(Note: A review I wrote for my now ex-job back in August. I was never paid for this review, my contract having run out. If this seems shorter than my usual stuff, that’s because it is. These were just meant to be short little reviews.)
As August skims away into September, so does the summer inevitably fade as well. With vacations ending and people heading back to school, perhaps it would make sense to look at a recently released graphic novel about school. And with a social climate not so conducive to the rights of transgender people, Crystal Frasier’s Cheer Up! is a tale about gender identity, sexuality, and how cisgender people can look at trans people.
Annie is the smartest girl in the senior class at her high school, with no one coming close to her grades. The only problem is her anti-social nature, brought upon by years of bullying, which has caused physical altercations between her and her classmates. At the request of her mother and the principal, Annie decides to try out for the cheerleading team where she meets a former friend named Bebe. The latter is a transgirl, people pleasing to the point of harming her own emotional needs, all in order to keep her parents appeased to her transition. Their story is one of bonding, learning how Annie is just very socially anxious and Bebe is forced to be one of the “good ones” or fear retribution for being a “bad” trans person. And they wonder if their relationship is strong enough to withstand Bebe’s fears.
Cheer Up! has its roots in the bonds of different relationships: familial, platonic, and romantic. In addition, it also focuses on the attention being trans can push onto a person who simply wants to exist. Bebe would love nothing more than to just be treated like another girl, but rather the attention not only from her classmates but the state at large others her. This othering results in Bebe becoming extremely uncomfortable and forcibly becoming a people pleaser. Moments where she does get angry results in mockery of her putting on her “man voice” or being constantly sexually harassed by a popular male student. It’s only through changing relationships that she is able to finally begin changing for herself. Annie, a lesbian, seeing her romantically as a woman to her parents slowly accepting their daughter to the rest of the cheerleaders realizing they were objectifying her to be known as the team with a trans cheer captain.
Authors similar to Crystal Fraiser include Lilah Sturges and Kay O’Neil, prolific trans authors for the medium. One of Sturges’ most recent releases, Girl Haven, also has heavy focus on trans themes and those of gender identity. Extremely important in a time where trans people seem to be constantly under attack. O’Neil has written plenty of queer related graphic novels, most notably the Dragon Tea Society trilogy and Princess Princess Ever After, a seemingly common fairy tale that turns tropes on their heads.
The book is relatively short compared to contemporary graphic novels, but that just means that it accomplishes what it needs to without going on for too long. The main relationship is between Annie and Bebe, and it is very believable to see them slowly reconnect, as if they had never lost their friendship in the first place. The way that Bebe’s cis classmates react to her vary, in ways that do entirely make sense to trans people. Not everyone is targeting her, but the attention she has received magnifies her fears of everyone waiting to harass her. Her fellow cheerleaders are seemingly supportive, but also face their own inner biases against Bebe, to the point of purposefully leaving her out from non-school activities they all participate in. And doin this toward a girl who does nothing but attempting to placate them, solely so she can feel like it is okay for her to exist as a human.
I highly recommend this story for anyone, genuinely. The importance of humanizing trans people, specifically transwomen, has never been more critical than now. One may believe they are being an ally, but inherent biases can reflect how they may actually act to a trans person. Even Annie, who lovingly supports Bebe, steps over the line in her attempts to defend Bebe from anti-trans rhetoric. It does go to lengths to show how this negatively impacts trans people, who at the end of the day are people and worthy of respect from others with no caveats.
While short, the tale of Annie and Bebe is the perfect way to start off the school year and the fall. After all, they are commencing their own senior year at the beginning of the story. Even outside of its own romance, there is much more to grasp from it than just the base story. Another excellent release from Oni Press, that seems to always knock it out with what they publish.
Originally Published on Reddit. (December 26, 2019)
So I’ve been thinking about what I want to kind of write about since I wanna get more involved with Life is Strange again, and kind of dissect my own critical thoughts about the main casts to these games. I love the characters to these games, for the most part. Regardless of whether or not I hate said character as a person, I can appreciate and like the character as they are presented. So using Nathan as an example, I think he’s not a good person in the slightest, but I think he’s a very good character for the antagonistic role he plays. One of the biggest things to note before I continue is that good character does not equal good person. So I decided I’d test the field out with a character analysis of Max Caulfield, our photo taking main protagonist. If you enjoy this, let me know, and I hope we can get a discussion going about our own thoughts and experiences with these characters. I am trying to move away from some of my more abrasive approaches, so I’m going to try to do this with more tact going forward. So I just hope we don’t ever devolve into toxic angry arguments, because going forward that’s the last thing I want. You don’t have to agree with my thoughts here, but I ask that we stay respectful in our discussion of these characters, because the characters of the world of Life is Strange is very much what makes it real. Now, let’s begin.
I’ll start with this. Max is one of my favorite playable characters in a video game in the past decade or so. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Max herself is incredibly relatable to us. A lot of video games present us with player characters that it can be hard to relate to. Her goal is something very grounded, something we don’t see a lot in video games. Sure the game’s main mechanic is time travel and being able to rewind time at will, but that is definitely besides the point. Even in games that I do love, such as Bioshock Infinite, the main protagonist is very well written and has his own character but he’s also very not relatable simply based on things such as the time period he’s in or the overall situation. Now other games, like Oxenfree or Firewatch, similarly have relatable protagonists but Life is Strange was different in the fact that it came first. Now I know games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead has Lee and Clem, but even they are a bit harder to relate to simply based on the fact of their characters.
Max is an eighteen year old girl in high school. She has telltale signs of severe anxiety, loves photography, and wants to be able to share her art with the world despite the fact her anxiety and self-doubt prevent her from believing she has any talent in the face of her peers. I think that’s something a lot of us can relate to, and is important when crafting a very character driven story in a mostly vanilla modern world. There aren’t zombies or ghosts or anything like that. If we ignore the time travel aspect of the game, Max is someone a lot of young people can relate to, especially of us who are more into making art. Max has talent. We all see that. Jefferson constantly compliments her photos, while someone like Victoria often belittles and berates Max out of jealousy for her talent in framing her photos. Not to mention, Max manages to do this with one shot. She doesn’t have an incredibly expensive digital camera that you can take many photographic attempts with. She doesn’t have a high quality lens or the most expensive gear. She has talent. She practices with her shots and expertly frames what she wants. But because of her anxiety and her own doubts about her talents due to the constantly belittling she faces by her photographic peers, she doesn’t actually believe in herself in the slightest.
