#was it just an opportunity to shove in a nonbinary character who had no personality and was just there as someone's s/o and call it

[dolokhoded]

my one season 4 complaint is Where The Fuck Was Aneesa

[briasfreespace]

Black Artist Exploration: The Illustrious Janelle Monáe

photos sourced by @themakeupbrush

(Before we begin, Janelle is nonbinary and uses she/they pronouns, and therefore, she and they will be used interchangeably)

In each of her distinct eras as a musician, @janellemonae has not only risen to the occasion but brought something extraordinary out of their listeners. They make music for what they're going through and what they're looking for. At every stage of their career, they unboxed new characters and new stories. New challenges for her audience to address in themselves and furthermore liberate themselves from. Monae is not only looking to take up space but to nurture a community for all the arch-androids and pleasure seekers out there. She is a Sagittarius doing right by the stars, liberating people through new ideas and perspectives, and guiding us to the new age.

🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖The Wonderful Janelle Monae🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖

Born Dec 1st in Kansas City, Kansas, Janelle Monae Robinson felt she was destined to be a star. They grew up in the church and theatre, always looking for new opportunities to show off their talent. They have described themselves on numerous occasions as ¨a free-ass motherfucker.” This free-ass personalities genesis started when she was young. Janelle often struggled with her early religious background which had an undesirable effect on her, into adulthood. She was once escorted out of church for singing Michael Jackson´s ¨Beat It.¨ The restrictions she often felt as a kid, is what helped evolve her into a liberated musician and adult.

After high school, they moved to NYC to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy for musical theatre. During her time there, she recognized that this was not the place for their talents to flourish. She explained to the Guardian´s Dorian Lynskey,

"I felt like that was a home but I wanted to write my own musicals. I didn't want to have to live vicariously through a character that had been played thousands of times – in a line with everybody wanting to play the same person."

She also acknowledged a lack of diversity drove her out of the school, and she made her way to Atlanta. This was the start of her career and where she would meet some very important names in Hip Hop and R&B. When they lived in Atlanta, they stayed in a boarding house and worked at Office Depot. She performed anywhere she could, including the library steps of Clark-Atlanta, Morehouse, and Spelman -all HBCUs. She would end up being fired from Office Depot, where says she was ¨pushing ink.¨ Ironically, she was fired for attempting to reach out to a fan on their computers. This was a push-comes-to-shove situation where she knew it was time to be all in.

Bria speaking: This exact fucking thing happened to me this year, and bitch, im still getting shoved. But I´m figuring it out every step of the way. For any of my creatives out there who are still trying to get their footing, Janelle´s story is for all of us.

The shove helped her create a song called ¨Lettin' Go,¨ off her 2003 demo The Audition, which brought her attention from none other than Big Boi. She would later be featured on OutKast´s Idlewild, and continued to be featured on a few other projects until in 2006, she signed to Bad Boy Records. This began the professional career of the artist Janelle Monáe.

The Era´s

Merriam-Webster defines an Era as a period identified by some prominent figure or characteristic feature or a stage in development (as of a person or thing)

Just to let y´all know, I am not going into intricate detail on these albums because we would be here all day. 😭

However, maybe I'll study the specific eras of artists in detail for another post, but not today.

The Android era, Cindi Mayweather, and Metropolis

In this era, everything is mechanic, robotic, and Black and white. This era begins with the first EP Metropolis: Suite 1 (the Chase). Here we were introduced to Cindi Metropolis, Janelle´s alter ego, who is an android from 2719. The records from this era, up to Electric Lady, introduce Janelle´s ideology, style, and most importantly the talent they have for world-building in audio and video. Archandroid and ¨We Are Young¨ (2011) were where I was introduced to them, and I have been a fan ever since. For more than half my life, I have loved her talent and their ability to step in and out of androgeny. There are features from Prince, Solange, Erykah Badu, and Miguel.

Dirty Computer and The Memory Librarian (2018)

Dirty Computer (2018) is my favorite era because this is the conclusion of all of the world-building she created in her previous era. This album is all about deconstructing ideologies imposed upon us through the hegemony otherwise known as the owners of the narrative. It´s about acknowledging the harm society has done to brainwash us into feeling shame about our sexualities and general expression. This is the era where Janelle would come out as bi-sexual, acknowledging her own shame around who she was becoming. I really recommend not only listening to the album but watching the film. They also co-wrote a book called The Memory Librarian, which is a collection of short stories that integrated the concept of Afro-Futurism -the integration of black culture and history into concepts of the future. Basically we been Black, will stay Black, and will forever be Black.

