Spoilers for The Owl House We are seeing an unprecedented rise in transgender hate and anti-lgbt+ bills worldwide. Our trans future seems now more bleak than ever, therefore positive trans representation where we are not only resisting but living joyfully is one crucial act of rebellion. For those who haven’t watched this masterpiece. The Owl House is an animated series created by Danna Terrace that follows self-assured teenage girl Luz, who discovers a portal to another realm where humans are not well-liked. Luz partners with a rebellious witch named Eda and her diminutive demon sidekick, King, who was indeed once a king and is searching for a way to restore his titles and glory. (Disney Wiki- Fandom). The Boiling Isles, the other realm Luz finds herself in, is ruled by an Emperor and his “Coven System”. It states that once witches reach a certain age they have to choose between one of 9 different covens: Emperor’s, Abomination, Bard, Beast Keeping, Construction, Healing, Illusionist, Oracle, Plant and Potions Coven, and afterwards are branded with an special tattoo that allows them to only perform the type of magic the coven specializes in - the only witches that can perform any type of magic is the ones in the Emperor’s Coven and is extremely difficult to become part of it. If the young witch doesn’t want to be part of any coven, they are criminalized, marked as a “wild-witch” and excluded from society. As we go through the series we find out how horrible, unnatural and new the system is. The first character we meet that criticizes the system is Eda Clawthorne (Luz’s mentor) self-proclaimed the greatest witch on the Boiling Isles and proud wild witch that is always making Luz question herself-conceived notions about the world and the fantasy genre. The second character that we see directly challenges the system is the protagonist of this article, Mx. Raine Whispers. We meet Raine Whispers in Episode 7 of Season 2, titled “Eda’s Requiem” after they have just become the leader of the Bard Coven. Later on in the episode as Eda is walking around one of the town’s plazas we find a group of bat-masked musicians causing trouble. Their leader stands in front of a statue of the Emperor, completely overshadowing him and delivers this amazing speech: They take your magic, They restrict your knowledge They said they do it in the name of unity but what they really want is control. You know what we say to that folks!? Shove off! And by playing just one note on their violin, they control the bodies of the officials that were about to detain the group and make them fall on trash. “Who are you heroes?” Asks one of the passerbyers to which the group responds: “We are the Bards Against the Throne, a.k.a…” Before the leader can end, the officials have recovered from the spell, and the group is quickly surrounded. Eda with her rebellious spirit helps the group escape and once they’re all safe unmasks the leader and we find out it is the head of the Bard Coven, and Eda’s old friend. Eda and Raine used to be in a romantic relationship, till one day Raine broke them up for an array of issues, one of which was that they were joining the Bard Coven and knew about Eda’s anti-coven system stance. However, once they became part of the system they quickly found out how unjust it is and radicalized, they met other people that think like them and together they formed the revolutionary group named “Bards Against the Throne a.k.a. BAtTs”. Till this moment on the series, any resistance against the system was individual and expressed through Eda mostly. With the introduction of Raine Whispers, we see people organizing against the emperor, teaching us that we don’t have to fight alone, in other words they introduce us to the revolution as a collective movement. As the series continues, the BAtTs shift from being a group of four, to bringing other witches that are not in the bard coven and therefore has a rebranding to “The Covens Against the Throne a.k.a. the CAtTs” but Raine is still one of the leaders. The character of Raine Whispers is amazing all by themself. They give depth to Eda as a previous romantic interest and act as a foil in the ways they both decided to fight: with Eda being upfront and alone, whereas Raine plays the long game through the system and always with someone else. But what makes them the love of my life is that they are OLD, BROWN & NON-BINARY. I didn’t start watching the Owl House at the same time as everyone else. I had heard the news of Luz Noceda and her bisexuality but didn’t have Disney+ nor did I want to give the company my money (you can watch the Owl House at theowlclub.net) therefore when I started watching the series I was kind of detached from the fandom and all the information it could have given me. When I watched “Eda’s Requiem” Raine’s pronouns kind of skipped over my head but they had enough gender swag, for me to be: I don’t care about anything, this witch is genderqueer. So you could imagine how happy I was when I found out that Raine was non-binary for real, in freaking canon! But that was not everything, they were old! As a young trans person, one of my biggest fears is that I will never get to be old, or that I will get to be but that I would have to sacrifice my transness to get there. So seeing this animated drawing with their wrinkles and gray hair was hope, it showed me a version of how I could look like, how my future could look like. And they’re brown! My skin tone is weird, some people see me brown, some people see me white, but regardless of that brown (and black) people are often erased from queerness and queer representation especially. Avi Roque, Raine Whisper’s VA, also talks how this would have been the case had they not come and played the character, which makes Raine’s skin tone ever so special. To have a character like Raine Whispers and make them a non-binary brown and middle-aged person, not alien, demon or any other non-human (witches are treated to same as humans on the series) , and give them such a speech as “They restrict your knowledge, they say they do it in the name of unity but what they really want is control”. Is one of the best representations I have ever seen. The coven system obviously stands for a lot of things, and one of them is the gender binary. Therefore to watch an enby of color standing against said binary which was historically created to further white supremacy and eliminate non-white (native) cultures makes my soul sing. To put a cherry on top, their VA is also a brown, nonbinary, adult and latine! Though Raine Whispers being a witch means that they are every type of brown and not at all so they could be whatever ethnicity the viewer wants them to be, but as a latine person it just makes them a bit more cool, you know? The Owl House team didn’t have to make Raine nonbinary or brown or old, but the fact that they did just makes their role in the story even more deep. Raine Whispers gives me hope for the future, because they are a representation of what my future could look like, and they’re cool as fuck, jejeje. They teach me that no matter the evils of this world there would always be resistance, and that you won’t have to be alone in your fight. Ari Ochoa Petzois a Mexican-Venezuelan bi genderfluid writer. They like dancing to old music and history. In their free time you can find xem trying to coerce their friends to participate in another of their crazy projects.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.Categories
All
Archives
May 2023
|