Julia Kaye, prettiest girl in the world

omg nooooooooo

late comment but this is so good lmao

just saw this—sending so much love tyler, if there's anything i can do to help in any way i'm here for you

i'm glad you're safe 💜

someone reminded me of this oldie so i dug it out of the archive

name that album 🦒🎶

a girl shouted out her car window at me "I LOVE YOUR HAIR"

girls rule

gonna refer to fans of kaiju movies as monster mashers

gurgi died for our sins

yeah it deservedly bombed hard

oh my GOD i was DYING for ANY of the characters to make a single meaningful choice throughout the movie

everyone was unlikable and nobody had an intelligible character arc????

i was terrified at how boring it was at the very least

i've seen this opinion a few times now and i disagree wholeheartedly

the plot itself was fine—it was a mishmash of lotr tropes

nobody who worked on the movie seems to have heard of the concept of a character arc and that characters need to make meaningful decisions to have an interesting story

is my life worse for having watched it? maybe just a tiny bit

i can't stop thinking about how bad the black cauldron was

the movie's crew:

• a mc without personality beyond boy mc
• a competent magical princess who stops being competent and magical upon meeting the mc
• an old man who is just kinda there in the bg
• gollum but cute

i'm done commenting on this movie—if it weren't for the bg art i'd regret watching it

checking in to say that taran didn't make a meaningful choice in the entire movie, the plot just continually happened to him and he was like "ok i guess"

there are endless ways to convey that character arc over the course of a film and the they chose none of them lol

yeah, the plot technically is pushing him thru the hero's journey but he never seems to actually engage with it intentionally lol

it's wild, it really isn't THAT far off from what it needs to be all things considered

the plot's mostly fine—i just wish anyone working on it had any idea what makes an appealing character

taran sucks: he has zero personality, the plot pushes him along instead of him ever taking any initiative, his survival is entirely luck-based, is egotistical despite it all, and is a misogynist toward eilonwy

the point of this movie is the beautiful background art imo

what if the pig was a palantir but also kinda frodo and the ring in a way

the author of the chronicles of prydain after reading lotr: what if i.......... also wrote lotr, that'd be so sick

sauroman walking around carrying a cute pig in the crook of his arm for just in case he needs to contact sauron

disney's the black cauldron asked the very important question: what if lotr's palantirs required the world's cutest pig to operate?

i once went to a halloween party that was wizard themed but somehow didn't catch that last bit

a room full of wizards and videl dbz lol

💪💪💪

it's so sick!! i love that there are academics focused on comics nowadays

i love that they picked up on and called attention to my work having resisted trauma-exclusive framings, that means so much to see

i worked hard to try express as much nuance to my experiences as the limitations allowed 🙏💜

unfortunately like most published papers only the abstract is publicly available

i just emailed the authors to hopefully get to check it out 🙏

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Research Article. Dys-appearing and eu-appearing trans bodies: an examination of Julia Kaye's Super Late Bloomer by Archita Mondal & Rajni Singh

ABSTRACT This paper examines Julia Kaye’s autobiographical graphic narrative, Super Late Bloomer, to explore how trans embodiment is represented in the daily comic strip form. It traces Kaye’s gender transition journey, scrutinising the utilisation of visual metaphors and graphic structure to depict trans dys-appearance and trans eu-appearance that articulate the affective states of dysphoria and euphoria, respectively. We argue that the comic’s distinctive formal grammar, its repetitive, daily three-panel structure, supports the non-linear experience of gender transition, a concept this paper terms the ‘embodied oscillation of trans appearances’.

It explores how the graphic medium can facilitate trans representation by offering an intimate engagement with the embodied aspects of identity and minutely capturing the transitioning body, thereby reflecting the individual’s body image. Additionally, the paper examines how the narrative presents a broader continuum of trans realities by delving into the role of mirrors, makeup, and gender markers (both feminine and masculine) alongside gaze, internalised transphobia and narcissistic investment in delineating the nuances of dysphoria and euphoria in the narrative. In doing so, the comic resists trauma-exclusive framings and linear before/after transition plots, instead presenting the trans self as an ongoing, rhythmically formed process.

man, this is the coolest

an academic paper about my first book was published recently ☺️