personal Category
Dear Marvel, Diversity isn’t the Problem
Today, there was an interview where David Gabriel said that Marvel’s diverse titles had failed and they had feedback from shops that wasn’t what fans wanted. Which is… weird, to say the least. Because it isn’t anything like what I’ve heard from fans from all spectrum. Fans haven’t been happy with Marvel’s books – but it certainly wasn’t the introduction of characters like Ms Marvel, Riri Williams, or Jane Foster as Thor. What fans were weary of was their favorite characters being pushed aside or misused – see Nick Spencer’s ongoing ‘let’s make beloved characters Hydra’ storyline. Or characters being…
Longing for the Sea.
Sometimes I dream of the sea. I can taste the sea air, feel the water on my body and the water fill me with comfort as I dive below. I’m never human in these dreams, but a creature of salt and spray. They’re wonderful dreams. I actually wake up rested, which is unusual. My mantra these days is that I’m tired of being tired. I’ve long been obsessed with the sea. As a young child, I thought it was because I was a child of the desert – and something I just was obsessed with when I moved to California.…
Congrats Riverdale, Now Do Your Homework
So Riverdale was renewed for a second season. And as I’ve been having some lovely weekly twitter chats with fellow viewers, where we’ve been discussing the shortcomings of this current season. So I thought that maybe I could offer a few suggestions for what you should be thinking about for season 2? 1. Make Jughead Jones aroace. The fact that you didn’t from the very start was more than just disappointing, it was a huge misstep. I know, it’s an AU, but somehow Veronica is still rich, Betty an overchiever, and Archie still plays football and is interested in music.…
Riverdale: the Grundy problem
I’ve been watching Riverdale for the last four episodes. I’ve started and stopped so many posts about this show it isn’t funny. About the apparent erasure of Jughead’s identity of being asexual and aromantic (as the comics have spelled out) – as Cole Sprouse spilled in an interview before the show started airing. About how Kevin Keller’s written as though we’re still in the days of Will & Grace. All snark, sex, and stereotypes – but no real substance. About the continued queerbaiting with Betty & Veronica in promos, the awkward references that are sometimes out of date by the…
It’s 2017, and I’m falling apart.
The irony is, it isn’t even the political stuff. My name is Whitney Drake, and I’m probably in the worst shape I’ve been in the last 4 years. I apologize to anyone who liked hearing about my progress, because there’s a reason I haven’t written about living with Crohns – 2016 was a year of frustration and that’s hard to write about. But I’m getting ahead of myself. If you’re new to my blog, I have Crohns disease. It’s an IBD, an inflammatory bowel disease – which are a family of diseases where your body attacks part of your digestive…
To the Young Women of the US, why we march.
I’m going to do something shocking. And repost something I wrote on another social network. I actually posted this on Tumblr and on FB before I put it here. It was prompted by seeing several young women (all 23 and under) sharing right wing memes insulting women who took part in the Womens March(es). It breaks my heart to see young women, working 40+ hour work weeks who claim they have the exact same rights as men. Who tear down women who found a way to march (often at economic hardship), just to seem superior. I don’t care if you…
Support women. In the US and Worldwide
There’s a copy/paste going around Facebook, sharing a woman’s feelings about why she didn’t march in the Women’s Marches yesterday. Essentially it boiled down to “why would I whine about what I have here, when women around the world have so many fewer rights.” Here’s why it bothers me. It’s an all too common reply when people want to make social change, to bring up conditions in the rest of the world. The fact is, that we don’t live elsewhere. We live here. And I do not mean to undermine the conditions that exist in other countries (in fact, I…
REVIEW: Hidden Figures (no spoilers)
Yesterday, I went to see Hidden Figures with one of my best friends. We had lunch, talked about writing (dear God, did I ramble and dominate the conversation – what the hell) and then we saw the movie. This review contains no spoilers beyond what you might have seen in commercials. Hidden Figures is a movie based on the book of the same name about the true story of three African-American women who worked at NASA in the early 60s, at the height of the space race. This was before the advent of computers, so they had teams of women…
The Galaxy is dimmer tonight.
I’d sort of prepared myself for losing Carrie Fisher, after the news broke about her heart attack. But it still didn’t lessen the shock or the sadness when I learned of her death today. It’s easy to say that someone’s just an actor. Just an artist. And I’ve seen plenty of nay-sayers quick to criticize people mourning. The reason that actors/artists/creators reach us is because they made an impression on us. Either as human beings, or because something they created reached us. Carrie Fisher was so much more than Princess Leia, though that will doubtlessly be her best known legacy.…
Review: MOANA
This last weekend, I was fortunate enough to get to see Disney’s latest animated movie Moana – which is out in theaters today! I wish I could have had this review up earlier – but my basic reaction to the movie was !!!!! And I’m not sure that an entire post of !!!! would have been interpreted in the way I wanted it to. Moana is the story of the young woman who is the daughter of the head of the village, who finds herself drawn to the ocean instead of the life that’s been laid out for her. She…
