This post contains my thoughts on a few stories I’ve been saving up that don’t merit a post on their own.

D&D Romance

Just a day after posting about my kids getting into D&D, I came across this article on Tor.com about The Golden Age of D&D Romance. I had no idea it was a genre, but I’m not surprised. Pretty much every genre can be crossed with every other. See The Dresden Files for fantasy mixed with detective noir, for example. After a brief introduction, the author of the piece lists 6 books in the D&D Romance genre. I don’t hate on romance as much as I did before I read a few books in the genre, but these aren’t my cup of tea. That said, they may work for you.

It’s been a while since we last went to Disney; five years, in fact. We were originally supposed to go in 2020, but then, a week before our trip, Disney closed for COVID-19. Finally it was time to go back and boy have things changed. Back when we just had Scarlett, I wrote a blog post about Visiting to Disney with a 2-year-old and another about Visiting to Disney with a 3-year-old. While I don’t intend for this blog post to be nearly as formal as those entries, they do serve as a contrast for this trip.

Back in November we took the twins on their first trip to Disney. This time around Scarlett wasn’t as interested in the parades as she was last time, but the twins were REALLY into them. Surprisingly, both twins ended up warming up to the characters. Sam’s reluctance with Mickey on the first day made me think he was going to try and avoid them the entire trip. But as you can see in the video, he eventually got into interacting with the characters.

When I wrote my second fatherhood post, the one about Disney Princesses, I speculated that perhaps the problem most people had with the Disney Princesses was not the movies, but how the company marketed to kids. Since Scarlett is only one, my only exposure to the princesses has been through my own childhood and adulthood love of Disney movies. This Boing Boing post about the princess from Brave, Merida, proves the point - it’s the marketing that gets under everyone’s skin. Here’s the change from the movie version on the left to the marketing version on the right:

[caption id=“attachment_6143” align=“aligncenter” width=“449”] lil kids - CC licensed by jepoycamboy[/caption]

I titled this Part 1 because I am sure I’ll have to revisit this topic in the future. Scarlett is only 1 and she barely cares for television, much less Disney animated films. However, if you don’t think about the future, it has a way of surprising you and finding you unprepared. Of course, as a kid, I loved the Disney cartoons. It was only in the last ten years or so that I came across any articles critical of Disney and how it might be corrupting our daughters. There’s always going to be some degree of hate towards the creators of mass media because we are powerless against them. They’re able to use emotions and psychology to affect us (or those around us) and bypass our rational thinking. Try telling some kid back in the late 90s he can’t have a Power Rangers toy because it promotes violence. He doesn’t know or care about that. He just wants to have one of the rainbow of action figures to play with his friends. Mass media is everywhere and the only way to keep it from affecting your kids is to lock them in the basement - they’ll see it on TV, movies, radio or from friends, teachers, and family members.  And Hinds over at The Atlantic recounts how he was unable to keep his daughters from learning about the princesses, despite his best efforts. Interestingly enough, Hinds doesn’t really dwell much on why he’d want to do this to his daughters - it’s considered to be assumed knowledge - of COURSE people want to keep their kids away from Disney Princess Culture.  But why?