#but it feels like at least with 90s antiheroes
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What I hate about modern-day comic book writing is that it's so jokey. The Riddler can break out of Arkham, kill twelve people, and threaten to blow up a subway car, and everyone will act like they're just LARPing? There'll be random hook-ups and a bunch of pop culture references and the whole situation will be treated with these knowing kid gloves, like everyone involved is Ralph and Sam clocking into work.
And you can't even say that it's lighthearted irreverence or dark humor, because the moment one of the writer's pet causes come up, THEN everyone gets all serious and solemn. So you get these scenes where the characters are treating gentrification like it's the worst thing imaginable, then playing grabass with Mr. Serial Killer like he's just their wacky neighbor.
It completely takes me out of the story, because it's clear the writer is only going to invest actual pathos and engagement into this world when it can be spun to some social justice angle.
I mean, even the shipping... the shipping is arguably bad on its own, but the way straight couples are treated like a retarded soap opera, pairing up at random and then breaking up for no reason, while gay couples are always treated like the second coming of romance and they're forever endgame... how does anyone take this stuff seriously?
Why is marriage this terrible thing that ages the characters and makes them boring, unless it's a gay couple, in which case them getting married is some long overdue triumph over adversity and the best possible direction the story could take and you're just supposed to marinate in how much sex these two characters are having with each other. It's not even porn. I could respect porn. It has a purpose. This is just like... there is a literally published Harley Quinn high school AU comic.
And you know, I watch a Mission: Impossible movie, it has real stakes. Tom Cruise is going "we have to stop this guy before he sets off the nuke!" That's all I'm asking for. That they treat the situation like it's a real thing that's happening to them and not a game show they're on. But these are such shitty writers that they can't put themselves into the headspace of "how would I feel if this were happening to me?"
#also the gay characters are usually unrepentantly evil villains who are now retconned to never having done anything wrong#and only wanting to kill nazis#and the heroes are suddenly willing to make exceptions for THEM to kill whoever they want#because of course supervillains are the best people to judge what grievances are legitimate#this is another rant#but it feels like at least with 90s antiheroes#it was agreed they were bad people#but now we have characters acting worse than venom#and being treated like they're soft uwu babies
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Slade is literally devious 😭 we already know about Terra, but I was reading through teen titans when Cheshire (I think her first introduction), is fighting Joey at his apartment, and she makes comments alluding to having slept with Slade.
Like ??
Wouldn't she be around Joey's age😭 that's so sickening
Oh, they've definitely hooked up:
Fun fact: Roy is in the room when this happens and seems fine with it. Also he wears a catsuit in this storyline.
Jade (and Joey and Roy) are all at least 18 by New Teen Titans, so she wasn't underage (and the image above is from a few years later anyway) so I don't think it was an actual crime. Also it's probably worth noting that the image above is also from a storyline where Jade nukes an entire country so like...she's also not a great person.
Idk I feel like a lot of things are true at once!
Slade sleeping with Terra was illegal and predatory.
Slade sleeping with Jade when she was somewhere in the 18-20 range may have been predatory or it may have been totally consensual - we don't know any details, but I don't think age gaps are inherently problematic in and of themselves.
That said, the pattern of Slade repeatedly pursuing women the same age as his kids is potentially predatory and definitely pathetic. Leonardo DiCaprio-ass behavior. (Fun fact! Aquaman does this too.)
Jade has done awful things in canon.
Slade has also done awful things, and the willingness of canon to occasionally portray him as a noble antihero (especially in the early 90s, when the page above is from) and Jade as an unrepentant monster is racist and sexist writing.
Jade being a mass murderer doesn't make Slade potentially preying on her (if that's what happened) okay, any more than Terra betraying the Titans made what he did to her okay.
It's all very messy and that's what makes it complicated and interesting, even if some of that is due to shitty writing at times.
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Tifa Lockhart/Aerith Gainsborough is kind of an odd ship dynamic, actually! There's a lot going on with those two
I feel like they could pass for a healthy, well-adjusted couple right up until the point where Tifa tries to start one (1) sincere conversation about Aerith's emotions.
Aerith seems like she can hardly cross the street without three layers of irony and performative cheeriness. She's in a party full of late-90s antiheroes, and somehow she's still the least good at being open with people.
#i'm sure they could work through it—they are capable people—but boy could aerith do with some therapy sessions#aerti#aerith gainsborough#ffvii meta
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10 characters/10 fandoms
YESSS THANK YOU @jaynesilver FINALLY MY WIDE READING OF FIC COMES IN HANDYYY
We're gonna go chronologically through my life because I think that's REALLY FUN (I legit couldn't choose a west wing character just know that if there's a secret 11th character is the ensemble cast of the west wing)
Artemis Fowl, Artemis Fowl
My first antihero, and we started YOUNG on that, I was reading these books premiddle school. I was obsessed with these books as a kid, and I'm still obsessed with them today. There's rumors of a third, more adult series when Artemis and Holly may get together and I will EAT THAT SHIT UP I LOVE THEM
2. Vexen, Kingdom Hearts
I Legit think this man primed me to enjoy Hux as a character. Like, I'm not kidding, I was obsessed with him as a kid. I'm 90% certain I wrote deviant art fan fic, but I have since abandoned that account so it's hard to know for sure if it ever got published. I was definitely roll playing at age, like, 13? way too young but god I loved him he was BATSHIT
3. Ianto Jones, Torchwood
Man, I can't really explain how much Ianto Jones as a character, he and Jack's kiss on screen, their relationship, and the events of the 456 changed me? It was DEEP though, I woke up the next day a different person, with much less trust in television writer's and their good intentions.
4. Desmond Miles, Assassin's Creed
We have to jump a few years to mid high school, because no joke I was on that Kingdom Hearts train for a WHILE. I love him, he was probably my first blorbo, before the term was invented. I tried to play the games after (MAJOR SPOILER) but I just couldn't do it. They didn't have the draw without him.
5. Stiles Stilinski, Teen Wolf
Now we've hit late high school, arguably my second blorbo. As a kid with ADHD, he was no joke valuable representation to me, even if it was sometimes played for laughs. I was also the least athletic kid on multiple sports teams who still tried really hard, so I got him, yknow?
6. Will Graham, Hannibal
It's legit tough for me to chose if I like the Will Graham of the books or the TV show better. (Don't ask me about the movies, I haven't seen them, and I probably won't. Movies and I have trouble. See: ADHD.) I'm not sure if he's a blorbo or just like, a regular character I like? My hannibal phase was my last 8 year ship, so the line is pretty blurred.
