Fight Every Fight Like You Can Win (Love Is Everything. Risk Your Life to Elope!!)

First things first: this memo talks about spoilers for the episode of “Dirty Pair,” Love Is Everything. Risk Your Life to Elope!! As such, it’s recommended that you watch the show before you read this memo. Sadly, there are no legal ways of watching the series as the numerous video-sharing sites that typically showcase anime legally (such as Hulu and Chrunchroll) do not have the series on their sites for free (here’s the link to the YouTube page with the episode, available if you pay $16.99 for the season pass, though the OVAs and films are available on YouTube for free). As such, either buy the DVDs (which are surprisingly still in stock) or watch it on extra legal video sharing sites like KissAnime (episode 7, if your source lacks the name).

Now that that’s out of the way, we should perhaps begin with an article by Cheryl Morgan entitled “The Future of Gender Is the Present for Trans* Characters in SciFi Novels.” In this article, Morgan talks about the history of trans* people in both the real world and in fictional ones. She talks about how the majority of genre fiction tends to have issues when it comes to dealing with people of alternative gender performance ranging from keeping them within stereotypes of gender performance (Steel Beach), outright disgust at the very concept (The Transexual Empire), and relatively decent portrayals (Triton). The article ends optimistically, with a desire to see what new stories might come. However, the works Morgan cites are entirely from western cultures, what about the works from Eastern Cultures about trans* people?

Enter “Dirty Pair.” “Dirty Pair” began as a series of Hard Sci-Fi short stories in various Japanese magazines written by Haruka Takachiho. The series chronicles the adventures of a pair of trouble consultants (basically space cops) by the names of Kei and Yuri who go under the name “The Lovely Angels.” However, because they are so good at their jobs that they can find a secret arms deal while searching for a missing cat then accidentally blow up the entire government because they were complicit in this cruel and illegal system, they are given the disparaging nickname of “The Dirty Pair.” Kei, the narrator of the stories, talks very much like the narrator of Jelani Wilson’s 22XX: One-Shot, where the narrator is preoccupied with thoughts of a significant other. But where Wilson’s Sasha Sangare is very much in line with the heteronormative relationship of pining for the girl next door, Takachiho’s Kei is simultaneously hitting on you the reader (regardless of what your gender is) while also talking about how much she most assuredly doesn’t want to make sweet passionate love to Yuri. The characterization of the Lovely Angels is typically read as being a Tomboy/Girly Girl dynamic, however if you pay attention you’ll notice that’s actually a performance done by the characters for the benefit of the audience (Yuri has a very verbose use of French and Kei can get a bit focused in physical appearance). The stories deal with themes of performativity, karma, and big as all fuck explosions. Also, they have a pet cat named Mughi who is from a species of hyper intelligent cats from the short story Black Destroyer. In short, it’s the greatest Star Trek series ever made. (No, I am not explaining that. There are some rabbit holes one should dive into without assistance.)

A few years after the first of the novels for the series was released, Sunrise began work on two OVAs (one of which is amazing, but has an unnecessary rape scene and the other is Project Eden, which is the kind of film that should one should only watch the first 20 minutes of and ignore the rest) and a 25 episode series. For the seventh episode of that series, we have Love Is Everything. Risk Your Life to Elope!!

Rather than go through the story shot for shot, as the episode is not the kind that is based on its visuals (though there are some interesting ones), I’ll give the base outline. Clicky Goldjeff (because Japan), son of an intergalactic cruse line mogul, was kidnapped on the day of his wedding to several women (because Japan (also holy shit, the wedding. He is literally being chained and dragged to the alter by the women out of a skyscraper sized cake while men dressed like Playboy bunnies hand out drinks to the rich people watching)) by a woman named Joanca. Allegedly, she kidnapped him for a large sum of money, which the Lovely Angels are meant to deliver. They hate this case because it’s a really crap case where everyone is crap both to each other and in general. Clicky’s a sycophant, Joanca’s a user out only for herself and a perpetual liar, and the elder Goldjeff is misogynistic dick head. There’s no one likeable.

