Beyond Selidor

Until snowflake_challenge is over, I'm going to piggyback on their prompts and use them for my own each Friday. Today's prompt is:

Choose Your Challenge: we will give you the challenge of making a list (who doesn't love lists?!?) and then you get to choose what list to make.

Five Things! The five things are totally up to you.



I can never resist making a 'five things' list into a 'five times she did, and one time she didn't' list, so that's what I've done here. Feel free to use my own list topic, or make your own 5 (+1) things list in the comments.

( Five TV shows perfect after just one season, and one cancelled before its time )

Today is the penultimate installment of this year's January talking meme, and wheatear asked me to talk about the trashiest piece of media that I love.

I have to preface this by saying that nothing is trash if it gives you joy and/or sparks fannish feelings, and media doesn't have to be high art or inspire critical acclaim to deserve the space it occupies in your brain. You feel what you feel about the stories that matter, and they don't have to be award-winning novels or considered must-watch prestige TV.

With that preamble out of the way, my answer to today's question is the glorious, messy, often quite terrible TV series Pretty Little Liars — or, specifically, its earliest two or three seasons. It suffered a sharp decline in quality about midway through, and eventually descended into such appalling transphobia that I honestly hesitate to recommend it to anyone, but at its best it was incredible.

It was also deeply silly, ridiculously soap operatic, and unapologetically aimed at teenage girls (hence, in part, its reputation as a frivolous piece of trash). But it took those girls — their fears, their friendships, their world online — seriously, and made them the centre of their own stories. It told the story of four friends who never really felt solid in their friendships with each other until the glue that held them together — their bullying, controlling, unknowable, enigma of a queen bee friend Ally — goes missing, and they begin being tormented by a shadowy cyberbully who knows all their damaging secrets. In the best, earlier seasons, Ally haunts the girls and the show, simultaneously there and not there, her disappearance a mystery, her presence in her four friends' lives still looming large and shaping their fears and actions. And, at the beginning at least, the show's story was one of abuse, power, and control, and the way teenage girls are disempowered by everyone around them, their very lives, secrets and bodies treated as if they do not belong to them. The only thing that will save them is to trust themselves, trust each other, and treat their lives and fears as if they matter. Heather Hogan, who wrote weekly recaps of the show, sums up my thoughts on why it mattered (to me, and as a story in general), on this specific recap:

[I]f there was such a thing as a television show grocery store, you’d find Pretty Little Liars on the junk food aisle, and the packaging would tell you it’s the story of four teenage girls who grab Fashion by the balls and kiss boys and tell lies and get the shit scared out of them on the regular. And that’s this scene right here on the surface. They all look hot as hell, two of them have guy troubles, someone creepy is knocking at the door. But the truth of this show, the truth of this scene, is that it’s about four young women who have been told from the very beginning that they don’t have any power. It’s what A tells them, it’s what the police tell them, it’s what their fathers tell them, over and over. No power over what happens to their bodies, their minds, their actual lives. On the best days, it’s, “You girls hush and behave while the big, strong men figure out what to do.” (Wilden.) And on the worst days, it’s, “I made you, and so even your most personal business, your very sexuality belongs to me.” (Byron.) Right? And but these four girls, they said no to being victims, no to being powerless, no being tricked into hating their bodies and their desires and the sound of their own angry voices. Whatever else is going on inside their love for one another — whether it’s Spencer shutting down and pulling away or Aria catching Avian Flu from her own earrings — they stand together and refuse to apologize for the space they take up in the world.

If the show ultimately disappointed me, it was only because, at its best, it aspired to something, had something to say, and said it well, if melodramatically. I still love it a lot.

Day Twenty-Three: Favourite female platonic relationship

Aria, Emily, Hannah and Spencer (Pretty Little Liars)

I think I've already established why I like this show so much in other posts, but I will reiterate it here: it puts the fears, dreams, friendships and stories of teenage girls front and centre. Most importantly, it takes its four teenage main characters seriously, and, by extension, its teenage target audience. Aspects of the show are over the top and ridiculous, but there is a truth at its core, and no matter how preposterous the dangers the girls face, there is always an element of truth to them. The seriousness and damaging effect of the stalking, bullying and abuse these girls experience — whether it is at the hands of shadowy forces on the other side of a computer screen, or known figures from their circle of former friends and classmates, or attempts at control by their fathers, siblings, partners or male authority figures — is never denied or minimised.

At the same time, the girls' greatest defence against this abuse is always shown to be their love and support for one another. When they believe each other, when they fight for each other, when they combine their very different skill sets and work together they are their safest and strongest. The danger never really goes away, but as a team they are able to stave it off for a little longer and face it with a little bit more preparation the next time around. It's so important to me that the relationship between these four girls is never portrayed as bitchy or competitive: they have different areas of interest, different talents, and even different tastes in romantic partners, so they're never competing in any arenas. Indeed, the bullying behaviour of their friend Alison, whose disappearance and reappearance drives the plot forward, largely consisted of playing the four of them off against each other. They are able to be themselves without her, because the dynamic of their group shifts and it becomes cooperative rather than hierarchical.

I cannot emphasise how powerful this central friendship and story of four teenage girls is. The continued success of Pretty Little Liars is an utter delight to me. I wish it had existed when I was a teenage girl, but it's still pretty fantastic to see it as a woman in her late twenties.*


( The other days )

*My Tumblr tag should give some indication of how much I adore this show.