Now we've reached the part where I dived into a lot of fandoms at once, because I dropped out of college and kind of did a weird spiral? Idk, we've lost chronology is what I'm saying
7. Artemis Crock, Young Justice
god I cannot say enough good things about her and I also cannot express how much (MAJOR SPOILER) made me mad FOR HER. Like it was cruel specifically to her and we should talk more about that, honestly. She was definitely a blorbo, but we're still PRE blorbo as a word in my vocabulary.
8. Darcy Lewis, MCU
My first real fandom bicycle, I ship her with everyone from Loki to Agent Coulson to Natasha. As someone who often feels like the comic relief character in their own life, I appreciate her.
9. Kent Parson, OMG Check Please
My sweet, sweet disaster son. My emotionally constipated hockey boy. The reason captain america is my SECOND favorite character with a birthday on the Fourth of July. I love him, he was amazing, and also my first experience with like, really toxic fandom was being so mad when people tried to equate his canon mental health issues with a noncanon, imagined abuse?? It was wild, I ended up so distressed about it i did have to leave the fandom.
10. Armitage Hux, Star Wars
I mean you've been on my blog for like ten seconds i think it's obvious?? The others needed explanations but like YOURE HERE YOU KNOW
WAIT I FORGOT TO TAG PEOPLE SHIT @sariastrategos @gingersnappish @fallingdeeperintothispit
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honestly i liked how you created a female main character with an edge. most of the stories i've seen here somehow trying to justify their characters bad behavior. sometimes you don't need to do that. just because someone does a good thing they're not a saint or someone does a bad thing they're not the devil either. world isn't a black or white. yes you can argue how she was a bad friend to mick and their friendship expired their course but also how she's a ride or die for max. sometimes people fall out, you don't even a reason for that. there are many celebs who had a fall out with their "besties" but we don't know what happened at behind the close doors. a part of the reason why mick and yn's fallout was a bit intense it's because its televised through social media. everyone had an opinion about it which is by everything went downhill quickly.
anyways i love she's a little shit but you can also see she's a ride or die for you once you're in your inner INNER circle. which probably has two people but i also see her getting out of her way to defend lando because he's probably her second close friend after max. i love how she has an edge. she's literally antihero like there's good and there's definitely bad, my fav kinda people ngl
also lily's message 🫣 i was like "wait... hold on she's kinda right"
Thank you. I love an anti hero and I find it so hard to get into any fiction where the character doesn’t at least make the odd questionable decision, especially when it’s in line with their personality.
I think Mick and Y/N’s fall out is 90% media driven. Things being taken out of context and reported on when they had no business doing that, and then the hate. Like, if it had never blown up, maybe Mick could have just met her for coffee and told her how he felt and they could have squashed it. It’s like Kylie Jenner and Jordyn Woods. If no one had picked that up and made it the scandal of the moment, would that have been allowed to die quietly (I know they hang out now and apparently they were always hanging out just not as close but I mean the way Kylie had to cut her off publicly because of the media/public opinion).
She’s a little shit but she a loyal little shit haha. I do think she’s kind and has quite a nurturing side to her (eg. With Liam) but I also feel like she’s a bit like she’s one of those people who is so used to/unfazed by harsh words she doesn’t realise how other people hear them.
Haha Lily is that person you can depend on to be right, I feel like. Tbf there’s quite a few blonde wags but even Max has dated a green/blue eyed brunette lol.
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I feel so bad that you, like, an actual Morbius fan?? Like, I've had some shitty remakes in my time but that movie isn't even a finished product. I'm so sorry they did this to you 😔
To be fair, I went in with real low expectations. I was honestly kinda baffled/amazed they made a Morbius movie in the first place.
Even so, it, like... got the character facts right, while missing the spirit of the character. My reference point for Morbius is rooted in his 90s comics, so maybe he's drifted since then—but for me his stories have always felt like "cyberpunk-remake-of-a-Victorian-scientist antihero stuck in the body of a high goth vampire antivillain, and also it takes place in the grungiest possible New York at night."
They got the grungy New York but I feel like they missed the boat on the rest. Even the vampire aspect felt weak, since, like, he never drinks anybody but a few dubious bad guys and then gets himself under control for the duration of the movie. I was SO disappointed when he was innocent of the one big attack on a good guy. (That's an important aspect of his character—not the fear that he might need to drink from someone, but the guilt knowing he has before and will again.) Once the setup is out of the way, tonally it just felt like a pretty generic, formulaic superhero movie.
And one with one of my superhero movie pet peeves: when a movie introducing a new superhero isn't creative enough to invent or use a villain with their own separate theme, and so the villain is The Same Thing As The Good Guy, But Evil. Morbius did it, Venom did it (technically twice, although at least Carnage is a full character and they threw in Shriek), Shazam did it, Man of Steel did it, Captain Marvel did it, Iron Man did it... didn't a Hulk movie do it? Like please I'm tired, come up with different bad guys. Star Wars and martial arts movies are allowed to have their Hero Versus A Villain With The Same Powers fights but everyone else is banned for the next 20 years
Part of the trouble is that Morbius's first big enemy is supposed to be Spider-Man. You gotta come up with a villain for the guy who's meant to be the villain? I feel like this was a weakness both for Morbius and for Venom, much as I like the Venom movies: they're both supposed to be villains that you like in spite of their villainy, either because they're sympathetic (Morb) or because they're fun (Eddie & symby). You've GOTTA have that backstory of villainy before they make their heel-face turns. Make 'em good (and only let them eat/drink baddies right from the start) and you lose half their depth of character.
Oh and Morbius was too good-looking. He needs to look like Nosferatu 24/7, not just when he's in fighting mode. The cowards didn't make him ugly enough.
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Mr. Malcolm's List Actor Zawe Ashton Taps Into The Feminine Mystique [Interview]
After watching her turn as the cunning Julia Thistlewaite in "Mr. Malcolm's List," one might expect Zawe Ashton to be similarly intimidating. She's the kind of scene-stealing performer whose reputation definitely precedes her: Ashton's career spans decades, following the actor-writer-filmmaker from the stage to the screen and back again. It's easy to feel intimidated by the thought of speaking to Ashton (I definitely was), but all that melted away when I sat down to chat with the "Mr. Malcolm's List" star.
