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terajkSo, Wreck-It-Ralph is my new favorite thing! I mean, you have video game characters who know they're video game characters! And Kano from Mortal Kombat* shows up in a PG-rated movie and rips out a zombie's bleeding heart!! What's not to love?
(Actually, the BEST PART is that Zangief from Street Fighter is in a villain support group, even though I don't remember Zangief being a bad guy--just a pain in the ass to fight. But, see, he was such a pain in the ass for screenwriter Phil Johnson to fight that "I don't care what anybody says, he was bad to me.")
But! There is banter and found families and disabled ladies (although one disability is played for laughs and the other one is fantastical and ends up a Disability Superpower and also more or less cured in the end) and, okay, Felix is adorable. The fic potential is HIGH.
And because the fic potential is high, I dunno why the one disability can't be taken seriously or why the other one can't be complicated more? Like, yeah, the game reset so Vanellope is no longer a glitch (cf: she's game-jumping with everyone else in the credits), but she still glitches which is now her awesome superpower, which she got partly by learning to control it. But, like, does controlling it have a cost? I mean, she's not glitching when SHE wants--she's glitching when the PLAYER wants. Not the kind of cost where she would choose not to race anymore (Vanellope? Choose not to race? Pfft!), but maybe she needs a break from keeping it in check during working hours? And it still responds to stress and stuff? I'm reminded of people with, say, ADHD or Tourette's Syndrome who take medication holidays.
So, yeah, I just brought disability back into something after it was canonically cured in a way that made total sense within the story. Jimminy-jamminy, self! But in my defense, there are things that annoy me about the Disability Superpower trope and also how difference is handled in stories where the moral is "It's okay to be different!" where a) the difference is always good/useful to other people (that ugly duckling is actually a beautiful swan! Rudolph's red nose comes in handy for Santa Claus to see through the fog! Which...is related to what annoys me about the Disability Superpower, I guess) and b) is separate from disability, as if disability isn't itself a form of difference.
Also: part of the way my skillset works is, it comes in handy for most academic things so I appear more stereotypically successful in a school setting than I do outside of it, even though I actually learned to do more things after leaving school. And, depending on what the costs of controlling her glitch are, and where they're more likely to show up, Vanellope could be a character to look at that with. (I dunno, I like playing with things in fic that affect me in real life, OK?)
Or maybe I just don't get to see two disabled ladies together in fiction very often. And I am too tired right now to talk about the other one, but she is fabulous, too! Although, good GOD the potential for disabilityfail. I mean, there's potential for disabilityfail whenever I write a disabled character--pretty much everyone I write, whether for reasons related to disability or race or gender or whatever, is a case of "I'll fail better next time!"-- but it's lower when their canon does, like, 90% of my homework for me.
*The first couple times I saw the movie, I was like: "Who is that guy? It's on the tip of my tongue!" And then TVTropes told me, and yeah, I don't know why they let me review video games either.
(Actually, the BEST PART is that Zangief from Street Fighter is in a villain support group, even though I don't remember Zangief being a bad guy--just a pain in the ass to fight. But, see, he was such a pain in the ass for screenwriter Phil Johnson to fight that "I don't care what anybody says, he was bad to me.")
But! There is banter and found families and disabled ladies (although one disability is played for laughs and the other one is fantastical and ends up a Disability Superpower and also more or less cured in the end) and, okay, Felix is adorable. The fic potential is HIGH.
And because the fic potential is high, I dunno why the one disability can't be taken seriously or why the other one can't be complicated more? Like, yeah, the game reset so Vanellope is no longer a glitch (cf: she's game-jumping with everyone else in the credits), but she still glitches which is now her awesome superpower, which she got partly by learning to control it. But, like, does controlling it have a cost? I mean, she's not glitching when SHE wants--she's glitching when the PLAYER wants. Not the kind of cost where she would choose not to race anymore (Vanellope? Choose not to race? Pfft!), but maybe she needs a break from keeping it in check during working hours? And it still responds to stress and stuff? I'm reminded of people with, say, ADHD or Tourette's Syndrome who take medication holidays.