The Age of Pleasure and The Tig ole Bitties (2023)

This is the newest album of Janelle´s that caught her a lot of flack. She decided to show her breasts to the world, and many people were not so happy about this. I think her titties are pretty and most would agree. Unlike her earlier eras, this is where she completely omitted the outside world. She is talking about sex, seeking out sex, and partying after a time of the whole world being locked inside. This is where her ideas of liberation hit its pinnacle. You break out the system, and now time to party & fu...

Her influences

Janelle has cited Prince -someone who was a mentor and friend of hers, Sun Ra, Michael Jackson, Grace Jones (a recent collaborator), Quincy Jones, Pam Grier, Tina Turner, David Bowie, Parliament-Fundelics, Stevie Wonder (another collaborator,) Brian Wilson and so many more. Janelle is an artist who knows that to elevate, you need a background, you need a history. If you can´t name the artists before you, who will name you when you're gone. The moral of the story: Study your heroes and icons. You may even get to work with them one day.

Signing off,

B the Virgo

Sources:

For specific links from within the Wikipedia page, make sure you look at the footnotes. It was super duper helpful.

[jcmorrigan]

Random dump of ASOUE headcanons involving minor anti-villains coming, ruthlessly blending showverse and bookverse extended canon

But given that I try to obsessively give backstories to all of my favorite characters that don’t have them yet, I’ve been thinking about the showverse Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender (referred to in the rest of this post as “Ainsley,” my personal favorite name for them, for the sake of convenience and not typing out either that whole title or an acronym) and what their life might have been pre-Olaf.

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that over in All the Wrong Questions, Ellington is oddly enough treated like kind of a stranger by all the other kids (except Jake and Cleo). Was she not part of the group? Was she somehow apart from the community? Who was she hanging out with if not Moxie and co.?

And it hits me that Ellington and Ainsley are both morally ambiguous and love coffee...

So now (without doing any math to see if the ages add up because they probably won’t and I don’t want this to get ruined that easily) I have this whole thing going on in my head about Ainsley growing up in Stain’d-by-the-Sea and them and Ellington being each other’s only friend forever. I actually CONSIDERED making a fanfiction of this, but that would involve me having to go out and actually purchase the entirety of ATWQ instead of just library-ing it up, and then reading all four of them again, and I have other books to read and fics to research for in other ways, so I can’t be bothered to marathon a four-book series for a oneshot. (Watch me change my mind in a month.) Anyway, because right now I am decidedly set on NOT making a fanfic out of this (come on, JC, nobody buys that Ainsley and Josephine are the same age anyway!), I’m just going to give you the bullet points of if this had actually happened.

Adding a cut because this is gonna get long

EDIT: I just did some looking up of stuff and the ages REALLY don’t line up, so this is super AU but I’m leaving it here for you to read anyway

-Ellington first meets Ainsley by coming across Stew Mitchum beating them up for being a “guy who thinks he’s a girl” (despite Ainsley’s insistence that they are nonbinary, which they try to emphasize in very verbose terms in between getting kicked in the shin). Ellington, thinking she can play hero as seen in the fantasy novels she loves, rushes in, attempting to beat up Stew. However, as Ellington has not been trained in combat in any sense whatsoever (YET!), she gets utterly decimated - bruises, teeth in danger of falling out, ends up lying on the ground unable to get back up. Stew warns her that she doesn’t know who she’s messing with before turning and walking ominously away. Ellington lies on the ground for about thirty seconds thinking about how big of a mistake she made before Ainsley gingerly approaches her, helps her get up, and walks her back home for first aid.

-They have a long discussion about how everyone around them is so literate and both of them sort of feel like outcasts, as Ellington is the ONLY person in town who has read ALL of Lord of the Rings and Ainsley prefers plays by and large to books. Now, Ainsley is turned off by the idea of reading even ONE book as huge as a Tolkien, and Ellington finds plays utterly too short to hold her attention when they’re not actually performed onstage, but they make an agreement not to belittle each other for their literary choices.