Speaking with Ashton is like making fast friends with a stranger in the place you least expected to. Her thoughts on Regency life and antiheroism are candid, hilarious, and considerably devoid of ego. Ironically enough, it is ego (and a thirst for revenge) that catalyzes the plot of "Mr. Malcolm's List." After Ms. Thistlewaite is humiliated by the titular Mr. Malcolm (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) — and immortalized in a Regency-era meme — she sets off to knock the bachelor down a peg. She asks her childhood friend, Selina Dalton (Freida Pinto), to pose as Malcolm's perfect woman, only to leave him high and dry once he starts to fall for her. It's the kind of story you'd expect from a '90s-era rom-com, where the stories usually begin with a harmless bet and feature at least one makeover montage. In that kind of story, Julia would be the villain, a cut-and-dry mean girl who gets what she "deserves" before the credits roll. But for director Emma Holly Jones and writer Suzanne Allain, "Mr. Malcolm's List" was not that kind of story.
Not only is Julia a character worthy of redemption (despite her questionable choices), but she's also worthy of a happily ever after. Her subversive arc appealed tremendously to Ashton, who'd never had the chance to star in a period romance before "Malcolm's List." The process was undeniably euphoric for the actor, especially when it came to the film's gorgeous costumes, but not without a few corset-related challenges. "Getting used to seeing your own bosom whilst acting is definitely a journey," Ashton mused. "But also what I love is, again: The sensuality, the feminine mystique that I'm not drawn to necessarily in my own life. I don't think about enhancing my bosom, necessarily. And I definitely will now from now on — for myself, not for anyone else."
I chatted with Ashton about walking the line between hero and villain, and tapping into the iconography of the Regency period.
You've spoken before about your attraction to more extreme characters. Is that what attracted you to Julia?
Well, do you know, I loved ... when I read [the script], I had 24 hours to read and decide and meet with Emma, our director, because two fantastic actresses had not been able to do the role. And Lyvie, I have no ego about that kind of thing because filmmaking is an intricate process that has lots of just twists and turns. But as an actor, the way that you come onto a project is often so influential. So having that very, very short decision time kind of made the decision easier in a way, because you go straight to the heart of things, I think. So I instantly read the intersection of genres present in this film. I'm a rom-com fan, I'm a fan of the new Regency-core journey that we're on as an industry, so that was an intersection that was a tick.
I also was like, "There's something so contemporary about this woman, Julia." We meet her at a point in her life where she's four seasons without a match. Her mother's starting to give her the side eye at every opportunity, reading out the latest matrimonial news at every opportunity. And that's something I think women can really understand, when society starts to kind of close in on you with that messaging of where you're supposed to be at in your life versus where you might be.
And I think I said to Emma in one of our initial interviews — or our only interview — I was like, "She feels like the Regency Bridget Jones." And that's a wonderful place to start. And then she becomes this protagonist. And then she becomes this humbled figure who lets her guard down and finds love and gets that intention that she sets off in the beginning of her life with, which is to marry for love. And I just really embraced the arc of that. I embraced the lightness and the kindness of the movie. We were in the second wave of lockdown and I knew that it was going to be a really wonderful spiritual reset to do something this fun.
And I have a very, very strong intentionality when it comes to supporting first-time filmmakers from underrepresented intersections. So it was just like "tick, tick, tick, tick, tick" in the space of 24 hours. And then I found out who the cast was and then I said, "Definitely. Please yes, I'll do this."
I love that you touched on kindness, because I feel like Julia sort of walks the scorned woman archetype throughout the film and she does make questionable choices, but she's never demonized. At the very end, she's able to find that she is worthy of love and forgiveness — which from a modern perspective, especially for women of color, that was so, so refreshing to see.
I think it's deeply refreshing to see. And you asked about a penchant for extreme characters. I wasn't drawn to Julia's extremes necessarily, but I'm always drawn to walking that line, I think. People in life are complex and I think I have a superpower as an actor for just really not minding if I'm disliked. I think lots of actors really desperately would like to be liked, but I don't know. I'm open to anti-hero-ness. I think they were the characters that I always warmed to as a child, when I was watching animated films or when you were at a puppet show, or just those first formative steps into understanding different creative worlds. I was an Ursula "Little Mermaid" fan. [Laughs]
They have much more fun, to be honest.
I think it's sort of ... you have to do more work as an audience member, and as an actor if you are going to win them over in the end. And of course you can win people over by just being extremely devious, and that's a very delicious experience.
I really love that also we're seeing an antagonist in a film of this genre who is a woman of color, who isn't attempting to be anything other than who she is. I really don't want to ever defang a performance for the purposes of being palatable. I personally don't feel like I make good work if I'm trying to pander to an audience in that way. And I also feel like you don't keep the door open for even more complex interpretations in that space, unless you really commit to walking that line. So I have a penchant for walking the line.
You've spoken about your relationship to secondhand clothes and how vintage has helped you find characters in the past. How did costuming inform your kind of molding of Julia?
Huge. And I'm so glad they have the costumes on show here at Saks Fifth Avenue as a way of representing this film. I love it mostly because there wasn't a huge amount of budget to make a lot of costumes. We really had to kind of do a lot with a little and that's down to our fantastic costume designer, Pam Downe.
Costume is very influential in this film, because I'd never played this era before, the Regency era. It's something that you've watched for such a long time. It has so much iconography attached to it. Stepping into it is a very, very unique experience, because the door has been closed to this genre to me for a very long time. So putting on a bonnet was heaven. I was like, "I feel cute! And I feel aspirational." Putting on the little ballet slippers that they wore at that time, it's extremely ... again, it's just very, very gentle and very ... it has a softness to it that really does transport you from this world to that one.
Also, I feel like there was something really, really fantastic about how sometimes wrong Julia was getting the fashion of that time. Her huge feather that was extremely offensive to Malcolm, I mean ... there was just a wonderful freedom in that to be someone who was presenting this very fashionable high society woman, but without making those fumbles and mistakes that we all make. Because of course, it was a hedonistic time. We don't think of it necessarily as that because we see the slightly more repressed behavior. Then the Victorians came along and corseted the Georgians up for a reason, because it was kind of sexy and out there! It was, again, it had this contemporary edge of a woman who's kind of embracing the fashions of the time and not necessarily always hitting the mark, but having fun with it. There was a huge freedom in that. (x)
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So I saw a car drive down the road when I went out to feed the ferals tonight, I went down and looked, didn't see any road closed signs so I am ASSUMING tomorrow I should be able to leave my house to go to HEB. Surely city workers aren't going to be working on the weekend, right?