We can tell Max has problems immediately starting the game off. She falls asleep in class and has trouble with actual schoolwork, such as knowing certain things right off the top of her head. She has the skill, but has problems with actual learning. Whether this be due to a learning or attention disability, we don’t know. We do know, however, due to her file in episode three that she is on a specialized school schedule designed to maximize what she’s able to learn. Giving Max these traits makes her relatable to a much wider audience and makes her deeply human and deeply sympathetic. We can identify with Max, regardless of if we have these certain problems or not. A player does not need to relate to every single part of a character for that character to be relatable, and that’s something important to note.
Max is mostly seen as an introvert. A lot of media tend to portray introversion as something to be “healed” and to make someone extroverted. Something a lot of people tell Max is that she needs to get out and do more, like go partying and stuff. But for Max, this is something she isn’t interested in. She would rather be out in the quiet, taking photographs because it’s something she truly enjoys and something that makes her happy. And if something like that makes her happy, we come to understand our own introversion is not wrong in the slightest.
One thing I love is Max’s relationships to other characters. As a person with anxiety, she finds it very hard to interact with people of her own volition. We see in her texts she only really replies to her parents and Kate. It’s easy for her to communicate with her parents as they are people she’s known her entire life. With Kate, it has to do with Max’s own compassion and relation to Kate. She can see herself in Kate, as Kate’s depression and anxieties are worsened by the bullying she receives. She relates to Kate and tries to be a really good friend… good friend, huh?
The game does not portray Max as a perfect human being. Max’s greatest regret was not keeping in touch with her best friend, Chloe Price, after Chloe’s father died. The most important relationship in Life is Strange is the relationship between Max and Chloe to the point where the game’s main theme and ending credits song is the scored piece, Max and Chloe. Max feels guilt over this. Even though it was not her fault to leave, it is her fault for not keeping in touch with Chloe with Chloe needed her the most. If there is a main antagonist to this game, it is mental illness. It is a driving force that causes all of the problems for these characters. Max’s anxiety over the death of William kept her from keeping in touch. What could Max say? What could Max possibly do to help? She was so far away from Chloe now… Max felt guilt over leaving Chloe, even though that was not her fault. This is compounded by Max’s guilt over not keeping in touch. William’s death affected Max just as it did Chloe. As a result, Max became very shut-in over this time period. And by the time Max might have recovered to talk again to Chloe, she couldn’t. What could she possibly say? Too much time had passed. Chloe surely hated her. Despite this, Max carried that picture of her and Chloe dressed as pirates around everywhere. No matter what, Chloe was an extremely important part of her. Max is so broken up about this and she still can’t bring herself to see Chloe again because of how much time passes.
Max’s rewind ability is definitely 100% related to the fact that Max wishes she could go back and have a do-over. She wants to go back and be there for Chloe, but she can’t. But then fate hits. She sees a random girl get shot in the bathroom, and she suddenly wakes up back in the classroom from like ten minutes prior. This girl, brought by fate, was Chloe. Something she doesn’t realize as she gets assaulted by Nathan in the parking lot, and then there she is. Saved by Chloe. Just like how she unknowingly just saved Chloe in the bathroom. Max and Chloe’s relationship seems very much like just a normal friendship. But seeing how fate plays a role in this is important to how we see Max and Chloe. Max and Chloe’s relationship goes beyond friendship, beyond romance, beyond anything we can really think about. They are, as I see it, literal soulmates. And this is an integral part in Max’s development as a character.
All of Max’s development as a character is kickstarted by reuniting with Chloe. This is something neither of them would have initiated on their own. Chloe from her own perception of Max to Max’s anxiety preventing her from doing it. Max would have remained a very introverted self hating girl who wouldn’t be able to do anything with her photography, but it is through this fated meeting with Chloe that she begins to change for both of them. Their relationship with each other is integral to them healing and moving forward. Here I’ll mostly focus on Max’s side of growth and in my next post, if I make it, will be about Chloe. Despite being gone for five years, and despite Chloe’s constant self-rants about how she hates and feel betrayed by Max, here they are. Max and Chloe simply together in her bedroom as if no time had passed. Chloe has some resentment still there, but we can see her brighten up when she sees Max. And similarly, Max does as well. They are, despite the time has passed, are still Max and Chloe. They are completely comfortable around each other. The choices you, the player, are able to make for Max show this. When David shows up and begins to berate Chloe, Max can come out immediately to defend and take the blame for her. If you don’t do this, Chloe gets physically abused by David.
When Max and Chloe are at the lighthouse, Chloe melts into the sunlight. Beauty and love are often symbolized in this game by the golden hour. The first time we get a good silent look at Chloe, it’s Max looking at Chloe in her truck as the setting sun shines through onto Chloe. A mark of beauty that Max immediately attempts to capture with her camera, before realizing it broke. As I said, Chloe melts into the sunlight at the lighthouse. Even though five years have gone by, she tells Max that she was drugged and kidnapped by Nathan. She tells Max that she feels as though David is spying on her, which he is with his camera. All of these deep personal thoughts just spill out of her to Max, because she feels so comfortable around her. And Max too as well. Max has a tornado nightmare sequence and collapses, while Chloe worries for her. Max immediately tells her she can rewind time and that it was through this that she was able to save Chloe from Nathan in the bathroom. The snowfall in October convinces Chloe that Max is telling the truth.
Every episode going forward continues this trend. It’s hard not to just critically analyze the entire game, because the entire game is based around this idea of Max and Chloe’s relationship and how that relationship grows and affects their own personal changes in the way they act. It’s hard not to just go through every episode scene-by-scene which is something I wouldn’t mind doing. I could say more, but I won’t simply based on the fact that I don’t know if I should continue this in an episode-by-episode analysis of the game, at least in the scope that Max and Chloe are soulmates and they are the reason for each other’s positive growths.
