I'm not questioning them or myself here, that's just, like. "Huh."

So Eric Sophia (from Curio) had a cameo on Maggie Mae Fish' new video on Zack Snyder's treatment of gender in his films and mostly I agreed that it's sort of fascinating how Snyder keeps coming back to a gender trinary where the third leg is this... aberrant, queer, indistinct mass, and what could be read into that.

But like, oh wow they actually used Owls of Ga'Hoole to talk about Zack Snyder "doing a hecking gender" and... honest to god this movie has always had one of my favourite approaches to female character design? There's a lot of indicental female speaking roles, Gylfie is great, the female owl's designs are subtle and pleasing and they are not animated any different... The criticism about the two main girl owls both being smaller than any of the main male owls is, I guess, a fair criticism, but I don't see how they have any less narrative agency than anyone who isn't Soren, so I can't relate to that point either....

It's just very strange to me, because as far as Gender Binaries In Kids' Films Goes, Owls of Ga'Hoole is one of my favourite ways of doing it, and it being used as a negative kinda just gave me whiplash. Like, is the point that when it comes to owls, females tend to be bigger than males, and therefore the lack of ground-breaking as far as male speaking roles is uniquely interesting because it fits a pattern with Zack Snyder?

(Like okay there's also the whole video Curio had about how thinking there's a guy named Dick Suckle who ruined the DC movies is hooey but. Having someone explicitly use the thing you use as a positive example as a negative one is still a trip.)