In before the universe clowns on me tomorrow and I wake up to more construction noises and people actually resurfacing the roads. It's weird, I didn't get like....ANY notice in my mailbox that I saw. No sign on my door either which I know the utilities company will do at least whenever they have to do service to the water or electric and there's some kind of interruption.
You'd think if they were going to close the roads I would have at least gotten something in the mail surely?
Meeeeeeeeeeh. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.
Taking two days off of work this week was definitely the right decision. I was a lot less stressed and worn out today. Let's hope it was just sleep deprivation because I really don't like or want to have to be taking mental health days every bloody month. I"m going to be chewing through my vacation hours quicker than I can accrue them if that's the case.
Alright I'm going to go concentrate on writing and NOT looking at more hot fanart of D&D characters. Someone pointed out Chris Pine's character name is Edgin and I am just DED. Because it's not pronounced like edging but it sure is spelled similarly enough for my '13 year old boy brain' which is typically where my emotional maturity level when it comes to most anything sexual lays. aka it resides in the gutter. Also apparently his ship name with Xenk is Xedgin which just looks like a 90's edgelord usenet name on top of it everything else and I just cannot take anything about this pairing seriously. And I am desperately trying to avoid just breaking and going to AO3 to see what no doubt terrible fanfic offerings there are to be found. I doubt there's anything SUPER GREAT because it's a new canon and usually it's like...mediocre at best and then you check in after a year and there's a couple of really good fanfics. I could be just prejudging but I've been a fanfic reader for a long-ass time even before I started to put out my own mediocre fanfic offerings. But if I am incorrect, please let me know.
I am also fighting the urge to take a dive into my dumpster of Artemis/Jarlaxle fics because talking about Forgotten Realms got me all kinds of nostalgic for my favorite trashy 'antihero/villain depending on how ol' Sal is feeling when he writes them' duo.
BUT I AM GOING TO TRY AND RESIST THE SHINY NEW HYPERFIXATION AND WRITE.
#life of el#dungeons and dragons: honor among thieves#bruh there has to be a shorter way to write this fandom name
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'In the miniseries Ripley , available on Netflix from April 4, Andrew Scott plays the famous character from Patricia Highsmith's novels, a con man with a life full of lies, fraud and murder.
In an interview with Variety , the actor explained why he felt connected to the character:
He is an outsider, a rather oppressed and very talented person who finds himself on the fringes of society. He is a solitary figure, or at least isolated. And he's placed in a world full of very entitled and confident people, so it was easy for me to relate to him. I always say that he is not a born killer. He is not bloodthirsty. He is invited into this world, he does not seek it. And then the darkness within him emerges. So I feel like there's a lot about him that I can at least try to understand.
One of these aspects is Ripley's chameleonic character, capable of imitating the ways of doing things of others: " He is simply a keen observer of human nature, as is also an actor, so he tries to maintain that aspect with which I can relate to me as an interpreter"
Speaking to THR later , Scott adds:
I definitely see him as an antihero, but he's the protagonist. He's not the antagonist, so we see the story through his eyes, that's the most important aspect. He's certainly a dark character… that's a certain thing after playing someone so dark who has a completely different ideology than you, it's different, you spend a lot of time in a dark place and you don't want to do that for too long, but it was a great honor to play this character because he is so multifaceted.
What pushed him to take part in the series was in particular:
The opportunity to spend so much time with this character, who appears in about 90% of the scenes. It was a huge amount of acting, but I thought the series was really witty, and written economically and beautifully and brilliantly and seemed to have a real respect for the book without having too much reverence, making it very visual. I think the pace and look of the story is very unique and unique.'
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So they readily admit their secret identities (or at least Michiru's) and then... attack them. Okay. This scenario really doesn't hold up well outside of the sort of windswept dream logic of the manga where it can be like "oh, that sure was a cool and mysterious thing that happened!"
Full disclosure that this "we're not your allies!" stuff happened in the 90s anime too, and was MUCH more painfully prolonged, lol. I do feel like there they sort of pinned it on an ideological disagreement over whether they should try to save all the pure heart snatch victims or not, since the 90s anime worldbuilding held that three of the pure hearts would become talismans and their owners therefore couldn't be saved by having them put back in. This was also annoying and painful to watch at times but had the awesome payoff of Uranus and Neptune realizing THEY were the talisman pure heart carriers and having to put their money where their mouths were and sacrifice themselves* to manifest them. In the absence of that scene having the faintest possibility of existing, their antihero posturing in Crystal feels VERY empty and fangless, and I can't recall if they ultimately do anything of consequence at all, really.
In this version the talismans are already their fun accessories (which makes me wonder why/how there's any plotline about collecting them at all) and I think they're going to disagree on whether to kill Sailor Saturn but uh, that disagreement hasn't come up yet, in fact the inners + moon don't know Saturn exists.
*It was a little more complicated than that and more like Michiru got sacrificed against her will and once the Truth was Revealed Haruka chose to die with her to save the world rather than live without her. In any case, it was rad. Also, as with many Sailor Moon deaths, they got better.
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Unpopular opinions:
Nothing you all do or say will ever convince me to watch Succession in spite of the deep, unpleasant, and boring hatred I felt for every character when I watched the first two episodes ages ago.
I’m blacklisting Robin Wall Kimmerer. Yes, that’s how irritating I find her.
Sorry, person who recommended Natasha Pulley’s The Bedlam Stacks to me, but I HATED it. In fact, I hated it so much that even though I normally don’t finish books that I hate, I kept reading because I was so fascinated by how much I hated it. “This can’t be what this book is,” I thought to myself. “Surely.” BUT IT WAS! On the one hand, I feel slightly bad for saying so, because I can see exactly how the different spinning plates of the narrative got away from Pulley and started crashing. Also, I am about 90% certain that she named the book long before she started writing it, and then had to figure out what on earth a Bedlam stack was going to be. On the other hand, she’s the one who thought it would be a good idea to write a novel about East India Company plant-smuggling and then write the protagonist not even as an antihero, but just straight-up, like, a nice guy?
However, Pulley at least can write sentences that are neither technically offensive nor semantically irritating, which is not true of 90% of current speculative fiction authors.