(Note: There is a bit of a trigger warning below in references to self harm and other things related to mental illness)
It’s 2020. I finally got around to finishing up Celeste. I bought the game when it released so long ago, but never finished it. I love video games. I love challenging ones. But I also get annoyed very easily. So one day I got stuck and I stopped playing Celeste. And… that was it. For two years I just didn’t touch the game. It was fun. But the message of the parts I did play? They hit me hard. The messages of anxiety and depression. Self deprecating thoughts. I only played through chapter three, Mr. Oshio’s hotel. But I still got a lot out of Mr. Oshio and Madeline’s conversation throughout the chapter. And the way Badeline appears at the end? It stung. I never finished Celeste.
2019 rolled around and the Celeste Farewell update happened. Again, I didn’t play it. I just knew it came out. The end of 2019 comes. Depression is hitting harder than ever. I’m having problems again. In one of my depressive episodes, I bought Celeste’s collector edition off of Fangamer. I didn’t need it. I had it for PS4 already. But I bought it anyway. I dunno why. I just… I wanted it. I saw the cassette soundtrack and the strawberry plush and… I decided I needed it. The game comes. My favorite person buys me Celeste for the PC for the holidays. I decide to go back and play it again. It’s hard… it’s frustrating. But the message? Maybe I needed it now more than ever. Something though… rang in my head when I got to chapter two and Madeline meets Badeline for the first time. It’s her. It’s Badeline. She says something that… gets to me immediately. She said Madeline will never be a real mountain climber. Madeline says why can’t she be? Badeline replies it’s easier to just give up. Something about that, to me? It rang true. Then when Theo takes the selfie with Madeline, she looks… tired. Uncomfortable with a photo being taken of her without her full consent. Continuing on the game delves more and more into Madeline’s problems. Her depression. Her anxiety. Her self deprecating thoughts. All of her mental health issues that manifest in Badeline. The game does… such a wonderful job of dealing with all these mental health problems, wrapped up in beautiful pixel art, beautiful music, and wonderful gameplay.
So color me shocked when the game’s end of Farewell and… you see Madeline in her bedroom. You see those flags. Trans pride. Gay pride. The game, for me, was completely reframed. And… it hit home. I’m queer transwoman. This… this was incredible. Transwomen, we don’t get much representation in a lot of media. Transwomen are probably at the lowest end of the totem pole when it comes to actual real representation where we are treated like humans and not the butt of jokes. It hit me. Hard. Lena, the composer is a transwoman. Matt, the developer is non-binary. For me, it simply rang true that this was the intention from the beginning. The first few things that Badeline says to Madeline is deriding her. She’ll never be a real mountain climber. It’s easier to give up. To turn back. And that? That is more often than not a huge talking point that people throw at transwomen.
“It’s easier to give up. People won’t harass you if you don’t transition. If you keep being the guy we know you are, life will be so much easier for you!”
This game, became so much more to me. I already loved it for the way it tackled mental health issues in general… but… it reframed those struggles. The struggles of a queer transwoman. A lot of the things that caused Madeline horrible anxiety suddenly ring so much more true in that context. I was ecstatic. Again, there are rarely any stories about trans people, let alone transwomen. Some of the only games I’ve played with transwomen? Extremely low budget indie titles, which I love no doubt, but no one knows them at all really. I, for once, could see myself. I could see myself in a game that, while indie, is well known and well loved. Awarded for the game it is. But I saw hate. I looked up things about Madeline being trans, and seeing so much hate and ignorance.
So many people claiming Madeline can’t be trans. That if she is, it’s forced. That it was just an easter egg to refer to Matt and Lena. That she’s an ally. Excuses and explanations in troves to prove one thing. This character can’t be trans. Me? It upset me. Greatly. I looked on the wiki, and even the wiki doesn’t want to touch the idea of Madeline being trans, instead relegating it to a section marked “Controversy.” Is that what trans people are? We’re controversial? I looked into it more. Matt has never said a single thing. Nothing to debunk those comments. Nothing that would shut people up about it. And… it felt hurtful. Especially because going through the game’s dialogue with Madeline being trans in mind makes it all make sense. Even Badeline herself makes a lot of sense. She first appears when Madeline looks at herself in the mirror in chapter two. I’m trans. I suffer dysphoria about my appearance. I hate the mirror more than anything else. It hit home. It hurt though. It hurt. It hurt to see that this character? Someone I could relate to heavily about dealing with their horrible mental health? Someone who was trans like me? That this character existed in a game I’ve come to love so dearly was like me. When I watch shows or movies? When I play games? When I read books? The stories that deal with mental health problems? It’s always revolving around a cis character.
Of course I know the reason why people hate the idea of Madeline being transgender. Transphobia. It’s wild. It’s rampant. Trans people die at alarming rates, from murder to suicide. Trans people are harassed for simply existing. Demonized by media and TERFs and transphobes… and then this game appears. And it treats us like everyone else who suffers from mental health problems. People don’t like that though. People don’t like the idea of playing this game and then the wool is pulled out from over their eyes to reveal Madeline is transgender. They don’t like that. They played an entire game as a trans person and didn’t even know. They related to the plight of Madeline’s mental health, but the second she is shown to not be cis? They turn on it. They get angry. They want more for them. Not for the people who have nothing. It hurt.
Why? Why is it so wrong to be trans? Why am I called greedy or “heterophobic” for wanting Madeline to be transgender? When everything points to it? I feel pain when it’s thrown out the window. I love Celeste. I love Madeline. I love the journey she goes through. I related to it on a full level. When I consume other media about mental health, I can relate but only to a certain extent. That doesn’t erase that relation I have to it. But… it leaves me wanting something that I can relate to the same way a majority of the population does to something they enjoy. So… why is it so wrong that Madeline is trans? People will claim that the flags signify she’s just “an ally.” But… that holds no truth. I’ve never met a single person who was an ally who had a specific pride flag in their bedrooms. Or even have a pride flag at all. Why would anyone who isn’t trans or queer need a pride flag in their own quarters? To signify to themselves that they are indeed an ally? No. It felt ignorant. It felt like their arguments were grasping at straws in any way to convince others and themselves that Madeline? The protagonist of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, 2D platformer of all time was a transgender woman? That she couldn’t be one of those horrible trans people. And… I just never understood why. Why people would get so upset? In any other piece of media, you don’t have to spell out a personal is cisgender or straight. So why does, when a game like Celeste leaves you all the pieces to say that yes Madeline is trans have to be rejected like that? Why does it? Why do people clamor that if it doesn’t say in fine detail that she is trans… does it matter?