Day Fifteen: Favorite female character growth arc

Emily Fields (Pretty Little Liars)

Today's post is short but sweet, because the arc concerned is relatively simple. Emily is my favourite character in Pretty Little Liars, and her story never fails to make me happy. She started the series deeply closeted, paralysed with fear at how her parents and friends would react if they knew she was a lesbian. Pretty Little Liars is a show about how teenage girls' secrets can be used to control them, and each of the four main characters began the series with one central secret, the revelation of which was their greatest fear. Emily's was her sexual orientation.

The nature of the show - with one of its themes being that secrets will eventually come out, and the only way to protect yourself against this is to control the narrative, to control the story you tell about yourself, and to reveal your secrets at a time and in a manner of your choosing. Emily manages this only partly - she's essentially forced out of the closet by forces beyond her control, but once her secret is out, and once she sees that it hasn't ruined her life, that her friends still love her, that her family (after some initial ugliness) still loves her, and that sky hasn't fallen, she seems to grow in confidence.

One of the things I find most refreshing about Pretty Little Liars is that of the four girls, Emily, the sole lesbian, is absolutely beating away love interests with a stick, whereas her heterosexual friends have far fewer options. It's a nice reversal from how such things normally happen on TV shows.

In terms of Emily's arc, what I find the most satisfying of all is that it's not simply a coming out story. Her coming-out happens very early on in the piece, and she's pretty comfortable with that by about mid-way through the first season. Rather, her arc is about confidence, standing up for herself, and not letting bullies walk all over her. Emily is like a frightened rabbit at the beginning of series, and by the fifth season she is fiercely brave, and will go to any lengths to keep those she cares about safe. Most importantly, she's learnt to stand up for herself. She's clear about her boundaries, and if those boundaries are violated, even by people she loves deeply, she calls them out and walks away. At the same time, this hard-won bravery is never at the expense of Emily's kindness and empathy, and words cannot express how much I love seeing a character whose kind heart is her strength, not her weakness. At one point in the series, in fact, the girls' faceless tormenter makes some cryptic threat about 'taking out the weak link', and everyone just assumes it's Emily, because the soft-hearted one has to be weak, right? And the 'weak link' ends up being Spencer, the cool-headed, razor-sharp rationalist of the group. I love what that says about strength.

( The other days )

Day Four: A female character you relate to

Aria Montgomery from Pretty Little Liars (TV series, not books). Spoilers for the entire series so far.

This may appear to be a slightly left-field choice, so let me explain. No, I'm not and have never been in a relationship with my English teacher, and I'm certainly not being stalked and abused by a shadowy network of enemies who always have excellent wifi service, a great sense of timing and a penchant for arranging creepy dolls in dark, abandoned buildings. However, her family dynamic is really similar to my own, almost to the letter (my parents are journalists, not academics and teachers, and I have sisters, not a brother, but other than that, they're basically the same) and I identify really strongly with her on that level.

Also, teenage me was very like Aria, in that I kind of viewed my life through the lens of literary references and used literature as a sort of guide for my emotional response to any given situation. Aria's life is measured out in the twentieth century literary canon and classic films, while I preferred fantasy literature, folk tales, fairy tales and mythology, but the result is the same. Your life becomes a series of episodes with deep mythic resonance, your relationships are reincarnations of epic literary love affairs, and you have a quote to make sense of every occasion. It's a coping mechanism, and a way to give yourself more power than you perhaps feel in reality. For this reason, I'm frustrated when fans of Pretty Little Liars talk of Aria's pretentiousness, emotional remoteness and detachment. She feels things really deeply! She's just talking about them and dealing with them in a language that makes them easier for her to understand!

For the same reason, I feel very defensive in the face of the general fannish rhetoric about Aria. She's often perceived as being very distant from the main storyline of Pretty Little Liars, and there's talk that the danger experienced by Aria is less than that experienced by the other three Liars. It's as if the fandom forgets she was nailed into a coffin with a corpse and almost thrown off a train. Or that her father's girlfriend drugged her, then locked her in a cellar and tried to kill her. And so on. If there's distance between Aria and the A plot of any given episode, this was because for a long time her storylines were tied to her relationship with Ezra, which for some reason was kept cordoned off from the ongoing threat to the four girls. Now that Ezra seems to be in the loop about the threat posed by A to the girls, let's hope that detachment will disappear completely.

( The other days )

( Recs behind the cut )

For the history lovers out there, I've also got a couple of fascinating videos. The first is archival footage of my Cambridge college (and the wider university) during the 1940s.



The second is something I encountered just today, and is truly amazing. It's a virtual map that traces the growth of London from Roman times to today, and is the best thing I've seen on the internet for a long time. I'm getting a very Troy Game vibe from it!



Finally, I've noticed some people have been complaining about the latest changes to Livejournal. As far as I can tell, I've managed to avoid them because I never chose to have the 'new' friends page (if I wanted have to endure endless scrolling, I'll go to Tumblr), and I'm only seeing differences on the login page, and if I comment on other people's posts. However, I think there's a possible way to avoid them if you go to Display section of the Settings page, and select 'View all journals and communities in my own style' and 'View comment pages from my Friends page in my own style'. That may make things slightly better. The only other thing I can advise is to keep your friends page in the 'old style' as long as possible. I'm not going to change until it's forced on me.