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StarKid and Musical Score #2
Pop culture parodies tread fine lines to avoid copyright violations, especially when it comes to music. Some go for a certain mood or genre to evoke the source. Holy Musical B@man! is a great example. Nick Gage and Scott Lamps used strictly synthesizer and an electronic drum kit. They made great use of the standard synthesizer sound, calling to mind ‘80s new wave electronic music; a darker electric guitar sound to capture the gritty Batman from The Dark Knight or The Killing Joke; and light and playful bell tones, representing the innocence of Robin or perhaps the campy silliness of the ‘60s Batman TV show.
When it’s a parody musical of a musical, the challenge is even greater. Enter Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier.
There’s not a lot of interstitial music to set the scenes, but what little there is excels with capturing the mood, like the eerie strings and woodwinds coupled with sporadic percussion during Aladdin’s breakdown near the end. Instead, Twisted features a large number of songs to fill its 2.25 hour runtime, so I’m going to focus on the instrumentals of those for this post. The instrumentation for this show includes keyboard, drums, guitar/bass, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, and alto/tenor saxophone. It’s a much bigger and more varied band than any StarKid show had before or since.
The endeavor that composer A.J. Holmes, accompanied by incredible lyricist Kaley McMahon, set out on was to evoke not only the source material, Disney’s Aladdin, but also other Disney movies of the same era and the Broadway musical Wicked. The Disney references are all over the place, including the Disney-fied StarKid logo. The latter was accomplished via the title (Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier vs. Wicked: The Untold Story of a Wicked Witch), the album cover, the method of role reversal (a villain posed as the hero of their own story), and even a direct reference to the book. But A.J., along with orchestrator Andrew Fox and music director Justin Fischer, took it a step further with several songs to give the audience a truly immersive and magical experience.
To keep it simple, I’m going to link each song--or most, as some I can’t quite figure out--to another Disney or Wicked song that A.J. was likely, or even obviously, taking influence from. The similarities are often in the instrumentation and tempo; chord progressions and adjacent melodies; or lyrics and character situations.
Not a song, but the opening music evokes the haunting strings and bells in the opening of Beauty and the Beast to a tee. Like...it’s a dead ringer, obviously in purpose.
“Dream a Little Harder”: An opening ensemble number like “Belle” from Beauty and The Beast. Introduces the protagonist and the surrounding characters with a sweet and tremulous flute at the beginning and bouncy strings throughout. Lyrics mirror each other, i.e. “Fuck you” = “Bonjour”...Nick’s favorite line, “Marie! The baguettes! Hurry up!”...they all hate Ja’far vs. they all think Belle is weird. Belle is even part of the ensemble, telling Ja’far to keep his “fat face out of the mother fucking book”! It’s a pretty obvious comparison.
“I Steal Everything”: “One Jump Ahead” from Aladdin is the obvious parallel in orchestration, melody, tempo, lyrics, character situation...everything.
“Everything and More”: Again, an obvious parody of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid. Same gentle yet sweeping melody, same lilting tempo paired with vocals timid one moment and powerful the next, lyrics exploring desire for more.
“A Thousand and One Nights”: This one was a little harder, as really none of the Disney princesses have duets with their princes. But I think it pairs well with “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from The Lion King, at least after Timon and Pumbaa have their moment! The back and forth between lovers talking to themselves about the other has a similar feel. Honestly, this song is pretty original and yet manages to evoke Disney love song perfectly without copying any. The gentle melody, sweeping yet sweet orchestration, and the dialogue really sell it. They knew it was the love song because they went ahead and parodied the cheesy pop covers that ‘90s Disney movies are known for with a true bop performed by Britney Coleman and Carlos Valdes.
“Orphaned at 33″: Perhaps the reprise of “One Jump Ahead”? It’s slower and more melancholy and has similar chord progression and crooning vocals. Maybe “Go the Distance” from Hercules? Both are songs of sadness and longing, but StarKid’s Aladdin is far more pathetic and creepy than Hercules. EDIT: “Proud of Your Boy”, which was cut from Aladdin and put in the stage show, is absolutely the reference here! Again, a song of sadness and longing and self-pity and lamentation of a bad childhood...and StarKid’s Aladdin is still more pathetic. Musical parallels: similar chord progressions, embellishments, instrumentation, time signature, tempo, etc.; starts with delicate notes and Aladdin just talking (this starts at 46 seconds in “Orphaned at 33″, after a prelude); lilting and tiptoeing melody in the middle (1:56 for “Orphaned”, 1:08 for “Proud”); powerful sustained vocals and sweeping winds and strings to finish. I know this song was in the back of my mind, but it just wasn’t coming to me. Thank you @hatchetfieldtheories and @melchron for helping me out!
“Happy Ending”: The last half, at 1:50, really reminds me of “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, specifically at 5:15. The quiet and tense music make way for powerful vocals and are just waiting to burst forth for a showstopping ending. Both songs are also Act 1 closers. I can’t really place the rest of “Happy Ending”, but it all reminds me of Wicked with the powerful rock guitar and drums paired with cinematic strings. Plus, I always love when multiple melodies come together as reprises, most often as Act 1 closers!
“No One Remembers Achmed”: A sillier version of “Gaston” from Beauty and The Beast. The spurned villain’s cohorts are pumping him up and singing his praises! Both melodies are jaunty, though with different instrumentation...Twisted’s featuring sillier sound effects and goofy xylophone.
“Take Off Your Clothes”: A sexier version of “A Whole New World” from Aladdin. Slightly modified melody, and obviously the lyrics, but it’s exactly the same.
“The Power in Me”: A solemn and sweet farewell duet between friends like “For Good” from Wicked. The delicate woodwinds and strings sound similar to the gentle synth in “For Good”. Vocal performances are cautious and tender at first but quickly become strong and confident. “You are the power in me” and “I have been changed for good” follow almost the exact same rhythm.
The titular song has many facets, so I’ll detail them here:
Opening to 1:03 and 5:55 to the end = “No Good Deed” from Wicked, with the same intense strings and percussion. The whole situation and lyrics match, with both Ja’far and Elphaba deciding to just be antiheroes because no one sees them as heroes anyway. “I’ll be twisted, it’s my turn” matches “No good deed will I do ever again” and “I’m wicked through and through”.
1:10-2:06 = “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid...it’s Ursula, so of course...but also, the woodwinds and keyboard mimicking brass evoke the same bouncy yet menacing rhythm, akin to an evil polka.
2:07-2:50 = “Be Prepared” from The Lion King. Obviously, it’s Scar’s moment...but also, they have similar deep and primitive drums and woodwinds.