One of my favorite comic books has a transgender character in it. And… never once does she say the words “I am transgender.” But we know she is. We know it’s canon. She refers to a boy’s camp and how she never belonged down there. It’s simple. But telling. It doesn’t spell it out for you directly, but it’s hard confirmation of who she is. Similarly, prior to Farewell, I always thought a lot of Badeline’s references seemed oddly specific. Again I go back to what she says in chapter two.
“You’ll never be a real mountain climber.”
“You’ll never be a real woman.”
It all makes sense to me. But the few people who knew Celeste that I have interacted with? I’m wrong. I’m dumb. I need to stop erasing cis identities. It all… pisses me off. I love Celeste. Celeste has one of the greatest messages in gaming history, hidden behind wonderful gameplay. I love Celeste. I love Madeline. So why can’t I love her for her being a transwoman? Her being trans doesn’t erase the fact that non-trans people can relate to depression, anxiety, and all these problems in general. Celeste? It’s a game that gives me hope. Hope that things can get better. With a person I love, someone who understands me? I can get through my problems. Sure, those problems will never really be gone. They’re chronic mental health issues. I’ll deal with them until the day I die. The framing of the game does change with the reveal of Madeline begins transgender. Is it super hardcore confirmed with the words “I’M TRANSGENDER” emblazoned on it in neon lights like Broadway? No. But looking at it as is? With the fact transgender people worked on the game? It seems ignorant and hurtful to deride people for saying she is trans.
People more often than not ask me why I get so upset about it. It’s just an opinion, right? No. Representation is important. A lot of cisgender and heterosexual people will never understand how important representation is. It’s not forced. We’re people too. We exist. I go to the store. I eat food. I shower. I go to therapy. I do all the things a normal person does. But I exist. I am a person. A person who is in a horrifyingly hated minority. But, small things like Madeline being trans? It normalizes that we are people too. People who love. People who smile. People who like strawberry pies! But we have problems too. Depression. Anxiety. Chronic loneliness. Self deprecation. Gender dysphoria. A simple fear of wanting to get a job, but that job never being secure because there’s no law to protect us from discrimination. Madeline’s journey resonates with everyone who has battled mental illness. Everyone. Cis or not. But it resonates even more with me when I remember Madeline is transgender. Just like me. And she is still fighting. The journey of climbing the mountain made her realize so much about herself. However… she still fights for her mental health. Just like anyone else. Her being trans does not detract from the relation you can get to her. I usually don’t have much. I’m forced to relate to cisgender characters. I relate to them still, but I feel a closer connection to Madeline’s battle because it reminds me of my own in every possible way.
Celeste is a game that gave me more hope than I could have ever asked for. The ending of Farewell made me feel so much. To me? That was the hard confirmation so many people ask for. Madeline? She’s a queer trans lady. And that? That gives me hope. And what is wrong with that?
Originally published on Reddit. (January 25, 2020)
First I want to make this clear, this is not an attack on people who chose to sacrifice Chloe. This is just my rundown of the general type of people I see when they talk about why they chose to kill Chloe. This is not meant as an attack, again, it’s just the people I’ve seen and encountered over the years and this is my main gripe with their collective argument and their reaction to Life is Strange 2’s references to the ending.
For me the wrong ending in Life is Strange is sacrificing Chloe. It’s antithetical to the arcs and themes of the game, and people prop it up as a fucking masterpiece of an ending because it gives them a feeling of moral superiority over the people who chose to save Chloe. Episode one of LiS 2 comes in and they get to see Arcadia Bay still there, giving their sense of moral superiority even more power. But then episode five comes around and we see David is a shell of a man who lost his wife, is depressed, and wants to kill Nathan Prescott the minute he gets out of prison, which it’s implied he does. There’s no mention of Max, and then the people who chose the sacrifice Chloe ending complain extremely hard that it’s not fair we don’t get to hear about Max.
But then in the sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending, in LiS 2 you see David is recovering from the tragedy. You see he has a good relationship with Max and Chloe. You see a picture of Max and Chloe. Why? Because you made the choice to save Chloe. And anyone who chose the bay gets upset that David is alive. They get upset Victoria is alive. They get upset that it’s implied people survived the storm. Why? Because moral superiority went to their head. It’s not fair that they made THE CORRECT CHOICE and in the bae ending there’s people alive still. Because in their heads, picking Chloe means EVERYONE HAS TO DIE because it’s not fair. It’s not fair Chloe gets to live and people survived a storm. They aren’t happy that people actually survived the storm. You think they would be. You think they’d be happy that in the other ending there are people alive. But they aren’t, for the most part. Because for them it’s all about moral absolutism. Either something is right or is wrong, and there’s no grey area for morality. Either choice at the end of Life is Strange is morally grey. No matter what you do, someone is going to die.
Some people believe the game’s ending is great because “Chloe is a selfish person, so selfish, and she finally does something for someone by selflessly giving her life up for a problem that is not her fault nor Max’s.” Like when you read something like that, it’s so horrible because it is a grave misunderstanding of Chloe’s character and her arc. Her arc is not about her going from selfish human being to selfless, it’s about her realizing that she is loved and cared about unconditionally. He asking Max to let her die is not some selfless act, it’s her ultimate form of self harm. It’s a suicide attempt. She wants to die because she believes that she’s better off dead and serving some purpose dead as opposed to alive. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to be some sacrificial lamb for an angry volcano god. But she believes that she’s only worthwhile to Max or anyone else if she lets Max kill her. And then when Max rips the photo in half to prevent herself from ever going back, that’s when it clicks in Chloe’s mind. It finally clicks to Chloe that she doesn’t need to die. She doesn’t need to be a sacrificial lamb to be loved by someone. Max loves her unconditionally. There’s no lies here like with Rachel. There’s no ulterior motive other than Max loves Chloe and Max won’t let Chloe die after all of this simply because Warren told her it was her fault.