And then, the penny drops. As it turns out, Joanca and Clicky genuinely love each other and want to be with one another, much to the dismay of the elder Goldjeff. The mogul sates his reasoning quite plainly: Joanca’s a transwoman. This is immediately followed by our protagonists siding with Joanca and Clicky, citing that 1/10 people in the universe identify as trans* and such viewpoints are “old fashioned.” Even the elder Goldjeff respects the gender identity of Joanca, never misgenders her, and yet is still a reactionary because she “used to be a man.” The show, which need I remind you came out in 1985, just showed a utopian future where even the reactionaries accept all gender identities. Better than Star Trek!

Morgan ends her article with the question as to whether or not trans* people will even be a thing in the future, to which “Dirty Pair” answers, “Yes. Yes you will still exist. You will still matter. And you will still be as beautiful as you are now. Yes, there will still be those who hate and fear what they almost understand, but so long as you are loved, and you are indeed loved even if you can’t feel it on your arms, you can soar through the sky like an angel.”

Discussion Question:

-I mentioned briefly that the show deals in the themes of performativity. Kei dons on disguises of alternate gender types including flower girls, black hatted cowboys, and bartender at a dingy bar where you’re more likely to get stabbed in the back than anything else. Indeed, the episode in question explores the ways in which people appear to one another, with several characters acting as a surface level interpretation of other characters and showing specific aspects of themselves to others. How do these themes of performativity tie into the way Dirty Pair handles gender? 

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We Secede From Entropy and the Myth of a Noble Past (Memo 2)

The book opens with Revolution Shuffle by Bao Phi, which tells the story of a nameless duo of Vietnamese Americans living in a zombie apocalypse who decide that the racist and oppressive government that rose out of the ashes of the apocalypse is not that great and probably should be torn down. Tananarive Due’s The Only Lasting Truth is the final entry of Octavia’s Brood and a transcript of a lecture about the work of Octavia Butler, her career as a writer, and how the theme of change permeates her work. And finally Outro as written by Adrienne Maree Brown closes out the book with a summation of the themes and ideas that appeal to Brown in regards to Visionary Fiction. In short, all three of these entries are tied into the concept of change and its relation to the world they are told in.

Unlike with the previous memo, this selection of short pieces has a thoroughly optimistic outlook. Although that might be due to the way I read the concept of change as my personal philosophical worldview is tied directly with the inevitability and necessity of change. We, as a species (and, indeed, all species), are built on change simply due to our need to move and grow, be it because we are acted upon by other forces or of our own volition. If I were to answer Sarah Hannah Gòmez’s rhetorical question I used in the previous memo of “Where are all the people of color in dystopias” using the selections included in this memo, the answer this time would be “In the margins, working diligently to free themselves and others from oppression and burn the system that opts to demonize them instead of fixing systemic problems.”

Indeed, that’s essentially the thematic through line of Revolution Shuffle to the point where it essentially becomes the explicit plot with lines like “And so the government classified it as a terrorist act, without evidence, without even an idea of what caused it” (10) and “Zombies. Brown people. On any given day, the armed guards were prepared to shoot either.” (8) This causes the metaphor the genre typically provides of “…the Other/alien [in] the form of the racial or cultural Other, from Africans, to indigenous populations, to the Roma, to die Gastarbeiter, to women, to the LGBTQ communities” (Calvin, 3) to blur into becoming what it represents.

Typically within zombie narratives, the horde is meant to represent the aspect of society that is causing ruination ranging from generic “Barbarians at the gates of Rome” used in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, to the specific “Consumerism” as is the case in George A. Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” and, most fittingly, the “Black People” usage of the zombie archetype as seen in D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”. Despite the text explicitly stating that the majority of the zombies were once living white people, the story explores the anxieties of society typically seen within the context of the zombie genre seen in the Griffith example, though obviously with a less racist ideology. The story shows that, when people are desperate for a scapegoat, they will always go for whatever fits within their worldview, no matter how baseless the claim is. And, for a lot of people, even myself at times, this includes people who look different.

