Not To Be Boring But I Like When Evil Characters…. Well Not Become “redeemed,” More Like They Become

i think a society failed its youth if they feel old (derogatory) at 20

Memories of strangers of brothers

books similar to The Expanse

im in a bit of reading slump at the moment and i believe my current rewatch of the expanse tv show may be a cause of this. it’s so good! and i can’t find books to scratch that same space opera itch! so when i came across an Esquire article about the expanse and its impact on the genre, i pulled out everything that was being name checked, and figured i might as well share them!

Standalones to dip into

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Phoenix Extravagant or Beyond The Dragon’s Gate by Yoon Ha Lee

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

The Prey Of Gods or The Hero Of Numbani by Nicky Drayden

Redshirts by John Scalzi

Series for the long haul

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

Wayfarers by Becky Chambers

Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie

The Machineries Of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee

Teixcalaan by Arkady Martine

Bel Dame Apocrypha by Kameron Hurley

Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

Tremontaine by (among many others) Karen Lord

Axiom by Tim Pratt

Old Man’s War or The Interdependency by John Scalzi

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

The Memory War by Karen Osborne

The Bloodright Trilogy by Emily Skrutskie

Co-authored works

The Expanse by James S.A. Corey, d’uh

The Vela by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Rivers Solomon, and S.L. Huang

The Aurora Cycle by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Books semi-randomly pulled from GR’s suggestions

Seven Devils by Laura Lam & Elizabeth May

The Black God’s Drum or Fatma El-Sha’arawi by P. Djeli Clark

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

An Unkindness Of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

Better Worlds, edited by Laura Hudson

The Indranan War by K.B. Wagers

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Paradox by Rachel Bach

So I've seen a few too many people on twitter talking about The Kiss Scene from the new Scott Pilgrim anime. People saying it's fetishistic and indulgent, people calling it male gazey, etc. And while the kiss itself is certainly a bit exaggerated, I felt like writing a bit about why I disagree, and why context is important, like it always is. But it basically turned into an extended analysis on the metatextual treatment of Roxie Richter. So bear with me. It's a long post.

What really matters about this scene is not the kiss itself, but what precedes it. Not even just the fight scene just before it, but what precedes the whole anime series, really. And that's the Scott Pilgrim comic book, and the live action movie. Because in both, Roxie is a punchline.

She's a joke. Her character starts and ends with "one of the exes is actually a girl, I bet you didn't expect that." Jokes are made about Ramona's latent bisexuality, the movie especially treating it as funny and absurd, and her validity as a romantic interest is entirely written off by Ramona as being "just a phase." There's a fight scene, she's defeated by a man giving her an orgasm which implicitly calls her sexuality into question (come on), and the movie just moves on. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

The comic fares a little better. It never veers into outright homophobia like the movie does, and while the line about Ramona having gone through a phase remains, Roxie actually gets one over on Scott when Ramona briefly gets back with Roxie. But Roxie is still only barely a character. Like all the other evil exes, she's just a stepping stone towards the male protagonist's development. She barely even gets any screentime before she's defeated by Scott's "power of love." But Roxie stands out, since she's the only villain who is queer, or at least had been confirmed queer at that point (hi Todd). In a series that champions multiple gay men in the supporting cast, the single undeniable lesbian in the story is a villain. She's labeled as evil, made fun of, pushed aside in favor of the men, and then discarded. Her screentime was never about her, or her feelings for Ramona. It was about the straight, male protagonist needing to overcome her. And that was Roxie Richter. An unfortunate victim of the 2010s.

Fast forward to current year, and the new anime series is announced. Everybody sits down to watch the new series expecting another retelling of the same story, and.... hang on, that straight male protagonist I mentioned just died in the first episode. And now it's humanizing the villains from the original story. And there's Roxie, introduced alongside the other evil exes in the second episode, and she's being played entirely straight, without a punchline in sight. No jokes are made about her gender, no questions are made of her validity as one of Ramona's romantic interests. The narrative considers her important. In one episode, she already gets more respect than she did in either of the previous iterations of Scott Pilgrim. And this isn't even her focus episode yet... which happens to be the very next one.

The anime series goes to great lengths to flesh out the original story's villains and to have Ramona reconcile with them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Roxie gets to go first. While Matthew Patel gets his development in episode 2, Roxie is the first to directly confront Ramona, now our main protagonist. This is notable too because it's the only time the exes are encountered out of order. Roxie is supposed to be number 4, but she's first in line, and later on you realize that she's the only one who's out of sequence. She's the one who sets the precedent for the villains being redeemed. She's the most important character for Ramona to reconcile with.

What follows is probably the most extensive, elaborate 1 on 1 fight scene in the whole show. Roxie fights like a wounded animal, her motions are desperate and pained. Ramona can only barely fight back against her onslaught. Different set-pieces fly by at breakneck speed as Roxie relentlessly lays her feelings at Ramona's feet through her attacks and her distraught shouts. And unlike the comic or the movie, Ramona acknowledges them, and sincerely apologizes. And the two end up just laying there, exhausted, reminiscing about when they were together.

Only after this, after all of this, does the kiss scene happen. Roxie has been vindicated, she has reconciled with the person who hurt her, the narrative has deemed that her anger is justified and has redeemed her character. And she gets her victory lap by making the nearest other hot girl question her heterosexuality, sharing a sloppy kiss with her as the music triumphantly crescendos.

It's... a little self-congratulatory, honestly. But it's good. It's redemption for a character who had been mistreated for over a decade. And she punctuates the moment by being very, very gay where everyone can see it, no men anywhere in sight. Because this is her moment. And then she leaves the plot, on her own accord this time, while humming the hampster dance. What a legend. How could anything be wrong with this.

Definitely one of the Top Images of all time I gotta say

people are like "if you put crabs in a bucket they can't escape because they keep pulling each other back in, this is called crab bucket mentality and describes why people don't help each other" and never acknowledge that crabs do not naturally occur in buckets, a human with more power had to put them there

x

every time i listen to “you’re a mean one mr. grinch” i can’t help but sit there and think “what did the grinch do to hurt you?” because dude just stands there for 2 minutes and 58 seconds and drags the grinch into the dirt