Most people’s non-moral superiority arguments revolve around the gross misunderstanding of Max and Chloe’s relationship, and Chloe’s personality. She’s a traumatized abused mentally ill girl whose main source of letting her feelings out are harmful to herself. She’s not really selfish as much as she is just destructive. She does some wrong things, but she always apologizes for them and tries to make up for her outbursts. Chloe is, at least from what I’ve seen, heavily coded with borderline personality disorder. Which if you have, like me, or know anything about you’ll see clearly in how she acts. In episode two she gets upset that Kate is calling Max. Chloe doesn’t know anything about Kate’s mental state. To Chloe, this is her first real hangout with Max in forever, and she feels threatened when Kate calls because she’s afraid that Max will prioritize Kate over Chloe. It’s not logical and it’s wrong of her to make Max not pick up or chastise her if she does pick up, but it’s understandable. She’s not doing this maliciously to hurt Max or Kate, she’s doing it because her inability to control her emotions makes her think that Max is going to leave to go see Kate, whom Chloe assumes Max sees all the time at school.
When Chloe has her meltdown in the car in episode three, again, its understandable. Her saying she doesn’t want to blame herself is true to how she actually feels. She feels horrified and betrayed. The person she thought she was in love with, someone who kept her afloat for four years, was lying to her. The basis for their relationship was an entire lie. If we assume that Rachel and Chloe were as close as a lot of people say they are, there’s no reason why Rachel wouldn’t tell Chloe about Frank or Jefferson. Yes these would have upset Chloe, but it was the right thing to do. Rachel knew Chloe had a thing for her, and instead of letting her down gently, she keeps her on a stick until Rachel eventually dies. Especially when you see how obsessed Rachel is in BtS about the truth, and the lengths Chloe went to in order to find the truth for Rachel, makes her entirely hypocritical. To Chloe this is the ultimate betrayal of everything she knows. From her point of view, if she doesn’t blame others… well she believes she deserves it all. She believes she deserved William dying. She deserved Max leaving and failing to keep in touch. She deserved her mom becoming passive to her problems. She deserved the abuse that David hurls at her. She deserved to find out the girl she was in love with was fucking her drug dealer behind her back, all while Chloe took out massive loans from Frank to fix her car so she could get RACHEL to LA. Because in the end, Chloe does blame herself. She believes she’s the root cause of all these problems, and all these horrible events had to happen to her. When she melts down in the car to Max, she’s venting about all these problems and is trying to convince herself that it’s not her fault. All this horrible shit happening to her can’t solely 100% be her fault. And even then? Even after all of this melting down? She still apologizes for it. She still tells Max she’s sorry for doing that, just like she did when she got angry about Max trying to pick up the phone for Kate.
Chloe cares for Max’s well being. Another argument I’ve seen is that Chloe doesn’t care about putting Max in danger, referring to Max’s power as a toy. Well, she only considers it a toy for a short period. She considers it a toy until Max bleeds out of her nose and collapses. Then it’s only what’s good for Max. She takes a gun from David, and she’s right to want to arm herself after being drugged and kidnapped by Nathan, and subsequently nearly getting shot in the bathroom by Nathan. And I mean, she’s right to want to be safe in case she gets attacked again. Yes, it’s dumb to go play with a gun in the junkyard, but Chloe is also just trying to have loose fun with Max and her powers. But that goes away once Max collapses, and Chloe realizes it’s not worth using just for fun because of the physical effect it has on Max. From then on, Max only uses her powers to help try and solve the mystery at hand. Chloe is emotionally stunted in a lot of ways. Being kicked out of Blackwell and hanging around Rachel has probably left her more immature than other 19 year olds. So she thinks playing with the gun would be a fun idea. Not really smart, but if you dive into her character you can understand why does it.
Other dumb myths I’ve seen are:
“Chloe lets Max take the blame for the weed and doesn’t do anything about it.”
Max takes the blame to prevent Chloe from being verbally assaulted by David. If you remain in the closet to not take the blame or protect Chloe, then David hits her.
Chloe is ableist because she wants to take the handicapped fund
This is a shitty thing to do, but it’s less about the fund itself and what it’s for and more of a fuck you to the school that kicked her out and continues to protect Nathan despite him doing so many expellable offenses, but his record will be scrubbed clean. Also we know that the handicapped fund does nothing really. In the alternate timeline where Chloe is paralyzed from the neck down, Blackwell essentially did nothing to even attempt to accommodate her or even let her try to study to keep her mind off of the horror of her accident.
Chloe is emotionally manipulative and guilt trips Max
She doesn’t do this. She gets upset when she believes Max is going to abandon her for someone else to hang with. She has no further agenda other than she wants to be with Max all the time. If you honestly believe this argument, then at the very end of the game in Max’s nightmare, Max wouldn’t view Chloe as the only one defending Max from the onslaught of nightmare citizens who blame Max for everything going wrong.
Insensitive about Kate’s death or attempt
She jumps out to scare Max. As I’ve said before Chloe is emotionally immature due to the trauma around her. She isn’t trying to hurt Max or be insensitive. She’s trying to make Max feel better by lightening the mood. It doesn’t work, and Chloe immediately apologizes for it. If Kate dies in your route, she says “Yes Kate Marsh killed herself, such sad.” While this is a shitty thing to say, you have to put it in context. You take it out of context it seems like she’s just a horrible bitch, put it in context and she says it while she’s having a full on mental and emotional breakdown about Rachel. Right then, Chloe’s entire reality is breaking down in front of her. She doesn’t know Kate, she knows of her, but it’s not like she knew Kate in any fashion. Chloe has bad mental and emotional problems. She doesn’t actually mean this, but at the same time she has so many bad problems with her own life she doesn’t need to burden herself with the problems of others. It’s not fair to invalidate Chloe’s feelings and problems because another person has problems as well.
These were just some of the anti-Chloe arguments I’ve seen floating around the fandom and how these are all horribly monstrous and selfish, so it makes sense to let Chloe die in the end. Chloe is not some horrible monster who only thinks about herself in every situation. Chloe is a broken girl. She has problems, yes, but she never goes out of her way to hurt others. She has constant breakdowns from a lack of the help she so desperately needs. When she brings up that Max abandoned her for five years, I mean there is truth to that. She desperately loves Max with all her heart, but the fact Max was gone for five years without a word still stings.
