNOW IT DID NOT EXIST AND SCOTLAND WAS NOT PART OF EUROPE. There was no harmonious traffic of people hopping over from Spain or France. Scotland was Scotland. The characters in Brave LOOK LIKE THEY ARE FROM THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS.
SCOTTISH CHARACTERS THAT LOOK LIKE SCOTTISH PEOPLE ARE NOT RACIST CHOICES. If this was set in tenth century Africa and there was a Scottish girl running around, you’d have all sorts of things to say about it. Would I love to see more stories set in the legends of other cultures of many colors and creeds, you goddamn bet I do. But that doesn’t mean every story has to have a character of every color and every creed in it. Especially if the story in question is about a tight-knit community of Scottish families and clans who have known each other for generations. There’s no room for “Hi, I just moved here, anyone want to introduce me?” This is not that story.
If you make everything into an issue, no one takes the serious issues seriously. And snidely using the phrase “white girl story” when we’re talking about a story set in a specific setting: the culture of ancient Scotland is beyond disrespectful, for someone who seems so concerned about respect for ethnic groups not often represented in fantasy. It’s not a generic caucasian kingdom, it’s a love story for a place and time with as much significance as any other culture. There aren’t a million stories about the Scottish Highlands, this isn’t a European movie, there are no stories in mainstream fiction—especially aimed at young people—about the world that I can think of celebrating female Scottish identity. None. Again, we’re not even talking about a generic Christian European kingdom. We’re talking about the general public being exposed to a culture that in no way reflects the Judeo-Christian worldview of Western Civilization. Do you have any idea how radical and awesome that is?! No, you don’t. Because you’ve divided fiction, and the world, into categories based on the percentage of white people in them. By dismissing Highland culture as a “white people story” you are making the same horrible and insensitive mistake any person of any ethnic background can make. You have made a lump judgement about the unique and wonderful nature of an entire culture based on the color of their skin. This is what happens when stories set in Japan or China are lumped together under the heading of “oriental”. This is what happens when people assume Pacific Islanders are Mexicans are Puerto Rican. Are those brown people stories? If I were a white person complaining about the use of black people in a film set in Spain in the 15th century because everything has to have a black person in it now, I’d be showing the same blatant and infuriating generalization of history, that color dictates culture and validity.
So maybe you should spend a little less time making duckfaces in your Tumblr profile picture and more time learning what the fuck you’re talking about if you want to critique Pixar’s marvelous telling of a culture that is much more than the color of the characters’ skin. I wonder if you even watched the movie, what with all the time you spent prepping yourself for this Tumblr thesis on equality in the media.
Oh, wait, my mistake. You didn’t miss anything. Because you haven’t even goddamn seen it yet.
GO BUY MORE LOLLIPOPS, LOLLIPOP DUCKFACE. IT WILL KEEP YOU AWAY FROM TUMBLR AND SPARE US ALL.
*Sigh* Honestly, all I wanted was more Merida gifs.
