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Samanthalane commented on your post: Origin stories are all about transformations. In stories of the past, we saw characters being physically transformed into villains or monsters. Medusa was once a beautiful woman. Anakin Skywalker had to be burnt to a crisp and don a mask in order to complete his transformation into Darth Vader. But physical transformations aren’t the only way villains are made. In “Gwen and Art and Lance,” Gwen has transformed herself into the “It Girl” at her school. She has skillfully climbed the social hierarchy of high school and manipulated those around her to get what she wants. Villains’ monstrousness, either physically or through their personalities, provides an excellent mirror for the hero. The better and more complete the transformation into a villain is, the better the hero has to be in order to defeat them.
camelotgwen
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Guinevere ? queen bee
CAN A BELOVED HERO BECOME A VILLAIN? CAN A VILLAIN TURN OUT TO BE THE HERO?
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Samanthalane commented on your post: We like our villains powerful, and one manifestation of power is narrative control. Who decides who the villain is and who the hero is? In “Gwen and Art and Lance,” Gwen takes power by being in control of information and withholding information to fit the narrative she wants. Over the years, our society has become fascinated with characters who are not fully evil or fully good, but instead lie somewhere in the middle. Our obsession with antiheroes and antivillains is a result of social ideals being rewritten. We are unmaking the concept of wickedness. As the popularity of the “heroes” in Batman, The Punisher, and Suicide Squad shows, the lines between heroes and villains have become blurred. There is no clear distinction between hero and villain anymore, which is the theme that modern stories and retellings are exploring.
SHIRLEY & JIM
BY SUSAN DENNARD
TO: Jean Watson
FROM: Shirley Holmes
This story begins with a kiss.
From my family’s pool boy. His name was Antonio. He was cute, and I liked the way a dimple formed in his right cheek whenever he smiled.
I was also super curious about kissing, so even though he was almost eighteen and I was only fourteen, I thought, What the hey? Opportunity was knocking, and you know me: once I’ve set my mind to something . . .
Well, the kiss was too sloppy, and for the record: tongues are gross. So that one exchange of saliva was more than enough to turn me off from kissing and from boys forever. Or at least for a while.
Not that it mattered to my dad. He caught me, see? And holy whatsit! William Holmes was on the phone with Headmistress Hudson an hour later, and the next morning, I was on my way to Baker Street Preparatory School. (Where young minds grow into brilliance! That’s what the brochure says. Have you ever looked at it, Jean? I think that’s the back of your head on the last page.)
No exaggeration, though. The very next morning, I was out of my family’s estate and moving into that dormitory with you.
Meaning (as you’ve no doubt deduced by now) that the story I told you about pissing off a “Mr. Antonio” at my last school was a total lie. The first one I ever told you, Jean, and the only one until our senior year.
The truth is, I was embarrassed about that kiss with Pool Boy Antonio. Plus I wasn’t very popular at my first high school, my personality being—what is it Headmistress Hudson always says? Abrasive. So Baker Street Prep seemed like the perfect chance to reinvent myself.
A Rebel with a capital R. That was what I wanted to be. Someone who didn’t do what the establishment expected. Someone who didn’t do what her daddy expected. And I know, I know. I never convinced anyone of that image, least of all myself.
Fall semester, senior year. That was when a True Rebel showed up, and a pecking order established in the ninth grade was suddenly obliterated by a mysterious newcomer.
It was lunch when he arrived. We were in the cafeteria, remember? I was lecturing you about why you were never going to pass AP bio if you kept mixing up pneumatocysts and nematocysts. (I’m sorry about that, Jean. Looking back, I was such a condescending a-hole. Aka my dad.)
First came Headmistress Hudson, bustling into the drab dining hall with her usual animation. She pushed through the pizza line (boys) and then the salad line (girls) like Moses at the Red Sea.
Then a collective gasp crossed the cafeteria. All the way over to our shadowy table, remember? Right as I was getting to the best part on cnidarian morphology, you twisted around to look.
“Holy crap,” you said. “I hope he’s a senior.” I followed your gaze . . .
And my lungs hitched. Until that moment, Jim had been blocked by Headmistress Hudson’s bouffant. Holy crap, I thought. I hope he’s a senior.
I don’t know how to explain it. Nothing about Jim Moriarty looked that good. Fitted jeans and a flannel button-up? Totally hipster. Thick-framed glasses? Not in style anymore. Dark hair, all sideswept and dramatic? Definitely not achieved without product.
Yet the instant the school turned its gaze upon Jim Moriarty, everyone sat a little taller. Then, in a bolt of lightning, rumors raced through the hall. Whispers of I heard he got expelled from his last school for hacking into the computers and changing his grades and He got arrested for erasing all of a bank’s digital debt records and (the only one that actually sounded plausible) His parents died in a car crash and his uncle raised him.
Even his name—Jim Moriarty—just oozed bad boy. Or Gothic hero along the lines of Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff. Or maybe even one of those vampires who girls are always falling for on the CW.
I was hooked. Immediately. Like everyone else at Baker Street Prep, I wanted Jim’s swagger. I wanted Jim’s boredom. I wanted his lazy smile and complete uninterest in the school, the students, the world.
He was everything I could never be, don’t you see?
Like, do you remember how he waltzed into AP bio the next day, took the exam (the one we’d crammed for all night), and then waltzed right back out with fifteen minutes to spare?
Ms. Adler didn’t stop him. She just watched him saunter away, hands in his new uniform pockets. She didn’t stop him the next day, either, or any of the days Jim abruptly vanished.
None of us did! We all just watched him go, thoroughly jealous that he could live by some internal clock only he heard. We guessed he went off to smoke cigarettes or snort Adderall, but we were wrong.
Jim Moriarty went to the library.
I know, Jean, because I went there with him.