In the end, when Chloe asks Max to let her die… We need to remember this is not the Chloe who is going to die. The Chloe that dies is one who is still hurting severely. A Chloe who feels the need she needs to confront her attacker to get money so she can escape her debt to Frank. But… she dies. She gets shot in the bathroom and bleeds out on a cold ceramic tile floor. As she does, the last words she hears are “Nobody would even miss your punk ass, would they?!” And she’s inclined to believe him. Everyone she ever cared about left her. It was her fault. Nobody’s gonna miss her. And then there’s nothing left for her but the ceasing of her existence. Yes, we know Max, David, and Joyce will miss her. But, to Chloe, she doesn’t believe that. She doesn’t believe everyone she knows cares. And that’s how Chloe dies. Unloved. Hated. Abandoned. She died how she believed she lived, alone and forgotten.
All of this is antithetical to how Max makes Chloe feel in the game. That she is loved unconditionally. That people care about her. That Joyce cares. That David cares. That Max? She loves and cares about Chloe above all else. And Chloe doesn’t need to commit suicide and be a martyr to be loved.
So I got recommended one of my least favorite YouTube channels based on my She-Ra search history, and we all know and hate Clownfish TV. Their name is almost self-reflective of their own foolishness. The channel itself makes no attempt to cloud itself other than a bunch of people pushing out the lowest common denominator of content. Clickbait titles, clickbait thumbnails, and overall inflammatory content that mainly appeals to heavy right wing people. A lot of people don’t like to throw that around, but it is their main audience no matter how much they try to say they aren’t. The comments on these videos are enough to tell you what kind of people the audience are as well as the ones behind the channel.
Not to mention they false flag a lot as well. If you don’t know what false flagging is, it’s the idea of planting yourself into a comment and saying you’re something you aren’t and agreeing with a horrible explanation. Such as someone claiming to be gay, but saying even the most well developed character relationship is forced if it’s same sex, but saying a horrible rushed straight romance was excellent. It’s an attempt to give credibility to someone horrible by claiming you are part of the marginalized group. I saw a comment in the newest Clownfish She-Ra video where the commenter claimed to be a gay man, but saw much more compatibility between SEA HAWK and ADORA.
The main argument these people hide behind are the timeless anti-SJW arguments as well as the idea of it somehow ruining the original show. I’ve seen some commenters refer to Noelle as having “hijacked” the property, and their newest video is about referring to She-Ra as a multi-million dollar fanfic as well as saying it ruins the original show. The idea of it “ruining their childhoods.” Now to note, Masters of the Universe as a property in its original form has been dead since 1987. We’ve seen attempts to bring it back, but it never hit the same popularity it had in the 1980s until She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
Going back, the MOTU franchise is just not that good. It suffers from the same thing as every 1980s cartoon, and that’s the fact that it’s primarily engineered to sell toys. The show itself serves as a commercial to sell you a product. TMNT is the same way. It has a MOTW format in an attempt to sell you more and more and more action figures. That’s why there’s so many old TMNT or MOTU toys. Because that was the point of those series. They had a very basic lore and then that’s it. MOTU’s lore is, as I said, very very basic. It doesn’t explore much, and it really boils down to selling the toys they needed to sell.
Reimaginings of old properties, to me, is not a bad thing. I see people calling it the epitome of laziness, but at the same time when the He-Man show by Kevin Smith was announced they all rejoiced it even though at the end of the day it’s the same thing. But it gets a pass because the person is Kevin Smith and the show is He-Man. Now I don’t like Kevin Smith at all. He’s a half-baked writer who made one successful movie, and now worms his way into everything he can because of said movie. It’s very easy to see from the comments on this video that the people there are heavily anti-LGBT. I mean, 90% of the comments were talking about how She-Ra oversexualized its characters. Let that sink in. Two girls kissed and that’s the conclusion they jumped too. (Writing this, I had to close the tab just because of how gross the comments were getting.)
I am a fan of Power Rangers, and have been since I was a child. Unlike MOTU, Power Rangers has endured to this day. And one thing to note is that more often than not, if a show wants to try and sell toys and get ratings via nostalgia bait, they will make as much reference to the original as possible. The past ten years of Power Rangers has pretty much been non-stop references to the 1990s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers in an attempt to recapture the popularity of that era. The issue is, that era is over. It’s long gone, and while we can have nostalgia over it, nobody born after that era will care that much about it.
I’ll get back to my Power Rangers references in a moment, but SPOP was a success for many reasons. It’s a mix of it being well written, character driven, and a good diverse cast of characters. And yes, Mattel released toys for SPOP but it’s been far few and in between in merch. Trust me, I’d love more SPOP merch besides the dolls and the overpriced Adora and Catra Super7 figures. The issue is, the lack of merchandise shows that it was less about selling toys and more about telling a new story of interest using an old property.
In 2016, Boom Studios, a comic publisher, started releasing a Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers comics. The comic itself is a reimagining of the original show. However it lacks much of the corniness, campiness, and overall MOTW formula the original series had. It deals with many social issues as well. Basically, the story itself takes from the original show, however nothing is the same for the most part outside of major plot beats. But even those beats have been changed heavily for the sake of an interesting and cohesive narrative with well developed characters. The Ranger the common public knows and loves the most is the original Green/White Ranger, Tommy Oliver. Everyone knows him, and his merch is bought the most, which is why most anniversaries for the series on TV are referred to as Tommy-versaries. The specials are mostly about Tommy, with all the other Rangers simply serving as background cameo fodder. The comic turns the fan favorite Tommy into a very weak willed character in the comics. He’s a good person, but by the time he becomes the White Ranger and leader of the team, he can’t really handle it. He has become the most powerful Ranger, but his inability to lead the team after Jason’s departure leads the group into many traps.
The point being is that reimaginings of older properties isn’t a bad thing. And as I’ve said before, just because something new has arrived does not mean the old thing is gone forever. If someone truly hates SPOP so much? If someone hates it for “ruining their lives” and feels the need to make fifty hour long rants about how horrible She-Ra is and how Noelle is a horrible human and writer, they don’t need to watch the new one and continuously complain about it for eternity. The original MOTU isn’t erased. It’s still there to watch if you seriously want to. Just like how if someone doesn’t like new Power Rangers, they can turn on Netflix and watch the original show whenever they want.
I used PR as my example primarily because it’s the franchise I’ve personally seen evolve and devolve over the past couple decades. And the thing is, the PR comic has been heavily well received. It’s been seen as the proper way for how a PR story should be told in the modern day. Of course, there’s a one huge reason why so many people dislike SPOP, which we’ll get to soon.