So, yeah, I just brought disability back into something after it was canonically cured in a way that made total sense within the story. Jimminy-jamminy, self! But in my defense, there are things that annoy me about the Disability Superpower trope and also how difference is handled in stories where the moral is "It's okay to be different!" where a) the difference is always good/useful to other people (that ugly duckling is actually a beautiful swan! Rudolph's red nose comes in handy for Santa Claus to see through the fog! Which...is related to what annoys me about the Disability Superpower, I guess) and b) is separate from disability, as if disability isn't itself a form of difference.
Also: part of the way my skillset works is, it comes in handy for most academic things so I appear more stereotypically successful in a school setting than I do outside of it, even though I actually learned to do more things after leaving school. And, depending on what the costs of controlling her glitch are, and where they're more likely to show up, Vanellope could be a character to look at that with. (I dunno, I like playing with things in fic that affect me in real life, OK?)
Or maybe I just don't get to see two disabled ladies together in fiction very often. And I am too tired right now to talk about the other one, but she is fabulous, too! Although, good GOD the potential for disabilityfail. I mean, there's potential for disabilityfail whenever I write a disabled character--pretty much everyone I write, whether for reasons related to disability or race or gender or whatever, is a case of "I'll fail better next time!"-- but it's lower when their canon does, like, 90% of my homework for me.
*The first couple times I saw the movie, I was like: "Who is that guy? It's on the tip of my tongue!" And then TVTropes told me, and yeah, I don't know why they let me review video games either.
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Date: 2013-02-15 06:16 am (UTC)tl;dr WRITE EEEEEEET
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Date: 2013-02-15 06:38 am (UTC)Not that I know of! There's a really cheap movie theater REALLY close to my house ($2.50 for the matinee show, $3.00 after 6 PM!) that shows movies after they've been in theaters for a while. I decided to go to the movies every day and, uh, saw Wreck-It-Ralph three times this week XD
Uh, is this the part where I tell you that I saw your Yuletide request and am planning a NYR for you, which is how this all started?
I LOVED that movie and its characters and I would really, really love more fic in which Vanellope's glitching is considered/written as a disability and having that explored.
EEEEEEE! <3 (Psst! And Calhoun, too!)
I'm enamored of the implication that she chose to keep that part of herself. (After the game resets and she turns into a princess, she glitches out of her princess dress into her "regular" clothes and says "This isn't me.") And I'd like to explore the many and complicated reasons she might have done that--which could be more than just "This is a cool power."
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Date: 2013-02-15 06:46 am (UTC)Calhoun, Calhoun - I'd definitely love to see more of her in fic, I mean I've read some stuff but she's such an interesting character, especially from a - would it be meta? - perspective, anyway, where she's dealing with this backstory of hers that may or may not actually be experiential for her. As in, I'm still personally unclear as to where character's "memories" begin, as opposed to what pieces are backstory/programmed in and not as deeply-felt/held as "real" memories - part of which makes Vanellope's decision at the end so much more interesting imo. The plot twist with such unexpected fridge logic!! *flaily hands*
Basically I will read ALL THE FIC, ALL OF IT, because I am greedy like that :P
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Date: 2013-02-15 06:59 am (UTC)Speaking of disability, I was disappointed with the couple of throwaway lines (played for laughs) that the arcade owner makes about putting his mother out to pasture just like the old games that don't work anymore; what an awful way to think of older people, especially if they have some dementia-type issue.
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Date: 2013-02-15 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 05:09 pm (UTC)NGL, last night I stayed all the way through the credits because TVTropes said there was a logo-joke afterwards. [SPOILER
It's a kill screen, which I have never seen personally as I'm not that good at Pac-Man.
/SPOILER]
ETA: If you ever see Texas Chainsaw 3D, there is a bonus scene after the credits, too!
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Date: 2013-02-16 02:32 am (UTC)Also I really love the way that you've dissected how Vanellope's disability is handled.
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Date: 2013-02-19 01:41 am (UTC)