The rest of the songs (”Sands of Time”, “Golden Rule”, and “If I Believed”) I couldn’t really place, but they still evoke the source materials. “Golden Rule” has a classic musical theatre ensemble number feel, with fun strings and woodwinds and delightful choruses; the reprise turns it on its head with menacing piano and bass. “If I Believed” is another take on an “I want” song; the flute and cello pair very nicely together to support Dylan’s soulful voice.
My next post in this series will likely be about the Hatchetfield series: The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, Black Friday, and Nightmare Time. There’s a lot in between, like the AVP Trilogy, ANI, and Starship, but the music for those stands out less to me. They’re great, don’t get me wrong, but I think that the score is not what makes them special. The Hatchetfield stuff, however...is intense.
Thanks for reading!
#starkid#rewatchers1000#twisted: the untold story of a royal vizier#holy musical b@man#disney#wicked#sk musical score
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Final thoughts.
The Bad Batch has left me feeling upset, tired and more than anything, sad. Sad that what we saw in Season 7 of the Clone Wars was hyped into oblivion and then told to fuck off and die once the show actually started.
Sad the best moments that we saw like Wrecker and Crosshair having a friendly rivalry got ruined by Crosshair turning evil which was about as subtly telegraphed as a carpet bombing campaign. I mean when you say, “toothpick chewing, lone-wolf behavior, sadistic personality with the only truly distinct voice in the squad,” I say, congratulations, you just described every basic villain/antihero starter pack out there and 90% of all of our first OCs.
But most of all, I’m sad that the show we were promised about some of the best soldiers to ever grace the ranks of the Grand Army of the Republic living in the dawn of the Empire was thrown away so a little girl could be the main character and turn a highly skilled special forces unit into a bunch of bumbling idiots trying to play dad.
And God, I love the people that will write upwards of 500 words just to say that I can't criticize a show they like because “I need to be patient and give it some time” like they wouldn’t have a bad reaction if I sat them down and made them watch the entirety of their least favorite show while repeating “just give it time.” (Like this person) You can’t keep quiet but we all wish you would.
I am going to mock this person for one little thing and that is “Quit trying to ruin things for those of us who love it just the way it is. I'm begging at this point.” Keep fucking begging or go back to your echo chamber, either way, if people saying bad things about a show you like is enough to ruin it for you, you might need some help and not the self-diagnosed kind.
And I truly do love “The Bad Batch Protection Squad.” Like, protection from what? If complaints by Star Wars fans were enough to cause change, we wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place.
#the bad batch#Star Wars#fuck disney#You don’t need to keep simping for Dave and Disney#They don’t care once they have your money#keep getting mad#your rage gives me strength and draws more to my cause
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Okay but imagine: AU where Chloe somehow came into contact with Adrian Chase aka Vigilante and became the Vigilante of Arcadia Bay as in she shoots up criminals. Also her wanting to use a chainsaw on Nathan.
Ok if so in this AU Arcadia Bay wasn’t a tiny town and was instead was idk something like Gotham, where everyone knows there are fucked up shit happening all the time, that might work?
Because Chloe’s issues get channeled into anger super easy. that’s just how she deals with like 90% of her emotions. So even if violence might scare her off initially if she thinks the people she’s about to fight are bad and deserve it, she’d probably come around to it. 
Chloe as Vigilante would probably end up being a rather dark antihero. She doesn’t want to wait for evidence and wouldn’t feel bad about beating up ‘low life’s’ even if they aren’t directly involved with whoever she’s trying to get. She probably has a set of rules she’s given herself but even then it’s stuff like ‘I would never kill someone in front of a kid’. At least once she’s had a minor break down from killing a criminal and later seeing his kids miss him a lot because he was a good dad.
There is a tiny part of me that’s going ‘Chloe with a gun????? No’ because I still can’t see her doing well with a gun. I’m a fan of her weapon being a baseball bat but that’s wayyy too violent for this. Maybe in a ‘Max kinda cracks from all the time travel so her and Chloe accidentally become villains’ AU?
Considering how Vigilante’s storyline ends (according to the wiki page) I’m going to say that Max shows up before Chloe gets too lost and pulls her back enough that she’s a hero with some dark tendencies. 
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Everything I Watched in 2020
We’ll start with movies. The number in parentheses is the year of release, asterisks denote a re-watch, and titles in bold are my favourite watches of the year. Here’s 2019’s list.
01 Little Women (19)
02 The Post (17)
03 Molly’s Game (17)
04 * Doctor No (62)
05 Groundhog Day (93)
06 *Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (86)
07 Knives Out (19) My last theatre experience (sob)
08 Professor Marston and his Wonder Women (17)
09 Les Miserables (98)
10 Midsommar (19) I’m not sure how *good* it is, but it does stick in the ol’ brain
11 *Manhattan Murder Mystery (93)
12 Marriage Story (19)
13 Kramer vs Kramer (79)
14 Jojo Rabbit (19)
15 J’ai perdu mon corps (19) a cute animated film about a hand detached from its body!
16 1917 (19)
17 Married to the Mob (88)
18 Klaus (19)
19 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (19) If Little Women made me want to wear a scarf criss-crossed around my torso, this one made me want to wear a cloak
20 The Last Black Man in San Francisco (19)
21 *Lawrence of Arabia (62)
22 Gone With the Wind (39)
23 Kiss Me Deadly (55)
24 Dredd (12)
25 Heartburn (86) heard a bunch about this one in the Blank Check series on Nora Ephron, sadly after I’d watched it
26 The Long Shot (19)
27 Out of Africa (85)
28 King Kong (46)
29 *Johnny Mnemonic (95)
30 Knocked Up (07)
31 Collateral (04)
32 Bird on a Wire (90)
33 The Black Dahlia (05)
34 Long Time Running (17)
35 *Magic Mike (12)
36 Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (07)
37 Cold War (18)
38 *Kramer Vs Kramer (79) yes I watched this a few months before! This was a pandemic friend group co-watch.
39 *Burn After Reading (08)
40 Last Holiday (50)
41 Fly Away Home (96)
42 *Moneyball (11) I’m sure I watch this every two years, at most??
43 Last Holiday (06) the Queen Latifah version of the 1950 movie above, lacking, of course, the brutal “poor people don’t deserve anything good” ending
44 *Safe (95)
45 Gimme Shelter (70)
46 The Daytrippers (96)
47 Experiment in Terror (62)
48 Tucker: The Man and His Dream (88)
49 My Brilliant Career (79) one of the salvations of 2020 was watching movies “with” friends. Our usual method was to video chat before the movie, sync our streaming services, and text-chat while the movie was on.