However, more the optimistic (and thematically tied to the theme of change) take on the genre that Revolution Shuffle uses comes in the form of the nameless protagonists of the piece. For they take on the role of the most generic of zombie narratives: “Barbarians at the gates of Rome.” This is a phrase I have heard thrown around whenever someone wants to defend the barbaric actions of countless Empires, especially the European ones, in that they had to be cruel monsters who subjugated the lesser races, for there were barbarians at the gate. This is naturally horseshit, as the way Empires work hinges upon expansion that displaces the indigenous cultures that live in the surrounding area that we call barbarians. In some cases, we as culture (because America, despite its claims of revolution, was founded upon the blood of Empires and natives) have imprisoned and enslaved countless “lesser people” for “their own good” so they might not “join the barbarians” with the obvious example being the Japanese Interment Camps that Phi was no doubt thinking of when creating his short story. As such, the nameless duo replies to this worldview with “Fine, we’ll be the barbarians at your Empire’s gates. And we’re gonna tear them down.”

The ending lines of the story imply that this act of youthful rebellion will “…turn into something like a revolution.” (14) And it is this concept of revolution that is one of many types of change explored within the text. For what is revolution, if not a massive change heaped upon a society? Indeed, many have argued that the apocalypse is simply what a revolution looks like from the perspective of those who have the most to lose in the face of this. Maybe that’s why the most generic of zombie apocalypse narratives has them as Barbarians at the gates of Rome.

Moving on, The Only Lasting Truth explores the work of noted author Octavia Butler, and in particular the novel Parable of the Sower. In it, the lead character of the novel, Lauren Olamina’s core belief system hinges on a singular concept: “…the only lasting truth is change.” (262) The full text of the belief talks about how we are all inevitably changed both by ourselves and the world around us, whom we in turn change. “Attitudes are in need of change to prevent the dystopia in our book, moving away from the class system—again, the hierarchy—of rich, poor, haves, and have nots” (268) which is essentially my worldview written down by someone else years before I even conceived of it. For as a utopian, I believe that for a utopia to avoid becoming dystopic, it needs to have people question the way things are, so as to prevent a system where, say, a single child spends their entire life suffering to teach the “perfect” society that there is such a thing as pain (Le Guin, 3). A society that refuses to change is a dystopia. However, contextually speaking, this philosophy that gives the speech its title first appears within the speech after Due relates to us that Octavia Butler is dead.

Throughout the memo, I have talked about the positive aspects of change and the ways in which it can benefit us in the future. However, I am aware that there are some negative connotations with the concept, from the degradation of the human body to the rise of Fascism in Democratic societies. The speech itself mentions a bit of skepticism on the part of Butler, by featuring a selection of Parable of the Sower in which two of the characters discuss the implications of change being worshiped as a God (269-270). But at the same time, there’s an importance to the concept of change, as Due argues Parable of the Sower “…quite literally sets out to change the world by forcing the readers to consider what a powerful force change really is.” (267) But then, isn’t that the power of art: to change people?

That’s at least what Brown seems to argue in Outro. When she talks about the way in which stories can teach us how to fight in this cruel world we find ourselves in, Brown specifically highlights Parable of the Sower. She talks about how Olamina, with only “… her bag, her knowledge, and her dreams” was able to create a new community of her own that “…[adapt] constantly to ever-changing conditions. Exploring these and other examples of Butler’s work—in addition to studying other aspects of emergence—creates a solid foundation for changing the way we strategize on our path to justice.” (280)

In the end, change is a complicated idea. It is both a concept that can be used for good and for ill. It is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We can refuse to bend the knee to the ever-crashing wave of fascism. We can inspire those who come after us with a song in our hearts and a fury in our eyes. And we can change the world with something as simple and basic as an idea. For we are a machine that kills fascists with love, kindness, and a willingness to admit we need to change.

Discussion Questions:

-Throughout this memo, I have discussed the concept of change as a broad concept encompassing topics from the heat death of the universe to basic movement. However, many have argued that a definition of change that is applicable to the world at large is necessarily based around social constructs. Others, like Octavia Butler, have argued that change is based in the very nature of the universe itself. Do you agree with either of these claims, and if not, what aspect of change would you hinge it off of?

-In the final paragraph of the memo, I argue that the act of change is a method in which we can fight off the coming threat of fascism, as the core of fascist ideologies is a desire for things to remain the way they are or go back to how they used to be. However, I also argued that the very threat of fascism is in and of itself an act of change within a social environment as it is a novum upon a democratic society. How does this seemingly paradoxical way of thinking work out as a coherent thought, if it even does? Is change an inherently forward moving concept?