For my research, I often go to the main places where actual fans of these things would hang around. I visited the MOTU subreddit to gather the opinions of big MOTU fans according to previous posts who frequent said subreddit. Most MOTU fans did have a positive reaction to SPOP, referring to it as an improvement over the original series in a lot of places. Even people who were fans of the original designs said it themselves that the original show exists, and they can easily separate SPOP as it’s own show with its own designs.
Of course, the people who absolutely hate the show hated it for one reason and one reason only.
I hate it. Agenda driven. Ruining something i cared about from my childhood.
I think at this point that is the primary driving force behind most people who hate the show. It’s not any genuine criticism of the show. I tend to roll my eyes when all negative criticism is the same exact argument.
Agenda driven
Ruined my childhood
The new She-Ra looks like a boy
Not enough like the original
“You’re shoving too much sexuality into a kid’s show!”
“You don’t need to see yourself in media. No one does.”
We’ve gotten to a point where it’s like yeah, Noelle is saying in interviews proudly that she pushed for the gay agenda. It’s always the same arguments over and over, and it is tedious to go places and see people angrily complain about it. I’ve even seen some people talk about how horrible Noelle’s writing is, and how she’ll never be able to sell an original idea. All this ignorance forgetting that Noelle had to sell ideas in the first place.
For something like Lumberjanes, she had to pitch that comic idea to get it greenlit by Boom Studios. And guess what? The comic that was intended to be eight issues long? It’s ongoing to this day with up to over seventy issues, five yearly annuals, two graphic novels, and four chapter books. Noelle left after Issue 17, primarily because she began to work on She-Ra’s production. Even as much as a couple months ago, we saw a picture of Noelle in what I assume was working on a pitch for a Lumberjanes animated show. And because of the overall success of She-Ra, I could see a Lumberjanes animated show being picked up by someone. Maybe even Dreamworks on Netflix.
The thing is, none of these people can actually create real criticisms about anything. As a result, they simply bark the same things over and over again because they cannot form real critique about why this show is bad. So in the end, their opinions don’t really matter.
My final thing to talk about here is the last point.
“You don’t need to see yourself in media. No one does.”
This is something I see a lot of these types say. You know. The neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white people who see themselves represented in every medium since the dawn of the written word. Of course THEY don’t feel the need to see themselves in media. After all, they are in every piece of media. Even some of the media we come to see as boundary breaking, like Steven Universe, has its primary character being a cisgendered heterosexual white person. Even in a show that’s meant to break bounds for LGBT representation has that central character in every corner of the show. So god forbid a show have major non-neurotypical lesbians as the driving force of the show.
People who are not in that majority of the rest of 99% of society need to see themselves in something. It shows that you are a person too. You aren’t some abnormality. You are a person. It lets you know that other people like you exist. NT cishet white people don’t have to ever deal with the idea of being alone in the world. Depending on what kind of place you grow up in or who you grow up with? You might never even know there are other trans, gay, lesbian or non-NT people out there. Representation is important for that very reason.
At the end of the day, I have this to say about pretty much any show that is remotely left leaning or diverse in its cast. It will be called political. It will be angrily ripped apart for no reason other than the fact it tries to be progressive.
So this is my advice to anyone who sees these kinda comments online from anyone. Ignore it. I let stuff affect me heavily a lot of the time. But I’m trying harder not to let these opinions hurt me. Because I know at the end of the day, they are empty temper tantrums. I wrote this for anyone who is like me who lets comments get to them. I wanted to get a lot of this off my chest, because She-Ra has come to mean a lot to me since it began streaming.
MOTU, from its origins, was about love and empathy for other people. Fighting evil armies hellbent on destroying everyone. So I find it funny that the people hating on SPOP, which continues those themes of love and empathy, complain and compare it to the original show which has those same themes as well all while spewing the most hateful comments. And they will never ever see the irony.
Tl;dr: Reimaginings do not ruin or remove the original properties. They exist to bring new life to dead franchises that haven’t been touched on a major scale since their inception. Haters will always spew the same four or five points at fans of the show primarily because they do not like the progressive diversity of the show. Even if She-Ra was considered by the entire general population to be the greatest piece of fiction to ever exist, these people would still argue that it was bad because of those reasons. So at the end, it’s best to simply ignore these people and let them stay in their echo-y bubble chambers until they pop. You will always have someone out there who does love you for you, and it’s better to ignore the people who would rather say you don’t exist or your existence is some sort of political statement.
I wanted to write this little thing about the show, primarily because of how much this show has hit me. Now I just wanna make some warnings first. This post is gonna detail why I think this show is so wonderful to me, as well as touch on spoilers from the entire series from beginning to end. If you haven’t watched season five all the way through yet, I just thought I’d put another spoiler here just in case. Can never be too safe when it comes to making sure others don’t get hit with spoilers. I also wanna touch on some of the themes of the show, which include mostly the mental illness I closely identify with Catra. I don’t wanna make anyone uncomfortable, so if topics of borderline personality disorder and abuse makes you uncomfortable, turn back now. I hope anyone who has suffered similarly
To preface this, prior to 2018 I was not really a fan of He-Man or She-Ra in any terms. Those were 80s shows primarily dedicated to pushing toys as opposed to being a story. And that’s fine and typical of a cartoon from the 1980s, but it was never my cup of tea. However, Noelle Stevenson was my cup of tea. I had been a fan of Noelle prior to the premiere of She-Ra, primarily her work on the comic book series, Lumberjanes. The comic had been one of my few reprieves from life in 2016, when I was dealing with the revelation of being trans. I hadn’t really found all that positive depictions of trans people before, and I was searching for some form of representation that was natural and well depicted. That was something Lumberjanes had excelled in. I was instantly hooked, as well as becoming a huge fan of Noelle’s other major work, Nimona.
So when I had heard Noelle was going to become the showrunner of a She-Ra reboot, I was half-skeptical and half-excited. I wondered how Noelle could possibly turn the 1980s era series into a show that would fit in well in the modern climate, along with the hopes of deeper characters and story that Noelle had experience in writing. So yes, I was extremely excited as time progressed and more and more information regarding the show dropped. Of course, there were the angry detractors who based their primarily wrong opinions on the design of Adora, but hey I was 100% for it.