50 Divorce Italian Style (61)
51 *Gosford Park (01) another classic comfort watch, fuck I love a G. Park
52 Hopscotch (80)
53 Brief Encounter (45)
54 Hud (63)
55 Ocean’s 8 (18)
56 *Beverly Hills Cop (84)
57 Blow the Man Down (19)
58 Constantine (05)
59 The Report (19) maddening!! How are people so consistently terrible to one another!
60 Everyday People (04)
61 Anatomy of a Murder (58)
62 Spiderman: Homecoming (17)
63 *To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (95) Of the 90s drag road movies, Priscilla is more visually striking, but this has its moments.
64 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (92)
65 *The Truman Show (98)
66 Mona Lisa (86)
67 The Blob (58)
68 The Guard (11)
69 *Waiting for Guffman (96) RIP Fred Willard
70 Rocketman (19)
71 Outside In (18)
72 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (08) how strange to see a movie that you have known the premise for, but no details of, for over a decade
73 *Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (91)
74 The Reader (08)
75 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (19) This was fine until it VERY MUCH WAS NOT FINE
76 The End of the Affair (99) you try to watch a fun little romp about infidelity during the Blitz, and Graham Greene can’t help but shoehorn in a friggin crisis of religious faith
77 Must Love Dogs (05) barely any dog content, where are the dogs at
78 The Rainmaker (97)
79 *Batman & Robin (97)
80 National Lampoon’s Vacation (83) Never seen any of the non-xmas Vacations, didn’t realize the children are totally different, not just actors but ages! Also, this one is blatantly racist!
81 *Mystic Pizza (88)
82 Funny Girl (68)
83 The Sons of Katie Elder (65)
84 *Knives Out (19) another re-watch within the same year!! How does this keep happening??
85 *Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (10) a real I-just-moved-away-from-Toronto nostalgia watch
86 Canadian Bacon (92) vividly recall this VHS at the video store, but I never saw it til 2020
87 *Blood Simple (85)
88 Brittany Runs a Marathon (19)
89 The Accidental Tourist (88)
90 August Osage County (13) MELO-DRAMA!!
91 Appaloosa (08)
92 The Firm (93) Feeling good about how many iconic 80s/90s video store stalwarts I watched in 2020
93 *Almost Famous (00)
94 Whisper of the Heart (95)
95 Da 5 Bloods (20)
96 Rain Man (88)
97 True Stories (86)
98 *Risky Business (83) It’s not about what you think it’s about! It never was!
99 *The Big Chill (83)
100 The Way We Were (73)
101 Safety Last (23) It’s getting so that I might have to add the first two digits to my dates...not that I watch THAT many movies from the 1920s...
102 Phantasm (79)
103 The Burrowers (08)
104 New Jack City (91)
105 The Vanishing (88)
106 Sisters (72)
107 Puberty Blues (81) Little Aussie cinema theme, here
108 Elevator to the Gallows (58)
109 Les Diaboliques (55)
110 House (77) haha WHAT no really W H A T
111 Death Line (72)
112 Cranes are Flying (57)
113 Holes (03)
114 *Lady Vengeance (05)
115 Long Weekend (78)
116 Body Double (84)
117 The Crazies (73) I love that Romero shows the utter confusion that would no doubt reign in the case of any kind of disaster. Things fall apart.
118 Waterlilies (07)
119 *You’re Next (11)
120 Event Horizon (97)
121 Venom (18) I liked it, guys, way more than most superhero fare. Has a real sense of place and the place ISN’T New York!
122 Under the Silver Lake (18) RIP Night Call
123 *Blade Runner (82)
124 *The Birds (62) interesting to see now that I’ve read the story it came from
125 *28 Days Later (02) hits REAL FUCKIN’ DIFFERENT in a pandemic
126 Life is Sweet (90)
127 *So I Married an Axe Murderer (93) find me a more 90s movie, I dare you (it’s not possible)
128 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (67)
129 The Pelican Brief (93) 90s thrillers continue!
130 Dick Johnston is Dead (20)
131 The Bridges of Madison County (95)
132 Earth Girls are Easy (88) Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum are so hot in this movie, no wonder they got married
133 Better Watch Out (16)
134 Drowning Mona (00) trying for something like the Coen bros and not getting there
135 Au Revoir Les Enfants (87)
136 *Chasing Amy (97) Affleck is the least alluring movie lead...ever? I also think I gave Joey Lauren Adams’ character short shrift in my memory of the movie. It’s not good, but she’s more complicated than I recalled.
137 Blackkklansman (18)
138 Being Frank (19)
139 Kiki’s Delivery Service (89)
140 Uncle Frank (20) why so many FRANKS
141 *National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (89) watching with pals (virtually) made it so much more fun than the usual yearly watch!
142 Half Baked (98) another, more secret Toronto nostalgia pic - RC Harris water filtration plant as a prison!
143 We’re the Millers (13)
144 All is Bright (13)
145 Defending Your Life (91)
146 Christmas Chronicles (18) I maintain that most new xmas movies are terrible, particularly now that Netflix churns them out like eggnog every year.
147 Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (18)
148 Reindeer Games (00) what did I say about Affleck??!? WHAT DID I SAY
149 Palm Springs (20)
150 Happiest Season (20)
151 *Metropolitan (90) it’s definitely a Christmas movie
152 Black Christmas (74)
THEATRE:HOME - 2:150 (thanks pandemic)
I usually separate out docs and fiction, but I watched almost no documentaries this year (with the exception of Dick Johnston). Reality is real enough.
TV Series
01 - BoJack Horseman (final season) - Pretty damned poignant finish to the show, replete with actual consequences for our reformed bad boy protagonist (which is more than you can say for most antiheroes of Peak TV).
02 - *Hello Ladies - I enjoy the pure awkwardness of seeing Stephen Merchant try to perform being a Regular Person, but ultimately this show tips him too far towards a nasty, Ricky Gervais-lite sort of persona. Perhaps he was always best as a cameo appearance, or lip synching with wild eyes while Chrissy Teigen giggles?
03 - Olive Kittredge - a rough watch by times. I read the book as well, later in the year. Frances Mcdormand was the best, possibly the only, casting option for the flinty lead. One episode tips into thriller territory, which is a shock.
04 - *The Wire S3, S4, S5 - lockdown culture! It was interesting to rewatch this, then a few months later go through an enormous, culture-level reappraisal of cop-centred narratives.