-Not brought up directly within the memo proper, but still conceptually important, is a quote from Due’s article: “Yet we hope that the work we create is the planting of a seed. And most of the seeds we plant will have no impact beyond entertainment—if that. But one, perhaps one, might actually help change the world.” (267) How do you respond to this quote after reading the memo before you? Do you find it to be overall an optimistic outlook? I can’t answer it for you. Interpretation, after all, necessitates changing a text’s meaning from mere letters and into something more.

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My Legion Of Multiracial Babies Will Be Intersectional As Fuck (Memo 1)

So as I said in the last post, this blog is going to be split up into Acts. I did this mostly because things came up that required me to take a long break in between the Batman RIP entry and the next one. So that there's still content in between the weeks, I'm going to post a series of Memos I wrote for a Science Fiction and Feminism course I took last spring. The first two look at various short pieces from Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements (which can be purchased here). While the third looks at something a lot of you should be familiar with... one of the blog's ghosts, if you will. Fearful Symmetry will return in 2018. You can support me on Patreon here. Thank you for indulging me this far, and I hope you see this through with me.

22XX: One-Shot by Jelani Wilson is a short story about Sasha Sangare’s attempt at escaping from The Institute after the military decides his nanotechnological experiments would be extremely effective in a military context while thinking of the genius next door he never said “I love you” to. The excerpt from Levar Burton’s Aftermath deals with Dr. Rene Reynolds, a scientist working on a neural net project that could save countless lives, being kidnapped by a group of people known as “Skinners” who seemingly wish to take her dark skin and use it to prevent a bunch of rich people from getting skin cancer. Finally, “Star Wars and the American Imagination” by Mumia Abu-Jamal is an essay about the political context and subsequent implications of the original Star Wars films. Suffice it to say, none of these works paints a bright picture about the future and our place within it, though Abu-Jamal’s essay is more about our present than what is to come.

It would be extremely easy to take this memo in a pessimistic direction, highlighting how the marginalized will always be marginalized because society is structured to marginalize said groups. How, given these works, the answer to Sarah Hannah Gómez’s question “Where are the people of color in dystopias” is “We killed them all, and those who are left are being used as cattle to make us live longer because America is already a dystopic nightmare and most people don’t notice because the “important” people are all white so no one cares.” Indeed, there is some truth to that answer, as evidenced by the rise of Nazis to positions of power in both law enforcement (see Ferguson, MI) and politics (see President Bannon), but that isn’t what Gómez is asking about.

Her article explicitly rejects the common use of people of color to experience, for lack of a better term, “Black Suffering,” wherein the reader experiences “…a nearly white world with the usual Noble Savage and Magical Negro to guide and humanize the protagonist and ultimately sacrifice themselves for [the white protagonist]” (Gómez). Equally, Gómez rejects the other typical approach of science fiction to just simply cast the characters colorblind while still writing them as if they were white. So then, the question remains: what archetypes and stories can people of color live within the context of a science fiction dystopia.

Going in the order they’re presented in the book, 22XX: One Shot focuses on two characters: Sasha Sangare and his friend Herb. The narrative in which the characters reside is a pretty basic genre mash-up of “The dumb-dumb militaristic government wants to use our brains for smarts and will kill us for it” and “Nice guy can’t bring up the courage to say he loves the girl next door as she dates a mutual friend”. These narratives are reflected in how the characters are portrayed: Sasha is essentially a mad scientist, willing to test brand new experiments on himself, regardless of the danger. However, his positionality within the narrative, as demonstrated by his narration (written in the style of classical fan fiction in works such as Paula Smith’s underrated and misunderstood satire “A Trekkie’s Tale”, Tara Gilesbie’s infamous “My Immortal”, and Haruka Takachiho’s highly influential The Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair that typically reveals more about the narrator/focal character than she would want it to) repeatedly, is that of the “romantic comedy lead”. Herb, meanwhile, is relegated to the role of “Generic Doctor Who Companion” (wherein the character exists to say “What’s that?” or “But that’s impossible!” before the clever person explains the plot to them) and never deviates from said role. Both of these roles and narratives are ones typically reserved for white people (in fact, if you exclude expanded universe material, only two people of color have played companions on Doctor Who), but at the same time, there are some problematic elements to them.