A lot of my love for the show derives from Catra and Adora. I think through the entire series I was rooting for Catra to eventually build herself back up to where she needed to be. I always suspected I was borderline, and I recognized a lot of my own negative qualities in Catra, and after eventually being professionally diagnosed Catra became a character I was extremely attached to. I rooted for her to get better, but I too could be a little disconcerting of her actions. And… that was something I primarily appreciated about Catra’s treatment. Catra’s entire character arc is designated around this cycle of lashing out and hurting everyone, including herself. And yes, a lot of what Catra did is wrong. But I empathized with her struggles. She was so lost. A victim of child abuse by Shadow Weaver, she never knew any real positive coping mechanisms outside of huddling for positive support from Adora.
The importance of Catra’s development as a character, to me, was to produce a harsh cold look at what people like that? People like us can go through, at least that’s what I got from it. Watching Catra lash out so much was important because, when she would eventually come to healing it would be all the more satisfactory. Feelings of worthlessness, self-doubt, and so much more can be seen in every scene with Catra. Catra fighting over what she wants, and at the end of the day Catra just wants to not feel the pain she feels every beating moment of her existence. Adora left to protect these people, as Adora feels the need to literally die for any and everyone in order to feel useful to people. But Catra felt betrayed by the idea that Adora broke her promise to stay with her forever. She lashes out in a negative way that harms others. And I understood why.
It always hurt when people would scream horrible things about Catra being toxic and abusive all the time for four seasons. It hurt because Catra was locked in this cycle of self-hatred that no one cared to fully understand or help her break out of. I took Adora until season five to finally understand what Catra needed. Catra needed both love and someone to tell her what she was doing was horribly self-harming and would get her nowhere but pain. Prior, Adora just thought Catra was a villain (like many of the vocal anti-Catra haters) while Scorpia seemed like the opposite, someone who was just in everything she did. I think that’s a reason why Catra could never return those feelings Scorpia had for her. Catra needed what season five Adora was able to give her. Catra is not a horrible villainous abuser who get sick delight in torturing everyone. Catra is not some upstanding citizen to aspire to. Catra is a trapped, scarred, and mentally ill girl who only knows how to feel a little bit better by allowing her anger and sadness to deregulate around her.
Those behaviors are not good. And I know that. In my life I’ve allowed my negative emotions to lash out and control me, and afterwards there’s never a good feeling. Just in place of anger and pain, it’s emptiness. Until anger, sadness, and pain make their way back into you. I needed a character like Catra. I needed a character I saw myself in. We just didn’t see the bad, we saw the pain Catra would go through. So much so we would see Catra lost and broken, just as much as we’d see her antagonizing the rebellion.
Catra pushes people away. You push people away to avoid rejection. You don’t let anyone in out of self preservation for what’s left of your stable state of mind. Between her perceived rejection by Adora and the complete and total rejection she received from Shadow Weaver, this was a completely understandable response. It was something I could see in myself, to not get close to anyone ever. Just to save your own state of mind.
The ending of season four, when Double Trouble confronts Catra, is one of the most important scenes. It gives the desperate confrontation of Catra’s problems from someone who is 100% capable of copying her appearance. However, it also is the half-assed understanding that a lot of people would give to Catra. The idea that everything in her entire life that has gone wrong is 100% her own fault, and it’s her own fault she’ll be alone until the day she dies. For me, that’s the idea of telling someone it’s their own fault they suffer from some condition that is not their fault. Catra needed someone to tell her most of what DT said, however squaring the blame solely on Catra only served to send her into an extreme depressive state, where she cared nothing for her own life. When Glimmer shows up, Catra just tells her to do it. Because Catra now believes she is at solely at fault for her current state and, as we’d see in season five, because she believes she is so worthless that no one needs or wants her. That she could be wiped from existence without a second thought from anyone.
For so long, I’ve felt like Catra. I’ve felt the abandonment and betrayal from people who I thought were supposed to care about me. To this day, it’s happened so many times in my life that I have unfounded fears that anybody I start to care for and get close to will leave so I try to not be close because if they leave it won’t hurt as much. Even the idea of leaving as not to hurt the ones I do begin to love crosses my mind, much like how Catra teleports Glimmer to save her from Horde Prime. The double of her telling Adora how sorry she is for everything she’s done, while also surrendering herself to possible death as not to harm Adora ever again. Borderline characters are often written off as overly emotional joke characters or toxic abusive stereotypes. A character like Catra hits me so hard because how raw she is. Her emotions always feel real and justified to someone like me who can always see where Catra is coming from. I know it’s wrong, and I hurt to see Catra self-destruct over the course of three seasons. But all of that was required so that we could see the healing she needed.
Everything that happened over the course of the series was so well done. My heart always went out to Catra. She did things that were bad, yes. She did things that definitely make no logical sense, for sure. But even in the end, I hurt so much for Catra. She tried to fill the void in her life with things she thought would help her move on. Things that would fill the desire of someone who understood her. The importance of Catra to me is her raw and unapologetic portrayal. Everything that ever happened to Catra pre-season one was not her fault. And even then, Catra is probably not even close to finishing her own maturing. And seeing her get a happy ending made me cry. To see that in the end, she could accept finally that Adora never gave up on her? It’s something I needed to hear. Something that helps me realize the person I love in my life won’t give up on me either, and I have to believe in them and not the doubts that control me. The idea that I have done some not so good things before, but I don’t have to let all of those experiences define who I am as a person.
In the end, Catra was a person who was deserving of love. Someone who was capable of giving so much love in the same way she couldn’t control her negative emotions. Catra saved me from believing things couldn’t get better, and I was destined to self destruct permanently one day. And for that I will always be grateful to She-Ra and the crew who made it. She-Ra, to me, is not only a wonderfully crafted show (another topic I’d like to write about is how well its written) but also filled with so much heart for marginalized people who are stereotyped. BPD people unfortunately are horribly stereotyped as abusive or toxic people inherently. She-Ra helped, imo, to make people understand we are capable of healing and giving love too. We are more than the disorder people hate us for. And Catra, to me, is the greatest positive fictional example of a borderline person. And to me? That’s what I needed more than anything.
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