Wow, it's already 2 years and a month since I grabbed that volume and started my Sandman quest.
It flies by!
Anyway!
From here...
Favorite characters?
Thessaly the witch, and Matthew the raven.
I'd read a whole spinoff series about Thessaly.
Make that happen, Gaiman.
It turns out there are a couple Thessaly miniseries, but they're not by Gaiman, and not that great.
They're like hard PG-13 Scooby-Doo with the hard R rated edges of the character sanded down.
Careful what you wish for, I guess.
Continuing from the same link,...
Favorite arcs?
"A Game Of You" and "Fables & Reflections".
People are divided on "A Game Of you" because they're divided on Wanda, the trans character.
I think her depiction is pro-trans. I think Gaiman's intent was pro-trans.
I actually wept at the end. I love that book. Your mileage may vary.
Is it perfect? No, but for the goddamned 80's, it's like a fucking Starfleet officer beamed down.
A Discovery era Starfleet officer.
Okay, so here's where both the spoilers and the TERF stuff come in.
Thessaly is a witch, and a badass old-fashioned ancient type witch who does human sacrifices, and makes spells with the lopped off body parts, and yanked out organs.
She does a gory spell with a baddies bits, and opens a portal.
She tells Wanda she can't go because she's not a true chromosomal woman.
Total TERF asshole move.
Thessaly was TERF-y before the term was coined, but it was a sentiment out there even in the 80's/90's when Sandman was written.
But Gaiman doesn't side with Thessaly.
Wanda later dies, and her spirit when claimed by Death is a cis woman, and waves goodbye to Barbie in a dream.
Death outranks a witch; Wanda is a woman.
Thessaly is neat to watch, but she's not a hero.
She's anti-hero bordering really close on villain.
You could just go ahead and go with villain if you like.
Like Harley Quinn, or Catwoman.
Hmm, more like Hannibal Lecter when he decides to help the good guys.
Thessaly and Hannibal think they're good, but...y'know...not so much.
In fact, in later chapters, Thessaly's inept magical meddling causes as much damage to the universe as any deliberate supervillain.
Think Sephiroth in "Final Fantasy 7" level damage.
So, she's not just a TERF, she's a jinx on steroids.
I wanted to bring all this up in the omnibus reviews, but there was too much to cover, and I didn't want to spoil. But...I didn't want anyone to think I was siding with a fictional TERF either.
No, the TERF-y-ness isn't cool.
But Thessaly's still a fascinating villain to watch, like Hannibal, or Joker, or Darth Vader.
Or, Geillis Duncan in Outlander, come to think of it.
Yeah, that's a more direct analogy.
If only J.K. Rowling and her TERF-kateers were at all interesting instead of just being a fucking drag, and a fucking bummer, and fucking gross.
Real bad people aren't at all fun.
If only Wanda's ghost could cross over into the Potterverse to clear up some bullshit.
There's a fanfic for someone to write.
I find it heartening though, that most Potter fans, and 99% of the movie series cast are anti-TERF, and wash their hands of JK's evil petty hi-jinks.
I don't know any pro-TERF Potter-ites, or know anyone who knows them.
They must exist, but I tend to think it's mostly if not all CHUDs who only started reading the Potter books once they found a cynical political ally in JK.
Well, they can't find a chopper landing pad in Sandman.
So, there's that.
There's bad rumors about Gaiman, and I hope they're not true.
I'll do another whole post just about that someday.
But, that's the Thessaly stuff addressed finally.
Kept meaning to do it, but I'd always think of it away from a computer, or piece of paper, and it would fly out of my head.
Now it's done.
3 comments:
Did you actually play "Final Fantasy VII" back in the day? They're about to complete that three part remake and it's not actually selling terribly well!
I recently replayed the original FF7 all the way through on my old PS1 for the first time in at least 20 years.
It's a five-star.....place in the mind.
I mean, the joy I got was about remembering how it all went from beginning to end, of revisiting all of these places. I mean, obviously the story can't really move me to tears at age 42. But I can enjoy the journey while it lasts.
I played it once in high school, once in college, and it's been ages.
Now that I'm in my 40s, playing it for the third time, though....there's one big heaping steaming problem with the whole thing.
For all the stunning amount of work that went into the whole thing...it's not a very challenging game. I was almost never anywhere near getting killed. The game gives you a zillion magic spells and materia and call monsters and Limit Breaks and weapons and....and...you barely need them.
I really felt like I could just hit "attack" over and over and over again and just get through the whole game that way.
I can see this plain as day now that I'm old enough. I would never have admitted this back in high school or college (in fact I got into an ugly fight with Josh Martin for saying precisely this.) And worse, I looked up some old magazines and reviews from 1997 that I still have in my collection and sure enough, as starry-eyed as everyone was at what an epic FF7 is...people were still admitting it was too easy.
So yeah, I think I'm going to be moving poor ol' FF7 down a ways on my list.
Or maybe you never played it and don't give a shit, but you did mention Sephiroth.
No, sadly, I never actually got around to playing it. I never had a PC that could run it, and by the time I had a PS2, it had kind of gone by. Then when it came back around, my PS2 had died. But, I saw pre-YT footage of the Sephiroth fight, and I own the FF7 cg-anime movie, so I know the broad strokes, and I know what a cultural touchstone the game is. Enough so I know people will tend to get it as a reference.
There have been loads of things pertaining to the FF7 story to keep the flame of that going....not just that CG Anime movie, but several other spinoffs as well. I don't see them doing that with any of the other FFs--it's obvious that the seventh one is to this day regarded as the big cultural monster crown jewel.
Seeing some of the more famous scenes from the remade with zillion dollar CGI and super professional voice actors was weird--did you know that right after Sephiroth kills Aerith in this one she immediately comes back as a ghost and helps you fight the next boss? Good lord! Fans are pissed.
And anyway, I could have sworn they were already talking about remaking FF7 in, like, 2000.
Did you know the original PS1 FF7 was actually *rushed*? First it was going to be an SNES game (in spite of how bad Square's relationship with Nintendo was in the first place and how obviously an SNES cart was never going to be able to hold it) then it was an N64 game (obviously THAT wasn't going to work) then PS1, they started making it in 1995. That explains why it isn't harder.
Replaying "GoldenEye 007" now, for the first time in damn near a quarter century! I'd forgotten how hard some of this damn game was! It's a killer!
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