Anghraine

She-Ra meets rambling (very rambling) personal/family angst:

So, I’ve mentioned that She-Ra was one of my first fandoms, for a loose value of “fandom.” I was too young for the original show itself (it came out a year before I was born), but my aunt wasn’t, and she gave me all her She-Ra books and figurines, which were the only superhero-ish things I ever loved. And I loved them with my entire five-year-old soul!

In fact, I loved them for several years afterwards, and only reluctantly surrendered the books/figurines when my aunt asked if I still had them. I wasn’t really ever a “now I’m Mature and the things I used to like are Cringy and Bad” person, so I retained a strong affection even when I was older and enjoying more advanced things.

As did my aunt, who is only five and a half years older than I am. She was like my cool older sister for a long time, even though we were very different people, and I vaguely associated this relationship with She-Ra in my head. Regardless, we played together, we shared clothes and toys, she taught me how to ride horses, etc, until we drifted apart.

That happened partly because five years was actually vast at certain ages, partly because my parents moved, but mostly because of our enormous differences in personality and interests. Still, I continued to think of her as Cool Big Sis until various things happened that led to her becoming much more insular and conservative, even for a pretty conservative family (my centrist parents are radical leftists by their standards).

The Bush administration kicked off around the time I started high school, and by the time I graduated, I was determined not to ever vote for any Republican for the rest of my life (I enthusiastically voted for Kerry in my first election and was baffled that so many people I knew hadn’t bothered or, worse, actually voted for Bush out of ~patriotism). End result: I’ve been a firm and reliable Democratic voter for sixteen years, while my aunt gets more far-right every year (…and day, it feels like).

And it’s like … she long ago ceased to be “cool” given that she’s become a raging bigot (by nearly all accounts more than she ever was before, so not just something I missed because I was a kid). She dismisses the racism my father experiences when she's not personally perpetuating it, she’s ~so much for the tolerant left~ about her homophobia (and I’m lesbian), she’s awful and goes off on these asinine screeds to my mother every. single. day. Like, she earnestly argued the other day that Kate Brown is an agent of Satan.

Meanwhile, back when the new She-Ra was about to come out, she heard about it and excitedly forwarded me the link. Whatever else our differences, it’s our thing!

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