Let's Get Down to Business

It's been a ridiculous amount of time since I last posted, so I thought that to keep things going smoothly, I'd make a weekly promise. I promise that I will post by Wednesday at midnight (which, let's be honest, is way after my preferred bedtime), with the goal of posting on Tuesdays. So, hooray!

No. We don't like camels here. Also, I haven't actually seen that commercial.

So, let's get down to business. Tonight I thought I'd discuss Mulan, the point of origin of my blog. As I'm writing this, my roommate is playing various Halo 4 matchmaking gametypes (yes, we know it's a Halo 3 matchmaking night, but we (and by we I mean I) were sucking) and we're listening to the Star Trek Into Darkness score (did I just do a parentheses within parentheses? Dude, it's like parentheception). By the way, how great was that movie? Soo great. I redboxed it and kept it for three days. Although, that also had a fair amount to do with forgetting to return it.

Space. The Final Frontier.

(These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her five year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before)

So, Mulan. Most of the reason I've been avoiding making this next post was because I knew I needed to do research for it, and I've been busy (marching band, working out, playing video games, making art, pick anything). Also, research sounded like a lot of work. But, like a true scholar, I decided to do the very hard task of typing the five letters I needed into the search bar of the wonderful Wikipedia. (Challenge, if you have a minute. Go from Mulan to Train Station on Wikipedia in as few links as possible. As I am dedicated to my work, I did not attempt this challenge. Yet.) Anyway, it was my assumption that Disney's movie Mulan was based on Chinese legend. Was I wrong?

That was the obligatory Halo quote. Yes, I realize this picture is from Halo 2 when that quote is obviously from Halo 3.

No, I wasn't wrong. The legend of Mulan can be traced back to a poem/song written sometime in the sixth century. The original was lost to time, as such things always seem to happen, but you can find Chinese and English side by side here (and I looked at several sources, in case you're one of those people that doesn't trust Wikipedia. They were all the same, this one just had the best layout.) Anyway, in case you're too lazy to read, it tells the story of a girl who wasn't like the others. Instead of sighing over a boy, she sighed because there was a war on and her father had to go. So she went in his place. After winning the war, she declined a government position (which I'll discuss more in a moment) and instead went home to her family. The guys she fought with (for twelve years) had no idea she was a woman. TL;DR: Disney's Mulan. I love the final two couplets, though:

The buck bounds here and there,

Whilst the doe has narrow eyes.

But when the two rabbits run side by side,

How can you tell the female from the male?

Also, my roommate would like to take this opportunity to ask you why there was only one set of footprints in the sane. The correct answer is because she carried the team.

The sixth century was a freaking long time ago. Women's rights and equality and stuff have progressed greatly since then, I think we can all agree on that. The story of Hua Mulan (the woman in the legend's name) shows what was expected of women then (makeup, boys, ...and I forgot the official word for making things on a loom) and it also shows a girl who lifted one finger to that and went to war. Except, you know, she probably did it in a much more dignified and professional way. Actually, maybe not. After all, she had to blend in with a bunch of guys.

Ba dum. Tss.

Unlike the many cautionary tales that women have to deal with (for example, No Name Woman by Kingston, in which a nameless aunt who was pregnant out of marriage drowned herself), this doesn't tell women not to go to war. Instead, it offers up the suggestion at the end that maybe, just maybe, the sexes aren't so different after all. For the time in which it was written, that was an amazingly forward thing. And it wasn't just a story that died out. It continued, showing that people were interested in breaking the rules, war, or at least equality.

"Do I look badass enough? No? Well, then I guess just put a little flame on my forehead." -Direct Quote

While it is pretty forward thinking, there are still elements that show that Hua Mulan was traditional in some aspects. For example, she went back to her family instead of taking a job that could advance her. At the end of the poem, the men she fought with only realized she was a woman because she put back on her pre-war clothing and makeup. But hey, it was a pretty radical step.

And with that, my phone decided to turn into a red-hot brick and cut off any mobile hotspotting that was happening (which was everything) and my brain is turning to tired mush. Next week, I think I'll discuss Scott Westerfeld or Tamora Pierce (I hope I spelled both of those right, no access to the beloved internet is awful). Until then, to quote a certain Green brother, Don't Forget To Be Awesome.

There are a few things you need to know for this to all make sense...

That was an attempt at a quote from one of my favorite shows. But I'll wait at least a couple more sentences before shamelessly plugging everything I love. The purpose of this blog is to discuss women's roles pertaining to combat throughout literature (mainly), and also some film and video games (my other favorite things). I also plan to take a look at where the world stands now with women in combat. Right now, I'm not sure what I want to do with my life. Joining the United States Air Force is something that I'm considering. 

But who knows.

Red vs. Blue, the source of the attempted quote above

Shameless plug, shameless plug.

This doesn't go with the rest of this post at all.

Before I go any farther, I'd also like to add that I'm watching Titanic as I write this (I didn't have the best day, okay? No need to judge), and I'll just leave this here for your viewing pleasure. I should also add that, in case you were one of those people that never watched Disney, the title of my blog is the name of one of the songs from Mulan, one of my favorite movies. That's also where I got the idea for this blog. Mulan is my favorite Disney princess (at least she was until Leia joined the cast at Disney). She also defies her parents, breaks both the laws of conventional society and the country itself, crossdresses, and joins the army. Why? Not for a prince that she'd seen for five seconds, like most Disney movies. For her father.

Also, I spent entirely too long on my friend's Pinterest looking for that picture.

Anyway, what does that say, that in a country where it's still kind of a big deal for women to be allowed in the military, that we're raising little girls to want to dress as guys and fight with swords?

The sequel is basically the story of my relationship. There's a lot of unnecessary yelling and talking dragons.

The more I thought about it, the more books from my childhood I came up with that had a similar concept. My favorite books were the ones where women dressed as men to fight in various fictional and nonfictional wars. My friends and I devoured Tamora Pierce's books, all about girls who fought in Tortall's wars (choose your class: tank, thief, mage). One of them, Alanna, had to dress as a man to do so. When she finally revealed her gender, it paved the way for others to follow her (although in later books, her former lover, the king, wouldn't let his daughters become knights, but that's a different story). Ann Rinaldi's Girl in Blue was another that I loved, about a girl who dressed as a man to fight in the Civil War. I'm still re-reading Scott Westerfeld's (one of my favorite authors) Leviathan trilogy. When I first picked up Goliath, I finished it in a night. Again, a girl dresses up as a boy to join the military (although this world is an alternate history of WWI, and as everyone knows or should know, alternate histories are the bomb).

Shameless plug, shameless plug. Also, my copy of Leviathan totally has different cover art.

So this is where I'm going with this blog. I guess I'll wrap up with telling you a little about myself. I'm a student in my second year of college. I'm currently an English major and music minor, but both of those are going to change. I'm thinking maybe computer science, business, or international relations. My ultimate, impossible dream job would be to work as a story writer for the Halo games at Microsoft's 343 Industries. My second dream job would be as an Air Force pilot. If those don't work out, or whatever I end up doing someday, I think I'd like to become a big truck driver. That sounds like fun to me. I spend a ridiculous amount of time browsing Reddit. I want to learn how to drive a motorcycle and own one. I'm spending next semester (Spring 2014) in Australia. I've written some stuff before, some of it decent and lots of it not good at all. I preordered my Xbox One last week (and I'm picking it up at midnight). Also, I have a class bright and early. I think I'm going to give up on Titanic for tonight, I'm in the last hour, and as everyone knows, it's all downhill from here.

This is also not relevant.