More directly seen is that the main focus of the narrative is that of a nice guy complaining about how “his” girl is going out with someone else, and he never shuts up about it, even in the life or death situation Sasha finds himself in. The short story, in turn, frames this mindset in a “boy shucks, ain’t I hopeless” mentality. This ignores the level of privilege such narrative situations typically have, as it assumes the male lead deserves to be with “his” girl without allowing the girl, Delia, to have a say in the matter (not that she gets any lines or even appears in the story to begin with). And given the genre mixing the short story is playing with, this can also lead to the narrative to be framed in terms of “Jock vs. Geek”, which has been a very problematic trope within the sci-fi community to the point where literal Nazis have co-opted segments of nerd culture by preying upon the implied assumption said mentality has of “I don’t play sports-ball, therefore I’m as oppressed as any other marginalized group” (Lovell). Fortunately, the short story doesn’t seem to be engaged with that narrative, and heartily subverts it by focusing more on the antagonistic corporal’s mechanical features over his physical prowess and, ironically, focusing on how compromised our lead is with the whole “mooning over the genius next door while in danger” aspect.

In the excerpt from Aftermath, we primarily follow the plight of Dr. Rene Reynolds. Now typically the narrative of a black woman literally being coveted by white people for her flesh would be problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which being an example of the “damsel in distress” trope, but the excerpt subverts this in a number of ways. For starters, for the majority of the excerpt, we are given the narrative primarily from the perspective of Dr. Reynolds and focused more on her intellectual interests than her kidnapping and torture. In addition to this, by the end of the excerpt, Reynolds turns out to be alive and well and is saved not by a white man, but by fellow person of color, Leon. "I know it's not the most feminist idea to be a woman in a tower wanting to be rescued,” actress Kerry Washington said of her role as Broomhilda in the movie Django Unchained, “but for a woman of color in this country, we've never been afforded that fairy tale because of how the black family was ripped apart [during slavery], I really saw the value of having a story that empowers the African American man to do something chivalrous for the African American woman, because that hasn't been an idea that has held women back in the culture — it's something we've never been allowed to dream about." (Sperling)

As for “Star Wars and the American Imagination”, we start to have some complications with this approach to the three texts. Most obviously, this is not a narrative set within a dystopian society; it’s not even a piece of fiction, but an essay exploring the political implications of the Star Wars franchise. However, the unspoken aspect of the essay is the implications of the Empire (who, need I remind you, are Imperialistic Space Nazis) presented within the Star Wars films as being a metaphor of what America is: the Empire is a dystopia. This would then make Mumia, whose first person account of his experiences and positionality with Star Wars open the essay, the protagonist of a dystopian story calling itself America. As such, it is telling that he focuses upon the past of America, claiming, “Americans, like any people, are subject to delusions” (256) in relation to the long and awful history of slavery and our willingness to ignore the evils that historical figures like Jefferson did while proclaiming themselves to be “rebels”.

This theme of rebelling is prevalent within the POC narratives presented within this selection of chapters. Each story presents different methods of the characters rebelling against their dystopic landscape, whether it’s by critiquing the claims of History, freeing the tortured marginalized slaves from the “progress” of “scientific research”, or simply escaping into a different genre entirely. This is also a typical narrative within dystopic fiction of the goodies rebelling (whether they are successful is up to the author), but then, the white protagonists of those stories seemed to be fine with the torture, subjugation, and humiliation of the marginalized before they themselves were targeted.

Discussion Questions:
 -What are some other stories featuring people of color that don’t rely on their relationship to a white -protagonist?
-Are there alternative forms of rebellion that a character could enact beyond escape, critique, or save and how can they be implemented into future stories?
-What are the roles of non-antagonistic white people within POC Sci-Fi stories?

Additional Works Cited
Sperling, Nicole. "'Django Unchained' Was More than a Role for Kerry Washington." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 31 Dec. 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.