-Ellington is the one who gets Ainsley hooked on coffee. Specifically Black Cat coffee. The two of them commandeer that shop and are basically its only two regular patrons before Lemony comes to town.

-Armstrong isn’t a fan of his daughter having a friend. There are secrets, Bombinating-Beast-related secrets, he doesn’t even want to tell HER. And now she’s bringing a stranger into their life? A stranger who might learn way too much by accident by being too close to Armstrong? Armstrong disapproves. But he’s not going to be overt about this, or his cover will be blown.

-I’ve been a fan for a while of the idea that Ainsley prefers dressing in male clothes specifically for the sake of comfort (largely inspired by statements by MCards) (In-universe, though, it’s more like ”Because, you know, women’s clothes are intentionally designed for form over function as a byproduct of the misogyny that has permeated the industry...” Ainsley goes on for another five minutes), but can appreciate throwing small feminine touches onto their ensembles (like that pearl necklace). Ellington, on the other hand, loves skirts because they make her feel regal. Ellington is SO femme. They have disagreements over this at first, but then Ainsley spots Ellington’s perfectly painted and groomed black fingernails and asks if Ellington wouldn’t mind painting theirs. Ellington is more than happy and Ainsley ends up with blue fingernails (she retains the monopoly on black; am I the only person who sees her as a bit of a Goth fashion-wise?).

-Ellington has a crush on Ainsley for about a week before trying to drop big obvious hints. “Have you ever felt anything about a close friend, like they should be more than that?” “I don’t like you that way, Ellington.” “...Oh.” “Besides, I’m half convinced love is just a fallacy concocted by our culture in order to” AINSLEY GOES ON FOR ANOTHER FIVE MINUTES

-But she gets over it, it’s okay

-They’re both aware of the fact that there are big things going on in the world around them. Plots, secrecy, underhanded schemes, covert organizations and operations. The Inhumane Society. They both want in on this, as the unexamined life is not worth living. But it’s one of those “be careful what you wish for” scenarios.

-They decide to try and write a play together as a passion project of their friendship. Ellington wants to write about a secret agent who finds himself stranded in a small, economically troubled town populated by strange characters. Ainsley wants to write about a set of children who are orphaned thanks to the machinations of a diabolical villain. Ainsley insists their idea is more suited to at least two adaptations of varying quality by sets of actual actors while Ellington’s idea is better suited to print.

-Though at first, Ellington wonders about writing a comedy. Ainsley talks her out of it. Tragedy, after all, paints the world as it truly is. Ellington finds she cannot disagree, even though she hasn’t experienced a tragedy of her own. (YET!)

-Armstrong REALLY doesn’t like how much time they spend together writing this play.

-They never get the chance to finish it.

-Armstrong begins acting very strange, and he might actually voice his concerns to Ellington about having friends she doesn’t know if she can trust. Ellington tries to argue hard that Ainsley IS trustworthy, but Armstrong doesn’t buy it and pushes back. 

-Basically something happens with the Inhumane Society, Armstrong, and the Beast to make Ellington start to doubt her friendship with Ainsley for real. She tries ignoring them and giving them the silent treatment, but they notice. They confront her about it, standing in front of her and refusing to move until they get some answers. Ellington just shoves Ainsley over, and while Ainsley stares at her in disbelief, she tells them that “If you didn’t want to get pushed over, you shouldn’t have stood in my WAY!”

-They stop talking.

-Then Armstrong goes missing. At the same time Hangfire rears his villainous head. Ellington is blind to the connection from the start. 

-You’d think now would really be the time she’d need a friend, but she’s starting to think her father was right about friendships, as she’s already lost one person she loved. For one thing, can she endanger someone else like that? For another, how does it speak to Armstrong’s memory if she runs right to the person he didn’t approve of?

-Ellington basically disappears from social life.

-Ainsley just wants to know what happened.

-Eventually, Ainsley’s family leaves Stain’d-by-the-Sea because the ink economy is in the toilet. It’s unclear whether this is before or after Ellington found Lemony and saw her opportunity.

-But once Ellington got wrapped up in that plot, she stopped caring (made herself stop caring?) about Ainsley.

-Fast forward several years later and Ainsley still hasn’t found coffee that tastes as good as Black Cat.