Little sister/ Fellow Aunt and I have this thing about "curating your own media", and choosing the texts for yourself that make you feel good, rather than misanthropic. I read Twilight to see what the fuss was about. I read "some" of 50 Shades for the same reason, but couldn't do it (it's not just the content. It's the terrible writing). I wouldn't do up again. Life is too short to read bad books. Life is also too short to not eat the dessert, and not drink the wine.
So when I find books, Graphic or not, that make me genuinely excited to share with the nibblets, I get so happy. So, here are two of them.
Lumberjanes is what happens when you send a whole bunch of girls off to summer camp, and you DON'T make the beautiful and blonde, or make it all about boys and bullying. Or finding your heretofore unknown identical twin sister. If you take a bunch of girls and make them clever, and brave, and silly, and scared, and cranky, and chubby, and aesthetically and sexually diverse, and full of interesting, layered, REAL qualities. You make them real friends, full of loyalty AND disagreements, love AND impatience. And then you let them have all the adventures. Did you get lost in the forest after dark and find some kind of mystical weirdness? You'll get through it together. Have the boys from the all male camp across the lake been possessed by something kind of evil and/ or gross? You can do it together. Three eyes shape-shifting bears? Magical foxes? They deal with it like they deal with canoeing, and crafts, and transgender campers. Like hard-core lady-types, Like Lumberjanes.
This is a camp for hard-core lady-types, complete with instruction manuals (like, literal pages included in the comic) and I freaking LOVE it. Vol 1 and 2,as well as author Noelle Stevenson's Nimona are 10/10's from me. Hello, freaking brilliant gender politics, feminist tropes, and plain old fun. The fact that they swear in punk rock goddesses (What the Joan Jett!) and believe in "friendship to the max" just makes me love them more. Even without added dinosaurs.
Volume three, now in my hot little hands, will be part of our family history and heirlooms.
Next, Princeless!!!!!!!!
Imagine a kick-ass, clever, fabulous, mixed race Princess whose family shoves her into a dragon guarded tower so that she can be rescued by some stupid, ridiculous, shiny-armoured prince that she'll be forced to marry. Yeah, NO. This Princess is going to make friends with her (female) dragon, rescue herself, and then set off to rescue all of her elder sisters. Hells, Yeah!
Princeless questions ALL of the fantasy tropes. She goes off to find armour, and finds a half-dwarf best friend (maybe more) Bedelia, who has been stuck under her fathers thumb in his shop pretending to be the dutiful daughter who never wanted anything else. Pfft.
They are both freed from who society wants girls of their sex and rank to be. And they just want to help other girls escape. And not just girls. Princess Adrienne's twin brother, Devon, the only male in the entire family, is as trapped by his circumstances as his sisters. His father wants him to be manly, princely, kingly, and warriorly. And he's not.
Add in the kind of fuck-ups that 16 year olds get into, the kind of mistakes that people make regarding societies equation of beauty and goodness, werewolf maiden-warriors, pirate princesses, and its a whole lotta fun. Even Adrienne's parents get into the action. The Father who thinks he knows best is going to get his preconceived notions shattered, and mother? Well, I have a strange feeling about the super, secret, black knight who was the Kings mysterious ally way back when.
10/10. Read it. Buy it. Love it.
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