I had no plans to write about the depiction of Iris West on The Flash because I thought my grumbling tweets were enough and that other people who were more moved by it could take it on. I didn’t think I needed to be the person because to be honest, the fun of the show…
Shoujo Stereotypes?! Nakamura’s Skip Beat! and Subversion
(Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for Skip Beat!) Shoujo manga—or manga produced for girls—is often dismissed by casual readers as manga brimming with stereotypes. In fact, oftentimes shoujo stories are not taken seriously solely because they are aimed at young girls. Despite the popularity of serious manga like Fruits Basket and Boys Over Flowers,…
Age Appropriate Toys: Abuse, Recovery, and Playing Barbies as a Teen
Welcome to WWAC Game Section’s summer Barbie series. These months are often the time that children are free from commitments, away from their friends, and ready to let their imaginations take over. For many of us that meant playing with Barbies, and over the next few weeks you’ll see the many different ways Barbies affected…
Sequential Sartorial: Fetishists, Unlike Emma Frost, Understand Occasion
Welcome to the X-Men, where second-skin garmentry is commonplace—hope you survive the experience! Amongst the X-Men is a villain-turned-teacher (turned heroine, though never nice); her name is Emma Frost. For most of her history, she’s worn all-white, though recently she turned to all-black. But just as often as she’s been monochromatic, she’s been clothed in outfits…
Surface Tensions: Character vs. Creator Diversity
Diversity—it’s a heavy discussion that’s happening all across the world of comics, whether being decried as “change for change’s sake” or being touted as a fundamental aspect of storytelling by creators like Al Ewing. Even Dan Didio has acknowledged that comics haven’t been great for representation and that the audience for more diverse characters is…
The Science of Orphan Black: Fanciful, Fearsome, Educational
Sometimes, little-known cult television shows are secret, sparkly gems that blow minds. For me, that show is Orphan Black. Although I wasn’t expecting much from yet another science fiction series, I was pleasantly surprised at how it delved into a thought-provoking story of relatable characters and real emotions from genetically engineered humans in previously unexplored…
Manga to Movies: Why Eastern Comic Film Adaptations Thrive and Western Don’t
Marvel and DC have always been large moving forces for comics, and their recent forays into expanding movie universes has helped put comics in the popular culture limelight in a huge way. While Hollywood filmmakers have been “loosely basing” movies from comics on the sly for years, the open appreciation of comics and comic film…
Dissecting the Asian Drama: Societal Reflections in Gender Perception and Performance (Part 2)
The male characters’ reluctance to accept their attraction to their female leads plays into another concept that Judith Butler explores in her piece “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” She talks of the strict repercussions Western cultures, especially in the United States, force onto people who stray outside their…
Dissecting the Asian Drama: Gender Boundaries, Perception, and Performance in You’re Beautiful and Hana Kimi (Part 1)
Should you ever find yourself perusing Netflix, there’s an excellent chance that you’ll come across “foreign” TV shows. They’re usually shorter than the average American TV series—ten or eleven episodes in length and rarely more than one season long—and more often than not, they are romantic comedies with Asian characters and settings.
The White Privilege, White Audacity, and White Priorities of STRANGE FRUIT #1
Strange Fruit #1 J.G. Jones and Mark Waid (Authors), J.G. Jones (Artist), Deron Bennett (Letterer) BOOM! Studios (July 2015) (This review contains some spoilers) Writing about Strange Fruit #1 has been a long time coming. It has been on my very-reluctant radar since it was announced on February 20th — Dwayne McDuffie’s birthday. For readers who are unaware, Dwayne McDuffie…
The Pregnant Belly: A Narrative Prison for Mother and Child
I’ve been pregnant twice. I won’t say I loved being pregnant. There were definitely down sides to the reproductive process, though compared to some my pregnancies were relatively easy. I do not say that to brag. Pregnancy is a frightening thing. A dangerous thing. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 800 women die daily from pregnancy or…
The Lord of the Rings, The Magicians, and Finally Learning How Not to Nerd-shame
I’ve always had a lot of opinions about The Lord of the Rings and all of them were always correct. Between the ages of 10 to 15, The Lord of the Rings books were my books. I read them every summer—thanks to my less-than-great school system with no summer reading requirements—and thought they were the…