05 - Forever - a Maya Rudolph/Fred Armisen joint that coasts on the charm of its leads. The premise is OK, but I wasn’t left wanting any more at the end.
06 - *Catastrophe - a rewatch when my partner decided he wanted to see it, too!
07 - Red Oak - resolutely “OK” steaming dramedy, relied heavily on some pretty obvious cues to get across its 1980s setting.
08 - Little Fires Everywhere - gulped this one down while in 14-day isolation, delicious! Every 90s suburban mom had that SUV, but not all of them had the requisite **secrets**
09 - The Great - fun historical comedy/drama! Costumes: lush. Actors: amusing. Race-blind casting: refreshing!
10 - The Crown S4 - this is the season everyone lost their everloving shit for, since it’s finally recent enough history that a fair chunk of the viewing audience is liable to recall it happening.
11 - Ted Lasso - we resisted this one for a while (thought I did enjoy the ad campaign for NBC sports (!!) that it was based on). My view is that its best point was the comfort that the men on the show have (or develop, throughout the season) with the acknowledgement and sharing of their own feelings. Masculinity redux.
12 - Moonbase 8 - Goodnatured in a way that makes you certain they will be crushed.
13 - The Good Lord Bird - Ethan Hawke is really aging into the character actor we always hoped he would be!
14 - Hollywood - frothy wish-fulfillment alternate history. I think the show would have been improved immeasurably by skipping the final episode.
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Hey! I wanted to ask you something that's been on my mind. Why do you think the fandom seems divided on Selina's characterization? Half the fandom wants to "remain a villian" and the other half wants her to be an antihero, i.e. wanting more out of life besides thievery? Personally, I feel like both opinions are valid based on the amount of material she has, and bc DC just hasn't given her a proper definitive origin, it's hard to know what makes her tick, so her characterization has become murky?
Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but FWIW that hasn’t really been my experience. Most of the people in fandom that I’ve seen or interacted with who are Catwoman fans seem to be more in favor of the anti-hero with a heart of gold characterization. My observations hasn’t been anywhere near what I would arbitrarily call “divided.”
Except for maybe a short time during the Silver Age, Catwoman has never been a hard line villain. She’s more self-serving than anything. Even in the Golden Age she had a moral code and aversion to killing and extreme violence so categorizing Catwoman as ever have been a villain is not accurate. She can’t “remain” something she never was to begin with. So that’s the first thing.
Like I said everyone’s entitled to their opinion but it would strike me as odd that anyone who is familiar with Catwoman’s modern (modern being a pretty generous term) comics would say that since her own comics has never portrayed her that way. Ed Brubaker’s Catwoman run, to this day is widely considered to be the most definitive Catwoman run. Whether or not you agree with that isn’t really the point. The fact that the series when Catwoman firmly reforms and we see that transformation from her perspective, is the most acclaimed and well known Catwoman runs, says something. In my experience the people who say that Catwoman is a villain or that thievery is the main crux of her character, are more familiar with her in the most basic sense. I think when you consume more Catwoman-centered media you see her more as a character and less of an archetype.
Thieving isn’t even something Catwoman particularly cares about, which is why she’s able to give it and move onto other things. It wasn’t her life-long dream to become a master thief, she wasn’t called to it or anything. She started doing it out of survival and eventually grows weary of the lifestyle. It’s more or less a gig to her. Okay maybe I’m being being hyperbolic, but only a little bit. This has been pretty consistent across Catwoman’s characterization, even in other forms of media. Catwoman begins a life of crime out of necessity, and eventually wants to find a better path for herself. This goes back to the Silver Age. It’s pretty ironic that some want her to “remain a villain” when it’s exactly that kind of perception and low expectations of her that makes Selina feel that she can’t move on with her life, even if she wanted to. It’s because of how others perceive her and pigenhole her into that role, that she feels like she can’t be anything else. Catwoman is a thief and that’s all she’ll ever be. These were prominent themes in The Dark Knight Rises and Batman: Telltale.
As much as I would love for Catwoman to get a new origin story I don’t believe that it would change anything about people’s perception, I guess because I don’t believe that her origins are unclear. I think it’s been consistent for the last few decades, in one way or another, that Selina becomes a criminal for survival. In The Brave and the Bold #197 she reveals that her abusive ex-husband left her socially and financially ruined, and thus stole to get back at him.
This was published in 1983, but it was a Silver Age era comic. Catwoman (v2) #81 goes into a lot of depth about Selina’s upbringing. She grew up in an abusive household and was orphaned at a young age. She learns to steal to fend herself on the streets. I’m going to link the panels instead of posting because it’s extremely graphic, but be warned: it contains images of suicide and domestic violence, but if you’re interested you can read about it here.
DC Comics’ has more or less stuck to this as Catwoman’s *origin* ever since. If you are interested in learning about how her childhood and it’s connection to thieving I’d check out Catwoman (v2) #39. It’s one of the few times Selina talks about missing out on having a loving family and stability growing up. You can see a few of the panels here.
The only thing else I have to add is that I think that people have an overly romanticized impression about what Selina’s life of crime is like. Sure she’s had some really great and highly entertaining heist stories, but it’s also come with very severe consequences. Including, but not limited to, getting Selina almost killed, thrown in jail a bunch of times, accused of crimes she didn’t commit, forced on the run, led to the torture and even death of her and her loved ones. She’s had to fake her own death more than once. So...yeah. If you read about all of these things happening to her you can see how the criminal lifestyle would start of lose its appeal, and why she’d want to move on with her life.
Selina has said herself that eventually the thrills wears off, and she doesn’t feel fulfilled by it in the long run. That is an indication of character growth. Development in character and storytelling should be moved forward not stifled or regressed. This is also just bad from a storytelling perspective. The first half of Catwoman’s first and fourth ongoing series were about Catwoman heisting and general life of crime, and if you’ve read them you might find that they start to get really repetitive and boring after awhile. As a reader you want to see different things, and I can see why readership eventually dropped off for both of those series. There are only so many ways you can see Catwoman dangling from the ceiling about to burglarize some museum or whatever.
I honestly think you have to read Catwoman’s comic book series to really appreciate her as a well-rounded and multi-layered character, because it’s from her point of view. You’re not really going to get the same insight if you only rely on her appearances in the Batman-centered media. I’d definitely check out at least the end of her 90s series and Ed Brubaker’s run for more depth.
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