As for ElfQuest and female stereotypes, well, I was introduced to EQ by my wife when I met her about 14 years ago.  She wasn’t the first geeky girl I’d dated, but she’s practically the last (unless you count daddy-daughter dates with my J-pop loving daughter).  Sure, I’d seen plenty of female geek/stereotypes that included EQ, anime/manga, and fan fiction.  But my wife was well acquainted with the Marvel universe, and out at the movies, she’d often say, “That’s not how it was in the comics.”  She’d been playing D&D longer than I had and once upon a time, with her parents no less.  I married into a gamer family.  I’d hit the jackpot, IMHO.  Basically every so often I write chiding fanboys to stop resisting and love their fangirls, especially since many (like my wife and I) were around when Geek and Nerdy Wasn’t Cool.

Despite the truth in what LMC and DCwomen are saying- which is that we shouldn’t ~have~ to list our “street cred” with the guys…we generally do in order to get people to listen to us. Instead of beating each other up with “I’m offended that you listed your “cred” …” we should be REJOICING that society is loosening up on those boundaries even as we type all of these replies to each other.

Our suffragette grandmothers fought for recognition as competent workers and decision makers so that you can sit here spouting cisgendered privilege with such undue entitlement?

This is like if a fan of African folklore saw an adaptation that wasn’t totally appropriated for European standards saying “Finally!” and the overrepresented white majority calling “reverse racism.” See also accusations of “playing the race card” and statements that the reviewer should ignore the subject of race and just enjoy a good story.
It’s also like getting antsy if a gay person states openly that they’ve never liked straight sex, in detail, and assuming it’s some huge affront to straight people everywhere.

The fact is, society EXPECTS you to like frilly froufy girly stuff, as it does me, as it does the original poster, and if a girl doesn’t, she actually has to state it in order to have it known. You can go around not saying a thing and the world will ASSUME you like EXACTLY WHAT YOU LIKE. 

Also, society expects you to be less educated and less capable than a man, (you gonna get mad at every woman who cites her college education?) more dramatically emotional, (you gonna get mad at every woman who cites her own rationalism?) more in tune with nurturing and raising children, (you gonna get mad at every woman who cites her reasons for being childfree by choice?) more in tune with aesthetics and design, (you gonna get mad at every woman who cites her reasons for being disinterested in fashion?) and if a woman DOESN’T fit these social standards, she’s seen as a novelty AT BEST, and a defective female who hasn’t figured out “her place” AT WORST.

This doesn’t mean that I think you’re a brainwashed Stepford wife who likes what she likes just because society tells her to. What it does mean is that YOU GET THE PRIVILEGE of not having to justify yourself to wider society in the particular case of “liking girly stuff,” because regardless of your education level/general competence/worldview/personal identity/actual, personal reasons for doing as you do and liking what you like, you are doing what society expects of you.Let’s make this clear now: there is nothing wrong with liking frilly, girly stuff. At all. There is nothing wrong with a girl liking it, and there is nothing wrong with a boy liking it. There is nothing wrong with a butch lesbian who likes Hello Kitty, there is nothing wrong with a straight, machismo guy enjoying My Little Pony, there is nothing wrong with a straight femme girl liking action movies with lots of explosions. There is nothing wrong with who you are, there is nothing wrong with liking what you like, AND NOBODY SAID THAT THERE WAS. I didn’t. The original poster didn’t. The only people here who have been stating and restating and regurgitating the idea that there is something wrong with liking girly stuff are the defensive cisgendered privilege holders in the audience.

What IS a problem is when the privilege holders, the majority, get defensive of their position as if any difference in taste, any challenge of the status quo, is a direct threat against their own personal validity. This, UNLIKE YOUR TASTE FOR FRILLY GIRLY STUFF, is a response conditioned by society specifically to get everyone on the same page about WHAT OUR PLACE IS AND WHAT WE ARE ALLOWED TO LIKE. This idea that if one person expressively deviates from the norm, it compromises the personal worth and validity of anyone who doesn’t — that is a societal silencing tactic employed by a white, patriarchal, class based system that exists more as a collective than as any governing individual.

And they turn each of us into their spokespeople by convincing us that difference of taste and opinion constitutes a threat. THEY, this faceless collective, is that Machiavellian friend that whispers to us “did you hear what they said about you?” in flagrant misrepresentation of whatever was actually said.Reread the opening to the above post. Reread it several times and listen to the inside of your head. That is the voice of patriarchy, the great gaslighter, begging you to be it’s spokesperson.

Furthermore, I’ve read Elfquest, and I think it does a damn fine job of “defending” itself by simply being a damn good comic– no qualifiers necessary

I still have my original Elfquest graphic novels (before the horrible re-colored re-issues).  Still love them.  But the “I’m not a girl who only likes girl things so you should listen to me” opener was a total turn-off.

After being exposed at age ten to the Buddhist teaching “The Journey West” (in the form of an anime called “Alakazam the Great”) I also read that other great myth featuring the Monkey King, “The Ramayana.” Then on to beloved “Mahabharata” and “Bagavadghita.” Later came Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Such learning expands you and never leaves you. When I told Richard the story of Elfquest in 1977, I had the unconscious influence of these marvelous spiritual quest/hero’s journeys of my childhood to help me craft the tale.

Your comparisons to other great creation myths were so smart, so right on and such a delight to read. I know your review will stimulate some to seek out these ancient myths and legends and discover for themselves – as you wisely point out – there is nothing new under the sun. And that lack of newness doesn’t matter because repetition is one of the best ways to pass on Life’s lessons.

Is Elfquest “the secret history of our existence?” Well, as I said in some long forgotten interview, it’s certainly a rambling, rambunctious metaphor for it. Why do we, as discarnate spirits, ever choose to incarnate and come here? Because this is SCHOOL! And when we graduate we RETURN! “Elfquest – the Final Quest” is about graduation…those who do and, perhaps, some who don’t.

All that plus lots of elf sex romancey scenes, for sure!

Love, joy and thanks from Wendy Pini

I read it as a statement intended to establish her credibility as a scholar of graphic novels. I don’t blame her for doing it. If anything I think it was necessary, even though I also think it’s unfortunate that some people–most, if not all, of whom would be men–would make a lot of unfair, and wrong, assumptions because she’s (a) writing about Elfquest and (b) a woman.

Then again I’m a guy who really loved Elfquest when I was a young teenager, so her gender and overall reading habits were of much less interest to me than her perspective on the story.

*It’s never been intimated that Timmain had other children, either other hybrid or purely wolf from the 8-10,000 years she stayed in wolf form until the end of the first war for the palace, but would re-iterate that the Pinis wanted it to be a singular act of survival lest it lose its gravitas.